SEO Made Easy

So you have a website now and you're wondering, "where's all the business I'm supposed to be getting?" Well, the answer may be that you're not receiving enough web traffic and if that's the case, your website may not be optimized for search engines.

What does that mean?

Optimizing a website for search engines just means following some steps. That's all it is - knowledge is power and in this case, knowledge is money too! We're going to outline a few of those steps in an easy-to-follow format to help you better understand them. You'll begin to realize that there's a lot more to it than what you might have expected. It's for this reason why you'll find a host of companies out there that specialize in search engine optimization (or SEO).

Trudeau Consulting clients receive some of these services free of charge but it can be a time-consuming process. Therefore, some of our more web-savvy clients choose to take on more of the gruntwork themselves. If you know some basic HTML, you too can do most if not all of the things we outline below. As an added service, Trudeau Consulting offers to do much of the optimization process for you.

Getting Started

First - you need to be able to see what your clients are typing into search engines to get to your site. Without knowing this, you will not be able to find out how well your project is working. We highly recommend Google Analyticsfor this. Why?

• Free (shouldn't that always be at the top of a list?)
• It's very intuitive - meaning, it collects and arranges a lot of data into meaningful sections
• The sign-up process is simple
• It integrates to Google Adwords^(TM) and Google Adsense^(TM) programs

The Google website explains the process a bit better than we can, but basically it gives you a special hidden script that you can put into your pages. The script feeds information back to Google Analytics so you can analyze your web traffic data.

Second, download the Google Toolbar. The Google Toolbar is unique because it has a little meter on it that shows Google's "Page Rank" of every site you're on.

Page Rank?

Google ranks web pages in importance using a 0-10 scale. Why is this important for you? It matters because the higher your company's PR, the more likely it'll show up high on Google searches. Like most things relating to SEO, there is a calculation involved in determining PR.

But to make a long story short - your PR depends on the PR of the sites that link to you. That's correct - the quality (not necessarily the quantity) of the pages that link to your page determines your own page rank.

Achieving even a mediocre PR can be a process. Don't expect this number to skyrocket in the first few months of your site's life. It may even take up to 12 months for it to even budge. Do not get frustrated though! Just keep following the guidelines here and keep hammering away at it.

What about MSN and Yahoo?

They don't use the Google PR, but they do have similar "importance" algorithms in use.

It's all about the key words, baby

You now have to come up with one or two key search phrases, or a collection of key words. There are tools out there for finding good key phrases. This document is intended to be a high-level overview and we encourage you to do some research on how to select a good key phrase before moving on to the next step.

When you've got your selection made, you can now begin the optimization process.

Off-Page and On-Page

Those are the two types of optimization out there. Off-Page Optimization is everything you do external to your site (links). On-Page is of course the opposite: things you do to your actual website. We'll talk about Off-Page Optimization a bit later. First, let's get into On-Page:

Here are some of the things you can do to optimize your page for your key words:

1. Domain Name
2. Title
3. META tags
4. Headings
5. Bold, Italic, Underline
6. Content

Domain Name

If you are lucky enough to have some of your key words IN your domain name, then you will be happy to know that you've already got a leg-up on everyone who doesn't! It shouldn't matter if your domain has dashes separating the keywords - most spiders are smart enough to account for this.

In other words, having a domain name of http://www.myspecialjewelry.com/ will rank well for searches that include the word "jewelry" (so long as the rest of the site is optimized).

Title

This one's simple - your page title (the bar at the top), needs to have your key phrases in it. Research has shown that most people pay little attention to the title bar when they're surfing, so don't feel bad if it's stuffed with key words. Note: no need to repeat the same word twice on your title bar. Also, try to keep the length of your title under 80 characters.

META Tags

There's a lot of debate about how much importance the search engines put on META tags nowadays, but it's still something you should do. A META tag is a special piece of code that communicates directly with the search engine spiders. It aids in indexing.

Again, there are certain rules for what to put in your META tags and we suggest you do a little digging to learn about this topic. There's a lot out there nowadays on how and what to do with your tags. Maybe start with Wikipedia.

Headings

Words that you put inside H1 html tags will be treated differently than things you put elsewhere on your site. This is because the spiders are trained to consider your headings as being an important component to your overall page content. Therefore, in the name of SEO, do what you can to weave some of your key phrases into heading tags. Learn more about heading tags here.

Bold, Italic, Underline

Same thing - throw in some of this special formatting into your page to help gently guide the web crawlers in the right direction. Don't overdo it though - just a few here and there. The same goes for numbered and un-numbered lists. The general idea here is to try to saturate your page with your key words, without making it look too crazy.

Content

The number of words on your page can greatly affect how it ranks. Mostly it can affect you if your word count is too low, but it can be a problem if it's too high (remember, key words... you have to keep your key word % high). Try to get to around the 600-word mark on your pages.

Just as important though, you have to try to keep it high-quality, relevant content. Avoid spamming your page with your key phrases over and over. You will be penalized for this.

Off-Page Optimization

So you've tweaked as much of your site as posible and now you want to do the 2nd part. Here's where it gets fun. Where in the On-Page optimization you had to make changes to your site and use some HTML coding skills, in Off-Page optimization it's all about networking.

Getting listed on the major search engines is not enough - you have to have folks linking to your site. These are called "backlinks" and it's one of the most important aspects of SEO. There are different ways of handling this.

As you learn more about this concept, you'll hear about reciprocal linking. I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. You put a link to "Joe's Garage" on your site, and vice versa. There are sites out there that help you manage these links, such as linkmetro.com. Note however that these links are not as valuable as non-reciprocal links.

It's not just link sharing though - it's exposure. It's posting messages on forums that have a link to your site in your signature, making sure you have your key words in the link. It's also getting listed on as many of the smaller search engines and directories.

The most important thing is to remain consistent. If your goal is to get on the front page of the search engines for "antique flash bulbs" - make it your business to keep "antique flash bulbs" in all of your links. Don't change it to "old flashbulbs" half way through your campaign.

What you put inside the tags is what it's all about. You have to pepper the web with that type of link in as many places as you can.

For a listing of directories and more importantly, more information on SEO, I recommend this site.