SEO for Newbies

The internet is a buzz with the concept of SEO.  Everyone who has a website is either dreaming of making money from their traffic, or is currently doing so.  For any individual who has limited SEO knowledge, knowing where to start and what to do with DIY SEO will seem pretty daunting.  Like any goal, especially where business is related, you need to have a strategy.  Once you put together a plan of SEO action steps, the whole process begins to simplify.

SEO is not rocket science.  Try this example to help you understand the concept behind it.  We have a single man, he will represent the Google search engine.  Your website will be represented by a room, a group of 50 people in a room will represent your content.

Mr. Google steps into a room to exam its contents.  When he opens the door, a crowd of 50 people turns to face him but says nothing.  They are all wearing “hello my name is” tags that are blank.  In the back, someone randomly says “spoon”.  Mr. Google finds nothing of interest, makes a mental note, then leaves.

The next room he travels to, the crowd turns to meet him and forms a single file line.  Each one greets Mr. Google in succession with a clear and brief statement about who he is and what he does until Mr. Google reaches the end of the line.  His trip here was useful, and will be a place he remembers more readily.

When it comes to your website, you don’t want it to resemble an unwelcome and unfriendly place to search engines.  You certainly don’t want the first example to occur with a visitor to your site.  You have to prepare your site not only for search engines but for the traffic you plan on receiving.  There are clear rules and reason that websites get ranked the way they do, I’ll examine a few in a series to help get newbies started.

Internal Navigation – Some of the most common pitfalls that new designers make are session Id’s, Javascripting and image maps.  These things make navigation a nightmare for search engines attempting to index the pages of your site.  Navigation should be done in CSS or standard text formatting.  You can verify that your site navigation can be easily crawled by reviewing the google cache for your site.  Generally if you can see your links in hyperlink form then you’re ok.

Some design packages for creating websites offer options to check your navigation.  While this can help you avoid broken links, it doesn’t do much in terms of search engine accessibility.  If a search engine can’t get to your internal pages, they’ll never be indexed and you will severely harm your ranking.  Poor navigation means your pages can’t shake hands with Google and other search engines.  They’re never introduced, which means no Christmas cards or party invites.

What makes your site the best? – The concept behind marketing in any form is to make you stand apart.  You are branding yourself and putting an image forth to potential customers.  When it comes to the billions of pages on the internet, it can be easy to find yourself lost in the crowd.  Screaming loud doesn’t help, either, especially if you’re screaming the same thing that everyone else is that’s trying to sell a similar product or service.  You need to set yourself apart.

If you’re just another company offering books for sale and you’re prices match those of Walden books, Borders, Amazon, etc then what makes you stand out?   It is important to make all of your content, products and services stand out.  There is no single solution for this, because it depends entirely on you and your product.  Keep in mind that even if you’re selling an identical product to someone else, there is always a way to spin it so that your product representation is unique.

Links… and a lot of them – In a Utopian world, we could quickly create a page and put it online.  Search engines would find it, index it immediately, and we would all have a fantastic rank.  Unfortunately, that won’t ever happen.  Search engine technology is always advancing but it’s far from perfect.  Likewise, we can’t all have a good rank.  In order for you to be at the top, someone has to be below you, and someone has to be below them, and so on.  Search engines will more than likely always use a link weight in their algorithm so it’s important to market your site with links that point back to you.

When I say link weight, I am referring to the search engine spotting links to your site on the pages of other indexed sites while it’s out and about crawling the web.  In short – it’s partly a popularity contest.  You are awesome by association.

Passive marketing will only take you so far.  Link building is an important aspect, and without software that assists in building links to create traffic, it can be a tedious business.  It’s necessary to contribute in blogs, forums and other discussion centers that relate specifically to your products and services.  You will never stand out above the competition by being an average Joe.  If you do manage to do so, it’s a fluke.  You have to become an authority in the niche where you work.

Next I’ll examine title tags, content and the unfortunate result of duplication.  I’m holding your meta-tags as ransom, stop by for more if you ever want to see your listing again.

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