Search Engine Optimization - Seven Steps to SEO
Generating Free Traffic for your Web site via search engine optimization requires the following seven steps:
1) Keyword Selection - Perhaps more often overlooked than any step in search engine optimization, choosing the right keywords and phrases for which to optimize is crucial. If you choose keywords that few people are searching for, then you can achieve a dozen top rankings and yet nobody will show up at your site.
Just as bad, choose keywords that are too competitive and you'll soon throw your hands up in frustration trying to rise to the top.
Furthermore, if you choose keywords that are not closely related to the type of buyer you cater to, then visitors will arrive at your site but never make a purchase.
The solution? Simply make a list of relevant keywords that balance both popularity and competition. WordTracker is the best-known service for helping you do this quickly and easily. It brainstorms keywords in seconds and then helps you narrow that list by ordering them based on both popularity and competition factors.
2) Measure your rankings - Before you can improve your positions, you must know where you rank for the keywords and phrases that relate to your business's products and services. If you did your job in step 1, you should now have a long list of highly relevant keywords and phrases that people are searching on.
When I first started optimizing pages back in 1996, I had an employee take my keyword list and plug each keyword into a dozen search engines. He would then carefully sift through page after page of search results looking for our Web site. After that, he would record the ranking, the page, and the URL in a spreadsheet, and move to the next keyword, and then the next search engine. Needless to say, this process took many hours of precious time and had to be repeated at least monthly. That's when the idea for WebPosition Gold , the first software product to report your rankings on the major search engines, and then to show you how to improve them.
3) Page Creation and Optimization - This is the heart and soul of search engine marketing. If you don't know what the search engines are looking for when they rank pages, then you can choose the best keywords and rank check all day long and never get anywhere. This is the part that makes all the difference in your ability to compete effectively.
What is Web page optimization? Simply put, your goal is to give the search engine what it wants to see. The easiest way to determine what its looking for is to study pages already ranking in the top 10 and to emulate key aspects of those pages on your own site. No, this does not mean plagiarizing text from your competition. Instead, it means emulating the basic statistical elements of the page such as keyword counts, link popularity, word counts, and other criteria.
Obviously, doing this by hand can be a daunting task even for a trained mathematician. That's where the Page Critic module in WebPosition Gold makes the job accessible even to the novice. It analyzes the densities of keywords on your page and your competition's pages, does the math, and then makes specific recommendations for improvement. Help links are provided to explain each step. It also includes an extensive knowledge base of tips and strategies for achieving top ten placements. The tips will vary for each search engine based upon its particular preferences.
Besides using a tool like WebPosition Gold, books and newsletters can also be a valuable resource for staying informed. Books are often less helpful, though, as it doesn't take long before they become out of date in this industry. In addition, both kinds of resources can only go so far in their advice, whereas a software product can analyze your specific page, engine, and keyword choice, making recommendations much more appropriate to your situation.
4) Uploading - For many, this step will seem obvious. For novices, however, it's important to remember that anytime you make changes to your Web pages, you must upload the changes to your Web site. You can do this via your favorite FTP program, or an application like WebPosition Gold or Dreamweaver that has uploading built-in.
5) Submitting - This is perhaps the best known of the seven steps, partly because you see so many advertisements for bulk submission to hundreds, or even thousands of Web sites. These services stay in business because people are attracted to the promise of a single-click, silver bullet solution. Unfortunately, submission is only one part of the process, and a minor one at that. Most of the sites on these bulk submission lists are not search engines at all, but simply scripts designed to gather names and e-mail addresses from unsuspecting search engine marketers. Only a relative handful of search engines command enough traffic to be worth promoting to.
Submissions today can easily be done by hand or via a submission tool. In the case of WebPosition Gold, it can help prevent you from making common mistakes like over submitting, submitting non-existent pages, losing track of what you have already submitted, and so forth. It also gives you estimates regarding how long it currently takes to get indexed at each engine, and when re-submission is recommended. Once you build some third-party links to your Web site, most engines like Google will re-spider your pages regularly without the need to re-submit.
6) Traffic and Revenue Tracking - Ultimately, it is not top rankings you are after, but more traffic and sales. This is where your investment in search engine optimization really pays off. Once you get your traffic-building pages set up, then the pay-off comes in month after month. There are many good tools out there for tracking traffic, with some that will even track revenues. WebPosition Gold includes one that does both, powered by HitsLink. Besides the usual reports, it shows you your revenues by keyword, engine, advertising campaign, and other demographics.
7) Follow up and fine-tuning - While some pages may rank well for a year or more without change, most pages will require refinements as the search engines change their ranking algorithm, and bring new pages online. It's important to measure your rankings at least monthly. Re-optimize any pages that drop in rank leveraging the latest Page Critic advice, and then re-submit or wait for the engine to revisit the page. After that, just sit back and smile as you watch all the visitors flooding month after month into your Web site. The best part is that all that traffic is free, and highly targeted.
SEO may seem like a daunting task at first glance. However, You'd be surprised at how much a tool like WebPosition Gold can organize and simplify the process for you.
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