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Newsletter - Search Engine Optimization - SEO is Easier Than You Think
December was so busy we just decided to lump December and January together and start the year off right by getting the newsletter out at the beginning of the month instead of the last day. So welcome to the January 2005 installment of the mostly-monthly MWI email newsletter. Subscribing is as easy as a visit to MWI's website at www.mwi.com, and unsubscribing is as easy as replying to this email with "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
GETTING RESULTS FROM SEARCH ENGINES IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK
Are you the kind of person who fixes your own car, or do you pay someone to fix it? I never learned how to fix anything on a car growing up, even though my father spent most Saturdays behind our 1969 VW Camper-Van and tried to teach me something about its finicky engine. When I got a car, I realized I could either pay someone $25 to change my oil or I could do it myself and save some money. Having never changed the oil in a car, I thought it would be too difficult and better left in the hands of professionals.
One day, I became friends with a professional auto mechanic and he told me that changing the oil on a car was easy, and taught me how to do it. And he was right, it was easy, and it was kind of fun working on my own car. However, the novelty soon wore off, and I realized that saving a few bucks wasn't worth it to me. So I started taking my car to Jiffy Lube and I've never looked back.
A lot of people look at search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) the way I used to look at changing the oil in my car-as complicated, confusing, and better left to professionals. However, just like changing the oil in your car, it's not as hard as you think. Even so, you may still want to turn it over to someone else.
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEO AND SEM?
SEO focuses on what you can do to your website to improve its rankings in search engines, and SEM focuses on what you can do with the search engines and the services they offer. When we talk about SEO we're talking about meta tags, keyword density and placement, and title tag text. SEM examples would include directory submission and pay-per-click advertising.
NATURAL VS. PAID RESULTS
Two more terms you'll need to be familiar with are "natural search results" and "paid search results," also known as pay-per-click advertising. If you go to Google and search for "utah accountants" you'll notice that the first two links in a blue area as well as some boxes down the right hand side are labeled as "Sponsored Results." These links have been purchased by advertisers and whoever is willing to pay the most per click gets the first link.
The other links on the page in the white area, under the blue area at the top and to the left of the boxes on the right, are what are known as "natural search results." You cannot pay to have your site placed in those results. The ranking of these search results is determined by algorithms known only to Google and which are frequently modified.
HOW DO I CHANGE MY OWN OIL?
So you'd like to try your hand at doing your own SEO/SEM? Here are some simple steps you can take without too much effort but which can make a big difference. Bear in mind while you can take these steps quickly you're at the mercy of search engines and it can take anywhere from days to months to see the results of your efforts. But with patience, your efforts will bear fruit.
Pay-Per-Click. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is by far the simplest and fastest way to get traffic to your website, but not the cheapest. Simply sign up by going to http://adwords.google.com if you want to advertise on Google or www.overture.com if you want to advertise on MSN and Yahoo! and follow the steps. You can be up and running and getting traffic in as little as 20 minutes for as little as 5 cents per click on Google and 10 cents per click on MSN and Yahoo!.
Title Tag. Google places a lot of importance on the words you have in the title tag of your website. The title tag is what shows up as the blue link in Google in the search results, and it is also what you see in the upper left corner of your web browser. You can edit it by opening your HTML file and finding the title tag near the top of the code. If your company happens to provide medical devices and you want people searching for medical devices to find you, then make sure the title tag contains the words "medical devices" near the beginning.
Keywords. Place a few important keywords on your homepage somewhere, preferably near the top if you have a homepage that is pretty long. You'll also want to group keywords together if they're going to be searched for in a combination. For example, if I want MWI's website to come up high in Google when people search for "utah web design" then I'm going to get better results by keeping those words grouped together rather than spread out and mixed with other text.
Backlinks. Websites that have lots of other websites linking to them are ranked higher in Google. Google's logic here is that if a lot of sites link to your site, then your site is probably of more interest to the public than a similar site that no one is linking to. Find websites that are related to what your website is about and get them to link to your site. The more, the better.
To find out what sites already link to yours go to Google and search like this: "link:http://www.yourwebsite.com/" (without the quotes) and Google will tell you what sites they've indexed that link back to your website. You can also see what websites link to your competitors, since this might give you an idea of where you could also get links to your site.
Where Can I Learn More? One of the best resources I've found for educating myself and our clients on SEO/SEM practices is at www.webpronews.com. Sign up for their newsletter, which is sent out a few times a week, and after a month you'll be well on your way to being an expert.
NEVERMIND, I'M TIRED OF CHANGING MY OWN OIL
Maybe you've tried playing around with search engines but it's about as fun for you as changing car oil is for me and you're ready for someone else to take over. But, just as you can easily be ripped off in the auto industry, it happens in the SEO/SEM world too. There are a few phrases and tricks disreputable SEO/SEM companies use to mislead their clients. Here are some of the warning signs:
"We guarantee top placement." No one can guarantee top placement in natural search results. Period. They can only make this guarantee with regards to PPC advertising which costs you money every time someone clicks on your link and which also does not get as many clicks as the natural results. One of the reasons no one can guarantee top placement is that search engines are changing the way they rank websites on almost a daily basis. What works one day to get you in 1st place may not work the very next day.
"We'll submit your site to 200 search engines." While there are hundreds of search engines, only three really matter and being listed on the others does little more than ensure you'll receive plenty of spam emails. You'll get more for your money by focusing on Google, MSN, and Yahoo!, and even just focusing on Google alone isn't necessarily a bad strategy.
Keywords that don't matter. If a law firm is #1 in Google for the keyword combination "utah law firm senior citizen" that might look good on a monthly report and it certainly isn't doing any damage, but what if no one is searching for that keyword combination? On the other hand, one of our clients is Johnson Mill Bed & Breakfast in Midway, Utah and their most highly desired keyword combination in Google is "utah bed and breakfast" because a lot of people are using those keywords to perform searches. By focusing on that keyword combination we have helped them move from the 80th result to 9th. Most companies, with some exceptions (ecommerce websites, for example), should only be concerned with about 20 or 30 keyword combinations, rather than several hundred.
Link Farms or "Search Engine Spamming." Google's practice of giving higher rank to websites that have lots of backlinks (see above) has resulted in an unfortunate side effect. Many SEO/SEM companies create hundreds of websites that contain little or no content other than hundreds of links to their clients. These websites are called "link farms" and Google looks upon these websites the same way you look at the spam messages you get by email. Although this technique can work, it can also result in your website being banned from Google if Google catches you, and they will catch you.
TO SUM UP...
Using search engines to get more traffic to your website is not as hard as you think. There are a few simple practices that make big differences. Even if you decide you want to outsource, it's a good idea to do some research and experimentation on your own. Like changing your oil, once you've tried it you'll either find out you enjoy doing it and can save a little money, or you'll feel better about paying someone else to do it.
-- Joshua Steimle, CEO
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