Archive for September, 2010

It’s no secret that reaching more customers is a goal of nearly all business owners.  As I discussed in a previous post…your potential and current customers are online and searching.  There are roughly 5,500 searches that occur every second.

That’s right….every second!

The harsh reality is….roughly 90% of all of those searches will not venture beyond the first page of the search engine results.

So how do you get higher on the search engine rankings, so that you’re the one your potential customers find?

This is done through a process called Search Engine Optimization.

There are two main aspects of Search Engine Optimization…On page SEO and off Page SEO.  On page SEO includes altering elements on your website that you can control.  Some of these include:

• Code structure
• Title tags
• Url structure
• Content
• Header tags
• etc

The other aspect of SEO is off page optimization, or link building.

One thing to remember is that Google and other search engines care more about what others say about you then what you say about yourself.  If I was to stand up in a crowded restaurant and yell out…”I am the best marketer ever” I may intrigue some people, but if everyone in the restaurant stood up and pointed at me and said “David is the best marketer out there” I would get better results.

In the search engine world this happens as well.  Links are the currency of the web. The goal is to receive as many links, especially relevant ones as possible. This is done through a process called link building.

Some aspects of link building include…

Article submissions (Write quality content around topics related to your industry and then submit to these sites with your link included in the article or resource box)

Top article directory sites

1. EzineArticles.com
2. GoArticles.com
3. ArticleDashboard.com
4. SearchWarp.com
5. ArticlesBase.com
6. iSnare.com
7. SelfGrowth.com
8. Buzzle.com
9. ArticleCity.com
10. IdeaMarketers.com

Press Release Submissions: Anytime that you have a new hire, noteworthy client, publish a new whitepaper, are going to attend conference, have a speaking engagement, launch a new product or service, etc…It’s wise to submit online press releases. Here is a very strong list of 50+, many of which are free:

http://www.avangate.com/articles/press-release-distribution_69.htm

Directory submissions (There are thousands of website directories online that will provide a link to your website. You can see a large list here: http://www.addurl.nu/)

Blog Commenting (Conduct a search for your topic at technorati.com and leave a thoughtful comment with a link back to your website on a blog post that someone has published)

Social bookmarking- Bookmark your website on sites like Digg.com, stumbleupon.com and Delicious.com these sites are highly trafficked and provide great awareness.

Guest  blogging- Reach out to popular bloggers within your industry and submit a well written blog post with your link included in the post.

Link Requests- If you have friends in your industry, or others with websites in general email them and ask them to link to your website with a targeted keyword as the anchor text or hyperlink.

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Working to improve your search engine visibility is a great way to increase your businesses visibility.  Keep in mind that getting a potential customer to your website is only half the battle.  Once they are there you need them to do what you want them to do…typically contact you, register, or buy something (depending on your business).  Having a well designed site and monitoring your analytics is very important to accomplish this.

Signing off for now…There are many more tips, strategies and resources out there to help improve your search engine visibility.  Hopefully this post gave you some basics.

If you have any additional questions feel free to reach out to me.   Brand Advance, my firm, would be more than happy to give your business a free consultation around this topic.  Simply fill out our contact form on the Brand Advance site and we’ll get back to you.

What other tips do you feel should be included in basic SEO & Link Building 101?

What questions do you have?