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The
Holy Grail of Internet Marketing: Search Engine Placement
When you
create a page for your website, the one thing you want to ensure is
that people will visit. Otherwise, why put a page up at all?Most people immediately turn to traditional methods of promotion: marketing, advertising, and press releases. All these are important, and for a large national site it's equally important that the advertising be in multiple media. The most critical part of your Internet marketing plan, however, is not paid advertising; it's placing well in the search engines.
Statistics vary, but most researchers agree that about seventy percent of all traffic, both repeat and new, to the average website is brought there by a search engine. Not through expensive banner ads, and not through a link stored on peoples' favorites -- through search engines.
Watch your own surfing habits. If you're anything like me, when you need to look up a site, you immediately go to Google, Yahoo!, or another search engine you favor. Even if the site is bookmarked in your favorites file, you're likely to go to Google first. So if that site doesn't show up high, what do you do?
Browsing customers are likely to take whatever higher-ranked similar page shows up, whether it's yours or your competitor's.
This is not good for your business when your competitor sneaks in above you.
What can you do?
Search
Engine Optimization: Creating Optimal Page Content
Rule
number one: your page content is always
primarily for your customers. But the search engines scan your site,
looking for keywords that they can use for cataloging your site in an
appropriate way, too. Your challenge is to ensure that you maintain a
readable and useful site, while giving the search engine spiders the
information they need to catalog your site high in appropriate places.This requires using an art and skill known as search engine optimization, or SEO. It's one of the hottest new industries developing online, and if you can write good optimized content, your words may be golden.
Why? Because, according to SearchEngineWatch.com's most recent Internet marketing survey, 89% of businesses reported that when they use the Internet as a primary marketing tool, SEO gives an equivalent or higher ROI than search engine advertising -- that's the paid advertising you see in the margins of every web search today. In the same survey, 35% stated that SEO pages gave a better ROI than paid advertisement. In other words, SEO content beat paid advertisement in ROI value by three to one.
With patience and attention, anyone can optimize a website for search engine placement. Even if you don't have the money to sink into an online advertising campaign right now, you can SEO your pages. Once more, the Internet acts as a great equalizer: your little local computer business can look as big as a national chain company, especially in your niche market. You just have to know how to make your content work right for you.
How
Does SEO Work?
To make
SEO work for you, you have to understand how search engines catalog
pages, and take steps to ensure your page is as usable as possible for
the engines. You also have to select a keyword or keyword phrase and
repeat it in specific ways throughout your page and your website.Search engines use text-based algorithms. Search engine spiders, robots, or web crawlers are miniprograms or processes enslaved to the primary program, and these processes visit web sites, catalog the data they find, and bring it back to put in the search engine databases.
Here the search engines process and examine the data. They apply their algorithms to the content they find and, depending on the mathematical results they get, determine where to place your page in search engine listings. Small changes in your page content can make the difference, for you, between a Page 50 ranking and a Page 2 ranking.
For example: let's suppose you sell handmade chainmail. You may think you're unique, but if you do a Google search for "handmade chainmail" or just "chainmail," you'll get thousands, even millions, of pages returned. Do a search for "armorer" or for "medieval weapon," and you'll get even more. There are thousands of people online who make, sell, or provide information about handmade chainmail. And this is true for almost any niche market.
Instead of just talking about your armor on your website, then, you can SEO the content. Go ahead and write an article about your business for the front page. Then think about what your customers are most likely to use as a phrase to search for your armor. Get specific. Do you serve a specific city? Do you focus on Norman-style chainmail? Do you prefer hauberks or gloves? Do you also deal in chainmail lingerie (yes, they make that too) or chainmail jewelry? By answering these sorts of questions about your business, you can come up with a good set of search terms.
In this case, we'll say our business, Chainmail Fantasies, is going to use "Pasadena chainmail for women". They do the lingerie type, but they also provide full chainmail, orienting toward a female market. As a secondary keyword to pick up slightly different searches, they plan to use "fantasy chainmail lingerie".
Once you've selected your keyword phrases, run a word count on your article (easy to do in MS Word by clicking File | Properties and looking at the third tab, Statistics). Between 3% and 7% of these words need to be your keyword phrase. As a guideline, for a very short keyword phrase -- one or two words -- you can aim toward the lower 3%. For a longer keyword phrase, 7% is better.
Example: Your article is 400 words long. Your keyword phrase is "Pasadena chainmail for women" -- three words, since words like "for" don't really count in keyword phrases. You decide you should probably have a 5% appearance, since this is a phrase that's a little long, but not really long. 5% of 400 words = 20 words. Divide this by the length of your phrase - 3 words - and round up. You need to mention your intact keyword phrase seven times in your article. (You can go up to 50% higher than this, and mention it ten times, but don't mention it more than this. Recently search engines have been tossing out extremely high keyword count pages as search engine spam.)
Still, seven mentions is a lot for one short article, and the phrase you're using is awkward. The solution: put your phrase in headers, especially at the top of the page. Two reasons for this: it makes it easier to use up the phrase in a way your reader can digest, and this is exactly the spot where it is most useful for increasing your search engine placement. Most SEO experts also recommend that you focus on including the search engine phrase most heavily in the first paragraph, with at least one additional mention in the last paragraph.
You'll also need to include your search engine phrase in the metatags of your web page, including the page title and keyword metatags. This makes it easy for the spiders to spot your keyword, and catalog your website accordingly.
Further
SEO Tips
Of course,
page content is not the only thing search engines examine when
determining where to place your page in the search engine rankings.
You'll also need to look at:- Keeping your content continually fresh.
- Whether you have good one-way links pointing to your site.
- Quality reciprocal links.
- Checking your search engine ranking regularly for any surprises -- this is a race, not a lottery.
Beyond
SEO
There are
dozens of other things you can do to drive traffic to your site:
creating newsletters, giving away articles, running promotions for new
and for established customers, using affiliate sales for both profit
and traffic creation. Keep reading here and I'll tell you more about
ways you can promote your website simply, with proven methods that have
worked for thousands of webmasters.And because search engines change the way they catalog sites about every six months, I'll keep you informed about new and upcoming changes that may affect how you manage your search engine marketing.
One more thing: I'll show you ways you can use your good online content to not only promote your business, but also to generate a secondary income for your business.
Just bookmark this page, and keep coming back; or subscribe to my free monthly SEO Content newsletter for information on page updates and articles you won't find on the website.
And if you'd prefer to use my services and experiences to fill your website with quality SEO content, contact me to discuss your needs.
