Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Optimization
80/20 To Do List™ – Existing Site
The step-by-step Search Engine Optimization To Do List is outlined below.
Executive Summary:
There are 2 different scenarios for optimizing existing Web sites – one for small Web sites (approximately 10 pages), and another for sites with more pages and/or multiple product/service sections.
For “small” Web sites, the goal should be to (1) optimize the site for one major keyword phrase (two or more words in the phrase) AND several iterations of that same phrase in the major search engines and directories; (2) create or re-optimize your “Site Map” pages (a XML version for search engine crawlers and a HTML version for human visitors) and submit it to the major crawler-based search engines; and (3) re-optimize and (if necessary) re-submit your site’s Home Page to BOTH the major crawler-based search engines AND to the major human-edited Web directories.
For “large” Web sites, the fastest, most effective and least disruptive way to optimize an existing site for the major search engines and directories is to (1) create and submit 3-5 “Information Pages” to the major crawler-based search engines; (2) create or re-optimize your “Site Map” pages (a XML version for search engine crawlers and a HTML version for human visitors) and submit it to the major crawler-based search engines; and (3) re-optimize and (if necessary) re-submit your site’s Home Page to BOTH the major crawler-based search engines AND to the major human-edited Web directories. These 3-5 “information pages” should align with the major product or service sections of your Web site. I suggest optimizing 3-5 information pages in this exercise because optimizing that many pages is a formidable task.
Don’t be put off by the length of this “To Do List”–I go into detail on some of the steps and that makes the outline look longer and more complicated than it actually is to complete. (If you would like to learn even more about why each step is structured as it is, you can research that on the dedicated Search Engine Optimization sites I have already referenced.)
If you follow this “80/20 Search Engine Optimization To Do List”, it will provide you with the greatest traffic volume from search engines and directories for the least amount of search engine optimization effort.
Let’s get started!
- Whether your Web site is large or small, the FIRST STEP is to compile the 3-5 most likely search phrases (minimum of two, preferably more, words per phrase in a specific order) that you think Web searchers will search for using one of the major search engines or directories in order to find the type of information contained on your site. Use your knowledge of your products and services as well as that of your employees and your existing customers to develop these phrases.This step is the KEY to a successful Search Engine Optimization effort, so put as much time as necessary into selecting these key search phrases. Be prepared to “tweek” the initial selections based on what these phrases return when tried in the major search engines/directories (see below).A word about WordTracker and Keyword Discovery: WordTracker and Keyword Discovery are online services you can subscribe to in order to check the popularity of the key search phrases you selected. Why do this? Because there’s no point in achieving a number #1 ranking in Google (or any other search engine/directory) for a key search phrase that no one searches for!! WordTracker and Keyword Discovery will help keep you from making that mistake. There are also free trials available that you can use to try it out before signing up for the service.Another keyword/key phrase research tool out there is the Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool. Using this service is a great way to get familiar with the concept of researching keywords (read “key phrases”) because it gives you an inside look at Google search results for your key phrases and it’s free!A work about Keyword Block – “Keyword Block” is that inevitable phase in your SEO effort where you bang your head against the wall trying to come up with good key search phrase ideas. Click on this “Keyword Block” link to learn how one SEO expert not only overcomes this problem, but uses it to expand the number of relevant keyword search phrases for a particular Web site.When you finish this exercise, you should have identified 3-5 keyword search phrases (2-4 words in each phrase with words in a specific order) that are closely related to the products, services and/or topics discussed on your Web site, and are popular enough to attract a sizable amount of search traffic based on researching these phrases on WordTracker, Keyword Discovery or Google as described above.
- If possible, use a product like WebPosition Gold to set a bench mark for where your site is ranked today (if at all) in the 3 major search engines (Google, MSN and Yahoo “Web Results”) and 3 major directories (Open Directory, LookSmart and Yahoo “Directory”) for these 3-5 key search phrases.
- The most thorough method to do the next part of this analysis is to enter each of these 3-5 key search phrases into the Google, MSN and Yahoo crawler-based search engines, and the LookSmart, Open Directory (dmoz.org) and Yahoo human-edited directories. (That’s right, there’s TWO parts to the Yahoo search optimization exercise – choose “Web” above the Yahoo search box to get the crawler-based search results, and “Directory” to get the human-edited results.)Why these 6 engines/directories? Google is the most visited “pure” search site on the Web, and provides the BEST (most relevant) crawler-based search engine results. MSN, owned by Microsoft, is one of the top 5 most-visited Web sites AND now uses its own proprietary crawler-based search engine. Yahoo has become as much a crawler-based engine as it is a directory, and has the greatest “reach” (the largest number of unique visitors per month) of any search engine/directory on the Web. The Open Directory and the directory (human-edited) portion of LookSmart are used by many other “search engines” as their default human-edited directory.
- However, the reality is NO small business Web site owner/marketer has that amount of time! So what should you do?Enter your 3-5 key search phrases only into the Google Search Engine, but do it as follows:FIRST, go to www.google.com, type one of your key search phrases into the Google search box on that page and press the Enter key. Note the number of results returned and print the top 10 search results.SECOND, type the same quote into the Google search box, but this time surround it with quotation marks, and press the enter key. Note the number of results returned and print the top 10 search results.FINALLY, first type in the phrase “ intitle: ” into the Google search box, then add the key search phrase in quotes, and press the enter key. Note the number of results returned and print the top 10 search results. (Here’s what your search box entry would look like if your
key search phrase was “yellow submarines”: intitle:”yellow submarines”)What you have done in this short exercise is found out how many search results Google returns for the typical manner that a search phrase is entered (no quotation marks), how many search results Google returns for pages that contain that exact phrase at least once (quotation marks), and how many search results Google returns for pages that contain that exact phrase in the Title Tag for that page (see below). This final step will help you identify those Web pages that have had at least some amount of search engine optimization applied to them relative to the search phrases you are working with. These pages are your real SEO competition for that phrase!
- Next you’re going to examine the 30 Web pages generated from the exercise in Step 4 for each key search phrase. The reality is that you’ll probably have fewer than 30 Web pages to examine per key search phrase because some of the results will be the same in all 3 steps.For each key search phrase, analyze the following 3 Web page components on the Web pages generated in step 3:
- Page Title Tag(use the “View | Source” command in your Web browser to view Title tag)
- META Description Tag(use the “View | Source” command in your Web browser to view META Description tag)
- First 250 words (approximately) of the “visible” page text – this is the text you can actually see when viewing the page in your Web browser
Note: We will also look at visible text in each internal hyperlink pointing to that page later in this exercise
These 3 items are the most important “on-the-page” components for the search engines we’re interested in optimizing for.
