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A number of articles and white papers have been written on this topic. Before the days of Google and Web 2.0 there was little attention paid to the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In the early days of the Internet Era you could get a site listed on Yahoo! or Altavista by merely submitting it. As long as it wasn’t too complicated for search engines to understand you could get your site listed within 2 to 3 days. But Yahoo! and Altavista couldn’t keep up with the flood of URL submissions. As web evolved, more and more companies began to embrace the online medium and the potential for using it as a marketing tool.
In the late 90’s something dramatic happened. Google introduced PageRank, a system of ranking Web pages based on their importance and other factors. Google searchbots (or spiders) crawl through the world wide web following links, indexing and categorizing pages based on their content and relevancy. The more links a page has, the more likely they will be picked up and indexed by searchbots. In order to allow spiders to understand the site content, web masters needed to follow certain rules like placing proper keywords, title tags and content in each web page. At this point search became more of an art than a science. Companies can no longer expect to simply add their sites to directories and wait for them to appear on the top of search engine results.
Why is it important to you?
The Search Engine market is fragmented, with Google commanding the majority of the market share (over 80%). If there is one search engine that you want to focus on, that would be Google. Microsoft’s announced bid for Yahoo! (subjected to regulatory approval) might increase Microsoft’s share in the search market, but I still don’t think they will be able to challenge Google’s dominance anytime in the near future.
In 2007, a survey concluded that over 50% of traffic originated at a search engine. According to a 2007 report published by eMarketer, over 20% of U.S Internet users use a search engine at least 4-5 times in a day. According to Internet Measurement firm, Hitwise, Search Engines were the highest sources of traffic during the peak Christmas shopping season, representing 57% of upstream traffic. Google alone was responsible for 18% of the upstream traffic, followed by Yahoo with 6%.
The above figure highlights the importance of SEO as a potential marketing tool in attracting visitors to your site.
How do you implement?
Analyze your current state
Before you start your SEO implementation, it is a good practice to analyze your current state. Evaluate your goals and priorities. Determine your plan of attack. After you implement a solution do not expect immediate results. Don’t be tempted to go straight for a Price Per Click (PPC) campaign such as Google AdWords or Yahoo! Small Business marketing to promote your site. As I pointed in the previous sections, what determines your site’s placement involves more than one factor.
Some companies take an easier route by hiring optimization firms that use shady techniques to increase search rankings. These optimization firms typically guarantee linking in from 50 or more sites (aka link-spamming). They are linked to doorway pages or parked domains that may work short term, but it is only a matter of time before the search spiders detect and penalize the site. Google even makes a point about this on their SEO support page.
Why links matter
As we noted in the first section, PageRank is a value that Google gives to a page based on the number of links pointing to your site. So how do you get others to provide links to your site? You can try the following methods:
- Register with major search directories (Yahoo!, OpenDirectory, MSN)
- Send press releases about your product or idea that generates free links
- Hire an expert to write something positive about your product and publish in an industry newsletter, magazine or a local newspaper
- Ask to be a featured or sponsored client in a major portal site
- Ask employees to mention you and your products
- Enlist in a local library’s site
- Make reciprocal link requests
- Mention your site in major Blogging sites, Yahoo! Answers and Google Groups
- Respond to blogs or queries in Yahoo! Answers (just don’t over-do it)
- Syndicate your content through external RSS feeds to different sites
- Use announcement sites like URLwire to announce your site
- Consider ad campaigns through Google AdWords
Re-engineer your site content
Here are a few basic things you can do to clean up your site and make it Search Engine friendly.
1. Site Hierarchy and text links
Most sites employ DHTML, Flash, Frames and other fancy objects to enhance the end user’s experience. While these objects are great to captivate the users attention, Google and other search engines can’t understand them and will have trouble interpreting them while crawling your sites. Google introduced a new concept called Site Maps. Most people overlook the power of this feature. The Site Maps feature allows Google to understand your site structure and diagnose any potential problems.
2. Server Side Dynamic Content
Many sites use session IDs to track a user’s path to the site. If the session IDs vary on each visit, Google and most other search engines simply ignore the page, resulting in it not being indexed.
You can avoid this scenario by doing two things:
- Store session information in a cookie on the user’s computer
- If the request is made from a searchbot, you can have your web server serve pages without any session IDs, hence allowing the searchbot to navigate through your site without using any session IDs
3. Use Targeted Keywords
Create a narrow targeted keywords list that you think identifies your site properly. Check Yahoo’s Overture (searchmarketing.yahoo.com) or WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com) for ideas on selecting keywords. You can find out the effectiveness of your keywords. In WordTracker for instance, you can input your keyword to see how often people have searched for it. It also tells you how often a term is searched and how many pages appear for that term.
Once you identify the keywords, what do you do with them? One obvious thing to do is to add them inside the Meta Keywords tag. In addition, use the keywords generously throughout your page content. Search Engines love a site with fresh descriptive content filled with keywords. This means constantly updating your site with new, fresh content is vital to your overall SEO strategy.
4. Use Google AdWords
One great way to generate traffic is to simply pay for it. Since Google pretty much dominates the PPC market, you want to focus your ad campaign effort on using Google AdWords. Google’s AdWords Network not only includes Google’s site, but also About.com, The New York Times, InfoSpace, Business.com, Lycos and a few others. So paying per click (PPC) on Google AdWords allows your ad to be featured on all the sites that are part of the Google network. Keep in mind that in most PPC systems, the top bid gets the top position. Be sure to use relevant keywords when associating with search engine ads.
Combining the steps outlined above and running ad campaigns on Google’s AdWords Network will provide ultimate exposure to your site.
How do you measure?
Measuring your returns on SEO investments is crucial. Google’s PageRank feature in the toolbar can help estimate your site’s importance in the Google index. You can perform a search on Google for the word “link:yoursite.com” to see how many back links your site has. This is a good indicator of how many sites are linked to your site.
One way to track the traffic to your site is to use Google Analytics. This tool allows you to see the traffic variables such as a) Absolute Unique Visitors, b) Page Views, c) Bounce Rates and d) Average Time Spent. In addition, you can also set conversion goals to determine how many of those leads converted to an effective sale (or some other action you describe), which is a key way to measure ROI. Tracking in helps you evaluate the efforts of your marketing strategy whether it is a PPC campaign, banner ads or natural SEO. Tracking also allows you to gain visibility into your end user’s behavior and time spent on each page, which allows you to make a decision on where to place ads.
Where to go from here?
Like any other software solution implementation, SEO implementation needs to be constantly monitored and updated. A continuous enhancement to optimization techniques, tracking, keywords, content, blog entries and ad campaigns is necessary to keep your site rank high in the search results. To stay on top, you not only have to outdo your competition but also keep content fresh. This will not only bring new visitors to your site, but also the keep the visitors returning to your site.
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To learn more about Search Engine Optimization and other topics around Search Marketing, please visit http://www.seosolutions.biz Chan Komagan is a Digital Media Strategist and he provides consulting work to both profit and non-profit organizations in Search Marketing. You can reach him at chan@seosolutions.biz |
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