By Carl Weiss & Hector Cisneros
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| Courtesy of Flickr |
If you own a small business and have a website, or plan to
launch a basic business website in order to get more visibility, no doubt you’ve
heard about the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website.
This is especially important if you plan on selling goods directly on your
site. The rub is that many times web
designers spend more time fretting on form rather than function. As a result, many websites we’ve surveyed don’t
have many of the On-Page SEO elements that are needed to get properly indexed
by the search engines.
To address this issue,
you need to either hire a knowledgeable optimization expert, or you can try a
little DIY action. When you consider the
number of website analysis programs on the market, DIY SEO isn’t that difficult
of an undertaking. In fact, if you invest a couple of hours a month on your
website’s SEO then you can DIY it, and be successful.
Keywords Are the Key
Before you start your analysis, it’s important you select the right keywords or phrases for your website. In other words, you need to select the words or phrases that someone would enter in the search engines in order to find businesses like yours. For example, if you have a beauty supply business, you must have the s “beauty supply” somewhere in your domain. Or, if your business is an automotive detailing business, then you must have the keywords “automotive” and “detailing” somewhere in your domain name.
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| Photo credit: wix.com |
Now that you have some samples lined up, you need to sort them out. The best way to do this is by
entering your keywords and phrases into Google’s Keyword Planner, which is
found by accessing your Adwords account.
(If you don’t have an Adwords account, you can set one up by going to
adwoords.google.com.) The tab for the Keyword Planner is located under the
Tools tab at the top right of the page. Once you enter your samples into the
Keyword Planner’s lineup, it will come back with the traffic count for each and
every keyword or phrase entered. More importantly,
it will also suggest other keywords and phrases along with their respective
traffic counts. Be certain not to select
too many keywords or choose ineffective keywords with little or no
traffic. The Keyword Planner is the
perfect tool to help you identify the best keywords to target for your business.
Once you have selected the right keywords or phrases for your site, now you plug them in. There are four
main areas where
you need to apply these keywords, namely your Meta Tags, the ALT Tags, and at
the Once you have selected the right keywords or phrases for your site, now you plug them in. There are four
beginning and the end of your website. The Meta Tags are located directly below the Title Tag.
For example:
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| Photo credit: ontopinternetmarketing.com |
<Meta name="keywords" content="Jacksonville
Video Production | Jacksonville Video Production Companies | Jacksonville
Videographer”>
<Meta name="description" content="Jacksonville
Video Production and Viral Video Marketing. Local, Affordable and Effective. 3D
Animation & Motion Graphics. 904-410-2091"/>
Next comes the ALT Tags, which are descriptors used at the
end of the code for every image on your website. Since search engine spiders can’t “see”
images, these descriptors tell the spiders what the image is. While many people ignore the ALT tags, this is
a mistake, since they’re another way to let the search engines know how to rank
your site. Below is some sample code
that shows you what an ALT tags look like.
One way to up the ante in reaching Page One of any search engine is to
ensure all of your ALT tags are complete:
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| Photo credit: sastrugimarketing.com |
<img id="JaxVideoProdlogo"
src="Resources/jaxvideoprodlogo.png" width=366 height=74
alt="Jacksonville Video Production Logo">
Next, you need to include the keywords in your content. Whether
you’re creating verbiage for your website, blog or video, you need to find a
way to insert the keywords and phrases into each and every one of these. Just don’t go overboard with the keyword
density or you risk being penalized by the very search engines you are trying get
to find you. (In fact, there is a Black Hat
SEO term, “keyword stuffing,” which every search engine knows and loathes.)
So the key is to use the desired keywords in your content
appropriately. In other words, it shouldn’t look like keywords are thrown in
unnecessarily. Content is designed first and foremost to be read by human beings. This means that keywords should be used only in
their proper time and place. They should
also be grammatically correct.
Here's what Google has to say about hiring & SEO vendor
Last but not least, the most important keyword or phrase
should be used at the beginning and end of your website in a font that is bold
and italicized. This lets the spiders
know that the word or phrase is important.
Incidentally, all the above is oftentimes referred to as On-Sight SEO.
Google Juice, the Other SEO
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| Photo credit: freakingnews.com |
In today’s content-rich world, even the best On-page SEO isn’t
sufficient to generate Page One results on most search engines. To grab the spiders’ attention, you next need
to start providing regular content that is valuable and interesting. (That’s
right folks, the spiders have learned how to read.) Providing fresh content on a regular basis
has become king due to the increased competition of the marketplace. People are
eager to learn what’s new and exciting with your business. They want to know how you can help them save
time and money or provide a valuable service.
They want to learn what other customers think about you. Since most people rarely update their website,
this makes it difficult for people and spiders to obtain the most current
information about you and your business.
That’s what blogs and social networks are all about. They’re also good for creating backlinks to
your website, which is another benchmark that the spiders use to rank sites.
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| Photo credit: copress.org |
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Hector Cisneros is COO and Director of Social Media Marketing at Working the Web to Win, an award-winning Internet marketing company based in Jacksonville, Florida. He is also the co-host of the weekly Internet radio show, "Working the Web To Win" on BlogTalkRadio.com, which airs every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern. Hector is a syndicated writer and published author of “60 Seconds to Success.”
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Thanks; that was very informative. I'll have to quaff me a pint o' that Google Juice. ;^D
ReplyDeleteJust because you hired a professional web designer to craft your site doesn't mean that it is properly optimized. If you don't want to have the prettiest website that nobody ever sees you need to do a little SEO.
ReplyDeleteI think Carl and Hector are right on the money here. Thanks for the helpful info.
ReplyDeleteI read your article and really liked the content. Really a lot of useful information on aspects of digital marketing. Even we deal in similar services. We at razwerks offers Web design, SEO, Social media marketing, Google Advertising, Reputation management, Branding, Content creation and video Production, Direct mail and Email marketing. If you want to know more about our services, please visit us at https://razwerks.com/
ReplyDelete