Search engine optimization is like a never-ending race. Your website has to be fit to keep winning a spot on the front page of natural search results. Google is the world's leading search engine, therefore we follow Google's guidelines primarily for search engine optimization. By doing this your website will have good results not only with Google, but with other major search engines.
Sites' positions in our search results are determined based on a number of factors designed to provide end-users with helpful, accurate search results. These factors are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html.
In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. For more information about improving your site's visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing our webmaster guidelines. They outline core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website. *
The key phrase is "webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages."
How do we accomplish this? Before diving into this, please make sure you are following Google's guidelines through the whole process. Beware of SEO companies promising you certain results, and be sure to heed Google's warning regarding SEO companies and get confirmation that your SEO company is also abiding by Google's guidelines or their efforts may actually hurt you rather than help you, getting your site penalized by Google at worst, or just eat up your money with ineffective results at best. So what are some things you can do that are considered legitimate by Google?
Step 1: Get Optimized!
Keyword- Targeted Copywriting
Besides the search engine optimization guidelines from Google, it's important to target the most effective keywords and write valuable content based on those keywords. What makes a keyword effective? First, you have to be sure that enough people are really searching for those keywords - the demand, and also good to know is how many websites actually provide relevant content to satisfy the searches - the supply.
Keyword Research
The best resource I have found to do this is Site Build It!. Their excellent video tutorials are all free, and walk you through the basics of search engine optimization online marketing as well as teach you how to use the free tools from Google, Yahoo, and WordTracker to determine keyword demands (on their Day 2 video) and give other keyword suggestions related to your primary keywords, some of which may prove to be more effective than the primary keywords.
The most valuable service they offer that no one else I know of does is a tool that actually provides the supply for the keyword searches. The demand minus the supply will help you determine the effectiveness or profitability of each prospective keyword on your list so you can target them first or focus on them versus the ones for which it will be harder to capture the traffic.
Site Build It! videos also provide help on how to write information-rich content for your website that helps sell your products/services/etc.
Click here to learn more about Site Build It!
Click here to see their excellent video tutorials
Keep a Track Record!
Any good marketing campaign needs to have measurable results so you can verify the effectiveness. Google Analytics is an excellent free tool that you can use to just do that:
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Get Crawled
After your site has at least one page, don't forget to submit your site to the major search engines when you're ready to go public or when you make major changes to your website to let the search engines know they should crawl your site:
Google
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
Yahoo
http://www.google.com/addurl/
If you create a sitemap for your site, and update it each time you add new pages, the search engine crawlers will be sure to crawl that page (this is especially important if the page you've just added is not linked to from the front page). You can get one made free (with limited customization and) at:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Step 2: Get LinkeD!
After your site is fully optimized, the next step is to get your website linked. A link to your website from a relevant, credible website is considered by Google like a vote of confidence. The more votes you get, the higher your website will rank in search engine results. The better your content is, the more valuable it is to others and the more likely they will link to you. Here are some other ways you can get your site linked:
- Build multiple websites, with similar, yet valuably unique content - relevant content, that link to your main site. Let's call them mini-sites. For example, if your main business website sells health and wellness products, you can build a mini-site regarding a certain health and wellness topic, or one that reviews certain health and wellness products. Just like your main site, your mini-sites should also be rich with useful, relevant, optimized content as much as possible, and follow Google's guidelines. Link all your mini-sites to your main site that you want to promote and maybe even to each other. It's best to purchase a new domain for each website, but sub-domains are okay. Do not simply put a mini-site under a folder of your main website's domain. You should submit your secondary sites to the major search engines just like your primary site (see section "Get Crawled" above).
- Get one or more blog sites, and periodically post entries of relevant news or mini-articles that include appropriate links to your site. You can get free blogs at:
- Build a page or more at Squidoo.com with relevant content that links to your site. Squidoo serves Google ads on your Squidoo page. 50% of the money from the ad clicks goes to you, 45% goes to Squidoo, and 5% goes to charity. Google loves Squidoo, and often times a Squidoo page will rank higher than a regular website. For this reason, it is advantageous to make use of Squidoo to drive traffic to your site as well as to link to your site.
- List your website on Craigslist.org. Because Craigslist is such a trusted site, like Squidoo, your Craigslist posting may rank higher than your main website. You do have to repost at least every seven days, but this very easy to do if you sign up for a Craigslsit account. There are several categories you may be able to create a posting, but make sure each follows the Craigslist terms of use.
- Yelp about yourself and get your clients, employees, friends, family, and anyone else you can to yelp about your website or company/services/etc. at Yelp.com. Not only will you get votes for good search engine ranking, but Yelp is a trusted review site, and can drive customers to you as well. The more yelps you get, and also the the more detailed the review about your company is, the better. Make sure the reviews include links to your website.
- Get a profile for your website on the major social networks: MySpace.com, Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com. Use their blog feature, add links to your main website.
- Digg.com is a resource you can use to submit links to specific articles on your website.
Our Services
Now that you understand the principles to follow for search engine optimization, you can either do it yourself, or hire us to help you! Our prices are as follows:
Keyword-targeted copywriting: View our hourly rates
Initial SEO Set-up: $800 keyword research, content updates, and Google AdWords proposal. Google Analytics & basic sitemap (10 pages maximum). Linked online flyer websites. Search engine submission. 3-5 main keywords included. $175 for each additional keyword. (32 hours maximum)
Ongoing SEO (content updates, blogging, directory listings, social networking, online flyer creation and linking): $600/month (24 hours maximum)
Contact us for an initial consultation
Recommended Reading
