Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, or best known as simply 'SEO', is a relatively straightforward marketing tactic.

I define SEO as any deliberate efforts taken to rank your stuff at the top of search engines for keywords you've selected. That's really it, and nothing more.

Today I'm going to give you a simple-to-follow 3-step process to get your stuff ranked at the top of search engines to increase sales or awareness of your brand.

1) What are you selling?

SEO can be used several ways. It can help help a local plumber be found by people with a plumbing problem in their area, or it can help politician reach their constituents by optimizing their website for terms residents in their area struggle with, such as "Galloway NJ busing problems."

Before you start doing SEO, you must have a clear idea of:

1. Who are you trying to get in front of?
2. What are they typing when looking for things related to your organization?
3. How can you create content that will address these keywords?

So, write down a list of the types of people you wish to target. Do they have a specific problem? Do they live in a specific area?

Answering questions like these will guide the rest of your SEO program.

So, now that you have a good idea of who you're trying to reach, and for what purpose, next you can begin creating the keywords you anticipate people will be typing into Google to find you.

2) Select and Create Your Keywords

There are 3 ways I develop keywords for clients:

Step 1: I examine where and who their market is

Step 2: I examine their Product Competitors to ensure I didn't miss anything

Step 3: I examine their Benefit Competitors to ensure I'm not missing a keyword or product opportunities they can provide

Now, completing step 1 is easy. Simply do the following:

1. Create an excel spreadsheet with 2 columns.
2. The left column will be the locations you serve and the second column will be the offerings you sell.\
3. Next, go to http://mergewords.com/ and copy your first column into their first column, and copy your second column into their second column. Next, press the "Merge" button.

You now have a list of keywords to begin optimizing your website for!

Next, you need to learn how to do this.

3) Optimize Your Website for Your Keywords

Now that you have your list of keywords, you next want to create a dedicated page, post or video for each one.

This is not hard to do, especially if you create content schedule for yourself.

So, say you have 50 keywords. Simply create 1 post each week, and in one year, you will have optimized your website for all of your keywords.

There are many schools of thought on what type of content to create for a particular page or post to get it ranked at the top of search engines.

I'll give you one of my favorite approaches:

1. Write an informative article regarding each keyword. If the keyword is "North Dakota Divorce Attorney", your article could be "How to Select a North Dakota Divorce Attorney." See how we got the keyword into the title?
2. Ensure your articles are qualitative, not quantitative. If you're just writing an article to write an article, search engines will know it, and you'll get no credit. That won't help you rank on search engines! Instead, write the most valuable articles you possibly can. If you can add a video or podcast to the page, that's even better.
3. In terms of length, ensure the article is at least 800 - 1,000 words. Use images, metaphor, outside sources and anything else to make your article more informative, entertaining and valuable.

Now you may be wondering how to create this content. It's really not hard, and you have 3 options:

1. Hire someone to do it for you
2. Record yourself speaking, and have somebody transcribe and edit it for you
3. You can write it yourself.

If you put this posting into practice, you will easily begin ranking in search engines which is by far one of the most popular, and effective, marketing tactics of this decade.

Good luck!
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