How to Start the SEO Process?

Getting Started

The first step is to choose the keywords that you believe your target audience will search for.

Optimizing Page Content

Making a Good page title

Avoiding Spam In Your Content

Is Your Content Relevant?

The Description META Tag

Navigational Links

Part 1. Keyword Optimization

The first step in a search engine optimization campaign is to choose your keywords or keyword phrases for each of your web pages. Keywords are the terms that search engine users type in the search box to conduct a query. The right keywords are those that: clearly describe the purpose and content of your site, and, allow your site to show up as close to the first results page as possible.

A good position doesn't depend only on your choice of keywords. It also depends on how well do you position those keywords in your web page, and how many quality external pages link to you. However, choosing the wrong keywords can throw off your entire search engine optimization strategy, so you need to invest a few hours and make sure you do it right.

Let's start with your homepage. Look at it carefully and write down the words and phrases that best define your site. Try to form two or three word phrases, since competition for one-word keyword phrases is fierce, and it is virtually impossible to get a top position for them. That is why, from now on, we will talk about keyword phrases, not keywords.

Once you have developed your list of potential keyword phrases you are ready for the next step: to analyze the demand and supply for those keyword phrases, and choose the best ones (those with good demand and not enough supply).

We will first check the demand for your selected keyword phrases. For this, we will go to WordTrackers Search Term Tool.

Overture is another popular pay-per-click search engine (as we know, pay-per-click search engines are the only ones that disclose keyword popularity for free). You will then type each of the keyword phrases you selected, and see how many people search for those terms. This tool will show you only those searches conducted in Overture (and only in one month time). However, the relative popularity of each search term will be very similar in other search engines as well.

In addition to telling you if your selected keyword phrases are popular, this tool will show you other keyword phrases that you may not have thought about, which may even be more relevant to your site. For example, if your first keyphrase was "Italian Restaurant", the Search Term Suggestion Tool will also display other popular search terms, like: "Gourmet Italian Restaurant", "Northern Italian Restaurant", "Italian Restaurant Pizzeria", "Italian Restaurant Miami", etc. You may also try other keyword phrases, for example: "Italian Cuisine", and come up with more specific keyword phrases, like: "Fine Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Miami", "Northern Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Fine Dining", "Gourmet Italian Cuisine", etc.

What you have done is to validate and enlarge your pool of popular, in-demand, potential keyword phrases for your web page.

The next step is to check the supply, or, in other words, to see how much competition there is for your selected keywords. Naturally, you want to focus on keyword phrases where competition is less fierce. For example, choosing "Italian Restaurant" alone will certainly hurt you. There are so many of them that your chances of showing up in an advantageous position within the search results are pretty slim.

Having said that, get your list of keyword phrases, go to Google ( http://www.google.com ) and type-in each of them in the search box. Enter your keyword phrases within quotation marks (to filter-out less relevant results), and see how many results each individual query produces, making a note of those with a relatively small number of results (less competition). You will stick with the keyphrase that:

1. Best describes the topic and content of your page.

2. Is a popular search term according to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool.

3. Generates a relatively small number of results after performing the Google search.

If "Gourmet Italian Restaurant" is the keyphrase that best meets these three criteria, it will become your primary keyphrase. To get even better results, you can choose a second keyphrase to make your page more relevant to an even more specific niche. For example, if your restaurant is in Miami, you can consider " Miami" a second keyphrase.

Once you have chosen the keyword phrases for you homepage, do the same for the other pages on your site.

You will then take your selected keyword phrases and optimize your pages heavily for them. This involves placing them in strategic locations in the title, headings and body of each page.

PART II: WEB PAGE OPTIMIZATION

Once you have chosen your keyphrases, the next stage is to optimize your page for those keyphrases. You do that by positioning your keywords in strategic locations within your page. What follows is a checklist of tips and steps you must complete to optimize your page:

Keyphrases in the web page title :

Create a descriptive title for your page. Your web page title is very important because it is what the search engines display as link text as the result of a search. The title must include your main keyphrases, while at the same time it must describe your business very well and should entice readers to click on it.

1. Unless your business is big and well known (like Microsoft or Coca Cola) don't start your page title with the name of your company. Start your title with the words search engine users will most likely use, and those are your keyphrases.
2. Put your main keyphrase at the beginning of your page title (keyphrase prominence) and keep your keyphrase together (keyword proximity) .
3. Put your second keyphrase somewhere else in the title.
4. Make the title short (8 words or less).

Keyphrases in your Keyword Meta Tag : Search engines rarely use the Keyword Meta Tag any more (Google completely ignores it). However, place a list of your main and secondary keywords in the Keyword Meta Tag of your page, just in case search engines decide to use them again in the future.

Keyphrases in your Description Meta Tag : The Description Meta Tag is still important, since some search engines use them to elaborate on the results link. Remember to:

1. Include your keyphrases (main and secondary) in your Description Meta Tag.
2. Make your description descriptive, concise and professional. Avoid using hype.
3. Make it short (25 words or less).
4. Don't make your description sound just like a collection of keywords.
5. Keep your keyphrases together.

Keywords in the body of your page : It is important to use your keywords heavily on your page, since this will help the search engine determine the topic of your page. Follow these tips as much as possible, since they will help search engines determine your page's relevance to your chosen keyphrases:

1. Use your keyphrases several times, and place them as close to the top of the page as possible.
2. Place your keyphrases between Header Tags (H1, H2 or H3) in the first two paragraphs of your page.
3. Place your keyphrases in bold typeface at least once.
4. Repeat your keyphrases often to increase your keyphrase density. Repeating your keyphrases between 5 to 10 times for every 100 words in your page is considered effective.
5. Since you have to repeat your keyphrases often, you must be especially careful not to make your text sound awkward. Your visitors should be able to read your page fluently and effortlessly. Remember that ultimately it is your readers who will decide if your page is worth the time they spend on it. A pleasant experience will make them more likely to come back. A good resource on how to write search engine friendly copy without losing readability is this special SEO writing report by Jill Whalen.

Other Web Page Design Considerations :

* You must make your page easy to navigate by the search engines. Search engines heavily favor text over graphics, and HTML over other editing formats.
* Use text heavily, especially in your navigation bar. Avoid placing text in graphic format since the search engines won't be able to read it.
* Avoid frames. Search engines have trouble following them, and they may index only the framed content page and not the navigation frame.
* Avoid Flash and Javascript: search engines don't follow either one. If you use flash, make an HTML version of your site available to your readers and the search engines. If you use a Javascript navigation menu, include an alternate text menu at the bottom of the page, so it can be followed by the search engines.
* Create a Site Map that includes all the pages in your site, and place a Site Map link close to the top of the homepage. When the search engine follows the site map link, it will find and index all the pages in your site!
* If you use a left navigation bar, the search engine will read it before the body of your page. Make sure you include your most important keywords there, too.
* Make sure that all your internal pages link to your homepage. g. Don't try to describe all your products or services in one page. It will confuse the search engine and dilute your page's relevance to your selected keyphrase. Instead, create different pages, each with its own content and keyphrases, and optimize them too.

This is pretty much all you have to do to make sure that your page is optimized for your chosen keywords. The next and final step to increase your site's ranking is to get as many links to your site as possible, from quality sites that have a topic related to yours.

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SEO Checklist. Crucial SEO Points To Keep In Mind

This lÃst, put together with the everyday webmaster in mind, drives home some absolutely crucial SEO points that you should keep in mind when optimizing your pages for valuable search rankings.

1. Check Search Engine Crawl Error Pages

It's important to monitor search engine crawl error reports to keep on top of how your site and its pages are performing. Monitoring error reports can help you determine when and where Googlebot or another crawler is having trouble indexing your content - which can help you find a solution to the problem.

2. Create/update robots.txt and sitemap files

These files are supported by major search engines and are incredibly useful tools for ensuring that crawlers index your important site content while avoiding those sections/files that you deem to be either unimportant or cause problems in the crawl process. In many cases we've seen the proper use of these files make all the difference between a total crawl failure for a site and a full index of content pages which makes them crucial from an SEO standpoint.

3. Check Googlebot activity reports

These reports allow you to monitor how long it's taking Googlebot to access your pages. This information can be very important if you are worried that you may be on a slow network or experiencing web server problems. If it is taking search engine crawlers a long time to index your pages it may be the case that there are times when they "time out" and stop trying. Additionally, if the crawlers are unable to call your pages up quickly there is a good chance users are experiencing the same lag in load times, and we all know how impatient internet users can be.

4. Check how your site looks to browsers without image and JavaScript support

One of the best ways to determine just what your site looks like to a search engine crawler is to view your pages in a browser with image and JavaScrÃpt support disabled. Mozilla's Firefox browser has a plug-in available called the "Web Developer Toolbar" that adds this functionality and a lot more to the popular standards-compliant browser. If after turning off image and JavaScrÃpt support you aren't able to make sense of your pages at all, it is a good sign that your site is not well-optimized for search. While images and JavaScrÃpt can add a lot to the user experience they should always be viewed as a "luxury" - or simply an improvement upon an already-solid textual content base.

5. Ensure that all navigation is in HTML, not images

One of the most common mistakes in web design is to use images for site navigation. While for some companies and webmasters SEO is not a concern and therefore they can get away with this, for anyone worried about having well-optimized pages this should be the first thing to go. Not only will it render your site navigation basically valueless for search engine crawlers, but within reason very similar effects can usually be achieved with CSS roll-overs that maintain the aesthetic impact while still providing valuable and relevant link text to search engines.

6. Check that all images include ALT text

Failing to include descriptive ALT text with images is to miss out on another place to optimize your pages. Not only is this important for accessibility for vision-impaired users, but search engines simply can't "take a look" at your images and decipher the content there. They can only see your ALT text, if you've provided it, and the association they'll make with the image and your relevant content will be based exclusively on this attribute.

7. Use Flash content sparingly

Several years ago Flash hit the scene and spread like wild fire. It was neat looking, quick to download and brought interactivity and animation on the web to a new height. However, from an SEO standpoint, Flash files might as well be spacer GIFs - they're empty. Search engines are not able to index text/content within a Flash file. For this reason, while Flash can do a lot for presentation, from an accessibility and SEO standpoint it should be used very sparingly and only on non-crucial content.

There are over 200 signals analyzed by search engines, creating an endless combination of tactics and strategies that can be employed to achieve exposure, rankings, andâ€”by far the most importantâ€”conversions.

To successfully deploy these tactics and strategies, however, requires a tremendous investment of time. To say that SEO is a full time job is a vast understatement. One can spend weeks or months dedicated to learning and employing just the more common aspects of SEO. Add to that quality copywriting, link building, usability testing, data analysis, and the myriad of social networking opportunities that seem to spring up over night, and you can see why today's SEO is not just one, but several, full time jobs!

Deciding how, when and where to invest

Because of this, search engine optimization can seem to be a daunting task for many small business owners. On the one hand, to hire a good consultant or firm can cost more than a small business owner has budgeted for marketing for the year. On the other hand, to attempt to perform optimization in house, one finds that there is often an insufficient amount of time available to do that and run the business while being effective at both. There are only so many hours in the day!

What options are available to the small business owner in the vast landscape of online marketing? The way I see it, there are only two real choices. You either do it yourself, or you pay someone to do it for you. Either way, you have an investment to make, and you must ask yourself, what makes the most sense for your current situation.

What many small business owners fail to understand is that in order to succeed online a significant investment must be made. Gone are the days when you could throw up a website and expect to become an overnight success. Most of today's overnight business success are back by investments in time, money, resources or any combination of those. While starting and running a business online is easier than off-line, the investment considerations should be no less. And with that, you must decide how, when and where to invest your resources, whether those be financial, personal time, or whatever else you have available to you.

Setting goals to achieve the desired result

What can an SEO firm accomplish for you? If one chooses to hire a consultant or firm, you must consider what that firm will ultimately provide you. Making such a choice on budget considerations alone is a decision based on faulty logic. You must choose a firm based on the tasks you want accomplished. If "top rankings" are your desire, then you can probably hire relatively cheaply. But if you are looking for a more solid marketing plan that considers reputation and conversions as a measure of success, you'll likely shell out a lot more.

What can you expect to accomplish yourself? Conversely, if a small business owner chooses to optimize the site themselves, I suggest taking baby steps through the process. Set aside a specific amount of time each day dedicated to the education and implementation of SEO strategies. Don't worry about the "big picture" but instead start by focusing on the on-page aspects of search engine optimization.

As you learn, don't take a single source as gospel. Find multiple sources that can confirm each other and also take in contrary opinions. These can only serve to confirm what you believe is the right approach. But most importantly, learn by doing, testing, and analyzing what you have done. Don't expect big immediate payoffs, but be patient as you work through the SEO process and its implementation of your site.

Depending on the size of your site and the amount of time you can dedicate to it each day, it may take several months to a year to "perfect" the on-page optimization. At that point, its time to start learning more about the off-page factors. Again, baby steps are required here lest you become overwhelmed. SEO is literally a sea and if you try to take it all in you'll likely drown in it. Instead, just take a small area to learn and master as best you can before moving on.

The decision you make in how best to invest your optimization campaign is of great consequence to the long-term success of your business. It doesn't matter if its in-sourced or out-sourced, either way, realistic expectations must be in place and your decision must be based on the ability to meet those expectations.

As a small business owner, you have to move forward in a way that is best for you, not just today, but a year from now, and five years from now as well. In any case, never be afraid to step beyond your boundaries if you believe the yield will be beyond your expectations. There may be over 100,000,000 ways to invest in SEO, but you only need to find one that works for you.