Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization equals how people find you on the Internet. Without optimization, you’ll have few if any visitors coming to your site via Internet searches. Period.
There are several components to search engine optimization (SEO). They include:
- Keyword research
- Competitor research
- On-page optimization of website
- Off-page optimization, primarily generating backlinks to the website
- Analytics and tracking
Your website can be found through natural search engine results (organically) or through paid traffic. Organic search results incur no fee, while paid traffic does come with a cost per view or per click. There are pros and cons to each, but here are some interesting statistics:
- More than 80% of Internet users looking for information, services or products to buy rely on search engines, not just surfing
- 85% of Internet searchers do not click on paid links
- 63% of links that are organically shown at the top of search engines get clicks
- Organic search results convert 30% higher than paid results
- Pay-per-click (PPC) costs have risen significally over the last years
Your Website
Your website does take some planning. Just having a website is not enough. Having a pretty website is not enough. You need to know how you want to use the website. What do you want visitors to do when they visit your site? Do you want them to pick up the phone, place an order, find your address? By planning, you can grab the attention of the visitor and turn them into a qualified prospect and convert them into a paying customer. Without planning, you risk losing the prospect for good.
If you don’t yet have a website, it’s a perfect time to plan the site, by choosing the keywords, structuring the navigation, determining calls to action, and taking other basic steps. You need to optimize your site from the onset, as it’s much easier to do now than after it’s been built.
If your company already has a website, you may need to make the necessary changes to your website so you can attract your target audience before your competition does.
Search engine optimization should be a part of a comprehensive online marketing plan. It is not a magic bullet, but it is necessary for generating a portion of your traffic as well as feeding your sales funnel.
Let’s see how we go about optimizing a website.
Keyword Research
It begins with keyword research. You want to know what keywords people will search for and how much competition there is for each keyword.
Every page on your site should be optimized for a different keyword. Your main page (Home page) should be optimized for your most important keyword or keywords, but it’s a good idea to have other pages on your website optimized for additional secondary keywords.
Choosing the right keyword is not completely intuitive. There is a lot of research that goes into it.
Note: When I say keyword, I generally mean a group of words, sometimes called keyphrases. Most keywords consists of two or more words, but we will refer to them as a “keyword.” Keywords that are more three or more words are referred to as a “long-tailed keyword.”
Primary Keyword
You will want to identify the primary keyword people use to find your business. If, for example, you are a chiropractor, are people searching for chiropractor, chiropractic, back pain, or other?
If you use Google’s keyword tool, we see that for the main broad terms, the following number of global monthly searches:
chiropractor 823,000
chiropractic 1,500,000
back pain 2,240,000
So, do we want to target back pain? No. Not a good idea. There are 165,000,000 competing pages in Google. The odds are stacked against you and it would cost a fortune and years to reach page 1 for organic search results.
You want to find some long-tailed keywords to target.
If you are a local business, which you most likely will be if you are a chiropractor, you want to add your location to the term. Say you service Atlanta, you look for:
chiropractor atlanta 2,400
chiropractic atlanta 1,900
back pain atlanta 590
Not as many searches. Sure. But they are targeted searches. People who are searching for a chiropractor in Atlanta could very well be in pain and want your services, NOW.
Also, there are only 15,000 competing web pages for back pain Atlanta instead of 165 million for back pain.
If you are not local, you will still need to do a lot of research to find keywords that will reach your target market with low competition.
Note: Google ranks every page in your website individually. Every keyword on your page will be ranked on its own against its competition.
Also note: Although you target chiropractor Atlanta, your site may be found using hundreds of different keyword combinations. You don’t want to target each one, of course, but to have enough content on your page that Google will serve up results because you have enough to choose from. You also want to use a lot of related keywords, and not just repeat the targeted keyword multiple times (considered keyword stuffing). Each one may be searched only once, but the searches can add up.
Here is the key: Google wants to know that your site is relevant to what the searcher is looking for. If they think your site is the most relevant, your website will rank high in the search results.
If the keyword is not on the page, Google will likely not find you. It’s as simple as that.
Competition Research
Your competition is a bit tricky, as you will have different competitors for every keyword. You will face different levels of difficulty in beating your competition depending on the keyword.
You need to know how well optimized your site is for each keyword compared to your competition. Shortly we’ll discuss on-page optimization, which is one factor. But so is the off-page optimization, which is how many backlinks your page and site have (how many other sites link to you), and more important, how many reviews your business has online that can be linked to your site or is talking about your site. Compare your on-page optimization, backlinks, and reviews to see why you are not at the top of the search engine for a particular keyword.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is vital, as it lays the foundation for other optimization efforts. In itself, it’s not the most important factor, but without good on-page optimization, some off-page optimization will have a lesser effect and can actually cost you a lot of money if you do PPC ad campaigns. In some smaller local markets, on-page SEO can be all the boost you need.
Elements of On-Page SEO
Elements of On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the process of making sure certain elements on the actual web page are optimized for the search engines as well as for your visitors. They include:
- Title tags
- Meta description
- Headings: H1, H2 tags
- Image tags
- Internal links and anchor text
- Meta keywords
- Body copy
Title Tags
The title tag is what shows up at the top of your web browser. As far as search engines are concerned, it’s the most valuable real estate on your web page. It announces to the search engine what your sites is about.
You want to use your primary keyword(s) here.
Atlanta Chiropractor – Atlanta Chiropractic – Atlanta Back Pain – SIlva Chiropractic Center
If you are in Atlanta, be sure to put that in your title tag. DO NOT put your company name first. Chances are, if someone searches for Silva Chiropractic Center, you have no competition and you will be easily found, whereas Atlanta Chiropractor or Chiropractor Atlanta will have quite a bit of competition.
You want your visitor to know where you are located—and you want the search engines to know where you are located.
Do not squander the benefits the title tag gives you.
The title tag is also what shows in the search results when someone searching. It acts almost as a headline of a classified ad. It needs to stand out from the competition.
As an alternative to a string of keywords plus your company name, it’s worth testing a call to action title tag.
Atlanta Chiropractor will Fix Your Back Pain – Call Silva Chiropractic Center Now!
Here you’ll see a call to action, and you have two keywords in the title tag.
Meta Description
The meta description is a short description of your web page of 150 characters or less. It should contain keywords that are on your web page and be relevant to what’s discussed on the page. Use the same keywords that you used in the title tag. Redundancy rules!
It’s often the meta description you submit that is served up on Google search results when someone searches for a keyword. This is not always the case, however, as Google can select random copy from your page for various keyword combinations.
Think of the meta description as a classified ad. It should be carefully crafted to get the searcher to take action.
Atlanta chiropractor, Dr. Joseph Silva of Silva Chiropractic Center cares
about your pain. Call today (770) 555-1212.
We discuss Google Business Profile more in another article, but if you are now listed, your address and phone number will show up. If you are not, by listing this information in your description, you let the searcher know your name and phone number, the name of your business, and gives them a call to action. This will help you stand out against your competitors. It also tells the searcher that you are a real business not just a generic or directory site.
Headings, Image Tags, and Body Copy
Your web page should have a heading or two <h1>, <h2>, etc. that includes your primary keyword.
Each image (photo) on your page can also have a description (or Alt tag) where you can repeat your primary keyword. Google likes to see image tags.
Your body copy should have the primary keyword in the first and last paragraph. At most you want to use your keyword once for every 150 words. Rather than repeat the keyword too frequently, it’s best to use some other words that are frequently used in your industry and are related to the primary keyword. In this case, “back pain” could be a secondary keyword and used in the body copy.
Meta Keywords
While it’s okay to list keywords in your meta keywords, they long ago lost their effectiveness. It’s best to just list the keywords that can be found on the particular page and not the whole kitchen sink.
Content
Last, but certainly not least, is content. I cannot emphasize this enough: your web page must have content on it. If you do not have content on your site, there is nothing for the search engines spiders to read and no keywords to index. Google and the other search engines will NOT send traffic to your site because they don’t know what your site is about and what is relevant.
It’s best to have at least 300 to 500 words on the web page, in one or two articles. More is better, but this should be the minimum. It should include your keyword, but especially on the home page, it should give a good description of your business and what you can do for your prospects.
Do not depend on images to paint a picture. Search engines cannot read graphic image files.
Off-Page Optimization and Analytics
Off-page optimization of a website is the process of obtaining links to the site, called backlinking.
Links can come from hundreds if not thousands of different sources. They can come from:
- Local directories
- Review sites
- Global directories
- Other websites
- Blogs and forums
- Press releases
- Article directories
- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social sites
- Authority sites such as Wikipedia
- YouTube and other video hosting services
- Other sources
While it would be nice if each of this sources would volunteer to link to your site, it would take forever if it does happen at all.
One of the biggest jobs of your search engine optimization specialist is to obtain backlinks for your site. This is a slow, tedious job, but it’s of utmost importance to getting your site anked for your target keywords.
How to obtain all these links would take a book in itself. What is important to know is that you need to make sure that these links are obtained through white hat methods, meaning they are compliant with the search engines terms of service. You cannot “buy” links per se. You can create links but not pay for them.
You also want other sites linking to yours on a consistent basis. Having a thousand links pointing to your site in a day and then no more looks suspicious. Links should come from a variety of sources over a long period of time.
Many of the social media sources have the potential to provide links because something on your site might catch the fancy of a visitor and they tell a friend, and they tell their friends. This can go viral and bring both traffic and links.
Citations and Ratings
The most valuable links your site can get today are those from citations. If someone leaves a review on Yelp for your restaurant, Google picks it up. If someone talks about your spa on a blog, Google picks it up. These links are counting very high in the search engines, especially Google.
If you are a local business, you need to get your online and offline customers to give you reviews. You might have to collect them on cards if you don’t think your client base would go online, but if you can encourage them to go to review sites like Yelp and Google Business Profile, all the better.
You cannot incentivize the review or ask for a positive review. You can ask for the review, however. It’s one area where you as the business owner can be proactive and not depend on your SEO company to get backlinks.
The site with the most citations may win the day over those with other types of backlinks, especially in the local markets.
You also want your business to be cited or listed in local directories. It’s vital, however, that the information in these listings is consistent with what you submit to Google Business Profile. In particular, make sure you use only one main business name, address, and phone number. If your business does have multiple physical locations, submit each location with a different phone number.
Invixo Marketing is a specialist in providing both online and offline search engine optimization. We use a systematic process of sending backlinks to your site with the goal of beating your competition.
Image credit: SEO arrow: catalby / 123RF Stock Photo