SEO for Dummies – Demystifying Optimization
Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 | by Rajan Sodhi | 
26 Comments |
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is so often kicked around and many times misunderstood. Business people and marketers actively using the web as a source for promoting their products know of it, but not all are sure how to “optimize” their site. Now I’m no SEO guru, but I’ve had a bit of experience working with SEO programs and have attended a few conferences on the topic, including a recent AdTech show in San Francisco which I found invaluable. The common question is, “How the hell do I get my site to rank high on Google?” Ranking high on Google means having your site appear on the first page when a user on the net types a keyword relative to your business. This is referred to as a “natural” search, as oppose to a “paid” search where you pay Google for your text ad to appear each time your choosen keyword is typed in. A recent study that I blogged about (refer to SEO As Effective as Paid Search, Study Says) found that natural searches were just as effective in generating lead traffic as paid searches. To me, this further underlines the importance of adopting SEO practices.
Amongst all the different strategies I’ve heard, some so convoluted I wouldn’t know how to repeat, one thing holds true… CONTENT IS KING. The more relevant and useful your site content is to users searching on your keywords, the more traffic you will generate to your site. And the more traffic you generate, the more popular your content can become (measured by users linking to your site and bookmarking it), the higher your ranking on Google. This is a simple way of viewing SEO, but there are some things you can begin doing to optimize your site. Here are a few:
1. Include White Papers and Tips Related to Your Area of Expertise -Users interested in your products and services want to know how to use them to better their business, so give it to them. Your site should include white papers, tips, articles, and any other written material that users would find useful. The more useful the content, the more often they will come back for more. Return traffic is great in helping your rankings.
2 . Keep Your Content Fresh – Google is looking for fresh and relevant content related to keywords. Ensure you have content that is “dynamic” (regularly changing or updated), especially on your home page. This can include new press releases, articles, case studies, product announcements, and service enhancements.
3. Include Your Keywords in Your Browser Title – By doing this, you make it easier for Google to find you during a keyword search. You also want to repeat these keywords on many pages of your website, wherever applicable (it should not appear forced). This repetition also helps in increasing your relevance to the keywords.
4. Focus on 1 to 2 Keywords Per Page – The content of each page on your site should have a focused topic and use 1 to 2 keywords that are repeated throughout the page, starting with the page title, headlines, and body. The more focused and repeated the content is, the more searchable the page becomes.
5. In-bound Links and Bookmarks – Other sites linking to your website is one big way Google and other search engines measure the popularity of your website. There is a whole cottage industry within the SEO business that focuses on generating as many in-bound links as possible to a site. Google has gotten wise on it and has changed its algorithm to detect such blatant practices. From what I understand, Google measures the relevance of both your content as well as the site linking to your site. If both sites appear to be relating to the same topic, the more relevant it is and better the ranking. This increases even further when a third site (and more) links to both and also shares the same topic. If you have more than one web site, ensure they are linking to one another. This can be done by having the links appear on every page in the footer in small, light grey text. Also, use sites like Digg.com to submit your white papers and articles and see if the community “diggs” your content. The more diggs, the more traffic to your page(s), the higher it will appear through Google searches.
26 Comments
September 26th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
“natural searches were just as effective in generating lead traffic as paid searches. To me, this further underlines the importance of adopting SEO practices.”
This statement almost goes hand in hand with the fact that 70% of web searchers are more likely to click a natural link than they are an advertisement.
Just some food for thought. Great article on SEO though and if anyone out there would like to go a step beyond SEO be sure to check out http://www.48hrStrategy.com
-The Team
October 14th, 2006 at 5:26 am
This is really a nice way to find neat blogs on the internet.I was searching for a particular query when your blog popped up in the search engines.I guess you just have to put together a organized web site.
Great blog either way.I will definitely will bookmark you for future reference.Recently I came across a fantastic way to get targeted traffic to any blog or web site with amazing results.Time tested and proven to increase web site traffic at least 400%.
Best of all they offer a JV Program that can create really fantastic residual income.Many have used this program in the past and now are called Super affiliates.I encourage you and your readers to check it out.Have a Great Day!
http://www.webtrafficsecret.com
November 29th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Is there any special techniques that can be used to optimize a wordpress blog on my server for SEO. One issue I see is no way to change the title tags on each page, where it seems to take the blog name for the home page.
I have several hundred 600+ inbound links.
I have pinged Technorati manually and used pingoat as well as pingomatic every time I add a new blog.
There is plenty of content, about 30 articles.
What else can I do? What else should I do to optimize my blog?
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:48 am
SEO should be renamed GCW ‘Global Chinese Whispers’ for the amount of disinformation flying around on blogs and forums. The subject is not too complicated, it takes about 6 months research for an average person to grasp. Without a doubt, the 2 main areas are based on strong on theme inbound links and unique content. The rest is less critical, but still important.
October 30th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
[...] active in utilizing both strategies in my work and I’m convinced that pursuing an effective SEO program is very worthwhile and cost-effective. You can read the posting [...]
October 30th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
[...] SEM Certification Jump to Comments The Direct Marketing Association is launching a first ever Search Marketing certification program for agency and in-house marketers. This announcement is sure to drum up some [...]
October 30th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
[...] top of today’s technology (and in-tune with today’s reading habits) are leveraging news SEO, channel sites, and bloggers to push out their message to intended viewers. According to Pew [...]
October 30th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
[...] and ran into Chris Breikss and Cydney Brown from 6s Marketing. 6s Marketing handles all of our SEO. We got to talking about a whole bunch of things around Web 2.0 and how it’s changing the [...]
February 15th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
[...] word press blogger has created a great post about SEO for Dummies which is sure to get you started. Effectively using SEO by getting more users to your website can [...]
March 7th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Are there any good sites that allow a company to post images and videos? Something like Flickr.com but for business?
April 29th, 2009 at 3:20 am
Here’s what I’ve been told so far to do to optimize my site: start off with a niche and pick keyword(s) or keyphrase(s) that are more general specific and don’t have too much competition meanwhile having enough searches to bring in decent traffic if your site gets popular, place on your site inbound links related to your niche, post comments on forums and blogs that implement dofollow with a link to your site on high ranking related websites, write articles, add tags to your images and “alt” img tag and keywords placed in your articles (if you have them) and in your header, footer, and your url.
Not everyone makes article sites, so this “content is king” and “keep fresh content” rhetoric I keep hearing is starting to annoy me. I want to make a gaming site, which has nothing to do with articles, but all the optimization tips I keep getting seem to be specifically for article and blog writers. Granted I have to write articles to article submission sites to market my site, but the site itself won’t have any written articles. I have yet to hear of any sound advice for a site LIKE I want to build. *sigh*, I’ll keep looking……..
July 24th, 2009 at 8:11 am
great and helpful stuff
August 6th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Hmmm… interesting way to get the attention of Google. But meanwhile the algo´s are changed. Content is King, this is sure right for every SEO or client.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Great article. I strongly agree that content is key. Good quality information is realy important in search engine optimization.
November 26th, 2009 at 1:23 am
I loved your “content is king”!! It is so true, you can adjust your website to be more visible to search engines, but that alone won’t get you more visitors if your content is irrelevant to the subject! Nice post!
January 4th, 2010 at 10:41 am
This is good in terms of search engine optimization. Nothing seems to bother on it compared to that!
January 26th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
[...] of control; instead, the small brands with remarkable products and services have the tools (namely search engines and social networks) to connect them with their ideal customer. But that means having a great [...]
January 27th, 2010 at 1:12 am
People that start a fresh webpage should not expect to rank high for a highly searched keyword such as make money online. The longer tailed the keyword the better… for example, the best ethical way to make money online. You may not get as much traffic being on the first page for that keyword but you will be able to reach first page in a much shorter period of time
January 27th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
[...] a special treat. F5 Expo is all about online business, marketing, and technology. Hot topics like Search Engine Optimization, social media, video blogging, and cloud computing will be tackled in interactive sessions and [...]
March 15th, 2010 at 4:23 am
Thanks for the post.
Natural search will be the way of healthily growing of the Internet. We still believe education about SEO to clients is essential.
Sometimes ,clients think we have magic to list their website No.1 in very short time . But the reality is different, we need to fight hard to grow their traffic smoothly and gradually
May 26th, 2010 at 9:57 am
Very good primer on the subject and should help many businesses better understand SEO. I will be recommending it.
July 26th, 2010 at 9:38 am
SEO is a process that requires planning, a strategy and of course research. If you are a local small business there are some benefits to marketing online.
Research tells us, 81% of people first search online before making a purchase. With some basic SEO small local businesses can dominate the local market online and be on the first page of the search engines.
Why not take some of your ad budget and redirect it towards a solid SEO plan. You may be pleasantly surprised on how many new customers you can gain.
September 9th, 2010 at 6:09 am
Content is always king indeed, (with Google’s constantly changing its algo) you won’t go wrong if stick to these methods. thanks for the post.
September 17th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Content is King… I have a small baby boutique where I sell handmade/unique products. So in practical terms, how do I change content every day? Change my product descriptions?
February 18th, 2011 at 2:26 pm
[...] picking your battles. If you are doing all the marketing yourself and have little experience in SEO, it’s probably wise to aim for less competitive search terms. That means you should probably not [...]
October 6th, 2011 at 10:20 am
Yes, definitely the right way to do it. Google is getting smarter these days
be careful about your inbound links.
Leave a Reply