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Search Engine Optimization [SEO] requires the discipline to follow through on a series of processes. These range from identifying your competition and reviewing their web presence to developing meaningful content pertinent to your product our service. Most are quite tedious commanding a great deal more patience than intellect. If there is a mentally taxing aspect to SEO it is deciphering the ever changing algorithms used by search properties [Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, etc.] to determine which web pages are relevant to a specific search.

Starting Your SEO Project

To limit the scope here we’ll assume you already have a website to start with or a domain name. If not, choose something brandable that reflects your business or service. It is helpful if it is of limited length and easy to type. If it doesn’t contain a keyword relevant to your subject [ Microsoft, Ask ] you can still build around a memorable word [ Yahoo!, Amazon, Google, say what? ]. We’ll also assume you have a goal for your website whether that be sales of a product, name recognition or distribution of information.

What we will deal with is assessing your situation, keyword selection, creating relevant content, linking, search engine and directory submissions, site maps and tracking your results. Understand from the start that any so called “Black Hat” techniques intended to dupe the search properties is futile and may cause irreparable damage to your project. Cloaking content, reciprocal link banks, duplicate content or violating “terms of service” will get you removed from the search properties index or directory. Ignore any “submit to 1,000 search engines for $35″ promo as most automated submissions are rejected by prominent properties.

Keyword Selection

What you know about your business and what you can say about it is the best place to start. Even if you hire a qualified SEO expert your participation at this stage is paramount; you know your business best. The more relevant content you can create about your subject the better. Identify key words that would be used to search for your subject to be strategically placed for best search results. Be careful of industry catch words as they may not be the same as what potential customers would use in a search.

Make a list of your competitors so you can check out what you are up against and possibly get some ideas. You will want to see what features and services they offer but, for our purposes here, you will want to see where they show up in search results. Actually test your keyword list in major search engines to see if they show up. Be sure to look at the sponsored results as well.

You may find a key phrase preferable to a word. Working with Splitmaster.com, a site offering trading information on stock splits and option strategies, we discovered the phrase “stock options” dominated by sites having little to do with their product. The results for a Google search brought up 32 million listings most having to do with stock option plans for corporations; we were marketing “stock options strategies.” This latter term may have been used less as a search term but brought more conversions against far fewer listings.

Tools are available showing search volume for keywords and suggest alternatives as will. Yahoo! has the Yahoo! Search Term Suggestion Tool and a tool showing what some of the top bids for a keyword are for Pay Per Click [ PPC ] campaigns if you want to explore ad campaigns. Similarly, Google offers the Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool as well as a bid tool. You may want to consider using a professional tool such as WordTracker. This service provides additional features including tools for researching niche markets. The cost ranges from $30 for one week to $299 for a year.

Once you decide on your keyword(s) you want to use it in your page title. Also use the keyword in the <h1> heading of the page and close to the beginning of the content without making it seemed contrived; always remember you have to communicate with your visitors as well as search bots. It has become apparent to many search experts that Google’s algorithms look for “natural speak” and may dismiss content without human appeal. Use <h2> or <h3> subheadings for sections or paragraphs of your pages where appropriate.

Most search engines give more weight to the page title then anything else on the page. This will also be what is displayed in search results and as such be your first impression on potential visitors. It should also be concise leading with keyword followed by site. Don’t try to make it to inclusive or you may dilute the impact or your keyword. Feel free try other keywords in titles of other pages with relevant content.

Linking Ins and Outs

Internal linking is also important. Descriptive text links should be used as opposed to images so they are readily discerned by the search bots. Every page on the site should link to the home page. In addition to menu links, pages that you link to most frequently, from content for example, are the pages search engines deem the most important pages. Use the words you want to rank well for as anchor text in these links. When you do use images, whether linked or not, be sure to use descriptive alt tags.

Link backs are external links back to your site. A great deal of weight is given to these links as an indicator of how important the information on your site is to others. As such it can be a great benefit if you develop a page relevant to your product or service that other sites would want to link to. The importance of the site linking to yours has weight as well, particularly if they are relevant to your subject. You can participate in topical forums or leave comments in blogs with links to a relevant page on your site. Make note of such sites you may want to participate in on a regular basis. Use your keywords in these links when possible. Press releases can be an important part of your linking strategy with the additional benefit of giving you greater exposure. They can be easily distributed with online services such as PRWeb.

Search Engines

You can help search engines build their indexes with the use of a site map or searchmap and a robot.txt file. You can also block pages or directories you want to exclude. These files can also assure the larger sites get fully indexed as search bots may only scan a limited number of pages for a site.

robot.txt – Search bots will scan the pages of your site and follow the links by default. You can skip creating a robots.txt file if there is nothing you care to exclude. Otherwise, you may want to place a “robots.txt” file in your root directory. If you want to block all scans you can do so using a meta tag as follows:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>

or with the following in your robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

You may want to block a directory leading to data you do not want to be visible to the public:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /data/

For a detailed description of robots.txt use see A Standard for Robots Exclusion.

Site maps – A site map is a structural representation of your site. This can be an additional navigation tool if visitors can’t find what they seek using your menu links as well as an aid for search bots to follow links throughout your site and find what you want them to. This is particularly true if you are using images, flash, or JavaScript in your site navigation rather than text / html. This is an inclusion protocol as opposed to robot.txt which is used for exclusion.

Google Sitemaps, quite different than “site map” described above, was developed to allow webmasters to submit search criteria of their sites. Now Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask have adopted the same protocol. You can find details at the sitemap.org Protocol page or by visiting the Google Webmaster Tools page. If you need a tool to help you crate the file for your site map visit SourceForge.net Files.

Submitting to Directories

Directory listings were once the most important task of any SEO campaign. Though relegated to less importance than much of the above they still provide an opportunity to describe your site in your own words and list it in a category representing your niche. The directories and the descriptions you provide are still used as secondary sources by some search properties and provide another inbound link to your site or page with a description of your choosing. You can find industry specific directories but for our purposes we’ll get started with a few of the major ones here. Make sure your project is complete before you begin the submission process.

DMOZ – The Open Directory Project [DMOZ] is perhaps the most comprehensive directory on the internet. It is human edited and submissions are free. Be patient as inclusion can take from several weeks to a few months if the editors approve of your site.

Yahoo! – Yahoo! Search Submission is free for non-commercial sites. Again, review can take some time. Commercial sites require a $299 annual subscription. Paid inclusion has a guaranteed 7 day review. You choose the category for inclusion and the descriptive text.

Best of the Web – The Best of the Web Directory lets you choose between a $79.95 annual fee or a $239.95 one time fee. Inclusion takes three days. It is important to note the do NOT accept weblogs or blogs!

Other directories to consider are JoeAnt and Business.com. Directories can help maintain your search ranking when search engine algorithms change. While there are thousands of free directories but you must exercise some caution when submitting.

Paid Placement

Sponsored Results appear in a variety of search engine results. These results are derived from Pay-Per-Click [ PPC ] advertising where key word placement ads are purchased in an auction process. Until recently the highest bidder would receive the top placement for the word or phrase bid on. Recently, however, consideration is given to the relevancy of the ad to the content it is linked to.

Detailed coverage of PPC is beyond the scope of this article. Submissions and PPC go more to marketing than optimization. Descriptions can be found through the major players in this arena. Google is the major player though its Google AdWords program, followed by Yahoo! with Yahoo! Search Marketing [ YSM ]. Microsoft comes in next with its adCenter program. Keep in mind that these ads appear in different places. You may want to change programs for wider coverage. Also consider how well your organic placement to avoid double coverage for a search property.

Analyzing Your Campaign

You will need to track your SEO efforts to analyze what is working for you and what isn’t. This can be difficult if you don’t have a programmer to implement conversion tracking or don’t have a program in place that can monitor site traffic. The process requires attention to detail and patience. Other than PPC campaigns, results of your SEO program can take some time to show results. Even with the PPC you will want a significant sample.

Most hosting services can supply the raw log files for your site. This provides a record of every page viewed by a visitor. This includes scans by search bots as well. If your hosting service provides cPanel you can use the Raw Log Manager to save or delete the logs. The benefit of using raw logs is that you don’t need to install any scripts on your pages to retrieve data. The downside is that this can add tedium to an already tedious task. You may prefer a program such as HitsLink offered for $19.95 per month for up to 10,000 hits.

Traffic Analysis – whether you use raw logs or an analytics program you will use the data to, not only monitor the volume of traffic but, track the path your visitor takes through the site. Did the visitor stop at the home page or take the time to click through to the desired page. Over time you will be able to recognize what keywords or phrases give you the best conversions.

Keyword Performance – monitor your rankings by keywords on a regular basis. Compare your position to that of your competition. Which search properties are you showing in [Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask ]? Remember, it can take some time for search engines to reflect your site changes and for inclusion in directories. This can be improved and expedited if you actively pursue links and use the keywords in your anchor text. Be sure any changes you make have a basis in fact and are not done out of frustration.

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