Who's your audience - humans or spiders? SEO tips.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - everyone with a website wants it - but do you know what is it? Or how to get started? Below are some tips that I hope will help demystify the process.

Why SEO?

The goal of SEO is that when someone does a search on a product or service you offer, your website appears in the results of that search. And ideally it comes up on the first page of Google. (The reason you want to come up in the first page is because few people click beyond that.)

What is SEO?

SEO is to websites, a little like what Public Relations (PR) is to print marketing. SEO is often referred to as "organic" marketing, meaning you don't "pay" to advertise your site per se. And Google searches sites using "spiders - or bots" (short for robots) using a certain algorithm meant to encourage the best sites to rise to the top and other sites, well... not so much.

How can you make your content more Search Engine Friendly?
First and foremost, make your content meaningful and interesting to your human audience. They are your PRIMARY audience. The spiders are not your audience, they are how you reach your audience. That's key. Then, beyond that, there are some tips below. 1 through 4 are ones you should be able to do yourself, assuming you have a website you can edit.

1. keywords in page titles: that's considered one of the most important place to put keywords, in the page title. Here's an article about this with some more detail and how to.
2. keywords in head lines: And also consider your headlines - its a great idea to start those out with a couple of keywords, so that's a bit different than writing for humans.
3. keyword frequency on a page: There is no set standard for how frequently to use key words within text - though unlike ordinary writing - repetition of keywords is a good idea. Some experts recommend 4 or 5 keywords within each 100 words of text. Others suggest using keywords or key phrases at least twice for every 400.
   
4. text length: And a well optimized site should have between 250-500 words of text per page. Though be mindful, robots like text and humans like pictures. If you're trying to attract both types of visitors, you need a design that balances both well.
   
5. keywords in domain names, site folders (for html sites), meta tags and links: These are tasks that will more likely have to be done by your web designer.
   

What should you expect from your SEO efforts?

1. Using good SEO techniques should help you increase your web traffic.
   
2. SEO doesn't guarantee you a top page ranking on Google, (which is usually the allure. ironic eh?)
   
3. SEO is an ongoing process not a one shot deal.
   
4. The one-time-only part would be more properly described as making your site Search Engine Ready. That means your web designer did few of those special things mentioned above. But the internet is an ever evolving beast. Key words can be fluid things, what got heavily searched last month, may be less relevant this month. Or perhaps the key word you're hoping to be searched on has too much competition to be effective. Or perhaps you've got a new product or service to introduce, and new key words to go with it... The point is, SEO is something you need to keep up with if you want results.
   
5. Making your site Search Engine Ready is an important function website design. And keeping it Search Engine Optimized - is actually a function of - marketing.
   

Can you do it yourself?

Sure. Do you want to? That depends on your resources, technical curiosity and patience.

Many people suggest that paying a company to do SEO for you is a waste of money. I'm not so sure. Whether you do it, or you hire someone to do it, it takes some time and effort. For some small business owners, its a great hands-on way to learn more about your audience, how to improve your website and how better to serve your target market. For other business owners, its time sapping activity and ultimately a poor allocation of resources. A few business owners I know who "did it themselves" found out first hand just how much time and effort it can take. That's because its not magic, its marketing.

In case you want to try, or just better educate yourself on it... here a few good articles to get you started

1. About creating a key word strategy
2. And the importance of link building
3. See what's really involved in terms of time and money

A few FREE Keyword Resources

1. Google’s Keyword Tool
The Keyword Tool provides keywords suggestions similar to the terms you entered. You can also see the local and global search size on Google. And you can check out what your competition is expected to pay for cost-per-click (CPC)

2. SEMrush

Type in some key words or key phrases and see who how many people search on that phrase and also what your competition is paying for CPC.

3. Key Word Density tool - this tool analyzes key word density of your site

My best advice:
Design a web site keeping the focus on your human audience (and us some of the principles mentioned). Then create and implement a smart targeted marketing strategy and the robots will naturally find you. As your business grows, begin investing in some mix of SEO, SEM and/or Social Media Marketing (SMM) using a professional designer to help you really reach your audience. Then begin to shape your brand.