Three Steps to Improved Search Engine Ranking
ByOne of today’s hottest marketing buzz phrases is “Search Engine Optimization”, or SEO. SEO is the process of configuring an organization’s Web site in such a way that when a person goes to Google (or other search engine) and searches for keywords related to the organization, the search engine lists the organization’s Web site within its search results in the highest possible position.
SEO can be a valuable promotional tactic within any Web site marketing strategy. However, SEO can also become time consuming because Google, Yahoo, and MSN (the big three) use sophisticated algorithms to index Web content. All three companies continually adjust their algorithms to provide users with the best search results. Therefore, you will need to continually test new techniques to achieve and maintain high rankings.
The AVS Group has researched and developed an SEO model that improves search engine rankings. This article highlights three tactics from our model you can use to improve your own rankings:
1. Select great keywords
2. Convert keywords into traffic
3. Link building
Tactic #1: Select Great Keywords
Your first priority should be to select great keywords that describe your organization and the content within your Web site. It might be tempting to save time by developing a list of keywords, some specific and others broad, and then applying all of them on every page throughout your Web site. However, you will achieve greater results by selecting 10 custom keywords or phrases for each page of content within your site. For example, select 10 keywords and use them exclusively on your home page, followed by 10 different keywords for each subsequent page of content.
When selecting keywords, avoid words that are broad or vague. Broad or vague keywords provide little benefit because likely too many other pages are currently indexed in the search engines using those keywords. To illustrate, let’s use AVSGroup.com as an example. Open a new browser window and go to Google. Search on the term “Web Site Design”. Look at the upper right corner where Google displays the number of pages currently indexed for the keywords. Google has already indexed about 22 million pages for “Web Site Design”.
Instead of competing against 22 million pages for “Web Site Design”, AVS chose to optimize a page of content for “Web Strategy Development”. This phrase precisely describes one of AVS’s Web services, and because fewer pages are indexed, there is a greater likelihood of achieving a high ranking. To illustrate, go back to Google. Search on “Web Strategy Development”. Google has indexed 623 pages and AVSGroup.com is the number one ranked site.
Tactic #2: Convert Keywords into Traffic
Once you have selected great keywords, the keywords must be incorporated into the right locations within your Web site to drive more traffic. Some of the best places are within your site’s page title, META description, and META keywords. Google, Yahoo, and MSN look for keywords in these locations to help properly index a site’s content.
If you are unfamiliar with how to view a page title, open a new browser window and go to AVSGroup.com. The page title is the white text that appears inside the bar at the top left of your browser window.
Next in importance is the META description and META keywords. Both are used to describe the content found on a particular page. To locate the METAs, open a new browser window and go back to AVSGroup.com. Click on the “View” drop down menu within your Internet Explorer window. You will see several options including “View Source”. Select “View Source”. This will display the HTML used to create the AVSGroup.com home page. At the top of the page, you will see the META description and META keywords.
You will achieve the greatest success if you develop custom page titles, META descriptions, and META keywords for each page within your Web site using the keywords that you selected earlier.
Tactic #3: Link Building
Link building is an SEO term that means requesting other Webmasters to add a link to your Web site within their Web site. This usually takes place in two ways. Webmasters will sometimes add your link within their own site’s content because your Web site could be a valuable resource to their site visitors. You can also encourage Webmasters to post your content onto their Web site provided they include a link to your Web site within the credits.
For the first example, open a new browser window and go to www.viroqua-wisconsin.com. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see a link that reads “Web site design and development by The AVS Group”. This link provides AVSGroup.com with additional traffic if someone were to click the link, but more importantly, the link helps increase our “Page Rank”. More on Page Rank later.
Next, open a new browser window and go back to Google. Search on the phrase “e-mail marketing tips”. You should see a link that reads “Learn Successful E-mail Marketing Tips” (it might even be the number two ranked site). Click on this link and you will find a Web site that is featuring one of The AVS Group’s Resources articles. This is an example of leveraging your Web site content by permitting other Webmasters to post it and provide a link back to your site. Scroll to the bottom of the article and you will see a link to AVSGroup.com.
Your link building activities increase what is known as, “Page Rank”. Page Rank is a measure that Google uses to evaluate the relevancy of a Web site’s content. If you have hundreds or even thousands of Web sites linking to your Web site using these two examples, Google will consider your Web site to be more relevant. You will earn a higher Page Rank score, resulting in improved search results for your Web site against sites that might even be optimized for the same keywords.
In closing, this article shared three key tactics within our SEO model that you can use to improve your search engine rankings. Because of the complexity of SEO, please let us know if you would like to learn more about our full SEO model. Our Web experts will demonstrate the various tactics within our model and discuss the results.
| About the Author: The AVS Group is a marketing, training, and communications company. AVS is in La Crosse, Wisconsin. AVS helps clients communicate and market effectively. AVS can be found online at http://www.avsgroup.com. |
5 Comments
February 19th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
A marketing plan is a marketing plan. A budget is a budget. A marketing plan is looking at the entire sales cycle and understanding how to make sure each part of the sales cycle reaches a consumer in the way they want to be reached.
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Marketing plans are sexy mistresses that tempt you to include all of the coolest of campaign ideas without the sanity of budgetary constraints. While marketing is one of the more important functions of a small business, it is one that is limited by the budgets of that business and campaigns must demonstrate a return in order to justify their existence. Marketing plans are can be difficult to write. Businesses often make the mistake of assuming that their product is so excellent that people will seek it out. Marketing Plans are also very important when it comes to making a social networking site ; It is an ongoing member engagement, and advertisers, sponsors, partners. This each thing will derive different benefits from participation in the site.
February 26th, 2010 at 2:51 am
From lots of observation, research, reading and experimentation, I believe that I have distilled the very basic formula behind the way that Google’s Search algorithm and the way it displays it’s search results. Google has publicly stated that it’s search results have over one hundred different factors and I’m sure that they do, but what they don’t talk about as much is that only a few factors are of primary importance. Discovering what the most heavily weighted factors are is key to your SEO success.
March 1st, 2010 at 5:51 am
Changes in Google’s algorythm have an effect on websites indexed in Google.
March 6th, 2010 at 1:12 am
A marketing plan is like a combination of the process by which you decide where you want to go on vacation and the the map (or GPS) that helps you get there. Sure, sometimes a completely spontaneous vacation is fun. A marketing plan is, after all, a structured way of dealing with marketing issues, not a random collection of incomprehensible bits and pieces. A marketing plan is simply a plan designed to generate your most wanted response for your business when you launch it and years after. In other words, if you want to make a lot of sales fast, then you’d create a plan that was geared to sell a lot of products in the shortest amount of time possible.