Always Buy Local

Eric May

What Not to do...

DO NOT Try and outsmart the search engines.
Do you really believe your "experts" are smarter than 20,000+ Google employees?

DO NOT Play games.
What happens when your cunning "plan" quits working? And you get booted.
10 years ago I was following the "rules" and had the #3 spot for "Art" on Yahoo. The "rules" changed and I went away. So did my business.

DO NOT pay somebody $$$$$ per month for "Guaranteed 10 Ten Rankings!"
Just think about it. IF they could actually pull this off - Do you really believe they're just going to do it for You and 9 others?

SEO  -  Doing it the Right Way!

You help people who help you... Right?

Search engines help people/businesses who help them. Here's the deal: Search Engines want to make money. They want your money and they want good content (which also makes them money). Give the Search Engines good content and some of your advertising dollars and they will Love you!  Simply put You get great rankings.

Your Home Page: and pretty much every other page on your site

Step 1: Decide Who You Are.
Define your offering in 10 key words or less. Follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of your profits come from 20% of your offerings.
Don't make the mistake of trying to "build" your business by "pushing" products you just know should sell better on your home page. You'll loose the bird in hand for the two in the bush.
IF you don't know who you are, neither will the search engines.
Much More about this in SEM Article!
This is the headline of your home page.

Step 2: Find out what your customers call "it".
What is "it" that you do or sell?
You are an "industry insider" - don't assume your customers know or use, your vernacular.
IF the correct term is "thing-a-ma-jig", but your customers call it a "widget".  It's up to you... do you want to be right? Or profitable?
Make sure you call "it" by the name your customers use.

Step 3: Tell the Search Engine who you are.
A) Your Domain Name and the Title of your home page are the first steps in telling a Search Engine who you are.
B) Followed by your headline on the page.
C) Followed by the first paragraph and/or bullet points.
D) Meta information is also be helpful. But not nearly much as it once was.
E) Robot meta information - tells the search engines to index your site
Don't worry too much about that one. Unless your web designer Hates you there isn't a "do not search" in your meta Information.

Step 4: Key Word Loading
This is Extremely straight forward - If you want to show up in the search engines under "Super Widgets" You MUST use the words "Super Widgets" on your home page. The more times you use "Super Widgets" the more the Search Engine is going to believe Your website about "Super Widgets."
Important!!!!! Don't Go Overboard! It's called Search Engine Spamming and will get you kicked off the Engine. There are lots of "rules" and "guides" and percentages that SEO pros quote. Here's a simple one -- don't use pronouns. If you make widgets call them widgets every single time you have the opportunity to call them widgets. See I said it 3X in one sentence. Oops, my bad, I meant widgets not it. Up to 4X...

Step 5: Search Engines are BLIND!
Search engines can ONLY read text. They can't see pictures and they can't read text in pictures or in pretty graphics. Or in Flash! IF the only thing on your home page is a beautiful Flash Animation - You don't exist! If you've ever wondered why some sites have a second set of menu links at the bottom of the page this is why. The Search engines can't read their pretty menu. So they have to put on a second set of text links - or they only have a 1 page website.

Here's a couple fun exercises at this point.
1) Go up to your browser menu and click on the View menu / Page Source. This is what this page looks like to the search engines. Now try the same thing on your home page. Can you tell its your home page? IF not neither can the search engines.
2) Try and highlight and copy the menu on the left hand side of this site. See it highlights! Because it's text. Which the search engines can read.
3) Try it on the top menu. Still works. The search engines can "see" where they're going. They really like that.

Step 6: Label your pictures & graphics The "alt= " tag next to every graphic in the html tells the search engine what's in the picture.
Roll over my picture. See the text that comes up. That's the "alt" text. This can also be used for Keyword loading. Again - be honest! IF you're showing a picture of a widget - label it a widget. IF it's not - don't. That would be spamming and you will get caught.

Step 7: Content is King!
The more content you have on your site the higher your rankings are going to be. IF you say widget 20 million times on 1 million pages. I'll bet anything your #1 in Google. I don't care how many incoming links the competition has. IF you have no hope of putting up more content than the competition - You have to read the SEM article. You should also look into getting a DB (database driven), CMS(content management system style website). In English: You can edit and add as many pages as you like. Seriously they don't cost much these days. Blogging is good.

Step 8: Incoming Links
The second best thing you can do for your rankings is to get site with similar content to link to your site. This site is a perfect example! It has lots of content. Businesses similar to yours. And best of all it's Free! So here's one for you right now. Go take 2 min. and sign up. Make sure to come back when you click on the confirmation email and add your website to your listing! BTW this site will also add you into a custom Google Search Engine. We're pretty sure that's even better than a link. And yes, I did build this site. So What? It's still going to do you a lot of good!
For more places please read Local Listings - The Secret Backdoor

Step 9: Bonus Points
Ever been to a site that has great graphics at the top of the page and a bunch of copy, that nobody is ever going to read at the bottom.    ;-)
If you aren't grinning - please return and reread Step 4

Those are the basics. Seems pretty straight forward - Right?
BE Good • Do what the SE's want • And You'll have great rankings.
Well until everybody starts doing it. In the meantime Your going to do quite well with these tips.

I recommend reading on with  SEM - Search Engine Marketing.