What the Heck is SEO? Series Post 7: Link Building Strategies

10 Sure-Fire Ways to Build Quality Links to Your Website or Blog

In my last two posts in this series, we talked about the critical imortance of both links and keywords.

But once you're aware of the importance of those two things, the next question is always, So where am I supposed to get all these links from? The purpose of this post is to give you some ideas in that regard!

"Where am I supposed to get all these links from?"

Getting a link to your website can be as simple as finding a cool website or blog related to yours, emailing the owner, blogger, or webmaster, and asking "Hey, would you consider linking to my site?". Obviously, when you're just starting out with your off-page SEO and link building efforts, this can be a daunting task. And the fact is, link building is a tedious, time-consuming pain-in-the neck . But it is absolutely essential to success!

"Link building is a tedious, time-consuming pain-in-the neck . But it is absolutely essential to success!"

So where should you start? Below, I've outlined some sources of links that you may or may not be aware of, roughly in order from lower quality but easier to get to hard to get, but very high quality (I'll be talking more about link quality in an upcoming post on Page Rank):

1. Friends and contacts in your field - If you have a business with a website, chances are you have a few friends, relatives, or business associates who also have websites or blogs. Drop them a line (or better yet, call them) and ask nicely for a link! A few potential sources of quality websites in this category that come to mind are:

• Suppliers - If you sell widgets, and you buy all of your widget parts from Widget Warehouse, why not ask them for a link? After all, the more widgets you sell, the more widget parts you'll buy from them!
• Customers - Do you have a few regular customers who want to see you continue to succeed so you can continue to serve their needs? Do they have a website? There you go.
• Partners - If you install drywall, but your buddy Joe always does the framing first, and your pal Steve usually does the painting afterwards - why aren't your websites all linked up so you can share the love?

2. Online forums and communities - Are you active in any online message boards or forums in your industry? Many of these will allow you to put a link in your signature. These are not high quality links, but they couldn't be easier to get. (Note: Please do not join a forum just for the sake of link building - this is called spam and everyone hates it. Rather, join, engage, and be an active participant in these communities. You might actually learn something or make a connection that pays huge dividends. That is the point - the links are secondary.)

3. Competitors in another market - One of the Catch-22's of link-building is you need links from sites that are related to yours, but if the site is related to yours, that often means they are a competitor and aren't likely to want to help you with SEO! Ahh, but what about the competitor in another market? If you sell used cars in Tampa, why not get links from used car dealers in California and Nebraska and Massachussetts...you get the idea!

4. People who linked to your competitors - Now we're getting down to the nitty gritty. Did you know that with just a little effort, you can get a list of all the web pages that have linked to a particular website? One of my favorite tools for this is Wordtracker's Link Builder software (affiliate link - note that they have a 7-day free trial!). You just put in the URL of a website, and bam - you've got a list of all the sites that linked to them. Chances are if they were willing to link to your competition, they can be convinced to link to you as well!

5. Directories - There are millions of directories on the internet. From huge, multi-disciplinary directories such as internet yellow pages to narrow theme-specific directories such as this directory of dog poop scoopers (trust me, if there is a directory for pooper scoopers, there is probably a directory related to your industry as well!).

Directories range from free sites where you just submit your site and it shows up in a day or two, to paid services with different levels of service and exposure based on your membership level. These can be excellent places to get links.

No mention of directories would be complete without a mention of the big three. DMOZ, The Yahoo Directory, and Best of the Web (BOTW) are all large, widely respected directories that search engines have traditionally given lots of weight to*. [I also like NoMoz.org, but opionions vary on how much respect it gets from the major search engines]. These range from free but nearly impossible to get listed in (DMOZ) to very expensive but quick and easy to get listed in (Yahoo).

*Search engines have traditionally given substantial weight to links from established directories for the simple reason that search engines are robots. Conversely, well-run directories are edited by human beings, who at a minimum should ensure that your website is 1) legitimate and 2) listed in the appopriate catagory in their directory. So if the Yahoo Directory lists your site under the category Small Businesses > US > Florida > Tampa Bay > Pinellas County > Home Repair > Plumbing, Google and Bing safely assume that your website is in fact about a Plumber in Pinellas county, Florida. The concept is the same for smaller directories.

6. Chambers of Commerce - Many small business owners are members of their local Chamber of Commerce. But many of these business owners fail to take the logical next step of ensuring their business information and website are listed in the Chamber's online membership directory. Much like internet directories, Google and Bing give a lot of weight to links from Chambers of Commerce. It is almost always worth the extra time and/or additional cost to ensure a link to your website is included with your chamber listing.

7. Press Releases - Assuming you have something of interest to say about your business (a new product or service launch, a new location opening, an award you recently won, an upcoming event you are hosting or sponsoring, etc.), press releases can be an incredibly effective way to get links to your site as well as traffic. A well-written and properly distributed press release can get you mentioned in places such as Yahoo News, Google News, and industry-specific blogs and websites, and can even result in coverage of your news or event by local meda outlets. Check out my press release page for more inofrmation.

8. Blogs and Websites in Your Field - Well, duh! This kind of goes without saying at this point, but you might be surprised at how many bloggers and webmasters maintain a "Blog Roll" and/or a "Links Section" and will happily link to websites or blogs that they feel are of interest to their readers - don't be afraid to ask!

10. Guest Posting - As a small business owner, you have expert advice and experience in your industry that has value. Often, the best way to share that advice is by blogging. If you don't already have a blog of your own, start one.  And once you do, and have spent some time and energy building up the content and readership of your own blog, the next step is to look for opportunities to guest post on other blogs.

"Guest Posting is the holy grail of link-building."

Guest Posting is the holy grail of link-building. By writing a post for a respected blog in your industry, you not only get the customary link back to your own website or blog, but you also get traffic (via said link) to your site from a respected blog in your industry. And the owner of the blog gets free content that keeps readers engaged and interested in their own blog. It truly is a win-win if done correctly. One of the best resources I can offer on how to do it correctly is this e-book on Guest Blogging.

This concludes my rundown of the top ten places to get links to your website. Do you have an 11th? Or a question about how to go about asking for a link? Feel free to leave a comment below!

And stay tuned for my next post about the Top 10 Places Not to Get Links From!

By the way, have you joined The Nifty 150 yet?

An Englishman's Guide to SEO

1. Do you have a website?

2. Do you want it to rank well in Google?

3. Do you have 18 spare minutes?

4. Do you like British accents?

If you answered "yes" to the above questions, then boy do I have a treat for you! Make yourself a cup of tea, press play, and enjoy the video below. It was put together by Mike Mendel of Wordtracker.com, and is a perfect complement to my What the Heck is SEO? Series!

(If you have trouble loading the video, you can watch the original here.)

Click here for more information about the cool SEO tools available from Wordtracker!

Disclaimer: Tampa Bay Search is an official Wordtracker Affiliate.

What the Heck is SEO? Series Post 6: Keyword Research

In my last post in this series, we talked about the power of links. By now you should be starting to realize that SEO is not rocket science or black magic - it's a simple set of guidelines that Google and Bing ask webmasters to follow so they can figure out what web pages are about. You're probably eager to start revising your content and building links that contain your keywords. But what are your keywords? And how do you know which keywords to use?

This post will provide a brief introduction to the concept of keyword research, and show you a couple of tools for getting the job done.

"SEO is not rocket science or black magic - it's a simple set of guidelines that Google and Bing ask webmasters to follow so they can figure out what our web pages are about"

While Google and Bing are getting very good at semantic analysis, the fact remains that using the right keywords can make the difference between getting lots of traffic and new business, or having a beautiful website that no no ever sees. The key to using the right keywords is knowing what people actually search for on Google and Bing. And this information is not as top secret as you might think!

I'm going to let you in on a little secret many SEO companies don't want you to know - Google (which you'll recall from my first post in this series has a 70% market share in the U.S.) gives away this information for free! Just follow these easy steps:

• Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.
• Enter some keywords or phrases you think people may search for.
• Have fun playing around with Google's keyword tool and exploring the many phrases people actually search for on Google. The tool is actually pretty intuituve and user friendly.

Google's Keyword Tool

According to Google:

You can search for keyword ideas by entering a keyword related to your business or service or a URL to a page containing content related to your business or service. Or, you can go straight to filtering keyword categories next to the statistics table. You can use one or the other or both together; the tool is completely flexible depending on how you'd like to use it. Things to try:

• Open Advanced Options to further refine your search by: Country, Language, and Mobile search.
• Relevant Categories will be highlighted in bold to the left. However, you can still select and explore non-highlighted categories.
• Check or uncheck the Keyword Match Types boxes beneath the available categories to further refine your search in the main browser pane.
• Click "Filters and Views" above the results table to customize the columns you see within your results data.
• Add -keyword to exclude the keyword from your search results. (For example, add -classes to a search for tango.)

A special word of caution about the third bullet above (Keyword Match Types) - There are three match types you can select in the Google Keyword Tool:

• Broad Match - Includes traffic estimates for all similar phrases and relevant variations
• Phrase match - Includes traffic for searches that contain the exact phrase
• Exact Match - Includes traffic for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively

If you leave it set to "Broad", the traffic estimates you see will be greatly inflated.

And another word of caution about the Google Keyword tool in general - This tool was designed for use by Google Adwords advertisers, and opinions vary on how accurate the tool is. Obviously, the numbers will be slightly inflated due to the fact that webmasters and business owners frequenlty search for their own keywords to see where their sites are ranked in the search results.

"Using the right keywords can make the difference between getting lots of traffic and new business, or having a beautiful website that no no ever sees."

If nothing else, the Google Keyword tool is great for comparing different keyword combinations and checking their relative traffic. For example, if the tool says the phrase "Tampa Auto Repair" generates 250 searches per month, and the phrase "Tampa Mechanic" generates 25, you can safely assume you'll get a lot more traffic if you rank well for the first phrase. But your actual mileage will vary.

My two favorite things about the Google Keyword tool are 1) it's absolutely free, and 2) it's from Google, so this is about as close to the horse's mouth as you're going to get.

But while this free tool from Google is certainly a good place to start, if you're serious about your SEO and you're looking for something more sophisticated, then I recommend Wordtracker (affiliate link). They have several tools available to help you with keyword research and linkbuilding, and most of them come with a free trial and a moneyback guarantee.

And that's it in a nutshell*. If you do your homework as you begin the SEO process, you'll get a lot more bang for your buck!

So now that you know what your keywords are and you've got them in the right place on your website, you're ready to start building links, right? But how the heck do you do that?

Stay tuned for my next post in this series - Link Building Strategies (or better yet, subscribe to my blog to get it delivered to your inbox).

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*I fully realize that this was a very brief introduction to keyword research. The truth is it's a complex subject that is difficult to cover in a single blog post. I just wanted to introduce you to the idea and show you a couple of tools to get you started. I am planning an in-depth e-book on the subject in the future - please subscribe to my blog and I'll send you a discount code when it comes out!

What the Heck is SEO? Series Post 5: The Power of Links

You've probably received an email recently with the title "Link Exchange Request". Or one from a company in India offering "Link Building Services". You probably deleted them, right?

The fact is, the world wide web was designed to be hyperlinked. Links are the power behind the web. So you should incorporate a systematic and regular linking strategy into your website (and you probably should look at some of those link exchange requests). Why?

If you've had your website up for a while, you know how difficult it is to get visitors or "traffic" to your site. You either have to advertise, or you have to have really good placement in the major search engines. In other words, when people go to Google or Bing and type in "Florida beach vacation rental" or whatever, you want them to find your page listed in the search results, right? Of course you do because this is the best way to get free visitors to your website.

So how does Google know that your site is about "Florida beach vacation rentals (or whatever)?" It knows by what you do both "on page" and "off page." The earlier posts in this series covered 'On-Page' SEO in great detail. But that was kid stuff.

Today, you're graduating to 'Off-Page' Search Engine Optimization!

The problem with 'On-Page' search engine optimization is it's relatively easy. Anyone can do it. And even if you've already done it, there's nothing to stop some snazzy upstart competitor from coming along and doing the same thing. That's why when you get serious about SEO, you have to start talking about 'Off-Page' factors such as links.

"The problem with 'On-Page' search engine optimization is it's relatively easy. When you get serious about SEO, you have to start talking about 'Off-Page' factors such as links."

Google and Bing consider other web pages powerful indicators of the content of your website. For instance, if I have a link on my site pointing to yours, and my linked text says Clearwater Beach Weddings, then I'm providing third-party verification that your site is indeed about Clearwater Beach Weddings.

Imagine the power of 50 sites pointing to yours with the same or similar linked text! No, don't imagine it. I'll show you the power. Right now!

You are familiar with Adobe Acrobat Reader, right? It's the free software that allows you to read pdf files. What would you search for to find the Adobe Acrobat site to download their software? Being a relatively normal human, you'd probably go to Google and type in "Adobe Acrobat Reader" or something like that right? And the site would be either number one in the search results or very close to it.

Proof of the Power of Links to Your Site:

Now try this: Go to Google or Bing and in the search box, type in "click here", and search for that keyword phrase. What website was number one for the search term "click here"? I hope you try this because this is very powerful. Go ahead, I'll wait...

Surprise! The Adobe Acrobat Reader download page is the number one search result for the term "click here"! Now go back and look at the page - notice that nowhere on the Adobe page will you find the words "click here". In fact, the page has absolutely nothing to do with the words "click here"!

So why is it number one in the search results, you ask?

On nearly every page on the internet that has a pdf file to be downloaded, you will find the following instructions: "To download your copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader, click here." The text "click here" is hyperlinked directly to Adobe Acrobat Reader download page on literally millions of web pages. Because the external links say the page is about "click here," that's what Google and Bing assume it's about!

"Google and Bing consider other web pages powerful indicators of the content of your website!"

Imagine the power of 50 or 100 (or 1,000) links from other web pages with your website's keywords all pointing to your site!

I just wanted to show you how powerful linking is so you will be eager to link and be linked to. As you can see, "off-page" links can actually be more powerful than "on-page" strategies. So when another webmaster sends you a link request, consider it carefully. It may be a great opportunity to improve your rankings in the search engines.

But don’t go out and start building links just yet – there are several pitfalls and best practices you should be aware of before implementing your own link-building strategy, which is why you need to subscribe to my blog and make sure you don't miss my next few posts about keyword research and link building!

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Special thanks to David McRee for his assistance with this post. David wrote the original version of this article for his own website several years ago, and was one of my first mentors in the often baffling field of SEO. David was into SEO long before SEO was cool, and is known throughout Florida as The Beach Hunter. He blogs about beaches in the Florida Keys and throughout the state at www.beachhunter.net!

What the Heck is SEO? Series Post 4: Content and Headers

In our last post in this series, we talked about the importance of meta tags when it comes to SEO. In today's post, we're going to get to the heart of the matter - content.

So back to our story in the airport bookstore...

You've got two books in your hand. The titles caught your eye, and the descriptions look equally appealing. How do you decide? Most people at this point will open up the books and scan the content - maybe look at the headings and a paragraph here and there to see if the content of the book catches their attention. Google and Bing do the same thing, except they read and save (index) every word of text on your site!

You may have heard the phrase, "Content is King", but what does that mean? It means that the actual text content of your website is given by far the most weight out of all the factors Google and Bing consider when deciding where to rank your page in their search results!

"The actual text content of your website is given by far the most weight out of all the factors Google and Bing consider when deciding where to rank your page in their search results!"

So what are the secrets to writing good content? They're actually much simpler than you might think:

• Your content needs to contain your keywords. If you want your website to rank on the first page of Google and Bing for the phrase "Dallas wedding photographer", and the text on your page does not contain the words "Dallas wedding photographer", it's probably not going to happen!
• Your content needs to be well written. You can't just repeat your keywords over and over. They need to be sprinkled throughout your content in a natural way. 

Note: There is a metric called keyword density, which measures the number of times a given keyword or phrase appears as a percentage of all other words on a page. Don't worry about it - it's an obsolete metric, and there has never been a set standard for it anyway. If you give a draft of your content to your grandmother or a 10 year-old and they can read it and then tell you what the page was about, I assure you Google and Bing can do the same!

• You need to use variations of your keywords throughout your content. If you're trying to rank for "Dallas wedding photographer", then sprinkle in words like photography and Texas and bridal, where appropriate.

Note: For those of you who just have to know the nitty gritty details, this stems from a search algorithm called 'latent semantic analysis', in which search engines look for semantically related words in addition to your keywords as a signal that strengthens their confidence in your content.

"The secrets to writing good content are much simpler than you might think!" 

Header Tags

Your keywords should also be used in your header tags. Remember in high school when you had to write that dreaded "research paper"? Before you even started writing the paper, you had to turn in an "outline" of your paper to your teacher, right? 

Header tags are very similar to an outline. They are designated by HTML markup and ranked according to importance, as in H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, etc. Accordingly, header tags should be used to break up your content into meaningful sections. It only makes sense that if your page is about Dallas wedding photography, then the sections of the page should be broken down into concepts or ideas that are related to the theme of the page, right? For example:

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Dallas Wedding Photography (this is an H1 tag)

Susie Smith is an award winning wedding photographer in Dallas, Texas...

Engagement Portraits (this is an H2 tag)

Susie offers engagement portraits throughout the Dallas area as part of all of her packages...

Actual Engagement Photo Sessions  (this is an H3 tag)

Click on the links below to see some of Susie's recent engagement portraits...

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So it stands to reason that Google and Bing will look closely at your header tags when trying to determine what your page is about. Thus, you should use them appropriately (and sparingly). Generally, I recommend having only one H1 tag per page, leaving no doubt in Google and Bing's "eyes" as to what each page is about.

If you've read the other posts in this series, by now you're probably starting to see a pattern and realize that consistency is one of the keys to search engine optimization. Your keywords need to be sprinkled consistently throughout your title tag, meta tags, content, and headers.

"Consistency is one of the keys to search engine optimization." 

But there is one other place where your keywords play a crucial role in what Google and Bing think of your website. Stay tuned for the next few posts in this series (or better yet, subscribe to my blog and get them delivered to your inbox), which focus on one of the most misunderstood and misapplied principles of SEO - link-building!

How to Install Google Analytics

Google Analytics is widely regarded as the industry standard for tracking website traffic. This powerful free tool will tell you things like:

• How many people visited your website in a given time period
• Where these visitors came from (i.e. search engines or other websites)
• Which keywords these visitors searched for when they found your website (if they found it via a search engine)
• Where these visitors were located, geographically speaking (as in country, state, city)
• What web browser your visitors were using when they viewed your site
• How long they spent on your website
• Which pages of your site they visited and for how long
• Which pages they entered and exited your site from
• How many visitors completed a "conversion" (as in did something like buy your product or fill out a form or visit a contact page - this is defined by you)

Given that Google Analytics does all this and more, and for free. I find it surprising that only 26% of the websites out there actually use Google Analytics. I figure at least some of the other 74% are small business owners who maintain their own websites and never knew they needed Google Analytics or were intimidated by the process of setting up a Google Analytics account and installing the Google Analaytics tracking script on their website.

Installing Google Analytics is actually a fairly simple process, and I dug up a couple of easy to use resources with step by step instructions:

• For those who need something you can print out and read, try the Google Analytics Installation Guide.
• For those of you who like to be shown how to do it, try this video:

 

Stay tuned or subscribe to my blog for my next post in this series , where I'll talk more about how to actually use Google Analytics!

If you need help figuring out how or where to install your tracking code, feel free to leave a comment below.

If I Only Had $30 to Spend on SEO...

Well that changes things entirely. In that case I'd borrow $10 and spend it all on Ninja SEO School!

(seriously)

What would you spend it on?


Jeff

If I Only Had $15 to Spend on SEO...

I'd borrow $5 and spend the entire $20 on SEO for Dummies by Peter Kent!
(Actual advice I shared with a potential client via email today)

What would you spend it on?

Jeff

What the Heck is SEO? Series Post 2: Title Tags

Welcome to the second post in my What the Heck is SEO? series on Search Engine Optimization for small businesses. You’ve probably never asked anyone “How’s your meta data?”, but I assure you that you will after reading these next few posts!

In my kick-off post titled “What the Heck is SEO?”, we talked about the definition of Search Engine Optimization, search engine market share, the difference between Push and Pull Marketing, and the critical importance of ranking well in the search results on Google and Bing.

This week, we’re going to roll up our sleeves, pop the hood, and start tuning up your website!

Search engines like Google and Bing work by “crawling” the internet with programs called bots or spiders that read the content of a website, taking a snapshot of each page of the site (called indexing or caching), and saving it in an index (a giant database of websites) each time the site changes. Then when you search for something, the search engine compares your search term to the sites in its index, decides which web pages are the best match, and ranks them in its search results.

The actual algorithms used by search engines to make these decisions are closely guarded trade secrets. But search engines publish their standards and guidelines, and search engine optimization professionals are able to make judgments and infer certain factors using these guidelines and good old-fashioned trial and error.

The purpose of this series isn’t to get into the nuts and bolts of how search engines work; it’s to help you improve your website using language and concepts that are easy to understand. So, close your eyes and imagine for a second that you’re going on a business trip...

You’re in the airport waiting to board your flight, and you just realized you didn’t bring anything to read! You wander into the airport bookstore and start browsing for a book to read. You find the section you want, cock your head to the side, and do what?

You read the titles, of course!

Guess what? Google and Bing do the exact same thing! The first place Google and Bing look when trying to determine what a page on your website is about is the Title Tag! The title tag is a snippet of HTML code in each page of your website that looks like this: <title>Title of This Web Page</title>

The title tag is only visible in the header of your browser when you are viewing a particular page, so it is often overlooked by small business owners and web developers when designing their site.

"The first place Google and Bing look when trying to determine what a page on your website is about is the Title Tag!"

The other place your title tag is visible is in search engine results - it becomes the blue hyperlinked text for each search result listed.

So now that you understand the importance of your title tags, what do yours say? If you have never given them any thought or you use a template based website, chances are they say “Home” or “Welcome”, or some other generic term. Obviously, your website has absolutely nothing to do with “Home” or “Welcome”, yet this is the number one mistake that small business owners make when designing their own websites! These generic title tags are just wasted space.

"Generic title tags are the number one mistake small business owners make when designing their own websites!"

Good title tags should reflect two things: 1) What your business does, and 2) Where you are located. They should be concise (no more than 60 characters) and get straight to the point. Here are a few good examples:

• Tampa Wedding Photography by Suzy Brown
• Wedding Cakes in St Petersburg, Florida
• Joe's Plumbing in Clearwater, FL

And keep in mind that each page of your site has its own title tag, so if you have one page about wedding cakes, and another page on your website about cake toppers, make sure the titles reflect this!

"Remember each page of your site has its own title tag!"

So, now that you’re armed with this knowledge of the force, get to work on those title tags (and keep in mind it can take Google and Bing anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to update your site in their index).

Now back to our story in the airport bookstore. You’ve narrowed it down to two books that look promising based on their titles. How do you decide which one to buy and which one goes back on the shelf?

Find out in my next post in this series post on Description Meta Tags, and subscribe to my blog to make sure you don't miss any of the awesomeness!

What the Heck is SEO?

Welcome to my first post in a series on Search Engine Optimization for small business owners.

There is a lot of confusion over Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, and there are a lot of shady characters, spammers, and telemarketers in the SEO business. Unfortunately, this has resulted in many small business owners being skeptical and tuning out as soon as they hear the term “SEO”. This is a shame, and a crucial mistake from a business and marketing standpoint.

Think about it – Who are today’s consumers? Baby Boomers have completely embraced the internet and email, and are heavy users of search engines, and many younger consumers have never walked across the living room to turn the “knob” on a television set, have had a computer with internet access in their household for as long and they can remember, and have never touched the Yellow Pages. Thus, the first place today’s (and increasingly, tomorrow’s) consumers go when shopping around for a small business is an internet search engine.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of planning (for a new website) or revising (for an existing website), a website’s structure and content so that it adheres to the guidelines expected of the major search engines and ranks well in their search results for a particular set of search queries or “keyword phrases”. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now that we’ve clarified that, it bears mentioning just who the major search engines are. In a word, Google! Google currently enjoys about a 70% market share of online searches in the United States. Google’s only real competition is Microsoft, who recently acquired the Yahoo! search engine and is in the process of merging Yahoo! with its own search engine, known as Bing (formerly MSN Live Search). Bing (when combined with Yahoo!) now boasts a 25% market share. All other search portals (AOL, Lycos, Ask.com, etc.) have a market share in the single digits, and many serve search results that are actually from Google or Bing. Thus they really aren’t a factor when it comes to SEO.

“You really only have to worry about Google and Bing!”

So the good news is you really only have to worry about Google and Bing! Furthermore, Google and Bing tend to serve fairly similar search results, so if your site is well optimized for Google, chances are it will also rank well in Bing, and vice versa.

Being ranked highly in the search results on Google and/or Bing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to today’s small business owners. And here’s why: Almost every other form of advertising in the world is based on what I call “Push Marketing”. In other words, you “push” your message in front of a potential customer’s eyes. Whether it’s an ad in a magazine or newspaper, a brochure or business card, or a billboard or sign, the effect is the same; The customer is usually not seeking your product or services at that
particular moment, so they are much less receptive to your message and subconsciously resent having it “pushed” on them.

"Being ranked highly in the search results on Google or Bing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to today’s small business owners."

Search engines turn this process around 180 degrees, and use what I call “Pull Marketing” – the customer is actively searching for your product or service and is trying to “pull” your message in front of their eyes. And once they find what they’re looking for, they usually stop searching and contact the business that seems like the best fit. At that point, all of the more traditional marketing techniques apply. You have to answer the phone when it rings and be responsive and professional in e-mail messages, and you have to have a high quality product or service in order to complete the sale. But the search engine did its job and delivered the customer to your door, telephone, or inbox!

But how do you make sure your message is the one that the customer pulls?

Most people are surprised when I explain to them that Google and Bing want your site to be on the first page of their search results. Why is that? Because Google and Bing must return relevant search results in order to keep users coming back to their search engines.

"Google and Bing want your site to be on the first page of their search results!"

Let’s say your website is about Tampa Wedding Photography (and you are in fact a wedding photographer in Tampa). If I go to Google or Bing and search for “Tampa Wedding Photographer” and your site is not there, then Google and Bing have failed!

However, if I search for “Tampa Wedding Photographer” and your site is one of the top results, and I click through to your site and find exactly what I was looking for, we all win! I’m happy because I found what I needed, you’re happy because a potential new customer found your website, and Google and Bing are happy because next time I need to search for something online, I’m more likely to return to their search engine. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

But how do you let Google and Bing know that your site is about Wedding Photography in Tampa or Plumbers in Clearwater? That is exactly what this series of blog posts will teach you!

The remainder of this series will focus on teaching you what the search engines are looking for and how to optimize your website to rank on the first page of Google and Bing. Subscribe to my blog to make sure you don’t miss my next post about Title Tags!

SEO Like It's 1999

As I was sitting in my office this morning, I glanced over at my bookshelf. On a whim, I picked up my old college marketing textbook, Contemporary Marketing by Boone & Kurtz (1999).

I intended to look up "search engine optimization" in the glossary and see how things have changed. The term was not even listed.

So I looked for "website" or "websites"...again, nothing in the glossary.

I did find a reference to "search engines", and quickly turned to the respective page. The information presented on search engines was in a chapter titled Marketing Research and Decision Support Systems, and was buried in a graphic titled "Online Sources of Secondary Data". Below is the 740 page marketing textbook's reference to search engines in it's entirety:

Search Engines

These search engines can help track down online information on a variety of topics:

• Search.com (http://www.search.com) - This site gives access to over 300 specialized indexes and search engines.
• Metacrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com) - This tool submits your query to nine of the top search engines at once.
• Altavista (http://altavista.digital.com) - This service provides one of the largest search indexes on the web.
• Infoseek Guide (http://www.infoseek.com) - This search index includes millions of listings.
• Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) - This useful search index divides reference sites into logical groups.

So there you have it - everything a marketer needed to know about search engines in 1999!

A couple of questions come to mind:

• Do you notice any big names missing from the list above?
• What (and who) do you think we'll be talking about in 2019?