Monday, April 14, 2008  

Many customers ask what they can do to maximize their site's placement in the search engines. This topic is commonly called SEO (search engine optimization) in the industry, and there is no shortage of opinions and advice out there. In fact, there is a highly competitive market of consulting companies dedicated to the pursuit of getting sites on the first page of search results.

This is the first of a three-part post. Each will detail one step of a basic three-step SEO process. It represents what I've learned from experience working with clients of various sizes, as well as getting and keeping this site on the first page of results for my target keywords. That said, I certainly don't claim to be an expert in this field.

In the interest of focus, I will ignore the entire topic of paid search advertising. Search results are often broken into two categories: paid and natural. Paid search results are important, but they represent an entirely different strategy and process. That leaves us with what's commonly referred to as "natural" search results - the ones that you get listed in on the merits of your site and without paying the search company.

Step 1. Define your targets

Before you can gauge whether your site is on the first page of search results, you have to define what you're searching for. The outcome of this exercise will define the difficulty of your task. In other words, the right level of specificity is key here.

To use this site as an example, we would be wasting time trying to be found with the overly general keywords web site. Even the high profile web hosting is so competitive that we'd be setting ourselves up for failure. That's also not really what we do. We landed on wiki hosting, wiki host, and wiki content management. It's what we are and what we do. Most importantly, we want to be found by people searching for a wiki hosting company.

When defining your target keywords, ask yourself the following:

1. Do these keywords specifically describe my web site? Trying to get found with keywords that don't describe your site will be met with failure and frustration.
2. Are they too narrow (returning only a handful of sites) or two broad (returning sites that have little or nothing to do with your own)?
3. When I search these keywords, do they return my competitors? (they should!)

Secondarily, you should include your company and/or product name. While being on the first few pages of results for your target keywords is doing fairly well, you definitely want to be on the first page for your company and/or product name. 

The other side of defining your targets is which search engines you want to be found in. While Google is by far the most widely used search engine, ignoring the likes of Microsoft Live/MSN, AOL, Yahoo! and Ask.com can be a big mistake. Together, these represent about half of all searches. You should also consider any niche search sites that are specific to your topic or industry. Most search engines provide a free method of submitting your site for crawling. There are services that do this for you, but most are a waste of money. By all means, submit your site, but only after you've followed the steps in the next post to get your content optimized.

Continue to Part 2