SEO + Good website = majority of new business for a small company.
The bottom line in all SEO work is bringing people interested in your product or service to your website via a search engine. Then getting vistors thru layout and copy to spend enough time on your website to decide to contact your company or not. Good search engine optimization can bring the majority of all the new business a small company needs. This cuts total advertising costs significantly, often down to just website and SEO costs. Make no mistake! Search engine optimization and the work to make your website do that takes quite a bit of time. It also takes significant trial and error to get everything to where you want it.
All SEO starts with key word research. Keywords and key phrases are simply the words or combination of words people use to search for websites having what they want, nothing more. Take your time and really understand the words people are using that relate to your product or service. Key word research is pivotal to every other step in search engine success. Research all the possible words you think may be used and then choose your top keywords wisely. Google has a free keyword research tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal This lets you do extensive keyword research by country and language. It gives the last month’s keyword totals and a monthly average. The time you spend researching your keywords is time very well spent. So do it!
Once your keyword research is complete and you have decided on your keywords it is time to go to the next step.
Create your website URL's using your keywords:
Often website URL's are very poorly constructed for search engine optimization. They contain few if any keywords. For example, does your website have any URL's such as?
- www.mydomain.com/contact.htm
- www.mydomain.com/about.htm
- www.mydomain.com/prod1.htm
- www.mydomain.com/service.htm
- www.mydomain.com/estimate.htm
- www.mydomain.com/quality.htm
Those URL's give search engines absolutely no clue about page or website content and thus from an optimization point of view are worthless. The words used, “contact, about, prod1, service, and estimate and quality”, should be replaced by the top keywords you have researched and are going to use. This underscores the importance of your keyword research!
EXAMPLE: Let us optimize URL's using "basement finishing" keywords.
- www.mydomain.com/basement_finishing_company.htm instead of contact.htm
- www.mydomain.com/basement_finishing.htm instead of about.htm
- www.mydomain.com/basementfinishing.htm instead of prod1.htm
- www.mydomain.com/basementfinishingcontractor.htm instead of service.htm
- www.mydomain.com/basementcontractor.htm instead of estimate.htm
- www.mydomain.com/finishedbasements.htm instead of quality.htm
Now you start on your internal linking structure ... (this may change as you write your copy. You may decide to change some of your URL's too as you write copy ... that's okay do it till you are satisfied keyword use is perfect).
Internal linking structure (site navigation) for search engine optimization.
This means using your keywords in the internal links (your sites navigation) for each page of your website. Does your website use navigation links to its page with words like Home, About us, Contact, Products etc? Bad! They give search engines no clue what each page is about. Using our example website about 'basement finishing' we create an internal linking structure using those keywords. Never use graphics for navigation; search engines do not index graphics. Only plain text links index perfectly!- Home becomes Basement Finishing Home
- About us becomes Company Name Basement Finishing
- Contact becomes Basement Finishing Contacts
- Products becomes Our Basement Finishing
- and so on.
The next step is writing copy that entices people interested in your product or service to read further and conclude, "I will either do business with this company or investigate them further". It sounds simple, but it is the most difficult part of SEO and takes the most time to do. You must incorporate your keywords and synonyms of those keywords within the copy.
You must also understand how people scan WebPages.
- Where do they look first?
- What area do they look at most often?
- How much time do I have to catch their attention?
How do people scan WebPages?
The Poynter Institute did 'eye tracking' research. The research was called Eyetrack 111 Eyetrack tells us how people scan a webpage. This helps you understand how to layout a webpage and where your important information must be located. Over the last decades, people have become first scanners, then readers, (readers only if something catches their eye). Media teaches people that information comes in small bites. TV delivers a story in 6-30 seconds. Radio does about the same. Information is everywhere and people are overloaded. No wonder scanning is the norm. If your webpage fails the scanning test, you lose. Take the time to understand what Eyetrack 111 says. The information will guide you in structuring copy and layout on each webpage. Your website will only be effective if people want to read it further and come to that all-important decision to contact you!
Now that you understand how people scan WebPages, apply this to your website as part of your SEO work.
Write effective copy for your website.
To write effectively for your website you MUST keep in mind what the reader is actually doing. Anyone searching the web has a need to solve. That need may be information to make a decision or find a company to solve that need. Either way readers are first and foremost looking to solve a need. Your copy must answer their need first, second and third. Who you or your company are, is last priority of readers. Your copy must tell first that their need is solved here, you have credibility and then entice them to keep reading untill they conclude, "I will either do business with this company or not". Just keep this in mind as you write. "When you provide a person with all the information he or she is looking for, then you've started to build engagement with a potential customer". There is no better first step.More search engine optimization points:
Headings H1 thru H6 Search engines like headings. They are like chapters for each webpage or section of a webpage. Headings divide your page contents into segments and give you ability to highlight your keywords on each page. Using headings wisely will boost your website in search results.
Titles The title of each page must be different, use your keywords, and be accurate about the pages content. It must also make people decide to click on your link in search results too. Titles take time and frequent experiment to determine the best ones to use.
Meta keywords Many search engines do not use keywords, but some do so make sure you add your keywords to each page.
Meta description Sentences of great importance! Search engines often show this in search results AND use it as a major decision tool in where the page ranks in search results AND people use it to decide whether they click to your site or not.
Alt tags All images and links must have alt tags. Alt tags are very important to your sucess in optimizing your web site. They give further information to search engines, increase your keywords on page and help users see what each page is about. I see many websites that lack this basic information, don't be one of them!
W3.org validation Always validate your pages at http://validator.w3.org/file-upload.html. Why take any chance that search engine spiders get your page wrong due to coding errors? Your search engine optimization work will suffer with errors.
Further Search Optimization points:
Frequent updating
Search engines use update frequency in their analysis of websites. A website that is updated frequently will be indexed more often and rank higher in search results. From a search engine perspective, a site that is being updated is being looked after and thus more valuable. Updates do not have to be large, they have to be just enough to encourage search engine spiders to visit frequently and see changes.
Static WebPages
It seems that your best page type is static html. Search engine spiders understand html pages and have no errors in seeing everything on your page. In my experience simple html pages with good copy always outperform complex pages. It is information people are after, not a show on web design. Stay away from flash, heavy graphics and anything that does not add to information!
Web users are looking for information to help themselves. They want to see what your website is all about quickly. Research shows that page loading speed is a very important factor. To keep page loading fast keep graphics low and small.
Trends of search engines to be aware of
These two trends affecting search engine optimization. One is geographic targeting and the other is time on site. Geo targeting is well underway and time on site is in my opinion, being looked at very carefully.Geographic targeting.
The technology to locate geographically where each search originates is becoming better and better. A search engine wants to deliver relevant results to searchers that are closest by geographic location. For example; the person, searching for air conditioning wants local business, and search engines know this! For search engine optimization, there are two issues to consider. 1) Where is my server physically located and 2) how do you ensure your site is considered relevant for the geographic area of your business. If your server is far away, consider moving it to the city your business resides. Make sure your physical address, mail code and phone number is on most if not all pages. Search engines will use a valid address to determine what geographic area your site belongs.
Time on site and search engine optimization.
This is an opinion: What better way can software (search engines) determine a sites value than the time visitors spend on the site and the number of pages viewed? Google is keeping extremely detailed statistics on time and pages viewed. I predict this calculation will become very important. It is the one statistic that cannot be manipulated. Websites that are information rich, accurate, and easy to navigate are will be ready should this metric become widely adopted by search engines. Follow the search engine optimization rules and suggestions here and your site should be well positioned to excel in, "time on site" statistics.
Search engine optimization conclusions.
Follow the rules: thoroughly research keywords, create a keyword based URL site, use keyword based internal link structures, understand how people scan websites, test extensively, and with good copywriting your website can bring your company 70-80% of all your new business for very little money. You must keep on top of your website, keep trying new copy and layouts until you have a website that does the job. Success can put your company in the position of reducing overall marketing and advertising cost well below competitors. For example, one customer Kelly's HVAC obtains 70-80% of all their new business from their website. See Kelly’s air conditioning central air conditioning and repair. It took over two years to get to this point along with constant work and experimentation. Hard work will keep it there. Kelly's is a small business but his payback on good search engine optimization is huge. Yours can be too!
Email richard hirtle at gmail d0t com
Mike Delgado
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Importance of good content
Bob Rutledge
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Link building