Search Engine Marketing Guide:
The Twelve Steps

12 Steps to a Successful Internet Positioning Strategy with a focus on SEO

As Pay Per Click costs rise higher and higher it is important to ensure that your website is built properly for the "un paid" listings. A good optimization campaign (SEO ) can bring long term results that would be impractical to pay for by the click unless you have a very large budget. Pay Per Click can be used to test your phrases to see what works well for you, as a supplement to your SEO especially while ramping up and in addition to SEO. PPC when done alone can leave you with no budget left to do SEO, so this lesson focuses on ensuring that your natural results are taken care of from the start.

Before you redesign or build a new Web site, Search Engine Optimization should be considered from the beginning. You should also have a consultant specializing in SEO on hand. This will save significant changes later. A successful internet positioning strategy should be implemented in 12 Steps:

1. Identify goals and audience.
2. Analyze competition.
3. Evaluate site/design with search engines in mind; consider hosting and domain issues.
4. Select keywords based on sound research. (wordtracker.com)
5. Write copy that is keyphrase-rich.
6. Design text-based navigation and interlinking.
7. Optimize page content.
8. Get relevant links from other sites (a big mistake to overlook).
9. Implement hand submissions/registration. (Avoid automated submission services.) (If necessary, buy some paid listings and inclusions in directories/xml feeds.)
10. Implement tracking and reporting (analytics stream mapping).
11. Implement Web site conversion enhancements based on user activity.
12. Balance your campaign by using both paid listings and optimization of your site.

Potential Design/Set Up Problems

• Frames (They cause the engines to index only portions of your intended content.)
• All Flash sites (So far, Flash sites do not index nearly as well as HTML sites.)
• Dynamic content (URLs with "? and /" in them. Use workarounds, such as limiting to two special characters or such techniques as mod rewrite.)
• Image maps for navigation (Use text-based navigation, even if just in the sitemap to ensure that crawlers can find your inner pages.)
• JavaScript for navigation (Again, a sitemap or text links in the footer can help offset this.)
• Flash intros/splash pages (Your first page should be rich with text.)
• Text in graphics (Avoid paragraph headings that are images, or at least use ALT tags.)
• Pages that require registration, cookies or passwords (These can turn the search engine crawlers away.)
• Too much graphics or multimedia above your text

Avoid SPAM (something the engines find deceptive)
Do not do anything to trick the search engines or it may be considered SPAM. As a rule of thumb, if it helps the user, you should be ok. If it is only for helping your search engine ranking, it may be SPAM.

Potentially Dangerous or Unethical Practices

• Cloaking (Showing the search engine a different page than what you show the user.)
• Hidden or invisible text (such as white text on a white background)
• Doorway or gateway pages (pages that are not really part of your website)
• Multiple instances of the same tag (overuse of html tags just for ranking purposes)
• Mirrored/duplicate sites (submitting identical pages with different URL's)
• Keyphrases in your keywords meta tag that do not directly relate to the content of your page.
• Automated submission services (companies that bombard the search engines with submission requests)
• Overuse of keywords (too many instances of a keyphrase in your text)
• Meta refresh tags (using meta refresh code to send people automatically to a new page)
• Link farms (sites that exist only for linking)
• Overuse of rank checkers (This clogs up search engines' resources when you automate search queries on multiple phrases. Do this sparingly, and be sure the programs you use are approved by the engines you run them on.)

Generally Avoid

• Companies that submit over and over to thousands of search engines
• Submitting the same page to any engine more than once within 24 hours will make them mad
• Companies that force you to let them host your site

The Top 5 SEO Myths

1. Meta Tags are the key to high rankings Meta tags were once highly valued and now have limited importance. Write a good meta description and unique short meta keyword list for each page but don't expect these to be a cure-all.
2. I need to resubmit my site to thousands of engines each month. If the search engines already have your pages indexed, it is senseless to keep asking to be listed. Resubmit only the pages that are not indexed. The top 5-10 search engines draw the majority of the traffic, so don't waste time obsessing over the rest.
3. These days, the only way to get traffic is to pay-per-click. Some people feel that, due to so much competition, it is too hard to get ranked through optimization. If you only do pay-per-click, when prices go beyond your reach, you will have no budget left for pay-per-click or SEO. With SEO, at least you have a chance to rank long-term. SEO has the best ROI and is the best place to start with a small budget. Testing your terms first in PPC can be useful, however. If you can afford it, supplement your SEO with PPC, but don't be fooled into thinking PPC is the only option.
4. I can buy software that does it all or automates the process SEO is all about writing good copy, making quality content and testing code adjustments to your pages. Software can aid in suggesting steps to take but can't make important decisions needed to grow your site as a true resource.
5. The more domains I buy the more chances I have to rank well. Having too many domain names just to improve rankings can be considered SPAM.

Top Reasons SEO Campaigns Fail

Targeting the wrong keywords
If you don't include high traffic keywords, you will get ranks but no traffic. If you get ranks for keywords that have high traffic but that you don't supply a great offering for, you will not convert on those phrases. When people type in 3-5 phrase keywords, they often convert really well. So don't just target one word at a time. If you sell Italian leather shoes, you might find the high traffic but high competition phrase "shoes" is less desirable than targeting the phrase "Italian leather shoes."

Not making a complete plan
You need to have all the steps in place from key word research and site-friendly design analysis to optimization and tracking implementation.

Not implementing an SEO's suggestions/code
Not putting new SEO code on your pages or making suggested edits is a far too common reason for poor results. Campaigns need all facets of SEO to be implemented for the full benefits to be obtained. For example, many people promise the SEO to get links but never do. These missing pieces of a campaign can undermine other efforts.

Not tracking and editing based on findings
If you don't analyze your results, you can't expect to make changes that will take the campaign to the next level. Many companies think a "quick fix campaign" should be all they need for SEO and sit around waiting for things to get better without monitoring what is happening. If you want real results, pay for monthly tracking and, ideally, for maintenance. Good SEOs welcome the challenge to track and report on their performance. Most SEOs desire your success but can't always afford to track your results over time for free. Either ask for monthly monitoring for a year to be included in the initial price, or pay for it by the month. In the worst case, you will know when results are failing and why.

Not giving continued input to the SEO
If you don't offer input on why you may not be converting on certain key phrases, your SEO may not be able to discern what keyphrases may be better. Work together using your knowledge of your business and the SEO's research and implementation skills.

Giving up too soon without making adjustments
The companies that say SEO failed are usually the ones that expected to do it once and not make edits to the site. If you track what works and what doesn't and make changes to pages that have lots of traffic but few conversions, you can make more out of the traffic you already have. All most people want is more traffic. But what you should want is to do more with the traffic you have. It can often be easier to make better use of existing customers than bring in new traffic. Also, keep in mind that some campaigns bring results in a matter of weeks or months, while others blossom many months or a year later. Especially with new sites, be aware that rankings can take a while to mature, especially if you have just implemented a links campaign.

Tools

• Wordtracker.com (one of the top tools for key phrase research)
• Linkpopularitycheck.com (a nice tool to check how many links you have in relation to competitors)
• www.google.com/analytics (Free and amazing)
• Clicktracks.com (more of a marketing tool than a full log analyzer, this tool has great charts that are easy to use)

Miscellaneous Tips

• Build lots of content that is useful to your visitors, such as articles, free recipes pages, FAQ's, lessons, free guides, etc. Share your knowledge of your industry, and the search engines will reward you. Create a newsletter and archive the content on your site.
• Use testimonials, especially ones that are keyphrase rich.
• Make sure at least your contact page has your city and state and potential areas that you cover.
• Do not buy multiple domains just for the search engines. If you have multiple domain names there are ways of avoiding domain name spam, such as using proper redirects from your server or using a feeder site to send all the domains to before forwarding to your main domain.
• Run a spider simulator to see what the engines see.