MacDonald on Marketing

Archive for the ‘search engine optimization’ Category

Welcome to SEO Tuesdays. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of creating a website that enjoys good search engine rankings for the search queries your potential customers are likely to use when searching for products or services your business provides.

Last week I talked about keyword research and showed you how to come up with a list of about a dozen keyword phrases to target. The idea is that when somebody goes to Google or some other search engine and performs a search, these are the phrases for which you want your site to be ranked well. Now you may be asking, “Okay, what do I do with the keyword phrases to make that happen?”

Search engine optimization efforts can be roughly divided into two separate categories:

• Onsite optimization, the changes you make to your actual website to improve its ranking; and,

• Offsite optimization, everything else you do to help improve your search engine ranking (most of this work involves developing inbound links to your site from other sites).

Today we’re talking about onsite search engine optimization. Both onsite optmization and offsite optimization are critical in search engine optimization. Think of onsite optimization in terms of the foundation of a house. A foundation is not a whole house, and similarly, onsite optimization by itself will not make you achieve your search engine optimization goals. However, without properly optimizing the coding of your website, all offsite optimization in the world will not give you high search engine rankings.

Onsite search engine optimization is a complex subject, and many businesses opt to hire a search engine optimization professional to make the decisions about onsite search engine optimization and implement the coding changes. However, if you are starting from zero and do not have the budget for outside help, here are the basics to help get you started.

First, make a list of all your site’s pages. For each page, choose two or three of your keyword phrases that most closely match the theme of the text content. Repeats are okay. We’ll call these your target keyword phrases.

Even if you are not comfortable editing your site’s HTML code, the information below will serve as a guide so that you know what to look for and how to instruct your web developer to change your site. For each page, here are the elements that should contain one or more of your target keyword phrases:

URL: The URL is the address of each page of your site (starts with http://). Ideally, each page of your site should have it’s most relevant target keyword phrases as part of its URL (e.g. www.thisisyoursite.com/target-keyword-phrase.html). If your site has already been online for more than a few months you should consult a search engine professional before changing the URLs of any of your pages to avoid losing the search engine benefits that you may have already developed.

Title tag: The title tag is the piece of code that determines the title of your page. You can see the title of any page at the very top of your browser screen, above all your toolbars. Your title tag will also be the title Google uses when displaying your site in search results. The title should be summary of the content of the page and it must contain one or two of your target keyword phrases. Keep the title length to one reasonably short sentence.

Meta description tag: The meta description tag will not be visible on the page itself, but Google and other search engines may display it as the description of your site in the search results. Therefore, this is a good opportunity to persuade searchers that your site has what they are looking for. Write a short paragraph, one or two sentences, that ideally contain your target keyword phrases and make a well-written summary of your page.

Header tags: Header tags go around the headings in your page’s content. Search engines treat headers as an important indication of your site’s content. Make sure your headers include your target keywords.

Text content: As mentioned above, your target keywords should be related to the content of the page itself. Therefore, it should not be difficult for you to make sure that the target keywords appear naturally in the text of the content of your page. Make sure you have at least three to four paragraphs of content on each page.

Image ALT tags: The image ALT tag is meant to contain a description of the image to which it relates. If you are using the Internet Explorer browser, you’ll see the ALT tag pop up when you mouse over an image on a web page. Starting with your target keyword phrases for the page, work in ALT tags for each image that are accurate and also contain your keyword phrases. Once you have used up your two target keyword phrases for the page, move on to other keyword phrases in your list of 12 in order to create the other ALT tags for images on the page.

There are some other important things to know about onsite search engine optimization:

Site navigation: It’s very important that some of the navigation elements on your site are hyperlinked text rather than images. If your main navigation uses images in order to look nice, make sure you at least have a text footer menu. If you can use a target phrase in the navigation links pointing to your pages, even better. If your site has more than 10 pages, a site map would be good idea.

A word of caution: Keyword stuffing is the name for packing too many keyword phrases into your URL, title tag and other page elements. More is not always better and keyword stuffing frequently results in lower, not higher, rankings. Don’t keyword stuff — stick to one or two keyword phrases for each element of your page. About a decade ago meta keyword tags were important to search engine rankings, but because of rampant keyword stuffing and spam almost all the search engines now disregard meta keyword tags. If a service provider tries to convince you that he can get you to the top of the rankings just by manipulating your site’s keyword tags, run — you are being scammed.

Next week we will talk about some of the ways to start building your offsite optimization strategies. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed in your reader or sign up for free email updates at the upper right of this page.

Do you have any onsite search engine optimization strategies to share? Please comment!

Google Maps information is now frequently showing up at the top of the Google search results page for user searches that include place name keywords. This post explains how to get your business into these Google search results.

Ever do a search on Google and get images, news, YouTube videos or maps at the top of the results? This is thanks to Google Universal Search. The pictures to the left (click to enlarge) show examples of these results.

If you’re a small business owner with a bricks and mortar location, here’s how to get your site into the Google Maps results for searches that include local keywords.

Go to Google Maps Local Business Center and enter your business information (name, address, website, etc.) into the form. Then you will be able to upload photos, videos, select categories, tell customers your payment options, business hours, and more.

How does Google make sure that your location information is accurate? Google will actually mail you out a postcard containing your PIN: your listing will not be activated until you log in again and enter your PIN.

One of the most exciting new features (see the second thumbnail) is the way Google indexes reviews of your business from many different websites. Soon we’ll be talking about social media and ways to turn your most loyal customers into evangelists for your small business.

Did you find this tutorial helpful? Make sure to add our RSS to your reader so you don’t miss future posts.

Have you added your business to Google Local Business Center? Please comment below to let me know the results.

Every small business owner is an expert. The secret to attracting visitors to your website and building their trust in you is to share your expertise generously online.

What’s your area of expertise? Hotel and restaurant owners know their region’s tourist attractions inside out. Real estate agents have lots of information about relocating to their communities. Printing company owners may be experts on wedding invitations or brochure design. Exterminators know all about preventing and dealing with pest infestations. Professionals like lawyers, accountants, veterinarians, health practitioners and dentists all have answers to people’s questions.

Remember, to be an expert, you do not have to know more than anyone else knows about your topic — you only have to know more than 95% of the general population.

Positioning yourself as an expert is a gradual process, and you must resist the temptation to flog your products and services; instead, take the time to build your credibility. Become a trusted expert and the sales will follow!

Here are five starting steps to leverage your expertise into more visitors to your small business website.

Find out what people want to know.

When your customers, friends, family and neighbors ask your advice, what questions do they ask you? Start brainstorming a list of questions and topics to write about. People type all sorts of questions into search engines too. Do a little keyword research at Google Adwords and WordTracker to find more questions and to find out which questions are the most popular. Come up with a list of five to ten popular questions to get you started.

Add information pages to your website.

Add an information or FAQ section to your business website. For best search engine results, use a separate HTML page to write about each separate topic or question. (I’m going to be talking about how to optimize your site’s pages for search engines next week, so make sure you add our RSS feed to your feed reader or sign up for email updates.)

Start a blog.

Blogs are the single biggest bang for your buck in terms of generating visitors from search engines and links from other sites. If you have the time to write something fresh and on topic at least once a week, blogging is the best way to share your expertise on a topic and build relationships with your customers and potential customers.

How do you get a blog? The best option is to have a web developer integrate a blog as part of your small business website. If you don’t have the budget for this, go to WordPress.com or Blogger.com and sign up for a free hosted blog.

Once you are blogging, take some time to participate in the blogging community by reading related blogs and making informative, focused comments. You’ll be able to get a link to your blog from your comments, which will invite people interested in what you say to come take a look.

Participate on forums.

When people are interested in a topic and have questions, they frequently turn to online communities called forums or bulletin boards. These forums provide a place where people can register to post questions and comments related to their interests. There are forums on every topic: diets, beauty, legal issues, hobbies, travel, you name it. Search Google and identify the most popular forums related to your business.

Forums each develop their own formal and informal rules and guidelines about participants’ behavior. Take the time to read and get to know the tone and rules of the forum before you jump in and participate. You may be allowed to post your business site URL in your signature — check the forum rules and if this is permitted, do it. Take time to post good insights and advice instead of just pushing your products and services; gradually you will become a respected and trusted authority.

Add our RSS to your reader or sign up for free email updates to make sure you don’t miss my follow-up posts on search engine optimization. I’ll show you how to turn the inbound links you will generate by sharing your expertise into higher search engine rankings.

Do you have more ideas about how to share your expertise with people who are looking for information and solutions? Please post in the comments!

Photo credit:  Mai Le