You must want to know, what is SEO?
What is SEO? It is not a simple answer. What SEO is an online marketing to market your website on the web. It encompasses many best practices and techniques, but it’s not magic bullet or magic formula. Here’s an example of a B2B site with on-going SEO over the last few years. They started at zero and now are at over 5000 hits a month! These kind of results take time and effort to achieve. This article will show you some best practices, so next time you ask what is SEO?, You’ll know the answer.
What is SEO…NOT
- “Getting to the top of Google”
- “Special proprietary software/back links/method”
- “I know a guy at Google”
- “We have an arrangement with Google”
- “We guarantee you top listing on Google”
- “We hire people in China to click on your links”
- “It’s all about the keywords meta tags”
I hear these things from clients all the time. They get cold calls from large SEO telemarketing firms whose sales reps will say anything to sign you up for the $299/month package. In reality, marketing a website takes a lot of time and effort. They try to insinuate they have some “secret” knowledge of Google. The reality is, most of what you need to know can be found on the internet. There’s no magic. It’s a process.
So, What is SEO, Really?
Marketing Campaigns start with a strategy
- Keywords = market segment
- On page copywriting = segment targeting
Promotion!
- Marketing and sharing your content to drive traffic.
Collecting leads from your marketing campaign
- You need reply devices and calls to action
Selling/Closing
- On-line, or with a phone call afterwards, you need to close the deal with a special offer.
SEO Keyword Analysis
- What are your potential customers likely to search on Google?
- What are related search terms that people are searching for on Google?
- How easily could I win the search term?
- (about 80% of clicks go to top 3 results)
- What kind of traffic can expect from the keywords?
- What’s the intent of the keywords?
- (“24-hour plumber”, vs. “Plumbing”) someone looking for a 24-hour plumber probably needs one right not vs. “plumbing” could be anything from “how to”, to someone looking up plumbing codes.
Use the Google keywords tool. It’s free and it gives you some great suggestions on keywords and related keywords and also shows you traffic and competitiveness of the keywords.
Targeting the Keyword for SEO
- Make sure it’s in the URL www. Mysite.com/seo/what-is-seo
- Make sure it’s in the H1 Title
- Make sure it’s in the H2 sub headings
- Make sure you use it at least 3-4 times per 250 words in the text.
- Link to it from other pages on the keyword.
- Include images with alt description “what is SEO”
Think of Google as a librarian and the internet as a giant library. All you’re doing is making sure the librarian knows how to catalog the book properly and where to put it. The H1 tag is the title of the book, the sub headings and content help the librarian determine what the book is about. So when someone asks for a book on “What is SEO?” The librarian (Google) knows which book to recommend.
Promotion: Marketing Your Page
- Submit your new article or page to blog catalogue sites: example: www.blogcatalog.com
- Submit your pages to social sharing sites like: www.digg.com, stumbleupon, reddit, slashdot, tumblr, etc.
- Tweet it! Facebook it! Pin it!, etc.
- Email it out to your mailing list with links back to your site.
All you’re doing here in this step is telling people about your new content and where to find it.
Consider Article Syndication
- You can make up a few different versions of your article and post it on article marketing directories like: Ezine Articles, ehow, Squidoo,Technorati, Buzzle, etc.
- These all get search traffic, you will get links back to your site and some traffic that clicks through.
Consider Other People’s Blogs
- Write as a guest author on someone else’s blog = links and traffic
- Comment on a related blog
- “Great article about SEO, I share your views, I published a related article called “What is SEO?” which may be of interest to your readers”
- You get a link and some traffic.
Collecting Leads and Selling
Consider the design of your pages. You’ve gone through all the hard work of writing content and marketing it on the web and now you’re seeing some traffic. Now you have to convert that traffic into leads and business. You need a couple of key things to do that:
- Calls to action
- Special Offer
- Mailing list sign up forms as a secondary capture method if they’re not ready to enter your sales funnel yet.
Here’s an example on my blog that incorporates these three things.
This is all part of a strategy to build your business on line. Here’s a flow chart of the process to help guide you, so the next time you ask yourself, “What is SEO?” You’ll know exactly what the answer is.
If all this seems too much work to you and you’d like to outsource all this to a dedicated professional who’s job it is promote your site, click on the button and I’ll contact you.
