Raleigh NC| The Big Bad SEO Monster

SEO 101

When talking to clients about their websites, I often get asked, “What about SEO?  What can we do to improve our SEO?”

Let me begin by saying that I do not consider myself a search engine optimization (SEO) expert; that said, I have learned a lot about SEO from my own experiences and by reading information written by the real SEO experts (i.e.: the ones who don’t have to advertise on Google). This is what I tell clients:

Google (from hence forth, when I say Google, I mean search engines) looks at three main criterion in deciding where to rank a Web site:

1) Relevance: How relevant is the content on your website to the keywords searched in Google?

2) Authority: Do other important sites link to you?  What’s your Google PageRank?

3) Longevity: How long has your website been around?

Most people can’t do anything about the last point, so let’s focus on relevance and authority.  How can you increase your website’s relevance?  The first step is doing some research and figuring out the keywords in which you’d like your company to rank.  For help with keyword research check out Google’s keyword tool, or for more robust applications, try Wordtracker.

How can your website become an authority site?  It’s all about the links — creating links from your site to other sites and having other authority sites link to your site.  All links are not created equal.  Domains that end in .edu or .org are worth more, and the Google PageRank is of the site that you are linking to is also considered.  Caveats on linking strategies…

• Do not buy links — Google is cracking down on this.
• Many websites make use of a “nofollow” tag which make the link useless from an SEO perspective (see the related links at the bottom for info on nofollow tags).

Remember that optimizing your website is a process and that taking shortcuts that appear to good to be true can have disastrous long-term effects on your site.  Feel free to rant, rave, yell and even agree with any of the points that I have made in the comments section.  Keep in mind that SEO is forever changing because Google is in a constant tug of war to return the best search results, but the three points above have stood the test of time for improving your websites organic search results.

Photo from Flickr

Related Links

• SEOBook.com
• Google Webmaster Central
• Hang 10 with Comment Kahuna and Backlinking
• Google’s Explanation of NoFollow Tags