Yesterday’s Part 1 SEO post got us started, so let’s pick up where we left off and finish out. Here are a few more cornerstone search engine optimization (SEO) concepts for you to understand about helping people find your website via organic search, such as through a search engine like Google.

• Link Building Works

Creating live links that direct back to your site is a great way to promote your site and get more traffic. If you leave comments on other blogs, especially high traffic, relevant ones, you will likely get traffic, and those comments will likely get indexed.  The thing to remember is to engage in the conversation, contribute to the point being discussed, and reveal your personality and purpose in your post comments. Don’t just pitch yourself – Use subtle, keyword rich comments that intrigue people enough to visit you at your site. (I use the free software package  CommentKahuna to find these high ranking relevant blogs. ) You can also trade links, provide articles, guest blog, and do many more things to get links. Get creative and reach out to the meeting places where your target audience hangs out.

• Spiders Don’t Have Credit Cards or Opinions
  

As much as it’s important to implement the suggestions in both Part 1 & 2, it’s even more important to remember that search engine spiders can’t buy anything – nada, nothing, zilch. Regardless of how many keywords you stuff into your copy,  how many links you have coming in, and how many meta-tags you have, it ultimately comes down to reaching people. You have to use full sentences, you have to appeal to human emotion, and you have to be likeable, or at least very compelling. You have to have something to sell, if you’re selling, or have a story to share if you’re working to educate or simply communicate. Don’t forget that the whole purpose of getting more traffic is to affect human beings.

• Traffic Doesn’t Equal Conversion

Another aspect of spiders not having credit cards or opinions is this -Just because you get visitors coming to your site doesn’t mean anything further will happen. You can perfectly design your site to rank #1 in Google for every pertinent word that someone might be using to search for you, but once a person gets to your site, what’s next? Do they sign up? Do they buy? Do they even stay long enough to read anything? Or, do you bore them, make it hard to navigate and click through, or maybe worse still, don’t provide targeted, relevant information that they were expecting to get when they searched in the first place? Become conscious of the limitations of the traffic trap – don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s a “numbers game”. It’s not – it’s an emotions game. Compelling and specific calls to action, moving stories that engage and encourage response, and reasons to return and stay loyal are going to make more of the traffic you do get more likely to benefit you.

• Nobody’s Perfect – Keep Trying!

SEO leads to authority in your marketplace, a great platform, and a solid foundation for your continuing success. It will take time and effort. This two part series is just the beginning. I am an internet marketing fanatic, so we will discuss this again, but there’s so much more to learn. You will find mistakes everywhere, you will find even big players and big companies not doing SEO right, and that’s ok.  Learn what you can and start chipping away at it. You will be in the top percentage if you do and that will set you and your business apart from the people who aren’t doing anything at all. Be patient, keep curious, and get help if you need it. These are some of our articles of faith as smart women and good entrepreneurs, so that’s what we’re going to do. I’ll be with you every step of the way, ok?

As a side note, just wanted to let you know that I am about to launch a SmartWomanRadio talk show, starting December 8th at 2 pm CT.  I’d love to have you join in. Come on over and call into the show!

Together, we are stronger!
Vicki Flaugher, the original SmartWoman

Search engine optimization (SEO) is webspeak for designing your website to be easy to find by search engines like Google. It includes some core foundational ideas that are relatively practical to grasp yet can quickly get very complicated. Gurus galore abound in this arena and it is a changing and esoteric business.

Today, we are going to stick to the basics. Once you get those down, you can keep growing into more intense areas of study if you’d like, but my goal is to start you at the beginning.

To keep it straightforward, here are the top ideas to wrap your head around:

• Content Is Queen

Having sufficient amounts of content – words on your website – is crucial. Flashy graphics can look cool, but they don’t attract attention from search engines. Strive for 250-400 words of direct, meaty content at the top of your website (called “above the fold”). Keep the sentences focused and sensible, not just a string of words that people use to search (called “keywords”).

• Pictures Don’t Talk

Pictures add interest and attractiveness to your site; however, they are like blank cubes to search engines. When you add pictures, be sure to add keyword rich description tags that describe the pictures and add additional content for the search engine spiders to find and index. Depending upon how your website is designed, you either do this through your photo insertion tool or via photo tags upon saving the file. Ask your webmaster or contact me if you have questions. I’ll help you.

• Tags are Helpful

Meta-tags are helpful to your site, but the most important thing to add is a strong description. You usually add this through your CSS style sheets, your template files, or, if you have a WordPress site, you can use a plug in designed to help you add page titles and site tags. Don’t get caught up in learning all this stuff yourself – once you do it, you’ll know it and there are lots of people (like the high school kid down the street) that can help. Get help.

• Relevance Rules

When your site is relevant, it has a concise topic focus and directly related content. If your site is about dogs, you might talk about pets, animal training, various types of dogs, and maybe flea prevention, but not skyscrapers. Not even the Cocker Spaniel Building in NoPlace, USA. Don’t get too cute with words or slap on some other business you have all into one site. It will only water down your relevance and confuse the search engine spiders. Make it easy for them to understand what you mean.

This is just our first scratch at the surface of this deep subject. However, if you implement these few basics concepts, your website is much more likely to get better ranking. Better ranking will lead to more eyeballs on your site, which can then lead to more sales and exposure. And, well, it’s like tying your shoes. You aren’t necessarily going to win a marathon if you tie your shoes, but you’re surely more likely not to finish if you don’t.

Come back tomorrow for Part 2, where we will cover the following ideas:

• Link Building Works
• Spiders Don’t Have Credit Cards
• Traffic Doesn’t Equal Conversion
• Nobody’s Perfect – Keep Trying!

Together, we are stronger!
Vicki Flaugher, the original SmartWoman

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Are you curious about what the Internet thinks of you? If so, Google yourself!

We are all focused on satisfying our clients, developing products and services, and all the other administrative, sales, and marketing activities that go with running a business. It’s not always so easy to take a step out of our bubbles and see how others see us. But, it’s crucial.

As women, some of us are a bit shy about our image. We don’t necessarily want to be in the spotlight. And,  we tend to shy away from our missteps. We’d rather hide under a rock than objectively examine our mistakes. But, I would ask you to consider this:

If you get a glimpse of you and your business from the outside, you will learn things about how and why you get new sales (or not) and also how you can contribute even more. And, it’s kinda fun!

So, this weekend, as a professional curiousity, go Google yourself–your personal name, your business name, your website name, maybe your executives’ names. If you have extra time, type in the words that describe the service you provide and see what comes up. It can be a real eye opener.

All I am asking you to do is to see what you see. It’s about awareness, not shame or judgement. See it all. Be ok with it. You can and will change what you don’t like but you have to see it first

Notice what blurps come up with your web page descriptions–would YOU click on it to buy what you’re selling? How many pages are you on? Who is there along with you? What are your competitors doing that you could learn from?

Notice who mentions you. If you don’t know them, you should.  Business is all about relationships and you could build some new ones with people who are already mentioning you.

Don’t neglect to notice where you are doing a great job also. This is an exercise in finding the good too, not just the not-so-good. You are bound to be doing things right and it can be very satisfying to become aware of that. It’s important to celebrate when you find gold. (Victory dances are encouraged.)

So, until next time, have fun and report back what you discover!

Together, we are stronger.
Vicki Flaugher, the original SmartWoman

p.s. I  discovered that a link to SmartWoman is now available in Russian–how cool is that?