Robby's Top 10 SEO "Do's"

You’ve got a business. You want to get in front of the people that will buy your products or are seeking your services. You know that most of your potential customers are turning to the internet, so how do you go about getting in front of them?

Your website should be the #1 tool in reaching out to these prospects as well as communicating effectively to existing customers of yours. Just because you’ve got a business card, an office, and a water cooler doesn’t mean your potential customers know about you. There are people searching for what you provide – they should be finding you!

Here are 10 things you MUST do in order to attract those potential customers to your website.

1. Know your keywords. I often hear people tell me “people aren’t searching the internet for what I have”. I can assure you this is not the case. Appropriate research will tell you EXACTLY what is being searched for online that relates to your business. Take the guess work out, do the research, and know precisely what people are searching for. By the way, according to Google, there were 58 people in the month of July that searched for the phrase “dry cleaning coupons St. Louis”. Who knew!?!

2. Identify Your Competitors. You may ‘think’ you know who your competitors are, but those strategizing online well are your true competitors. The majority of your customers are going to the internet. This is the space in which you should be competing. Know all you can about what your competitors are doing online.

3. Build a Search Engine Friendly Site. There are a million website companies out there to choose from. There are fewer that truly understand Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Just because you have a “great” looking website doesn’t mean it’s doing you any favors in attracting NEW customers. Having a glossy brochure online with no way for search engines to recognize it only means it is getting in front of those customers who already know about you.

4. Optimize Your Site. Having a search engine friendly site means you’ve built a site with a solid foundation. Now it’s time to build the frame. Optimizing your title tags, meta data, and writing appropriate URL’s go a long way to ensure your site is indexable by the search engines.

5. Create Keyword Focused Content. Now that you completely understand what keywords relate to your business (#1), it is time to put that to best use. Content is king when it comes to SEO. Having targeted articles with a keyword focus will ultimately give you a better chance to rank for a particular keyword. When you couple optimizing your data (#4) with quality content, you have the opportunity to reach people online for specific topics that relate to you. Having a website with a lot of content means it is giving you a larger net to cast in the World Wide Web. The net’s size is directly proportionate to how much content you have on your site. A larger net gives you the opportunity to catch more people searching for the products and services you provide.

6. Web Design is Important. I think we can all agree on this, but what does it really mean? After all, it’s difficult for all of us to have the same taste. Web design is two pronged. It needs to accurately display the type of company you want to be portrayed as. It also needs to be user friendly to allow people to get to the things you want them to do (e.g. fill out a contact form or buy a product). The design of your website should instantly give a user an idea of what you do, as well as intuitively give them the opportunity to navigate how they want to research information. Be careful not to be creative for the sake of being creative.

7. Build Links. Having other website link back to yours is Golden. Search engines view links back to your site much like a “vote”. The more “votes” you have the more of an authoritative source of information you are to your customers. The quantity of links to your site doesn’t necessarily mean they are quality links. The weight of a “vote” depends on the quality of website your link is coming from.

8. Social Networking. Speaking at Chamber of Commerce events and Rotary Clubs gets you in front of a lot of folks. The same can be said when you take these same principles online. Locate industry related websites or other avenues online that will give you an opportunity to write content related to your business. Consistently kicking over rocks online will give you an advantage over your competitors when attempting to gain rank in the search engines.

9. Measure Your Data. If you don’t have measurable date it would be like playing darts in the dark. Analytics on your site will show you how people are finding your site, navigating through the site, and how much time they are spending on your site. As more and more traffic comes to your website, it is important to know how they are behaving. Collecting data will allow you to make smart decisions moving forward in attracting and converting that traffic into new, loyal customers.

10. Be Consistent and Patient. Writing content, link building, blogging and staying in tune to what your customers are searching for is important, but it takes time and effort. Doing these things consistently will give you a great opportunity to rank highly for many keywords you are targeting. Like being successful in any other venture, it takes a consistent effort over time.

Good luck on your quest to learn more about search engine optimization