Part II: SEO Strategy

see: part i: SEO in a nutshell

Now that we better understand how search engines work, and what SEO is, we can talk in more detail about optimizing your website. The first thing to do is an SEO audit of the website to determine strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. The specific strategies and tactics that are best for any given site are identified through this audit.

While there are literally hundreds of SEO tactics, there are only three primary SEO concepts:

• Code your site so that search engines can fully index your content
• Create good content with targeted keywords and phrases
• Get other sites to link to your site

Let’s look at these in more detail:

Create search engine friendly code. This ensures that your full site is available to search engine spiders. SEO best practices for coding include appropriate page titles and descriptions, use of text hyperlinks within site navigation and page content, use of a plain text sitemap (especially when using dynamic navigation), deep linking strategies for Flash, XML sitemaps, and more.

Create text content that identifies the purpose of the site and key web pages. Break content down into web pages with unique themes for clarity. Create unique/original content. Repurposing content may even have negative consequences. Incorporate targeted key words and phrases specific to your products, services, and individual page theme.

Once your site has text content and search engine friendly code, the number one thing you can do is to find (reputable) ways to get other sites to link to your site. Search engine awareness tactics build and entice these types of links. This can include developing business relationships, posting to blogs and forums, link baiting, releasing optimized PR with links to your site, submitting to vertically targeted directories, creating a blog that talks about your industry, products, and services, encourage other bloggers to comment and/or link to your blog, etc., etc.

How Do I Get Started SEO For My Site?

First, answer these four questions:

• What is the purpose of your website?
• What is the purpose of each page of your website?
• What words and phrases are used in the website content that are relevant to these purposes?
• Why should the engines rank your site higher than everyone else for your topic?

Second, consider these three key concepts:

• Code your site so that search engines can fully index your content
• Create good content with targeted keywords and phrases
• Get other sites to link to your site

With these tools you’re ready to get your hands dirty. Everything you need to know is on the Internet. How do you find it? Use a search engine of course. There are a number of easy, quick hit wins where you can begin SEO work for your site.

As a small business owner you probably don’t have the time or inclination to do this work yourself, or even to bring it in-house. If so, it’s time to hire a professional. Depending on the size of your website you might find an reasonably priced independent contractor, or you may need a powerhouse SEO agency.

Regardless of who does the SEO work, the important thing is to get started today. Over the long term SEO is a solid marketing and branding investment that will pay dividends. Put in the effort. Follow best practices, and reap the rewards. Does your competition outrank your site? Time to get to work. Better yet, get a leg up on your competition and build your rankings now.

Jason Rogers, eMarketing