Showing posts with label web search visibility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web search visibility. Show all posts

Monday, July 21, 2008

Four Steps for Search Engine Optimization

The four main interrelated areas of knowledge for search engine optimization are keyword research, content organization, search visibility, and linking relationships.

If your small business is seeking a Littleton, CO SEO Consultant we offer professional SEO Services along the Colorado Front Range.

Keyword Research

Extensive keyword research using analytical tools is the first step, taking into consideration how people search, search engines algorithms, your own site keyword objectives, and your competitors’ keywords.

Content Organization

It’s not only quality content but well organized content showing focus and emphasis that is needed. Think of a web page as an outline: title, meta data, and well organized paragraphs with relevant content supporting H tag headings. Blocks of content in paragraphs using appropriate emphasis is powerful and effective. Sometimes SEOs ignore the most basic and fundamental concepts.

Search Visibility

Search visibility is the intersection of links and content. You need inbound links, excellent internal linking (often underutilized as a technique), good site architecture, and well-organized content so the website has a natural flow of both links and content internally from web page to web page. Optimizing pages with keywords should pull in targeted search engine traffic, then it’s up to the web design to direct visitors towards the call to action –whether it is to fill in a form, complete a transaction, or pick up the phone and call. The end result of search visibility is targeted traffic matching your keyword plan, a great user experience with visitors staying on the site longer and visiting more and more pages, and a site that performs based upon its chosen keywords. Other topics that contribute to search visibility are site uptime and your robots.txt file.

Linking Relationships

You need inbound links, internal links, and outbound links connecting to the web. If a site has three broad topics with multiple web pages on each topic, the topical web pages should be cross-linked from within the body of content. Human visitors can handle about eight links per page easily, more than that can be confusing. You need planned anchor text links leading to your home page, but in addition for great search visibility and relevance you need deep links into your most important internal web pages.

Selling SEO Services and Web Search Visibility

In order for the client to fully embrace web marketing via SEO it is useful to inform them generously on the various components and contributing factors of SEO, how they work together, how they impact a site, and what’s possible to achieve through a comprehensive SEO campaign initiated by experts. The better information a client receives in the Selling SEO Services front-end process the better they can make appropriate decisions and stay committed to the process. SEO is a process and not an event and clients should understand this -especially if they want to win. It is helpful to get an idea for the end result they have in mind and are willing to pay for in the SEO campaign.

One key concept for Web Search Visibility is in Social Media Marketing or SMM. Sometimes you just have to dive in. One example of SMM is in using the many online services to mash together the many options available which helps your Site Visibility.

Do You Want To Participate, Compete, or WIN?

For example does the client want to Participate, Compete, or Win, which basically comes down to working with the right SEO and then investing the necessary time and capital. Basic SEO services can definitely improve their web search visibility so they can Participate in the search query space on chosen keywords. More work is needed in order to successfully Compete with a higher level of expectation with other indexed sites already employing SEO experts.

For me personally, to Win means top three or four SERP position achievement on Google for high volume keywords along with consistent SERP results over a period of several months or longer. Given the correct information regarding SEO practice business owners can choose what they want worked on and the associated time schedule.

A few important questions to ask business owners are: how are you currently marketing your business; how are you currently using your website; do you know what keywords are delivering traffic to your existing site now; how important is it for you to market your business on the internet in the short-term, medium-term and in your long-term business plan; do you want both a PPC and an SEO campaign; and do you realize what is realistically possible to achieve through SEO? Well, we know what is possible, and what it will take. It shouldn't be necessary for an SEO to make claims or promises in advance on what SERP results a particular client will achieve; set realistic expectations together and then get the ball rolling and keep it moving down the field.

At the beginning of a project a business owner needs to weigh all the factors and make the key business decision as far as scrapping or reconstructing the old site or building an entirely new search engine friendly site. In some cases, especially where site architecture, URL structure and design has been poor, it could make sense and provide a higher return on investment by starting over.

Web Search Visibility

One major determing factor in the decision to reconstruct the existing site, or start over, has to do with their existing web search visibility. Quality of inbound links; search engine indexing; well organized and well written content; and link flow dispersing the link juice within the site will help determine the probability that existing or new blocks of content will be discovered by search engines and delivered to the eyes of visitors.

What you do not want at the beginning of any SEO campaign is to be saddled with multiple built-in limitations and constraints due to site design or problems such as crawling or spidering issues. Another key factor before starting any new client campaign is whether they compete locally or nationally or internationally, as that will drive the keyword plan, content strategy, and the linking strategy portions of the campaign.

Code to Text Ratio

One key element I examine when working to improve a website's SERP performance and search visibility of the individual web pages is the Code to Text Ratio. This SEO metric gives you the percentage of text on a web page counting as content that visitors actually see. For a web page to be relevant for search visibility for a keyword you need plenty of unique text -I shoot for around 30% text minimum.

Web Search Visibility with RSS Feeds

We're a fan of utilizing the free tools readily available on the internet for distribution of web and blog content. One effective web marketing promotion strategy is to not only create a business blog, but to distribute the blog in the form of RSS Feeds in blog directories and free RSS syndication services that are powerful and simple to distribute content that can be indexed and crawled by webbots automatically. We also regularly have the blog directories and other social media marketing promotion sites PING our blogs so the most recent blog entries can be crawled to maximize visibility and indexing.

Local Search

If your customer strategy is based locally then make sure you create an online presence in your local state and community. This is preferable for highly targeted traffic. Local search sites include Superpages.com, CitySearch, Yellowpages.com, and Local.com to name a few.