Thursday July 21, 2011
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is about eyeballs. The more eyeballs you have looking at your website, the more visible you are. The more visible you are, the higher the chance of people finding out about you.
The aim with SEO is to drive traffic to your site because 90% of Internet buyers are turning to search engines to find the products they want.
Research shows that purchasers are about 12 times more likely to buy your products or services after finding your site through a search engine than all other traditional advertising methods combined, such as trade shows, direct mail, radio and even television.
Why? Well, when a consumer finds you through a search engine he is ready to buy. With traditional forms of media, you are broadcasting a message hoping to reach the right consumer at the right time.
It is important to set objectives to achieve success with your SEO plan. When setting goals, use the SMART goal principle. Your goals must be:
- Specific — clear goals provide a focus for effort.
- Measurable — if you can’t evaluate your goals, how do you know you have achieved them?
- Attractive — they must inspire and motivate you.
- Realistic — if they are not achievable, the urge to give up will be strong.
- Time-framed — deadlines help clarify your priorities.
Let’s look at these in more detail:
Specific - As potential prospects generally only explore the first two pages in the search results, achieving high rankings on the search engines will make an enormous difference in the amount of eyeballs looking at your website.
So you have to be specific in your keyword profile.
Step 1: Brainstorm a list of logical terms and phrases that relate to your area of expertise, product or offerings. This should be done by a number of individuals. Sometimes people have different ideas for search terms. By identifying a variety of people and their search terms, you may tap words that have not occurred to you.
Step 2: Use free and low-cost tools available online and for download to allow you to expand and research terms that have been brainstormed. The tools will assist you in determining where to focus your keyword efforts.
Two examples from many available tools include:
KeywordTumbler
This tool takes existing keyword phrases and generates multiple variations by reordering the words. This allows you to build a large keyword list in seconds.
Wordtracker
This helps you choose the right Internet marketing keywords that will help your search engine placement and ranking. Use Wordtracker for keyword research.
Web marketing is all about search engine ranking, and that starts with the proper Internet marketing keywords. Get a free keyword report and website promotion information.
Measurable - The great aspect of the Internet is that everything is measurable. Examine the log files on your own website to see what terms customers are using to find an article or website.
Attractive - How do you make it attractive to search engines? Visit competitors’ websites and articles and examine their meta tags for additional terms. Use a thesaurus to find related terms, include misspellings of keywords in your keywords, and optimise for various forms of nouns and verbs, including tenses and plurals.
Realistic - Having your website rank high in the search engines is a science, and the rules for SEO are always changing.
Some reasons why you have poor ranking may include incorrect usage of the title tag or no title tag content, too many occurrences of the same word in a page (spamming), missing H1 and H2 heading tag content (search engines interpret these as indicators of relevancy), no meaningful content in the first 250 characters on each page, less than 200 words per page, very few pages on your website and no links from other websites to your web site (which signifies link popularity).
You can categorise SEO into “off page” SEO and “on page” SEO tactics. For example, off page optimisation basically consists of all of the off page ranking factors, like which websites link to you, the number of websites linking to you, and the Google page rank of the website linking to you, among others. Remember, do not put anything more than three clicks away from the home page.
Time-framed - SEO changes rapidly, so everything has to be done by a deadline and be constantly updated. Just look at some of Google’s trends in the near future: Google Caffeine, Google Real Time search, Google Personalised search results and Google Phone.
Remember, SEO is an ongoing process beginning with the initial optimisation of the site, monthly maintenance of the site, regular evaluation of search results and adjustments to the site. - Source: ST/ANN
Article by Thomas Murrell, an international business speaker, consultant and award-winning broadcaster.