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If you are wondering if
you could conduct a successful SEO project on a very
tight, the answer to this is 'Yes, absolutely'.
Don't be a victim of the mainstream mentality that
believes the 'you-get-what-you-pay-for' mantra. If
you are part of the corporate world, you know that
this is simply not true (i.e. we are paying for our
suppliers' marketing expenditures).
In short, all you need to know
are these three
things:
-
What's
involved in a SEO process
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How to build links, and
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How to create
high-quality SEO copy (text, content)
Let me go over each
item. You will quickly see that a high
quality optimization project should not necessarily
eat up all your marketing cash, provided you are
prepared to do the leg work yourself.
Note that I have
included links to help you get results
quickly and efficiently - without spending a penny.
These free links will allow you to plan, manage, and
measure all important aspects of your campaign, i.e.
check your current ranking on major search engines;
check who links to you; check your own internal and
outgoing links, check to see how you compare with
your competitors, and other relevant parameters.
With all that said,
let's get down to business.
-
Knowing what is involved in an SEO
project
Assuming that you have
correctly determined your most important "keywords"
(i.e. key phrases, because you need to use 2 or 3
words combined, not individual single words), let's talk about what
else you should do.
At a high level,
organic search engine optimization (SEO) is
primarily comprised of
content creation (website copy and
downloadable documents)
and link
building. There are some web design and
coding principles that need to be observed to have
high a SEO rank, but they are not as important. The two
most important things are your copy writing and your
links.
In addition, you should purchase keyword ads on
Google and Yahoo. You can limit yourself to a
couple of your most important keywords. In fact, I
recommend that you start your SEO project with
purchasing a couple of keywords first and then
proceed with the SEO optimization of your website.
The process of deciding which specific keywords to
pay for will show you what your most important
keywords really are. It should then make it easier
for you to create highly targeted and focused web
copy.
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How to build links quickly and cost-effectively
When it comes to links,
keep in mind that for search engines (robots) a
link is a link, it has an
anchor (a)
tag:
<a href="SiteMap_SEO.htm">Site
Map</a>
Naturally, links that point to you from other
websites (incoming links) have a much higher value
(they get more points) than outgoing or internal
links, but you can still boost your SEO ranking by
building a lot of outgoing and internal links, as
long as all your links are HIGHLY relevant to your
area of expertise and your main keywords. Unrelated links (and content)
dilute your theme and may result in a lowered
ranking.
You have full control over internal and outgoing
links. You have less control over incoming
links, but there is still a lot you can do on even a
small budget.
-
To build internal
links, create a Site Map (like the one I have
here: Site
Map) and place the site map link on every page.
If your website is under 50 pages, do not use
'include' files, but manually hard-code the site map
link on every page. In addition, create a side bar
on each page and provide 5-7 links to other pages on
your website (example of
side bars).
-
To build outgoing
links, provide some kind of 'resources' related
to your field, i.e. list educational or professional
associations, governing bodies, educational
websites, anything that can be of value to a reader
within your profession or business.
-
To build
incoming links, you should list your company in
as many relevant directories as possible (local,
international, professional, etc). Some of these
listings would be free, some would need to be
purchased. Aim at having at least 100 links pointing
toward you.
Below is a basic set of
free resources to help you manage your link
building efforts:
back to top
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How
to create high-quality SEO copy at little or no cost
When it comes to
writing, things are more difficult, but here is a
tip. In order to get professional SEO results, you
need a designated person to do the writing:
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A person from your
Marketing department who knows how to write well and
enjoys writing;
-
If you are the only
person in Marketing and simply don't have any time
on your hands, hire a Master's student in
Linguistics or Journalism, even if you are a
technology company.
Linguistics is a field where jobs are scarce and
students work for low wages and often even volunteer
their time to get some real-life experience and
references.
Why Linguistics? Because Linguistics is the field
devoted to the study of human ability to communicate
using Language. This is the field where you would
find writers who took the time to study and learn
the English language at a professional level.
Graduate students of Linguistics often proceed by
becoming lawyers. In fact, a Master's degree in
Linguistics is one of the most popular "transit
ways" to Law school.
But what about my highly complicated technological
subject matter (you may ask)? A non-technical person
will not be able to understand it. If you believe
this, you will never find a good SEO writer.
Engineers are notoriously bad writers; besides, they
are too expensive. But most important, your website
copy should never resemble a design specifications
document or any technical document for that matter.
It may, and will, contain product descriptions and
certain technical information in appropriate
sections (which your student can obtain from your
Engineering department), but it should not be
written as a legal or technical document.
If your budget is tight, but you want high-quality
results, hire a graduate student of Linguistics to
do SEO copywriting for you.
Make sure that this
designated person
learns basic SEO copywriting
principles. For a graduate student of
Linguistics or Journalism, it would only take a few
hours.
Here is a
good SEO copywriting manual (but your students
of Linguistics would only need to quickly look
through it, because they already know most of what
is provided in this guide).
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SEO
pitfalls and what not to do
One of the major
pitfalls of an organic SEO project is that it may
take a long time, especially if your site is new.
As a rule, it takes
about 6-8 months for a new site to get indexed by
search engines, and it may take a year or even two
to get listed in the
ODP
directory (if you qualify to get listed in the
first place). Note that this directory is used by
Google as its database resource.
For older sites, the
situation is better (by "older" I mean sites that
are at least two years old), but boosting their SEO
ranking for specific keywords still takes time.
On the plus site, once
you have achieved your desired ranking on Google and
other search engines, it takes relatively little
effort to maintain it. You always need to keep an
eye on competition and make sure to add new
optimized content to your site on a regular
basis (issue a newsletter, press releases, etc).
Note that the basics of
search engine optimization are pretty
straightforward and very easy to learn. There are,
however, a few things that that you must never do.
Every one by now has heard of
'doorway pages',
'mirror sites',
'spamdexing',
'spamming',
'spoofing',
'siphoning',
'cloaking', and similar terms.
If these terms sound
unfamiliar to you, you MUST review
their
definitions, or else you are risking
penalties imposed by search engines without even
knowing it (some penalties can even result in
de-listing, and it may take months to get back
into index).
There are rumors in
the SEO circles that overly optimized pages get
penalized by a lowered rank. While there is no way
to confirm this for sure, it does sound plausible
(because it makes sense). Do not overdo your
keywords (see
'keyword
stuffing'). Do not repeat them more than 5-6
times per page, and do not use identical
keywords in the same paragraph (use synonyms and
grammatical variations).
However, if you are too
lazy to read (<smile>), your main guideline here
should be total honesty. If you thought of
some new and "creative" technique that you think
could quickly boost your ranking, make sure that it
passes your own honesty test. If it does not,
it is almost sure not to be "liked" by search engines.
If you would like to
read one thing and one thing only, then it should be
these
SEO guidelines for webmasters by Google.
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Budget-conscious SEO campaign in 8 steps
A company of 40-50
people can conduct a very successful optimization
project with a budget of roughly 2-5K, provided they
have at least one designated staff member to do the
leg work. Ideally, this person should know how to
use web publishing software, such as DreamWeaver or
FrontPage (at a basic level). The time line will
depend on the number of selected keywords for
optimization purposes and the market value of these
keywords, i.e. how competitive they are (check to
see how many results get returned by a search engine
in response to each keyword phrase).
As a rough estimate,
plan to spend 1 to 2 weeks for each keyword for
content optimization (when no website re-design is
involved).
Here
is an 8-step process of what you need to do to get great SEO
results on a shoe string.
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never provide 100% duplicate content in various
formats, as this is considered spam). If
possible, disperse your most important key phrases
throughout these documents.
Add pages to your
site regularly and post white papers, manuals,
help, and other references on your website
(on-page and for downloads, but
- Repeat your specific keywords EXACTLY (in the
same order) 4-5 times on each page (plus
use 4-5 synonyms) and place them within H1 and H2
tags, as well as under bullets and
especially embedded within hypertext links, even
if leading to your own pages. Do not overdo
repetition of keywords, ask your writer to be
sensitive.
-
Optimize your Title tag on every page very
carefully, i.e. each page should have a title
tag that would be like a summary of the page
content, i.e. each page would have a slightly
different title tag. The title tag should be 60
characters including spaces, ideally, but if it is
longer than that, don't worry, as long as it
contains your most desired keywords preferably
twice.
Examples of the Titles tags on my site:
Home page:
<title>SEO
in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: Attract Customers
through Web Marketing and Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)</title>
Services page:
<title>SEO in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada:
Services: Get Customers through Web Marketing
and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)</title>
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Interlink your pages as
much as you can without making it look weird.
One easy way is to use side bars (example of
side bars).
But don't forget to create a
Site Map.
-
Place listings in RELEVANT directories so
that to create inbound or back links. However, the most
important directory is this one:
www.dmoz.org.
Google uses this directory as its database
resource. Make sure you select the most
appropriate category for your business (try a few
different paths and check available listings to
see whether you are on the right track; check to
see where your competitors are listed as well).
-
Another important thing is NOT to dilute your
content and links, i.e. only use highly
relevant text, white papers, pdfs, etc. and only relevant links.
Search engines may lower your rank, if you have a
lot of unrelated information associated with your
website one way or another.
-
Enroll in Google AdWords and try a few different
keywords (you can place a cap on how much you want to spend
daily, weekly and monthly, so your spending is
highly controlled and you can adjust at anytime; Google provides
excellent reporting and management features free
of charge).
-
Make sure to find out what NOT to do to
artificially boost your
SEO rating. Here is a couple of good links for
this:
For information on how and where to find
professional-quality yet very inexpensive graphics components as
well as graphics designers, where to find free survey
software and other enhancing components for your
website, use the
resources page
on my site. All links have been carefully collected by
me over the years of personal use.
And finally, monitor your site's performance:
·
Site Analyzer
·
Search Engine Position Checker by Keyword
·
PageRank Checker
·
Useful SEO tools from SEOChat
Note from the
Ottawa editor
If there
are specific Web Marketing and Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) topics that you would like me to
discuss in this newsletter, please do not hesitate
to
drop me a line.
For
related Web Marketing and SEO information, browse
through the Resources
section on this site.
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Anna
Tulchinsky 
