In Part 1 in this series we covered the selection of the right keywords. With your optimal list of ‘power’ keywords selected, reviewing your SEO plan is the next step in your quest for top rankings on Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com.

Your SEO Plan

You want to prioritize your pages first. Lack of focus in SEO can be one of those “can’t see the forest for the trees” situations. Look at each page individually. Then plan your SEO efforts around the priority of each page. Your high priority pages will be your home page and other pages you feel will be of the most value to your visitors. These are the pages you will invest the most optimization time into, link to the most aggressively and track the most diligently with analytics.

With your pages prioritized it’s time for a website SEO audit. The first thing you want to check over very carefully are the title tags and meta description tags. (The meta keywords tags have become a waste of time.) Be sure that the primary keyword phrase for the page are in both, but avoid keyword stuffing (repeating the same keyword or phrase in a single tag). Some of the search engines will list your site by the title and description you specify, so make sure they entice human visitors to your site as well.

The next thing to look at is the page content. Is the content fresh? Has it been updated recently? Is it still relevant? Search engines could eventually ignore and delist content that is not being updated regularly. (There are some exceptions. ie: where content has rich archival value.)

Next you’ll want to evaluate your links. Are your pages internally linked together in the content, with carefully selected keyword anchor text? Linking page content to other pages with additional information tells the search engine that your site has a dominant theme and that the pages are part of a larger body of information. Are your outbound links directly related to the content in the page? Do inbound links ‘deep link’ to the specific page on your site that best supports the anchor text in the link? Have you validated the links to make sure there are no broken links? Search engines hate broken links and the state of disrepair they suggest. You can run a quick check at Dead-Links or one of the other free link checking sites.

Every time you add or remove content you should update your HTML and XML sitemaps. Again, search engines hate broken links, and that include those in sitemaps. You also want to assure that even the deep pages of your site are all indexed. There are some great free sites to help you create your XML sitemap file. One of the more popular ones is FreeSitemapGenerator.com.

You’ll want to enter all your current ranking and traffic standings and the goals you plan to achieve. Careful tracking of your SEO and traffic results is the next step in building a successful SEO/marketing plan. You won’t know whether you’re winning or losing without analytics data. We’ll cover analytics in Part 3.

Here’s an Affiliate Summit clip I came across on YouTube. Hope you find it helpful.

Andreas Hagener
SEO Commandos

Despite what the spam emails will tell you, getting to the top of Google, Yahoo!, MSN is going to take time. And staying there is going to require a continual investment. Anybody who promises you top ten (first page of search engine results) rankings on Google, Yahoo! and MSN for all of your target keywords in 24 hours, or even a month, is selling ‘snake oil remedies’. The razzle-dazzle ads tell people what they want to hear, making wild promises that cannot be delivered upon. The pricing for these too-good-to-be-true offers are usually very attractive - $29.95, $49.00, $199.95 - and the ads lure in many ‘something for nothing’ website owners.

SEO is not a one time ‘quick fix’ band-aid you can apply to a web site with little or no traffic or return on investment. SEO is a moving target, with search engines constantly changing the algorithms they use to rank your site and competitors aggressively making their own bids for the top ten ’holy grail’ listings for your industry. I constantly have to remind our clients that when we topple a competitor from the first page they are going to be emailing their SEO (search engine optimizer) within a few days demanding to regain the lost positioning. SEO is war and the battle is an ongoing one.

In sharp contrast, effective SEOs and online SEM (search engine marketing) companies are interested in building a long-term relationship with you. (We have SEO clients that have been with us for more than 8 of our 11 years in this business. They stay because they get results. We don’t lock in clients with long term contracts.) If you invest $10,000 in an SEO/marketing plan from a reputable SEO firm, and your website’s sales increase by $250,000 in your first year or two, you have made a brilliant business investment. If you invest $250 in a “Be at the Top in All The Search Engines in 24 Hours” scams you will lose the $250. But that’s not all. If they list your site on FFA (Free for All) sites or place your links with link farms, you could lose the rankings you already have, or worse, find your site permanently blacklisted. (Incidentally, there aren’t 5,000+ search engines you need to be submitted to.)

Is Do-It-Yourself SEO for You?

Is it possible to do your own SEO and search engine marketing (SEM)? Absolutely. However, effective SEO is a lot of work and I have rarely heard of a website owner with the time or commitment to learn how to do it properly and actually see it through. Having said that, if you choose to embark on this path I suggest you first consider purchasing Get to the Top on Google: Tips and Techniques for Get Your Site to the Top of Search Engine Rankings — and Stay There, SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible or the SEO Book ebook. Read them through very carefully, cover to cover, with a highlighter, making copious notes on how you will apply the techniques to your own website. You should have several pages in your SEO ‘To Do’ list. Once you fully understand what is involved you can decide whether you’re going to do it in-house or leave it to a professional.

1) Keyword Research: It all begins with the selection of the right keywords for your website’s topic. Most of our customers are looking for top placements for very generic keywords (ie: ‘cell phones’). Depending on your website’s topic and the competitiveness of the industry you’re involved in, gaining top ten rankings for very generic keywords can take years of carefully planned ongoing labor. We do target very generic keyword search terms, where we’re competing against hundreds of thousands or millions of other Google listings, but as long term projects. Our objective is to provide a return on investment for our clients as quickly as possible, so selecting the right keywords is critical. Targeting a dozen highly competitive keyword search terms is not likely to achieve the search engine rankings you want, the traffic or the sales your company needs; at least not on the short term. There are many software and online tools that can help you select keywords that will yield far quicker returns. We use WordTracker and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, among other proprietary tools, to select keyword phrases that are being searched frequently, yet are not extremely competitive. The chances of gaining top rankings for less generic keywords (ie: ‘samsung phones vancouver’ or ‘toronto cheap cell phones’) is considerably easier in the short term and can deliver very noticeable traffic increases in a few months. You want to be picking up all the easy-to-get low hanging fruit before you attempt to pick the apple at the very top of the tree. Gaining top ten rankings for some impossibly competitive generic keyword search term may provide a much needed ego stroke and revenue for some SEOs, but it is unlikely the effort or cost involved will provide a return on investment. Spending a day or two at the outset of your SEO/SEM project to select the best keywords to target can greatly increase its effectiveness and yield significant dividends.

Contrary to what the anti-Flash naysayers would have you believe, Flash web sites do achieve top rankings on Google, Yahoo! and MSN. At the SEO Only we have specialized in Flash SEO since 1999. Many of our happiest customers own 100% Flash websites, yet enjoy top search engine rankings and the resulting traffic to their websites.

Most search engines can’t read Flash, the Flash adversaries will quickly point out. That’s true. If you choose to offer your visitors a Web 2.0 interactive rich media experience (vs plain vanilla HTML) your website will likely employ Flash, Silverlight Java or AJAX. In the last two years it’s pretty much come down to a battle between AJAX or Flash. The humorous point in all of this is that most of the Flash bashers are on the AJAX team. What these people won’t tell their prospective clients is that the search engines don’t like JavaScript (the ‘J’ in AJAX) any more than they like Flash :-).

The biggest liability in Flash design can actually become its greatest asset when it comes to SEO. As SEOs one of the top challenges we face is that our clients are married to their content. They labored over each sentence and are very reluctant to have us insert keywords or make any other SEO changes that take away from their divine inspiration. When we optimize for Flash we create an HTML version of the Flash content for the search engines. The HTML content mirrors what is offered in the Flash SWF movie(s) but offers us the opportunity to insert some keywords into the titles and paragraph content, changes the client may not otherwise permit us to make.

Flash lets you have your cake and eat it too. Your visitors receive a quality Web 2.0 experience that engages them, increases conversion ratios (sales) and encourages return visits. Search engines receive quality content (providing the site is properly optimized by a Flash SEO specialist) and grant your site the top rankings it deserves.

Other Resources

Flash SEO by Cole Wiebe Internet Marketing Agency
Flash SEO by Studio 12, Vancouver

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

In order for your website’s links to be of value they must be related to the content of the page and they must be active, linking to real websites. Broken links can lower your search engine ranking. Choose the sites you link to carefully based upon relevance. Ideally you should deep link to the most relevant page on the site, based upon the content on your page. Consider using link validation software or an online service so you can remove or repair broken links.

[Posted with MacJournal]

SEO is a declaration of war. It is driven by your intense passion to be the best, to outposition your oponents; rising victoriously as a leader in your industry, seizing market share in battle after battle. As you go into battle you want a mercenary (skilled SEO marketing professional) at your right hand, not an artist (web designer).

Hire a ‘take no prisoners’ SEO today.

Having your site listed on Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) is one of the best ways to gain high quality backlinks. Being listed on these top directories also influences your placement in other search engines and directories.

Yahoo! charges $299 annually for a listing in their directory. They do however guarantee that your site will be reviewed within 7 business days.

The Open Directory Project (DMOZ) can also take months and repeated submissions before you’re indexed. If your site has been accepted into the Open Directory, it may take anywhere from two weeks to several months for your site to be listed on partner sites which use the Open Directory data, such as AOL Search, Google, Netscape Search, Yahoo Search, and hundreds of other sites. Open Directory is definitely worth your effort.

On rare occasions, these directories will allow you to slip some keywords into the title, but do so at your own risk. This practice could raise a red flag for your submission and subject it to additional scrutiny.

The website description you include with your submission has a big impact upon how your site will rank once it’s listed in the directory. It is very important to get it right the first time. If you include too much promotional jargon in your description or make it too long, the human editors are sure to change it. If they do, it’s highly unlikely that your keywords won’t appear in the final listing. Be concise, be sensible, and, most of all, include your most important keywords wherever you can without appearing to be keyword loading.

Start with your meta description tag for your site. Copy and paste it into the submission form, then start deleting extraneous words. Reposition words until you have the shortest yet most descriptive sentence possible. If you do this correctly, chances are the editors won’t alter it. They’ll appreciate the fact that you saved them the time of editing the description.

The words you’re using in your description must appear on the pages of your site. If they don’t, and the site appears to be about subjects other than what you described in your form, your description might be edited. It’s almost impossible to change a site description once it’s listed in most Internet directories. Get it absolutely right the first time.

One shortcut to getting into DMOZ is to volunteer as an editor in the category you wish to appear. The time investment in most cases is well worth the return of having exactly the listing you want approved with just one submission.

Technorati Tags: zeal submission, dmoz submission, yahoo submission

The Internet and search engines have reached a new level of maturity and sophistication. Search engines are putting more and more weight on the age of the domain in their algorithms.

If you purchase a domain that ranks reasonably well, but where the owner has failed to monetize the site or convert visitors into buyers, and the domain name matches the keywords you want to promote, you can shave many months off the standard ranking process. You should be able to buy an instant page rank cheaply because of the previous owner’s lack of marketing savvy.

According to the Google’s Sandbox theory, all new domains will take six to twelve months to rank well. If your business is solely Internet based buying a seasoned domain with a pagerank can literally mean the difference between a brilliant success and bankruptcy.

Whether or not you believe in the Google Sandbox theory, in most search engines, the age of the domain does play a role in site ranking. There are web pages in the index that have been there for a decade that have less than twenty back links, on extremely competitive terms, that rank in the top five positions.

An existing domain name that is already in the index is a valuable commodity. If you’re looking for a shortcut to search engine rankings, traffic and online profits, consider purchasing a mature domain.

A note of caution is in order. If you aren’t careful and purchase a domain that has been banned for either search engine black hat techniques or for click fraud then you can pretty much write off that domain for ever getting into the indexes again.

Cole Wiebe
Vancouver SEO

Technorati Tags: aged domains, seasoned domain, mature domains

There are three unique types of searchers who visit the search engines you are targeting.

1) Navigational Searchers

Navigational searchers are searching for a specific website. Sometimes, it’s because they have visited the site before or perhaps someone described it to them. Often, they have heard of a particular company or its products. Perhaps they were flipping through a magazine and saw something that piqued their interest. And lastly, there are many Internet searchers who have so much confidence in the web that if they think of something they assume a site exists to that covers it.

Navigational searchers are not web surfers. They know what they are looking for and no other site will do.

Niche affiliate marketing has captitalized on the navigational searcher, providing niche-specific content to exactly fit their unique requirements.

Navigational searchers are the only group likely to go past page one in the search results, if they don’t find titles and description snippets that match their queries in the first ten search results.

2) Informational Searchers

Informational searchers are looking for in-depth content on a very specific subject. They believe the deep information exists but they don’t know where to find it. Unlike navigational searchers, informational searches aren’t looking for a specific answer. They will often click several of the top ten search results, then follow the links in the sites they arrive at to expand their search.

Almost every Internet user is an informational searcher at some point, and informational searchers are the mainstay of any search marketing program. Informational searchers have not firmly decided on a product or service, so they are still ‘up for grabs’. They allow you the opportunity to sell them. Conversion plays a vital role with informational searchers, turning visitors into buyers.

3) Transactional Searchers

Transactional searchers are ‘can do’ people. They make things happen. They are not surfing for information. They want to take action. Transactional searchers want to buy something, download something, sign up for a newsletter, subscribe to a blog, donate to a charity, etc.

Make sure the keywords for any specific searches they may enter come up on search engines and your site search. They enter model number and product/service information.

Transactional queries are the most difficult to optimize your site for. The product and service pages they are looking for are often database-generated catalog pages, which have little content to work with. You’ll have to be careful to include all relavent keywords in these brief descriptions. Choice of your shopping cart or CMS, based upon optimization will be critical.

If you would like follow-up articles on optimizing for each group, please comment.

Technorati Tags: navigational searchers, informational searchers, transactional searchers

SEO experts and Internet marketing consultants don’t always agree on SEO pricing and budgeting, but on average the SEO budget recommendation works out to 4 - 5 times the cost of the website. In other words, if a company’s annual website budget is $15,000.00, SEO and Internet marketing should be between $60,000.00 and $75,000.00.

To their extreme detriment, most website owners have it exactly in reverse. They’ll invest only a paltry 5 to 10% into SEO and Internet marketing. The results will almost always be a disaster. The most drop-dead-gorgeous Webby award-winning website without traffic is like having boxes of Print magazine’s top award brochures stacked neatly in the storage closet. Great design without an audience of prospective customers is a waste of inspiration, time and money!

Small companies often feel they can’t afford to invest in SEO. They’ll build a budget site for two or three thousand and then throw a few dollars after it with a $24.95 site submission package. What they should have done is invest $500.00 into the site and $2,500.00 into first rate SEO and Internet marketing, developing the backlinks that provide a top-5 ranking on Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search. Even a butt-ugly website (while not recommended) with a flood of qualified traffic will always outperform the pretty site with little or no traffic.

Some SEOs like Vancouver SEO expert, Cole Wiebe, offer monthly SEO plans at very reasonable rates. Even a small company can afford six to nine months of monthly SEO services to drive serious traffic to their site.

Brandon Forsythe

Technorati Tags: seo investment, seo budget, how much for SEO