What
is Search Engine Optimization?
·
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is
marketing on the web using the search engines to get top placement for your
website.
·
Just think of your domain and website as a piece of online real estate where
you jockey for the top positions to be seen by millions of internet users. You
are competing against thousands of other websites for that position. The higher
your website position; the more traffic to your website.
·
Simply, your goal for Search Engine
Optimization is to increase web visitor traffic to your website by placing high in
the results of searches using the optimized keywords describing the content of
your website.
Why
Optimize for the Search Engines?
·
In today’s
competitive online global market, search engine optimization is
critical to companies who want to expand
their reach to targeted customers and increase their overall sales.
·
A growing number of prospective customers search for
specific products online through the
major search engines. Online sales dramatically increased by 26% just last year
and are predicted to continue climbing.
· Market Rite Websites offers this free SEO info as an in depth strategy for your online marketing approach through your website. By applying these proven methods, and using the accompanying SEO Web Worksheet, you will increase your site’s visibility while also sending you highly targeted traffic.
·
Increasing your online visibility
and bringing more qualified prospects to your company’s website will lay the groundwork for better visitor sales
conversion and ensure the long-term success of all online marketing efforts.
How
do I Successfully Optimize for the Search Engines?
·
First and last, top placement is
achieved by studying your competition and out ranking them. By searching on your target
keywords, you will see the leading websites in the rankings. By using the
following methods, you can out rank the competition!
·
This workshop gives you access to
our online list of free SEO tools and resources used to optimize and improve
search engine results with effective methods used by top SEO experts. This workshop was compiled using free
online resources and created for the small internet business owners who want to
market their own websites. Feel free to link back to our workshop for future
reference. Although
new SEO methods and techniques are already online, this workshop provides a
solid, basic SEO resource for marketing your website right.
·
Once you know what keywords and
search engine marketing services worked for the competition, you can utilize
this information to do even better! Search Engine Optimization requires a lot of time and
effort in research to be effective. Knowing and implementing the keywords and
services used by your competition can greatly improve your results.
·
Then you can begin building website
popularity and
online business relationships through successful linking strategies.
·
Additonal paid advertising and
affiliate programs can
be utilized to further advertise your website.
·
By using a combination of several
on-page and off-page optimization strategies you can excel and outrank your
online competition to gain valuable market exposure.
Facts on search engines and how
they work
Background
on the top three search engines: Google, MSN, and Yahoo
Google is the King
of search engines with 48% of the internet’s search traffic. Yahoo comes in second with 28% and MSN
is third with 11%. These are the search engines we will target in our SEO
Marketing Strategy Workshop.
According to an article in Search Engine Watch, “
Facts on the King of Search: Google
·
Google provides search engine content to: AOL Search, Netscape,
Iwon
·
Provides paid advertising to: AOL Search, Netscape, Teoma, Ask Jeeves ,Iwon
·
Receives content from: Directory:
dmoz (Open Directory
Project). In our
step-by-step guide, we will discuss the quickest way to get into the Google
Empire.
·
Google uses
SPIDER BOTS on the web to maintain its
index.
·
These are computer robot programs that find the pages for inclusion into their directory
by following the links in the pages they already have in their database and have indexed. If the webpage has no links to other websites, Google will not find it.
Quick link building
strategies will be discussed in the step-by-step
SEO Strategies. Most large search engines operate several robots all the
time. Even so, the Web is so enormous that it can take six months for spiders
to cover it, creating a time lag of dead links and out of date websites in the
search engines.
General Info for Google SEO
·
Page Rank is Google's way of giving
specific value to your website popularity. The ranking system
considers the number of links other websites have to your website. Popularity
occurs when other websites place links on their website that are pointing to
your website. Generally, the more links you have pointing to your website, the
higher your Page Rank (PR) will be. Page Rank is one of the many factors that
Google takes into account when ranking websites.
·
They evaluate the
quality of inbound links (people
who link to you) and quality of outbound links (people who you link to) by
assigning a value to the number of quality (popularity) of your links.
·
Also, Google
analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the
location of each word. In order
to determine the relevance of search user results Google also analyzes the
content of neighboring web pages.
The Must Do List For Google
·
Optimize for webpage content by including relevant and
useful content and
information that an internet surfer would want to read and explore! There’s
plenty of spam out there and Google doesn’t like it. Duplicate content is
frowned on. Make sure each page has unique content.
·
Optimize for link relevance, quality and popularity: Several
factors that determines your rank on Google are the number of links that point
to your site, the quality (popularity) of the sites that link to your site, the
text in and around the links that link to your website.
·
Optimize with clean code structure and no cheating. Do not use webpage building
programs like Frontpage, which is not compatible with Netscape browsers. Make
sure your website code can be displayed properly by all the web browsers like
Firefox, Netscape, and Internet Explorer.
·
Tips from
Google: "Basically,
Google's position is that we prefer no hidden links, no hidden text, no automatic
tools used for positioning, and no cloaking. We prefer that Googlebot get the
exact same page that users see. In general, you can assume that we're as
conservative as possible. We don't like hidden links/text in
divs/layers/iframes/css, or links that are inconspicuous or punctuation, for
example. Similarly, we don't like cloaking or sneaky redirects in any form,
whether it be user agent/ip-based, or redirects through javascript, meta
refreshes, 301/302's, or 100% frames."
Google will blacklist websites
who use underhanded techniques to get more traffic.
·
Optimize with on-page techniques: Google
looks for the keywords in the title, metatags, content, and the text links
within your site.
·
Optimize the right type of website: There
are some technical website design elements that make it hard for the search
engines to index the content in the
webpage, no matter how well you optimize and submit them, because they can’t follow the code. Fortunately, these technical design elements can
be combined with SEO friendly HTML to work together before you submit your
website. The most common coding that
spider bots don’t see or spider: Sites that use Frames.
Sites that use Dynamic URLs./
Sites that use Flash/ Sites that
use Image Maps for navigation/
Sites that use Javascript for
navigation.
General
Info for Yahoo SEO
·
Yahoo
receives search engine content primarily from itself. Yahoo is the
leader in amount of traffic, overall advertising, and household and business
user reach on a global scale. Over 237 million
unique users in 25 countries and 13 languages.
·
Yahoo owns the paid advertising program in the
Overture Network. This is the second best online advertising program after Google
Adwords.
·
The main Yahoo Index results are compiled spidering
the web or participating in the Yahoo Paid Inclusion Program.
·
Directory: Yahoo’s main business directory employs
human editors.
·
Yahoo has both a human-edited directory and a spider
based index.
·
The Paid Yahoo! Directory is organized by placing
related websites into subject categories. Sites are evaluated by Yahoo! editors, who visit and
evaluate user suggestions and decide where the sites belong. To get express
inclusion, you should use their Business Express plan. It costs $299 every
year, but your site will get reviewed within 7 days. This does not guarantee
that your site will get into the Yahoo Directory.
General Info for MSN SEO
·
MSN staffs a team of editors that monitors the most
current popular searches being performed and they hand-pick sites that are most
relevant.
·
Some listings
compiled by human editors, while most results in index are provided by their
own index. They
have discontinued the index relationship with Yahoo, but continue their
Overture paid listing program.
·
Microsoft is the
best in local computer search: They control desktop search with their MS operating systems that find
documents on a local computer or across a network. This local searching
capability is an advantage and may later lead to a larger control of the search
market if they continue to add new indexing and search engine capabilities.
The Must Do’s For Yahoo and
MSN
·
Optimize with clean
code: Yahoo and
MSN place a strong emphasis on clean code. According to many SEO experts, the
MSN Search spider downgrades the ranking of sites that have badly written code. Make sure
you have a “clean” web design, or employ a good web developer who knows how to
create SEO friendly websites.
·
Optimize keyword placement on the
webpage: Yahoo and MSN
rank websites with on-page optimization higher and consider these factors more
than Google does. Although they also consider off-page factors such as link
popularity, they give far greater weight to certain on-page factors, such as
keyword placement, than does Google. Now that we know what the search engines
are looking for, we can start the process of on-page optimization….
Step
by Step Proven Methods for Long Term SEO Success
Identify Your Market and Initial
Keywords
After understanding how search
engines work, and the various factors that influence website ranking in search
results, we want to apply this knowledge while researching the competition and
keywords for our website. Before you start, it is important to identify your
target product and target audience in order to sell your product and convey
your message with the right keywords.
Identify
your product
·
What is your product or
service?
·
What are your primary
selling points? (Built-in characteristics of product itself)
·
Primary Benefits? (What buyer
gets from using the product or service)
Identify
your target market and audience
·
Demographics: (Age, sex,
education, income, occupation)
·
Psychographics:
(Lifestyle, attitude, personality traits)
·
Specific regional or
local market area
·
Specific target groups
or business organizations
·
Specific industry
related markets
Create your first list of relevant keywords and phrases
Consider the following when
choosing keywords:
·
How will your target audience
most likely type in a search for your product or service? Quickly list the phrases you would use to search for
your product or service.
Find your competition and beat them
at their game!
Steps
to research your Keyword competitors
1. Keyword
Data MinerTool: Find your competition
for the most popular search terms: Using your
initial keywords and
phrases, find their search engine popularity by using this tool listed on
SEO Web Worksheet. List of free online
tools and resources for our visitors.
2. Make sure you copy and paste all top search
engine keyword results and metatag research into a notepad or word document.
3. SEO Word Tool: Use this tool
to find out how much competition you will have for each popular keyword from
step 1. Choose the top 20 keywords and phrases.
4. Google IT! Look for your competition directly on Google.