Have you searched for your business name lately? What shows up in search engines?
OK, What search terms do you think people use to find information about your services? Search for those. Where do you show up in this organic search? What information is available? Is anyone finding you here?
You may not know all the key terms people use to find information about your line of services. That will be found by paying attention and testing.
You are looking at the 21st century battleground for business. Where do you stand? You had better know.
We are going to keep this real simple because SEO experts make SEO very complex. SEO is simple when you stick with fundamentals and approach the challenge, strategically rather than through the overbearingly complex tactics of the nerdhood.
People find their favorite search engine, type in keywords and start looking through what the search engine returns.
The top of the page is usually sponsored links. Sponsored links are a powerful tool for business leads if you know what you are doing. Click here for more information on sponsored links and PayPerClick.
Below the sponsored links and maybe Google Maps (are you showing on the Google Map?) and pictures and videos are the organic search results. I hope you have caught the significance of photos and video. They are huge in search now and have broadened the playing field for everyone.
Keep up with Internet technology and get ahead. Lag behind and you will get covered in dust.
Your SEO battle is ranking highly in the keywords that matter to your chosen market. This is the first failing of many SEO efforts. You may have top billing on keywords that aren’t that big a deal to your marketplace.
Understanding what keywords are important to your marketplace is an imprecise science that involves sales people and technicians that actually deal with customers; conversations with prospects and customers, site surveys and testing.
The battle for SEO is won with great content that matches what your market wants and great connections. Powerful connections are built through social networking and… real networking. People you get to know. Nose to Nose.
The other rather obtuse question here is- What exactly is the web searcher looking for when they type in particular key words?
This is pretty essential if you want your reader to think your content has value. Compelling content is relevant to to your web visitor when it matches what they are looking for.
Do you feel mislead a bit? I said this would be very simple and then the complexity starts?
Well this complexity deals with human nature and figuring out what people are thinking VS the tangled world of SEO and all that magical BS.
So this is simple… relatively… and you know your customers. You just need to make sure your talent is listening to you. You have the answers. They know the technology to using your answers.
There are some very powerful tools you need to help read minds. You need an analytics program to tell you who is visiting your site and what key terms they used to find you. This goes hand in hand with a PayPerClick campaign that you control where you can capture the stats and start to decipher what people want.
You have discovered the Path to Perpetual Improvement. You are on the road to easy and stress free business development.
Site optimization allows you to continually improve your business development process. You are able to see the statistics, have conversations with people, improve your compelling content, share your stories in the social network, create more conversations and better understand what your market wants- concentrate on offering them compelling value and you are improving your business model as you proceed.
Watch Out for these SEO Land mines
Your website could easily have inherent problems of being found.
- Flash entries often turn the lights out on the searchbot- the digital robot critter who comes by your site to map the content. Confuse the searchbot and your content is in a deep digital forest undiscovered.
- Does your site deliver static html code? or does it deliver content with conditional phrasing?
- Does it use javascript in the menu?
Don’t overdo the SEO or your content suffers
Remember to write for people rather than write for search engines. Search engines can not tell whether your content is compelling or not. But boring content will cause you SEO problems. SEO is evolving. Content that is shared by your visitors helps you establish your site as authoritative and search engines value authoritative.
And of course, no one reads boring content. People have to read your content and find value or you are wasting your time.
Today social networking is a big deal and it can greatly impact your on-line business development in good ways or bad. The easier it is to share you content, the more it will be shared… if it is interesting.
Some Easy Tips for Strategic SEO
The battle for markets is won at the local level these days. Local anchors are so important to your content.
Anchor your pictures. Anchor your video. It will only become more important. This is critical. Like not building on the sand. Make sure you understand how to leave your mark on local search and local mapping.
Fresh and updated content is much appreciated by search engines. Fresh and updated compelling information is appreciated by your readers.
Local Links will become ever more important. Collaboration is a very powerful tool for building links that work well not just your bushel basket of BS links that some people scrape up. You have seen them.
Even thought this is all simple- the complexity of it all shows through. This website is intended to help break out and explain a lot of this complexity and it is your call whether I succeed at all.
Do you have questions. Are you wondering what SEO might do for your site? Do you know where you stand now with your most important keywords? If you would like some help with gathering perspective or would like some issues clarified- feel free to call or email.
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