For me, SEO is a passion. I love discussing it, explaining it, testing theories and the like. Most people aren't into it like that. They just want their site to rank. And that's understandable. They have a business to run, so they turn to search engine optimization companies like mine.
What do you look for if you are an Arkansas business owner? What qualifies someone to do your seo? Is it the high price they charge? Does that make them good? I know some people who think like that. Others think its about being friendly and accessible. Well, I can see how that could be a benefit in some situations, but I also want them to make my site rank, right? What you need is someone who knows what they are doing, can explain to you why it's important and the steps to take to achieve it. Someone you trust and who is reliable. I'm guessing you will agree with me that these qualities define the best search engine optimization companies.
As I've posted elsewhere on this blog what you want most is organic results, where you site ranks because Google thinks your site is the most qualified site to rank and rewards you with that position. That is the traffic you really want coming to your site. Traffic from folks who actually sat down and searched for your information. These are people who are actively looking for what you have to offer. They are what we call "qualified leads". That's what SEO is all about, right? Getting leads and making money.
In many instances it may take about a month to see improvements in your rankings. Top search engine optimization companies are able to make your site rise to the top in about this length of time because they know that building links to your site too fast is not good. What you don't want to do is go with a company that tells you they can rank your site overnight by building a ton of links really quickly. This is no-bueno in the search engines eyes. You will also find that reputable companies will inform you that link building needs to be a constant for your site. Meaning, you can't build a bunch of links and then quite building them. This is frowned upon by those that work at Google.
So, if you decided to hire someone, keep that in mind. It isn't a one time fee like buying an ad in the Sunday paper. Organic search engine optimization takes time and needs to grow, which means it needs to constantly be happening.
Here are some important points to think about:
The web is always changing. Your site has to keep up.
Other companies can hire SEO consultants or services, too.
Google's goal is to always offer the BEST possible answer to the question in the searcher's mind. They don't care about your business. They care about the searcher. If you were great yesterday, but another site is newer, fresher and also relevant, well, kiss your top spot goodbye.
These are true statements about ranking your site and keeping it there. But who do you trust to do that for your website? And what about search engine optimization pricing? Are those prices fair? I mean, we all want to save money, right? Well, yes, and no.
We all know you have to have money to make money. The part that is implied is you have to SPEND money to make money. So, if having your site get organic traffic from people who want what you have is important to you, you had better find a way to get yourself to that "location, location, location." Can you do it yourself? Yes. But it takes time and money. And, as we have all heard a million times, time is money.
So, what is it you want to do? Rank or learn all about SEO and do THAT? If you do, my blog is a good place to start. Read my post about search engine optimization tips you can use to better qualify your site. Dig in and get busy. More power to you. Really. I mean that. I'm a bootstrap kind of person myself.
If not, then consider hiring someone (even if it's not me.) Take the time to figure out what really constitutes a return on your investment, what you spend on a lead now, what the lifetime value of a customer is to your business. These are numbers every business owner should know. How do you measure the response you get to other advertising methods you are currently using? Are you doing any pay-per-click advertising? How is that working for you?
Answer these questions and you may find hiring someone to do your search engine optimization isn't that expensive. You just thought it was.
You'll also want to look at what each company you are considering specializes in. I mean, many of them want to build your website and charge you an arm and a leg. Then they want to throw on some meta tags and call your SEO done. That's not what you are looking for. (You can easily build your own site using Wordpress. Just leave me a comment below and I'll tell you how!) You don't need for them to build you a killer website as much as you need it to rank.
This is a relatively new industry and because of that people can call almost anything search engine optimization. I know of a company that operates on a nation level who sells so-called seo services but informs people that with their $400 something dollar a month service that "almost no one ever ranks." Believe me, I know how to rank your site. It can be done. Shoot, you can do it yourself. I can teach you how, and do to my coaching students. Quit throwing away money on folks who don't deliver. At least use a rank tracker to see what their "results" are. And for goodness sake, don't let them build too many links to your site too fast. Google penalizes such things. Find someone you can trust, someone who will tell you like it is. (Someone like me, maybe...?) Maybe.
Want to know what the best affordable search engine optimization is? The do-it-yourself kind. I know, that sounds strange coming from me because I offer search engine optimization consulting and services, right? But truth is truth. There are a couple of hurdles however.
The technical difficulties. Not everyone knows how to do that "computer stuff," nor do they want to know. If this is you I would consider my service. :-)
There are time restraints. SEO takes time and research. And to make things more frustrating it is like trying to hit a moving target because the search engine algorithms are constantly changing. What worked a year ago doesn't work today. So, not only is there time involved to learn how to do it yourself, you have to keep investing the time to keep up with what it takes today, and tomorrow, etc. And it takes time. You have to write content, or order it, research keywords, write meta tags, write more content like guest blog posts and build links, do social media and "I don't know what all!" (Well, actually, I do!) But it is a full time occupation. If you don't just love it, hire someone. (Not a plug, though I would love the business. Again, just the truth.)
Whatever is holding you back in your business needs to be really scrutinized. If it's a twenty dollar problem, or a hundred dollar problem, just pay for it and get back to business. In other words, don't let not knowing how to do something or not having something hold you back. There's no reason, for example, to spend hours and hours learning how to build a website. Do what you do best. Hire someone to get that baby up and keep selling shoes, or drilling teeth or fixing air conditioners. As a business owner you don't need to know how to do everything, but you do need to know the jest. (So read my blog and only tackle what you really want to do.)
Am I making a case for NOT doing your own affordable small business search engine optimization? Nope. No guts; no glory is true too. All I'm saying is even the do-it-yourselfer might outsource the part of the job he hates or isn't interested in. If you 'are interested, roll up your sleeves and let's get busy.
So if you are ready and willing to get your hands dirty, maybe hit your thumb with a hammer and perhaps scratch your knee, the first thing you will want to look at is your keywords.
Keywords
Lots of times I talk to business owners and they think they are trying to rank their site for say a single word, like crochet for example. They want their little craft shop to show up on the front page of Google for the word, crochet. Ain't going to happen. I hate to break it to them, but it's just not. And quite frankly, they don't really want it to.
Keywords indicate what's going on in searchers mind. Someone who put the word "crochet" into a search engine and hit Google is not looking for a craft shop that sells crochet yarn, needles, patterns or lessons. They don't know what crochet is!
Think about what that shop owner should really be trying to rank for. They should be more like these types of phrases:
crochet yarn fayetteville ar
crochet needles fort smith arkansas
crochet patterns pine bluff ark
crochet lessons sherwood ar
crochet classes cabot arkansas
We call this targeting the "intent" of the user. Someone who types in these types of phrases in a search engine are looking for something this local craft store might be able to provide. As a business you basically are offering your products and services to those who are actually looking for them. So when someone says, hey, I want some crochet lessons near my home in Fayetteville Arkansas, Google wants to say, hey, here are the best pages we have found so far for crochet lessons near Fayetteville Arkansas. I mean, that's what Google does, right? They are in the business of dishing up pages that answer the query or question someone searched for. And you want your pages to show up. You make money selling yarn, needles, patterns, lessons and classes, not being a dictionary!
You don't care if Google thinks you are about "crochet" because that won't make your cash register, your banker or your spouse sing. But, if Google thinks you are about "crochet classes in Cabot Arkansas" and people in Cabot, Arkansas, are looking for crochet classes, you'll have it going on.
This is the most important aspect of doing your own search engine optimization. Without it you might even rank for something, but you still won't get traffic if no one is searching for it. So, don't try to rank for something like "blue crochet yarn with pink polka dots in cabot arkansas in a building with a yellow door." I'm pretty sure you will rank for that, because there is NO competition for that. But no one will ever search for it and come to your site.
Don't lose site of the goal. You want to rank for something people are searching for in large enough quantities to get you some traffic and make some sales. People have to want it and be able to find you for this search engine thing to work for you. And the competition has to be reasonable enough that you could rank for it if you decided to put the effort into trying to do it.
And, if you've done your keyword research correctly, you will have decided to put the effort in BEFORE you create the page on your site you will be trying to rank. So, start with keyword research. Then:
Optimize the pages you already have on your site as well.
Add pictures. (You do have pictures on your pages, right?)
Add video. (You're using them, too, aren't you?)
Look for ways to silo the navigation for your pages, or at least build some links from pages to other pages on your site. This should be done thoughtfully and is related to keyword research. I could write a lot on this, but for now think of it like this. The pages you want to rank the most need the most links. Some of those links can come from pages on your own site. Don't go crazy. Just let the links speak the loudest about what you think is most important and Google will get it.
These are some of the things a good and affordable search engine optimization company will start with. Why can't you do them yourself? Sure it can take some time. So? You can't get any more affordable than free!
Another thing you can do yourself is add new content. Add it to the pages you want to beef up and add new pages. You can use the new pages to build links to the pages you want to rank the most, or you can just use it to add more content your users might like to read. Why? Google loves new content. Give it to them. Give it to them regularly. No, I don't mean 10 times a day. Pick a schedule you can live with and do it. Just do it. A new post once a week? twice a week? These can be blog posts, too. I think every site should have a blog if they can. Curated content can work great for this. It doesn't have to be a huge time suck.
You can also ping those new or newly updated pages. Pingler is a great site for this if you are only doing a few pages on a given day. (It's free for low level usage like we are discussing.)
You can also add some links to your pages that go to other authority sites. These are sites that DO and SHOULD rank for crochet, for example. These are helpful for readers and Google loves them.
In any link building you do don't forget to link to the inner pages of your site as well as your home page. All the pages on your site should serve some purpose. Most of them will target keywords. Build links to them.
And get some social media going. In today's search engine landscape it is a must.
Take these search engine optimization tips into consideration and you will have made a huge step towards ranking your pages in an affordable manner. But, if you are overwhelmed and just want someone to swoop in and make everything better for you, then you will find that we offer affordable search engine optimization services you can trust and rely to grow your business while you get back to doing what you do best. Deal?
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.
