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You Gotta Have Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or You're Missing Out

Search engine optimization, or SEO, means the construction of a website that is designed to be discovered by search engines.

When customers search for products and services to purchase, they go to search engines. And when your site ranks highly among those search engines, you (the business owner) stand to enjoy tremendous profits. If your site is not being "seen" by the search engines, then you're missing out on a ton of opportunity!

Two main areas to address when optimizing your website:

1. INTERNAL/YOUR SITE - optimizing the code and content of your site is the vital first step to any SEO campaign. If you have the time and ability, you can often do this on your own. If not, and sometimes even if you do, it's better to hire someone who can manage this process for you. It WILL take time!

There are several "back-end" elements to consider - including title tags, meta descriptions, alt tags, etc. Each of these elements should strategically include targeted keyword phrases that are relevant to your product or service.

The content (the actual words on the page) is critical, as well. Integrating the right amount of those target key phrases is very important here, too. But, doing it effectively is key. You can't just list out your keywords on the page a bunch of times. You have to strategically "pepper" in these keyword phrases so that they the search engines can "see" that your site is relevant for those terms, but not over-doing it.

2. EXTERNAL/INBOUND LINKING - secondly, it is important to have other relevant, credible sites that link into your site. This is seen as extremely valuable "currency" in the eyes of the search engines; they call this "link popularity" and the more popular your site is (with relevant, credible sites), the higher your ranking is for those targeted search terms. Some sites have just a couple inbound links, while others have thousands. However, it's not all about quantity - it's about the quality of these links. Five quality links can generate much more value to Google or Yahoo than 1,000 sites that don't have anything to do with your business or just link to anyone.

There are many companies out there who offer SEO services. When you're looking for a partner to help with your SEO, be sure to look for credentials - successful current campaigns, knowledgeable staff, and retention.

I'd love to hear about your experience with SEO. If you have any questions, feel free to email me - mailto:matt@joltcms.com">matt@joltcms.com

6 Responses

  • Dec 29, 2009

    Member

    The Most important you need to have a power of promotional products on your side.

  • Jan 09, 2010

    CEO

    I have a chimney sweep website that is almost always in the top 10 in google and yahoo concerning my key word terms. SOme tricks I learned to keep my site high on the list is 1) Register you domain for the max 10 years. The search engines think you are in it for the long term and rank you a little higher. 2) Not too many out bound links and only to "same topic" website. This decreases your google page rank. 3) Put your keyword in your url. My key word is chimney cleaners and my url is chimneycleaners.com 4) Have a good amount of pages. A 5 page website is not as strong as a 50 page website. 5) Place your website address in ALL your advertising. You will be shocked how much work comes from web traffic. The more you send people to your site, the more people will tell people about your website. 6) Buy a search engine submission program and/or hire someone to submit your site to all the search engines. I bought my own.

  • Daniel O'Callaghan

    http://www.linkedin.com/in/danocallaghan
    linked in badge

    President, Sales and Marketing Expert

    (Jun 28, 2010)
    Getting the internal optimization done correctly is a huge part of the battle... we have clients that show up on page one of Google and Yahoo without any external link-building. The reason is the internal optimization is done perfectly.

    This makes it much easier to rank for keywords when doing external link-building. If you are trying to rank for competitive keywords, proper internal SEO is essential.

    Check out our clients at http://greenapplesales.com

  • Jun 30, 2010

    SUSAN ROTH

    Matthew,
    I know I am a little late to the party considering your article appeared at the beginning of the year; however, your topic is particularly timely for me and my company, Trims Unlimited, Inc. For several months, I relied on in-house talent to manage SEO for us, but frankly the task was too daunting. A colleague at UCLA's Anderson School suggested that we consider using Hubspot to get us organized and keep us current. So far, we have completed all of our tasks and private tutorials. We have taken the process very seriously, and while there hasn't been any tangible ROI, we have increased traffic to our site 100 fold and have raised our corporate profile through the coordinated use of our blog with Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. I don't think we could have accomplished all that we have to date without professional guidance. I will keep you posted on our progress.
    Best, Susan Roth/President/Trims Unlimited, Inc.

  • Jul 01, 2010

    LEE ODDEN

    I appreciate the recent comments from Susan and Daniel bringing this article to the Marketing home page. It's a topic that is near and dear to our business since SEO accounts for over half our lead generation.

    According to the newly released 2011 MarketingSherpa Search Marketing Benchmark report (http://tprk.us/cD5ClI), SEO alone is less effective than search engine optimization that is integrated with social media. Conversion rates were nearly double for those that integrate the two vs. those that use SEO alone. In fact, if you're not integrating the two, you're in the minority since 64% of the respondents in the study say they integrate social media with their search marketing programs.

What do you think?

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