The JAR Group

Electrify Your Visibility!

Today I’ll be sharing with you what I learned from Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing University course on Search Engine Optimization, taught by Lee Odden. (Make sure to check out my first post on the Basics of Blogging for Business!) SEO allows you to make yourself visible in highly trafficked areas on the web. IMU deemed SEO “the most effective Online Marketing tactic for generating conversions,” which means that if you do this right, you’ll have more traffic, sales, and hit whatever goals you want to reach, faster. And at the same time you’ll be reducing your marketing costs. Sound good? Keep reading!

The three main points to make sure your site is Search Engine Optimized are:

1. having the right keywords for your customers
2. being search engine friendly
3. link building

But before we get into that, let me tell you why these things are important. As we know from my first post on being an effective blogger, Google is the big kahuna. How does it work?

1. Google makes a copy of the web (yes, the web)
2. Google extracts information from that copy and indexes  that information
3. Google stores those indexes in servers all over the world

Ok great, but what does this have to do with your site being Google-friendly?  Well, when you search (or make a query) your location is identified, then your query is matched with the index, those matches are then ranked and returned to your in ranking order specific to your location and search history. Cool, right?

What is your intention?

Keywords show intent, so there are a few things to think about when choosing your keywords, but always keep in mind your customer.  Where are they in the buying process?  If they are doing research you can use broad keywords; if they are considering a purchase, make sure you have specific brands; and if they are looking to buy, make your keywords as specific as possible. And where should you place these keywords to make them easily found?

1. title tags (the text at the top of your browser that gets bookmarked and saved)
2. headings
3. paragraph titles
4. body copy
5. anchor text in links (the blue, underlined text that links–and make sure that the page it links to is relevant!!)
6. image alt text (the text that appears when you mouse over an image)
7. meta description tag (used in search results to describe your links)

How friendly are you?

If your site is crawlable it is search engine friendly! And there are several ways to make sure your site is crawlable.

1. Make sure a lot of great sites have a link to your site, on theirs.
2. Use your pages to link to other pages of yours.
3. Have a site map (Apple’s is a good example), which is an organization of how and where information can be found on your site; and put that link at the bottom of each of your pages.

You should probably avoid things like Flash, Ajax, or Javascript–the lack of crawlable text makes it harder for the search engines to find you. Just something to keep in mind. (If you are using these techniques, make sure to have supplementary text elsewhere on the page.)

Example! Adidas, one of the top running shoe brands, has a site that isn’t even in the top 100 results when searching for “men’s running shoes”–why? Because their site is all pictures, and hardly any text. On the other hand, Patagonia has a great, visually enticing picture on their site, but beneath that is a wide variety of text, hitting many keywords, allowing not only visitors, but also search engines, to easily find what they’re looking for. Result? Patagonia ranks 2nd on Google when searching for “outdoor clothing”.

Also, as with blogging, make sure your content is fresh and themed, making you much friendlier than if you have stale, outdated content.

Electrify your visibility!

IMU says that “inbound links are like electricity for search visibility”. It’s simple: if you have a lot of people linking to your site, Google will rank your site higher. But wait, how do you get inbound links?! Two key ways to do this: promote your content (because you have great content, right?) on social networks and link up with marketing partners. In essence, be active off of your own site. If you are active in other forums and commenting on blogs related to your site, it is a great and easy way to promote your site, and thus get more links (ReTweets via Twitter, people sharing your content via your RSS Feed, and others simply sharing your site because you’ve established yourself as a credible source).

So there you go! The basics of SEO for you and your site. Now go make sure you have the best keywords in the right places, and don’t forget to think about your customers! Check back next week to learn what you can do for your online community with Chris Brogan.