How to Achieve Search Engine Optimization Success

As a savvy business owner, you may have thought about what it takes to achieve search engine optimization success.  You are probably already aware of the value of having your website show up on the first page of a Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for the product or service that you offer.  In order to climb to the top, you need to hire a Search Engine Marketing Success consultant (or SEM) provider who will use every “white hat” resource available to them.

There are literally thousands of web companies offering Search Engine Marketing Success services, but very few have the knowledge and skills to enable SEO to work for local businesses.  In fact, in traditional Search Engine Marketing Success services, what nearly all SEM companies are offering is simply ineffective for local businesses.

In the following copy, I’m going to explain the reasons why traditional Search Engine Marketing Success (or SEM) does not work well for local businesses. However, before I explain these reasons, let’s take a look at what traditional SEO companies actually do.

What Search Engine Optimization Success Is All About

Three simple steps to Search Engine Optimization Success Mastery

1. Create a website that is easy for the search engines to find and process
2. Uncover the keywords (phrases) your prospects and customers use to find your business and weave those keywords into the content of your web pages
3. Get important and relevant sites similar to yours in your industry or related industries with high DA & PA to link to the pages of your website to tell the search engines that your site is important

You must do many little things just right and the process eventually begins to snowball and your biggest results occur during the three month to one year or more timeframe, while it may seem like nothing much is happening in the beginning. Remember, your goal is Search Engine Marketing Success.

Search Engine Marketing Success may seem complicated or mysterious at first, but by far the bulk of your time, energy and effort will focus on those three objectives.  Understanding and internalizing these fundamental principles will form the foundation of your SEO knowledge and will therefore help keep your efforts focused on what’s most important.  Additionally, by focusing on these fundamental goals, it could help prevent you from diverting your resources on strategies and tactics that may have no effect, or worse, could potentially degrade your web page’s position in the search results.

Often unbeknownst to many site owners, they may be inadvertently or unintentionally designed in such a way as to make it difficult for the search engine spiders to find and access their site.  Some may even be blocking the search engines altogether!  This can leave site owners puzzled and confused.

However, creating search engine-friendly web pages alone will not propel your site to the top of the search engine results.  Actually, it’s more about averting the mistakes that could harm your search results than it is about rocketing your pages up the ladder of results.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION SUCCESS

Search Engine Marketing Success Tip:

• Keywords (key phrases) tell the search engines what your page is about

• Inbound links tell the search engines that your page is important

As much time and attention as we devote to on-page optimization, it is your inbound link strategy that will do more to raise your search engine results than anything else you do.  However, other sites will not likely want to link to you unless you have great content – so the two strategies work hand-in-hand.

Although the keyword phrases you choose to weave into the content of your web pages are critical to telling others and the search engines what your page is about – however, their overall direct impact on your search engine results is limited.  External links, links from important and relevant pages in your industry and your topic and the visible or anchor text of those links will actually have a far greater effect on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) than even the keywords on the actual page.

In fact, I’ve seen pages that are established (have been on the web for years), have outstanding, important and relevant sites linking to them and therefore they rank at the top of search engine results – even though the search phrase does not even exist on that page!

Climbing the ladder to those top coveted spots for your chosen keywords is a gradual process.  Odds are that one or more of your competitors may already hold one of those top positions and they may have a well established SEO program.  They may also have the advantage of being an established site that has been in the search engine’s index for many years, and these days, that can be a significant advantage.  This is often an overlooked advantage; time is an SEO’s greatest asset or worst nightmare – depending on your perspective; whether you have an established site or a new one.

If a search engine has already decided that one or more of your competitors is the most relevant page or site for a particular keyword, it will take some time and a concentrated effort to change the search engine’s algorithmic reasoning and list one or more of your pages at the top instead.

And if you’re looking at Google – who wouldn’t want to be at the top of a Google search result for a targeted keyword – you can count on at least six months to a year or more of concentrated and focused effort to elevate your pages to the coveted top position.  In all likelihood, your rank will climb gradually as you continually tweak the optimization factors of your pages and collect more quality inbound links, and before you know it, your pages will suddenly gain traction and climb to the top of the search results for your targeted keywords.

In fact, in highly competitive markets, the only way to achieve a top ranking is through a gradual process – a reality that often frustrates professional SEOs because too many clients expect immediate results – something that is unrealistic in today’s highly competitive markets.  After all, only one page out of millions can be number one – and your competitors are constantly aiming to knock you off the top.  That is why search engine optimization is a continual process that never ends.  However, when done properly (as I am teaching you here) organic search results tend to hold steady over the long haul with only minimal maintenance.

If you feel you must have immediate results you can utilize Pay-Per-Click advertising as well as wide-range of long-tail keywords that are less competitive. 

What’s in a domain name?  More than you might think…

Existing versus new domain names

If you have an existing domain name for a site that has been on the web for awhile, whatever you do, don’t change it unless you absolutely have to (for example – for legal reasons; if your domain name contains someone else’s trademarked name).  Switching from an established domain name to a new one can be a touchy process and can often put you at a disadvantage for six months and up to a year or more.

Search Engine Marketing Success Tip:

Google places a higher value on established domains versus a new one.  As a matter of fact, two of the most important ranking factors in Google are:

• The quality and age of your incoming links; how long inbound links have been pointing at content on your site

• The age of your site (how long your site has been online and indexed)

In comparison to having an older established site and what appears to be a catchy new domain, the new domain name value is relatively miniscule.

The ideal domain name should exactly match your best keyword; (remember that the term ‘keyword’?  It is representative of not only a single word, but also short phrase; 2 – 5 words typically; you may have heard the term “long tail” keywords, they typically refer to keyword phrases that are 7 words or longer; i.e. more specific) you’re targeting.  Remember that it is the keywords that tell the search engines what your page is about.  Inbound links tell the search engines that your page is important.

Keep in mind that often many of the keyword-rich domain names are already registered having been scooped up by professional domainers (people who buy and sell domain names for a living; it’s big business, they’re virtual land brokers) or other savvy businesses in your niche.  (Also note, domain names are case insensitive.)

Search Engine Marketing Success Tip:

However, the domain name governing body ICANN, has been releasing and will continue to release thousands of new Top Level Domain Names (TLDs) to enable businesses to more accurately target their specific type of business.  Click Register New Top Level Domain Names for more information. 

Now let’s say you’re a heating and air contractor and you have a website.  A search engine optimization company would typically try to optimize your website for certain keyword phrases that include your city name that your prospects would be likely to use to find your service.  If you’re in a large metro area such as Atlanta, they would optimize for every suburb, city, town, county, area, etc.  For example, an SEO company in this case would probably try to optimize your website for the keyword phrase, “Dunwoody heating and air, Sandy Springs heating and air, Marietta heating and air,” etc.  However, the actual keywords they would choose would be based on extensive keyword research to know precisely which keywords people actually use, because simply what you think they may use versus what the data says they actually use can often be quite different.

They would accomplish this through a number of methods, but most would focus on optimizing the content of your website so that it includes your keyword phrase in all the right places and so that you have good internal linking, site header information, etc. Then they’ll work hard on creating backlinks to your website scattered all around the internet, and if they’re really good they’ll use some additional techniques to make Google think that your website is the most important one for your keyword phrase. Eventually, your website should end up somewhere near the top of the list on Google page one—remember, Google only has 10 websites displayed on page one*.

Search Engine Marketing Success is an ongoing process.

If you really want to dive deep into SEO and Search Engine Marketing Success, visit Moz as they are the ultimate experts in this specific area.

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