Organic Search Engine Optimization Tips

I have discovered that most Arkansas business owners don't understand optimization very well. Because of this I wanted to offer some organic search engine optimization tips and explanations to help get you started on the right path.

Website optimizing is essentially about organic traffic, meaning presenting the best website you can to the search engines and the world at large so you can be found when people search online.

Organic Search Explained

 We call this organic search because it is our hope that the efforts we make will get our pages to come up at the top of the first page when folks search. Those results are called the organic results because they are not paid for. They have simply passed muster for those spots and are therefore rewarded with them. And it is a reward. Those sites get the lion share of traffic. If your site isn't there you can be sure you won't be making money from your site.

Getting your pages to appear there is the goal of search engine optimization companies like mine. Since most business owners don't understand how to go about getting natural or organic rankings, they hire companies or consultants to help them or to do it for them. Obviously I would love your business, but there are a good many things you can do yourself to improve your chances of ranking organically. It is my hope that with my help here you will see improvement in your organic rankings.

Use Rank Checker to Establish A Beginning Baseline

 

In order to do that you have to start with a baseline. So, my first tip is to find out how your site is doing before you implement any of these tips. There are a lot of tools you can use to do this, Google Webmaster Tools for example. A free one is a free plugin for Firefox you can download and install very easily called Rank Checker.

This tool is easy to install and set up. You will add the url of your website and any pages you want to rank for specific keywords and associate those keywords to them. Then hit start. If you get no results it is likely because your site is not in the top 100 results. That is as far as this plug in checks. However, say you are on page 5 or 6 in spot 55 or 63, it will be noted. Be sure and click on Save when you are finished.

Now you can start modifying things and in a week or two open Rank Checker and check again. Sometimes it takes a month or so to see improvements. Just keep at it.

Why Every Arkansas Business Owner Should Know These Minimal Things

You will some of these tips to be the most affordable search engine optimization advice, I promise. Sometimes that is what we really need. It also helps us have a clear understanding of our goals and the process of SEO. This better positions us to choose a good company to help if we can't break a barrier, or a consultant to help us take our business to the next level. Knowledge is power.

I find that many times people think what's important is how cool their site looks. Or if it's getting likes or (in one of the strangest encounters I had with a marketing manager) about making the content look fresh all the time. If no one is coming to your site, it doesn't matter if it's fresh or cool.

Organic search engine optimization then is more about what the google bots see, those wiley little roaming programs sent forth to read and categorize our sites. They don't care about cool. They care about other criteria entirely.

In previous years this was all a webmaster had to focus on - what the spiders thought of a site. But as the programmers have gotten more sophisticated they are looking more and more at the users experience, which means now we have to gear our sites for both the bots AND our visitors (which we should have been doing all along).

Does Your Site Pass The Test?

In many respects it's about how well our site passes a test. Bear in mind that the test and the answers are always changing, and that the test differs from one search engine to another. What is important to really grasp is some of the guiding principles to keep in mind. This will make a huge impact on developing your own seo strategy and evaluating the value of what others offer you as services.

Guiding Principles

First of all the search engines are a business. Google is a business. Meaning? They do what they do ultimately to make money, just like you and me. Don't forget that. It's important. Just like many businesses put up "no skateboard" signs in the 90's, the search engines don't like certain things and they will make your life unpleasant if you don't listen. Just like showing up with skateboards might get the cops called on you, doing certain things on or with your site will make Google frown upon you. Who cares? Well, not being on the front page of the organic search results means no traffic, and no traffic means no money. So, we care, you and me. Google makes money offering a very good search engine. They don't want you to putz it up with tons of spammy sites. Read: "NO SKATEBOARDS." Okay?

Second principle, borrowed from our brick and mortar brothers, "location, location, location." What? Location on the search results page, right?  This is much bigger than you might think at first. I'm not just talking about being on the first page or in the first spot. I'm talking about multiple places on the first page (what?) and platforms beyond your site like social media sites and blogs. It's still about position. Don't forget that.

So, to summarize: DON'T be in the wrong places or pissing off the search engines and DO be in the right places, as many as reasonably possible. We'll discuss this a bit more below.


Have a plan. For real. Not just a goal, but "how to get there from here" plan. Then, follow the plan. Trust yourself. Just do it. If you don't you'll never realize the rewards or watch your competition pushed off the front page never to be heard from again. (You know you want that, I know I do!)

Cheap Search Engine Optimization You Can Do Yourself

So let's turn our attention to some cheap search engine optimization. I say cheap, really for the most part, these are free, but they take time, and time is money. So, that makes them cheap.

First you need to understand keywords. Every single page on your site should be focused on a specific keyword phrase. I could write a book on this, so suffice it to say you need to determine and know what purpose each page on your site has, who it speaks to.

Basically each page on your site is potentially in a race. Which race? the 3 legged race, the 100 meter, the relay? It matters. If you were taking a team to a track meet you would know who was running in what race. What page is running in what keyword race? Race to where? The front page, silly!

That being said, one of the "no skateboards" things Google hates is when all your pages say they are in all the races or in none of the races. They think that's just silly and ignore all those pages as contestants. No body is good at everything, and every page on your site can't be about everything, or nothing or even the same thing as all the other pages on your site.

Sit down with a piece of paper and check it out. Use your elementary essay writing skills. What's the topic of your page? What is the whole page basically about. If you had to given an answer with a gun to your head, what would you say it was about? Write it down. Do it for your whole site.

This exercise will determine the "race" that page is in. How qualified is it? That's what Google is going to ask.

For example, let's say your whole site is about silverware. One page should be about spoons. Another about forks. Another about knives. In some sense a page about forks will mention knives and in that respect, to some teeny tiny degrees that page is also about knives, but the over all topic of the page is about forks.

If you were Google, and your business was to provide the best d**n search results on planet earth (because that is their business model), would you take that page that mentions knives, once, in passing and put it on very first page in the very first spot on your results page? I didn't think so. Neither are they.

That being said, if your site has no content on it except for mentioning forks on it once because you have a ginormous picture of forks or a flash page with cool fork pictures Google is not going to rank your page either. Why? Because it's not about forks. It only says forks once. In passing, as far as Google is concerned.

Now, don't run out and put the word forks on your page 1000 times either. That is another "No Skateboards" thing. Remember, they want to be the best search engine in the universe. Don't putz up the pages with spammy sites that are only trying to "trick" them. They'll punish you and send you to the end of the line.

See how these principles can guide you?

So, map out your site. Decide what every page is supposed to about, and therefore what race it's in. Optimization is about giving the search engines the BEST possible pages to enter the race. So, let's get busy.

The Best Organic Search Engine Optimization Tips

• First we want to make sure our page is actually about our topic.
• Then we want to make declarations about what our page is about in the meta tags on our pages. (Title and description tags mainly.)
• We want to make sure our page is relevant to our topic by including our main keyword and some other related keywords.
• We want our page to be pretty and engaging to visitors. (Why? Because Google wants to give the best results to its users and if folks stay on our page instead of immediately leaving - called "bouncing" - then Google knows they did a good job by sending them to us. Then, they'll do it again.) So, a nice theme, images and video are good options.
• We want our site to be easy to navigate for spiders and humans, in some cases this means siloed.
• We want good content, not woefully spun illegible, misspelled content so people will again, hangout and read, right?
• We also want reference links to important information readers might need to know that is not on our site. Why? Because Google wants the best experience for their users, the folks who found your site.

HINT: One of the easiest ways to do this is with a Wordpress site. If you are interested in knowing more about it let me know in the comments below and I'll add some content about it. It's easy, free software you can install on your site to run the whole shebang. It's one of the best ways I know to get a site up and optimized quickly. There are a ton of free and paid plugins that can help you get every aspect of optimization taken care of yourself and it's free.

Onpage and Offpage Optimization

Everything discussed so far concerns onpage optimization. Offpage optimization is simply all the links and anchor text pointing to your pages. I like to explain anchor text like hearing about a restaurant for the first time:

"Hey, have you heard about that new Italian restaurant on 4th?" Your first clue about this place is that it is Italian.  Later in the week someone tells you about a new restaurant they had lunch at on 4th. They tell you about the great Pizza they had there. This is in line with what you already have heard about the restaurant. Italian and Pizza go together, right? What if you heard about the new Italian restaurant and then later about the great tacos someone had there? You'd be confused right?

Well, when a search engine spider happens across a link to a page and it says "Italian," and then comes across another link and it says "pizza," a category is starting to form in the spider's mind. "Maybe this site should rank for Italian Pizza!" But if it comes across another link that says "tacos" and another that says "barbeque" it won't know what category to put your page in.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text that forms a link that a spider follows to your page. You want all the links to every page to provide a CLEAR indication of what your page is about.

Linkbuilding

You can build links using your anchor text (not the same phrase or word over and over again, but like Italian and Pizza, themed keyword phrases) on article sites, with blog comments, guest blogging, forum posts, directories and blogs, as well as many others. Remember our guidelines though. You don't want to build links on sites that Google hates, like porn sites or spammy sites. You don't want to build them too quickly, but you also want to build them consistently.

Each of these anchor text links is like a vote from other sites or people indicating what your page is about. The more or bigger the votes, the more Google thinks your page is relative to the keyword race it's in. This boosts your rankings in the organic search results.

It's also very helpful if the link is coming from a page relative to your topic. In other words a link from a page about Italy or eating out or making pizza is better than a link from a site about golf shoes.

When it comes to local search engine optimization a few, consistent, well-placed links can do a lot for your rankings. Because the competition for say Little Rock Pizza is much smaller than the competition for Pizza, it will take less linking power to rank a page for that phrase.

Social Media

You'll also want to be sure and take some steps to incorporate social media. The search engines expect to see this from legitimate sites, and so do your customers. These are specialized offpage links and provide a new "location" to interact with your customers.

Phew! That was more of a synopsis than a few search engine optimization tips! I hope you found this helpful. If you have any questions or comments please do leave them below. I would love to help in any way I can. Also, note that I do a monthly webinar where you can ask questions and get feedback or critiques and suggestions for your sites and strategies. If you haven't signed up for that, do so we can talk more about this.