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Nightingale-Conant presents Andrew Melchior

Playing the SEO Game to Win

If you've ever typed a name, word, or phrase into Google, Yahoo, or any other online search engine, you know that an Internet search can yield anywhere from dozens to millions of results. You also know that, chances are, you won't look much beyond the top 10 or 20 links on that list before finding something that seems right and clicking over.

As a business owner, you need to make sure that when someone goes searching for a word or phrase that relates to the product or service you provide, your website shows up as high on the list of search results as possible. But how? That's the question Search Engine Optimization seeks to answer and it's why this relatively new tool is one you should start understanding and utilizing immediately.

Search Engine Optimization — commonly known as SEO — is the process of structuring and/or altering your website in order to achieve the highest possible organic ranking on a given search engine.

For most business owners, the process of SEO seems like a tricky or even impossible task, one that's not well understood by them or anyone else in the company. Adding to the sense of mystery is the mass of confusing and conflicting information floating around on the subject.

If you've been working on your company's SEO for a while but haven't seen the jump in ranking or traffic that you've been hoping for, don't despair. Successful SEO is possible, even for a virtual tech novice. The key lies in familiarizing yourself with the language and terminology of SEO, and following a few simple but crucial steps. By doing so, you will be able to rank high in most search engines, leading to increased traffic and, hopefully, an increased bottom line.

SEO Success Step #1: Identify your optimal keyword phrases

Your own Internet searches start with typing a precise word or phrase into a search engine. In the same way, successful SEO begins by identifying the specific keyword phrases that will bring the maximum number of visitors to your site, and then optimizing your site around those phrases.

When determining which keyword phrases you should focus on, you might be tempted to go for those with the most obvious relevance and biggest number of searches. For example, a small wrench manufacturer might want to achieve a top-10 ranking for the word "wrench." An ideal scenario, but not a likely one when you're competing with umpteen other bigger, more established sites.

Instead, you should look for keyword phrases that are more precisely targeted to your product or service and, at the same time, generate a moderate but still meaningful number of searches. A keyword phrase that gets a few hundred searches per month may not sound like a blockbuster, but you stand a much better chance of achieving a high ranking for it; if you do, you will experience a sizeable increase in site traffic.

Selecting the right keyword phrases can be a trial-and-error process. Thankfully, there are many useful tools on the Web that will give you keyword phrase results. The most commonly used one is the Overture Keyword Selector Tool, which you can find at inventory.overture.com. This tool will tell you how many times a user typed a keyword phrase into his search engine during the last month, and also help you zero in on 10 to 15 optimum keyword phrases.

Once you know what words you want to target for SEM (search engine marketing), you can begin succeeding in it.

SEO Success Step #2: Code your site properly

When a search engine looks at your site, it does not see a visual image the way a human visitor does; it sees code. Search engines use computer programs known as spiders that actually search, or "crawl," through all your pages to determine whether or not your site is search engine friendly. If a spider cannot read your code because it has errors, its search engine will not index you, and no small or large amount of optimization is going to help you rank.

A properly coded site is one that contains no JavaScript links, session IDs in the URL, or dangling links, and has a good internal link structure utilizing anchor text to enforce the emphasized keyword phrases. If your grasp of technical jargon doesn't run this deep, consult with your IT director or web host about your site's current coding. (If it does, see "SEO 202: The Do's and Don'ts of Linking" for a quick lesson in proper link formatting.) You may also want to utilize a web-based HTML validator tool to help determine if your site is coded without errors. One of the most popular can be found at www.w3.org.

SEO Success Step #3: Strategically place your keyword phrases in your meta tags

A meta tag is an HTML tag that identifies the contents of your website to a search engine. Your meta tags tell search engines what keyword phrases your site should be indexed under, so it is critical that they be worded and structured for maximum effect. If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer as your web browser, you can visit any website and select View > Source to see the meta tags currently in place on your site.

There are three main meta tags in which you need to place your keyword phrases: the title tag, the description tag, and the keywords tag.

The title tag, which appears in the title bar of an Internet browser, is often considered the most important factor in receiving good ranking on search engines. Each page on your site should have a unique title tag that is easy to read and that includes the two or three main keyword phrases that are being targeted on that page. In most instances, your keyword phrases should be placed near the beginning of the sentence.

The description tag should be in sentence form and should describe the purpose of your web page to the search engine. Most search engines will use your meta description in their search results as the description of your site. Once again, you want to include your two or three main keyword phrases at least once in this tag. Place your keyword phrases near the beginning of the sentence to give your keywords good keyword proximity, and always keep the length of the tag under 25 words.

The keywords tag has become less relevant in past years and therefore receives less focus by search engine marketers, but you still don't want to leave it out. A good keyword tag will include your main keyword phrases for that page and any other relevant keyword phrases. Be careful not to "keyword stuff" the pages by throwing any and all keywords into this tag. You want to include your main words at least once; put them at the front of the list and then slide them in again in the middle or toward the end.

SEO Success Step #4: Saturate your site with your keyword phrases

Once you have your target keyword phrases selected, your code in order, and your meta tags correctly written, the next step is to get the actual meat of your site — the words and images — in peak search-engine-friendly shape. The way to do that is through effective keyword phrase repetition.

Keyword phrase repetition is the technique of repeating your main keyword phrases throughout a page's text. For many people this is a frustrating charge, since all our lives we've been taught not to repeat ourselves when writing. But when a search engine crawls your page, it will be looking for the keyword phrases you mentioned in your meta tags and will weight the frequency of use of those keyword phrases against the rest of the text on that page.

The optimal keyword phrase weight is somewhere between 4 percent and 7 percent. That means that if you have 100 words on a page, you need to repeat your keyword phrases 4-7 times each to reach the optimal weight. The challenge here is keeping your text reader-friendly while repeating your keyword phrases often. For an example of how to do this successfully, reread this paragraph and notice how many times the term 'keyword phrase(s)' has been used ... 5.03 percent of the time.

A word of warning: As important as repetition is, DO NOT repeat your keyword phrases twice in a row — either one after the other mid-sentence, or as the last word of one sentence and the first word of the next. Search engines will often recognize this kind of construction as spam, and it could seriously damage your ranking.

SEO Success Step #5: Submit your website to as many directories as you can find

Submitting your website to an online directory is another critical step toward getting it noticed and ranked by search engines. Directories function much like the search engines themselves, except that they are manually edited, with website categories listed in alphabetical order. When you submit to a directory, you choose the category that best fits your site and suggest they list it there.

Search engines constantly send their spiders through directories looking for new listings, then following the link, they send their spiders through the site. If your site is built correctly as laid out in the steps listed above, and the search engines start hitting your site through the directory back links (links that take visitors from another site to your site), your chances of getting indexed by the search engines and/or increasing your rankings will substantially improve.

While many directories charge a submission fee, there are hundreds of free directories on the Web. Two worth exploring are www.dmoz.org (also known as The Open Directory Project, ODP), and www.eplanit.biz/directory.html.

SEO Success Step #6: Write and distribute online press releases for your site

While press releases may generate some publicity for your website in the traditional sense, the more likely benefit of this step — and the reason why it is so important — is the number of back links to your site that can result from the online syndication of your release through press release feeds and the fast-growing blogosphere.

Generally, when a press release is published online, the title of the release will link to the website that the release is about or to the source of the article. If you submit your release through a few news feeds and a few hundred news sites pick up your article, it could result in hundreds of back links to your site. Two excellent online press release feeds are www.prweb.com and www.prnewswire.com. These sites feature great information and services, and also enable you to scan other releases that are out there — which can be extremely helpful if you're unfamiliar with the style and structure of a typical press release.

SEO Success Step #7: Create buzz around your website with articles

Writing articles about your site or topics that relate to your business accomplishes two things. First, it creates fresh content that you can post on your site, and search engines love fresh content. Secondly, you can submit your articles through an article submission and syndication website, which gives you the opportunity of having your article published on thousands of websites. These websites will either post links to your website or allow you to post links to your website within the article, creating "buzz" for you and leading to increased rankings in most engines around the article topics. There are thousands of sites, blogs, and forums that accept articles on a huge variety of topics. A few sites worth checking out are www.articlecity.com, www.isnare.com, www.ezinearticles.com, and www.articledashboard.com.

Here is an example of a well-formatted link and a similar poorly formatted link.

Good link: http://www.site.com/ProductTitle by AuthorName.htm

Notice how this link is simple.There are no dynamic parameters or session IDs, and relevant information is in the link (i.e., product title and author name).

Poor link: http://www.site.com/product.asp?pro duct=123&Session=2234

The above link is for a dynamic page, which means that the page, "product.asp", will dynamically adjust based on the product ID that is passed in "123", in the case above. The first problem with this link is that the search engines will often then see that you have only one product page, "product.asp", and you won't get the benefit of the depth of all your products. In other words, they may disregard the information after the ".asp" part.

The second problem is that it has a session ID that tracks the activity of a single user — in this case, session 2234. Search engines that do recognize the entire link will see every new session as a new page. Therefore, every time the search engine crawlers visit your site, they will see all new pages (i.e., all new links), and they will start all over, assuming that the old pages are gone.

These two mistakes can cripple your search engine optimization efforts and make all your other efforts useless.SEO works like links in a chain: If one link is weak, it doesn't matter how strong the others are; the overall effort will be weak.

An H (or Header) tag is a command that specifies how a certain portion of text should be formatted, essentially increasing its font to a pre-set size. Incorporating H tags into your site text is vital because H tags emphasize the importance of your keyword phrases to the search engine, which in turn gives those phrases more weight than standard text. You will want to H tag your main keyword phrases at least once on the page, but try to aim for two or three times. Make every attempt to get your first H tag as close to the top of the page as possible.

In addition to submitting your site to directories, you should also submit it directly to the search engines themselves.

To submit your site to Google, go to http://www.google.com/addurl/? continue=/addurl.

• Does your site use search-engine-friendly domains (meaning there are no session IDs in the URL of your site pages)?
• Did you research your keyword phrases to select the proper phrases to target for each page on your site?
• The top three keyword phrases for my site are: ________ , _________ , _______
• Is your site code error free or as close to error free as possible?
• Have you placed your main keyword, phrased for each page, in that page's meta title?
• Have you placed your main keyword, phrased for each page, in that page's meta description?
• Have you placed your main keyword, phrased for each page, in that page's meta keywords?
• Do you repeat your main keyword phrases for each page 4% to 7% of the time within that page's text or content?
• Have you placed H tags throughout your site content to emphasize your main keyword phrases?
• Does every picture or image on your site have ALT text?
• Are the site hyperlinks optimized to include title attributes and keyword anchor text?
• Have you created an optimized site map page on your site?
• Have you submitted your site to major directories, including: www.eplanit.biz/directory.html?
• Have you released press releases and posted articles about your website online?

3 Things Great Writers Do That Kill Search Engine Rankings

1. Great writers are taught never to repeat their words in close proximity to each other. Great optimizers repeat their words strategically to meet the demands of the search engines. This means that they repeat their keyword phrases 4% to 7% of the time throughout the content of each website page.
2. Great writers focus on a human audience when writing. Great optimizers focus on a computer program when writing but still keep the writing reader-friendly for a human. Great optimizers are able to meet a whole different set of demands while still reaching a great writer's demands.
3. Great writers can paint a picture through their words and will thoroughly describe what they are writing about. Great optimizers are concise, because there is limited website real estate to be viewed by visitors. The average visitor is on a page for less than 15 seconds.

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