How to improve the effectiveness of your web site through better search engine results.
An Introductory Guide
Search Search
Search Engine Optimization
As you’ve probably learned, having a Web site is almost a must these days, especially for small companies and individuals who want to attract more customers, remain competitive, and continue growing. That’s be- cause the Internet—with over 200 million visitors each year—has joined traditional marketing as a great tool for promoting your business.
But how do you make it easy for those visitors to find your site? One of the best ways is called search engine optimization, or SEO.
Search engine optimization sounds complicated. But once you understand a few basic principles, it’s easy. And it’s free.
So let’s get started!
Table of Contents
The Benefits of Search Engine Optimization for Your Business ...2
Search Engine Marketing and the Internet ...2
How to Optimize Your Site for Better Search Engine Placement ...6
Identifying Keywords and Content ...6
What Site Content is All About ...7
What Does An Optimized Site Look Like? ...11
Taking Advantage of the Link Universe ...12
What About Social and SEO? ...13
What are Blended Search Results? ...14
How Do You Measure Success? ...15
Glossary of Terms ...16
The Benefits of Search Engine Optimization for Your Business
Optimizing your Web site will take a little time and thought. But it also has the potential for delivering an excellent return on your investment, including:
• More traffic to your site through improved visibility and “ranking”
• Free exposure for your business
• A better site experience for your customers and prospects
Search Engine Marketing and the Internet
To understand why SEO is so useful, it’s important to understand how Internet marketing and search engines work. If the Internet truly is the Information Superhighway, imagine the millions of sites on the World Wide Web as exits on that highway. Search engines—like Google, Yahoo! and MSN—help visitors find those sites quickly and easily.
And they do this in three main ways:
Organic Search Results Natural Search Results
This is what happens when a search engine finds a site “naturally,”
according to its editorial importance—that is, based on content, keywords, and page make-up the Web site owner can control. Our guide will concentrate on optimizing this for your company. And you’ll see why on page 4.
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Paid Inclusion
Think of it as the pay-per-click of organic search. It is advertising program that ensures your site will appear in organic search results —although there’s no guarantee of ranking. You essentially pay whenever a visitor clicks on your site listing. This is typically used when sites have structural issues that keep search engines from finding them.
Paid Search Results Paid Listing
Also known as pay-per-click (PPC). Instead of leveraging content from your site, search engines let you buy keywords, specify ad copy, and determine where to send the traffic. Your site listing then appears in a specified sponsors-only area of the search results page. You pay when a visitor clicks on your listing.
Paid search Results SEO helps your website to appear higher in these Organic Search Results (natural)
Why Natural Search Results Are Better
At first, you might think that paid advertising would be more effective at directing visitors to your Web site. But look at the chart below and you’ll see that natural searches—made more effective through SEO—account for over 60% of the nearly 6 billion search clicks that occurred on the Internet in March of 2006 alone. And that represented a 36% increase over the previous year (Source: Nielsen/NetRatings)!
So the lesson here is that optimizing your site for free search engine placement is one of the best ways to drive traffic and promote your business. It’s definitely time well spent.
Popular Search Engines Searches Natural Search Clicks Paid Search Clicks
All engines combined 5.9 billion 60.5% 39.5%
Google 2.9 billion 72.3% 27.7%
Yahoo! 1.3 billion 60.8% 39.2%
MSN 644 million 50% 50%
Others 1.06 million 28.8% 71.2%
Others includes: AOL, My Way Search, Ask.com, etc.
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What to Optimize
The following table gives you a better idea of the page elements you can optimize to improve search engine results, enhance your site ranking, and increase click-throughs. Essentially, it comes down to creating better keywords and other content, plus making improvements to your site’s
“architecture,” as explained below.
You may not be familiar with some of these terms. And this guide won’t cover every aspect of search engine optimization. But it will certainly show you the most important things you can do to get better results.
Elements You Can Control Site Content Site Architecture Title tags Site navigation
Keywords URL structure
META description Page structure Body content:
• Headers
• Link text
• Link title attribute
• Hyperlink URL
• ALT tags
• Comment tags
Cross-linkage
Elements You Can Influence Site Popularity
Or how many click-throughs you get to your site from third-party site links Site Relevance
For specific keywords, and the information your customers are looking for
Site Reputation
How long your site has been in exis- tence, and how it is regarded within the
“universe” of other sites related to your business
How to Optimize Your Site for Better Search Engine Placement
Think of it as a three-step process—but one that really doesn’t, or shouldn’t, have an end. That’s because to keep your Web traffic flowing, and keep your site relevant, you’ll want to periodically fine tune it and measure your progress.
Now let’s take a closer look at how you put each step of the process into action.
Identify keywords and content
Start the search engine optimization process by identifying keywords and phrases you feel would attract your target customers—ones your competitors often seem to use, or those which common sense tells you would increase traffic to your site. These should be words your customers would typically think of when referring to your business or products.
Because the content of your site is what tells the world about you and your business, here is where some careful thought really pays off.
6
Identify Keywords and Content
Make Changes to Site Track R
esults
To use QuickBooks as an example, research showed that the words ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE scored very high among our target audience.
So as you’ll see in the coming examples, we chose that term as our pri- mary keyword for our Home Page.
Still, there’s no exact science to choosing the right keywords. It’s whatever seems to work in your particular business and market. That’s why, as the illustration on page 6 shows, you should view it as an ongoing process.
What Site Content is All About
Now that we know how to think about site content, let’s look at some specific page elements that make up that content:
Title Tags
Each page of your site has a title tag associated with it. When a visitor hits on your site these appear on the colored bar at the top of their Web browser. They’re also one of the key elements search engines looks for.
So be sure to include important keywords related to your business—and the content of that particular page—in these title tags.
Also, as the QuickBooks example shows, try to place your chosen key- words at the beginning of your title tag, while eliminating unnecessary words, as we did by replacing QUICKBOOKS HOME with the new title tag starting with ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE...
Title Tag
Title Tag
META Description
What’s a META description?
It’s the summary usually displayed beneath your site listing when it appears on the search engine results page (SERP). It not only tells the vis- itor what that page is about, it’s also a place the search engine looks for keywords. So make your META description as concise and meaningful as possible.
Body Content
Body content includes all the text, headers, links, etc. (see
table on Page 5) designed into the visible page itself. To optimize search engine results these should incorporate many of your keywords. But when it comes to body content, where and how that content is posi- tioned is just as important.
Imagine a newspaper lay-out, with the information of the widest interest reserved for the top of the page, and important facts formatted in big bold headlines. You should lay out your page with those same principles in mind.
And make sure you use keywords frequently, because search engines also favor repetition.
META Description
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Which pages to optimize?
Generally, search engines confine their activity to the first few pages or
“layers” of a Web site, especially for small businesses whose sites are typically limited to just a few pages. So your best approach here is to focus your search engine optimization on the first two layers of your site.
Then make sure the text links and navigation on these pages make it easy for visitors (and search engines) to get around and find the information they need.
Optimizing Your Site’s Architecture
When we say “architecture” we’re referring mainly to the way your URL (commonly known as a “Web site address”) is structured, plus how search engines “navigate” your site to find the right information.
URLs First, let’s talk about URLs, or uniform resource locators. The basic rule is that long is bad and short is good. Plus, search engines generally don’t like URLs containing lots of parameters, which result from dynamic Web pages that “build” URLs on the fly based on visitor behavior. Look at these examples:
Pre SEO URL
http://quickbooks.intuit.com/commerce/catalog/category.jhtml?priorit yCode=0273400000&categoryId=cat0000000000006332134&lid=s ite_sub_header
Post SEO URL
http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/accounting_software/
small_business_financial_software.jhtml
Clearly, the optimized URL is much shorter and contains more relevant keywords that help the search engine locate the right page. So it’s best to keep your page names brief and meaningful, and to balance the benefits of dynamic page-building with those of SEO.
Navigation
The important thing to remember here is that while multimedia—including color photos, Flash, clips and animation—
attracts the visitor’s eye, search engines cannot see them. For this reason you should not place important SEO text in these visual elements.
Text links and navigation buttons are much more SEO-friendly, as the diagram shows. So when designing your site, try to strike a good balance between these and the “bells and whistles.”
Text Links Navigation Buttons
Image Maps Menus Animation and Photos
Search Engine Most Friendly
Least Search Engine
Friendly
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What Does an Optimized Site Look Like?
SEO is now part of our site building process, but here are some before and after shots from 2006 when we were just starting in SEO.
After determining that ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE was an effective keyword in the minds of our customers, we incorporated it into both the title tag and META description of our Home Page. But you’ll also notice we changed some of the wording in the body content too.
What was the outcome? For the keyword ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE our page moved from a #28 ranking—which placed us on the third page of the search engine results—to a #1 ranking, putting us on the very first page.
Pre-SEO Homepage
Post-SEO Homepage
Taking Advantage of the Link Universe
Another indirect but effective way to increase Web traffic is by lever- aging the “link universe.” Essentially, that means understanding how complimentary businesses can link to each other, then asking those with favorable search engine rankings to include a link to your site on their site.
Thus, you can take advantage of their popularity, relevance and reputation.
For example, your page might rank 17th overall for your select keywords.
But convincing a business that ranks 2nd for those same words to add a link to your site could mean a whole new avenue of business for you.
But which sites should you consider? Here are some things to think about:
• Is the business relevant and complimentary to yours?
• Does it have high natural ranking for your chosen keywords? Open up a Web browser, enter your search terms and see who comes up.
• Does it have a good PageRank? Check your Web browser on how to display a PageRank indicator for the ones you’re interested in. Or use one of the free SEO assessment tools shown on the next page.
• Does the business have a good, long-established Web presence?
Once you’ve made your determination, the next step is to contact the business you’ve targeted, ask who’s in charge of Web marketing, and make a proposal. Remember, including links to reputable businesses like yours is good for their business too. So always maintain your confidence and optimism, because it promises to be a good situation for both of you.
12
What About Social and SEO?
Social technologies are tools that help connect people and form com- munities online. Examples are Facebook, Twitter, blogs and video sharing sites like YouTube. While these sites are great for connecting people, they can also be a great way to promote your Web site’s content and improve your SEO campaign. There are two big ways in which these tools can help you drive more traffic to your site. They are:
1. Creating content Blogs, for example, are a great way to easily add content to your site. They also give you an opportunity to showcase your expertise. You can then use your online communities to interact with oth- ers and to spread the word about your great blog.
2. Promoting Content Social technologies allow you to connect with other people; this in turn helps you promote yourself and your site by sharing your knowledge. Establishing yourself as an authority on a subject can be very useful for building links to your site.
Always, remember you’re connecting with people and contributing
to a community. Add to the community, answer questions and build a
network just like you would in person. Over time you’ll learn the “social
norms” of the communities and when it is appropriate to promote
yourself or your web site.
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What are Blended Search Results?
Google, MSN and Yahoo now incorporate more than just web pages into their search results. It’s not unusual to see videos, blogs, images or news items “blended” into the search results. This is often referred to as uni- versal search results or blended search results. As you’re thinking about creating content for your web site consider content beyond just text on a web page. Think about videos, blogs or other types of content that will be valuable for your visitors and could potentially appear in “blended” search results. To help illustrate blended search results from Google for a search about Tiger Woods.
In addition to the usual web pages you also see…
Videos
News
Blogs
Books
How Do You Measure Success?
Let’s say you’ve used all the great ideas in this guide—picked your keywords and content, and implemented the changes. Now you want to know whether SEO is working or not. Actually, there are several ways to find out.
Use Free SEO Assessment Tools
One way is to make use of free Web-based SEO assessment tools, like SEOmoz (www.seomoz.org/tools) and SEO Company
(www.seocompany.ca/tool/free-seo-tools.html). These sites will help you determine things like page ranking, link popularity, and much more.
Be sure to check them often and see if you can spot an upward trend.
Conduct Your Own Search
Another way is to log on to a search engine and actually enter your chosen keywords.
• Is your site moving up in the listings?
• Where does it stand versus your competitors?
• Are your keywords, tags and other changes still working
in the marketplace?
Look at Your Business
Finally, take a closer look at how your business is doing. What happened immediately after you made your SEO changes?
• Are you getting more hits to your site according to your page hit counter?
• Did you start getting more phone or Web inquiries?
• Have your customers/prospects mentioned visiting your Web site?
• Has your business volume or revenue increased from more Web traffic?
• How are your link-building efforts coming along?
Use a combination of these methods consistently, and over time you’ll develop a good understanding of how your SEO efforts are paying off.
Plus, remember to review your keywords, META descriptions and every- thing else periodically to make sure they’re all working as well as they should.
Glossary of Terms
Body Content The headers, links and text that make up the visible portion of the Web page itself.
Headers Typically, the larger and bolder type visible within your site that both precedes and relates to the text beneath.
HTML Hypertext Mark-Up Language. The software coding that goes into building a Web site.
Image Map The HTML coding “beneath” a Web image which, when activated, takes the visitor to the appropriate content related to that image.
Keywords Words you select because they effectively define your busi- ness, or the content of a particular Web page on your site.
Links /Link Universe Also known as “hyperlinks,” these are Web elements which, when clicked, take you to another part of the page, a new page, or other sites on the Internet.
Menus A sequential list of hyperlinks and pulldowns on your site directing visitors to the subject matter they’re interested in.
META Description The text summary that appears beneath the bold listing when your site appears on the search engine results page (SERP).
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Natural Search Results What happens when a search engine finds a page organi- cally or “naturally,” according to its editorial importance—
that is, based on terms, keywords, and page make-up the Web site owner can control.
Navigation Buttons A design element which, when clicked, takes the visitor to other areas and pages of your site.
Page Ranking Where a particular page falls within the hierarchy of search engine results based on specific keywords. SEO seeks to increase this ranking.
Paid Inclusion (PI) Also known as pay-per-impression. An advertising pro- gram that ensures your site will appear in search engine results—although there’s typically no guarantee of ranking.
Paid Listing A Web marketing program that lets you buy specific key- words and search terms. Your site listing then appears in a specified sponsors-only area near the search results for those terms. And you pay when a visitor “clicks through”
to your site. Also known as pay-per-click (PPC).
Search Engine A Web-based program—Google and Yahoo!, for exam- ple—that locates Web pages based on keywords entered by the user.
Search Engine Optimiza-
tion The process of making changes to your site—title tags, META descriptions, content and architecture—to improve its popularity, ranking, and relevance with search engines.
Search Engine Results
Page (SERP) The Web page that displays the site listings for the key- words you have entered.
Site Architecture In the context of this guide, the URL and navigation properties of your Web site.
Site Navigation In the context of this guide, the way a search engine maneuvers its way around your site to find the informa- tion it needs.
Text Links Text elements which, when clicked, take the visitor to other parts of the site, or to other sites altogether.
Title Tag The page title that appears in the colored bar at the top of your Web browser, and which identifies the page you’re viewing. A key element search engines look at.
URL Uniform Resource Locator. Commonly know as the “Web
How to improve the effectiveness of your web site through better search engine results.
An Introductory Guide
Search Search
Search Engine Optimization
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