SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION – THE FIRST STEP

Keywords

The key to unlocking business on the Internet begins with words.  They are all around us and how we use them makes a huge difference especially in business. The million dollar question is what words you use to get the results that you want.  

Everyone knows about keywords or at least they have heard of them.  Keywords are entered into the search box and results are spit out.  If you know what words they may use that is a start.  But, all words are not used as frequently as others.  Choosing the wrong words means very little traffic to your site.  Programs can analyze keywords for you but the only way to know for sure is to test market them.  

As a business owner you have an advantage.  You know your product or service better than anyone.  The keywords you want to begin with are the ones that pertain to your website.  These will get the ball rolling.  

Now, there are the other words.  Everyone won’t know what they are looking for.  Let’s say that you sell flower bulbs. A searcher may want to plant a garden but they aren’t sure what flowers to plant or even which ones work best in their area.  To attract them, you’ll have to think of general keywords they might use in a search.

You can also find useful keywords on competitor sites.  If competitors are using some of the same keywords, what are they doing differently than you?  Paying attention to your competition can yield valuable information in your keyword search.

Your list of keywords can stretch into the hundreds.  This is good because you have many to choose from.  Don’t just stick to single keywords.  Long tail marketing is a popular technique.  Combine keywords to create unique phrases to gain higher search engine rankings.  

Here’s an example of that.  Let’s go back to the flower bulbs.  “Flower bulbs” is a popular search entry but “flower bulbs sellers in DeKalb County” narrows your search to a select group of people who are serious about finding flower bulbs and buying them.  

Content

Search engine optimization should permeate every character on your website.  Search engines crawl unique webpages.  Using those keywords in titles, headers and meta tags will get you noticed by the search engines.

Another great feature is using SEO content to move your website up in the search engine rankings.  Content is simply article writing.  How the articles look and what they talk about are up to you.  Just be sure that those great keywords are included.

Content has many benefits in a search engine marketing campaign that utilizes SEO as a tool.  Think about what you would like to offer to your search traffic.  Your content can fill a need by:

•  Demonstrating your expertise in a particular area with informational articles for customers
• How-to articles that will address the needs of those uncertain visitors and convince them to use your product
• Provide product reviews and testimonials that solidify your product credibility
• Appearing in article directories for greater exposure across the Internet

Continually update your content to keep the website fresh.  Content is crawled on your website and ranked in search engines.  Vary the keywords that you use in your content to gain higher rankings on several fronts.  It takes a few months or longer to see if optimized content is working so it’s a good thing that that is not the only marketing tool you will use for search engine marketing.

Since we still have a lot to cover we'll just carry this into next week.  Hope you all have a great week!  If you need assistance with your Social Media strategy and/or implementation we'd love to talk to you about it.  Please email me at KMStarry@gmail.com. 

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