5 Quick Steps to increase traffic to your site via Search Engine Optimization

I wanted to write a simple article on SEO or Search Engine Optimization. I have a lot of people coming to me and asking how they can improve their ranking and drive more traffic. Time and again, the people I am working with haven’t done these basic steps required to drive traffic. I wanted to take a few minutes to break down SEO and to show how it can be made quite simple. This isn’t to say I don’t have a lot more advanced tricks up my sleeve, but this will at least get you on the right path.  More importantly, it will help you to start driving traffic to your site.

1. Do some basic analysis – Want to get more traffic to your site? Start by understanding what people are searching for. With all the tools currently available, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t be able to understand what people are searching for.
   1. Get the Tools – Start by getting a Google Analytics account. Using this account you can use the Google keyword predictor to see what are the relative searches on different keywords on a monthly basis.
   2. Pick 20 Keywords – Once you see the list and the searches, pick keywords to optimize against. If you try to pick all of them you will water down your site too much (unless you know what you are doing). You want to pick keywords that you think you could convert on and have a chance of ranking on in Google.
   3. Analyze – Analyze your current site against those 20 keywords that you just picked and figure out where the deficiencies are. Which keywords could be mapped against existing content? Am I missing content? If so, what? You need to ask yourself all of these questions at this step.
   4. Localize – If you are trying to capture a local market, use local markers like cities and neighborhoods to further refine your keywords. Adding your location to Google Places is also extremely handy for driving traffic, especially when people are searching on Google Maps.
2. Create Content – Content is king (yes I just broke out that cliché, mostly because it is true). Text, video and images are your weapons. If you have all 3, you are set.  Start by tailoring good text around the keywords. Don’t write for the search engine, but don’t keep the search engine out of mind when you are writing them. If you have images, rename them to your keywords. Take the time to implement Alt and Anchor text throughout the site. Alt text refers to alternative text that tells the search engine what an image is, anchor text refers to additional text attached to a link to give the search engine more context of what a link is. Video is also important.  If you have video, make sure to title it appropriately along with the correct link back to your site when you upload to YouTube. Video can really help boost a search position of the site. In anything you do you need to define your meta information. Meta information is contextual information that Google reads to understand what the site is about. It is typically made up of four things:

• Title Tag – What is the title of this page
• Meta Description – Give a brief description of the page
• Meta Tags – Keywords used within this tag
• H1 Tag – while not technically meta information, it is important. It is your first heading within the content of the site and is very important.

3. Create some links to your site – Google needs to know that your site is worth visiting. One of the key methods to achieve that is by creating other links back to your site. A link back to your site is a vote in Google’s eyes that your site is worth visiting. Some quick places to create some meaningful links back to your site are Yahoo Answers, Quora or other people’s blogs. A really quick way to get a link is to respond to someone’s question and use your website as part of the answer

4. Create a simple navigational structure on your site –In order for Google to see all of your content once it gets there, you need a simple navigational structure. Make sure that Google can get to multiple pages from anywhere in the site. You want someone to be able to get through 90% of the site in 2-3 links. Ensure all of those links are as descriptive as possible so Google knows what kind of content it is visiting. Most WordPress sites allow for an integrated menu system that will save you time.

5. If you try to game Google you will be caught – There are a lot of ways to try to cheat or trick Google. If you try to play these games you are going to get caught. You might get a temporary boost in traffic, but then you will find that you get pushed to the back of the pack. This is also referred to as Black Hat SEO. Play by the rules and you will be rewarded. Your interest is to build a strong relationship with Google by playing by the rules.

Bonus SEO Tips:

1. Keep all of your urls lower case. I won’t bore you with the details but you can learn all about it here – Canonical URLs
2. Find broken links – You don’t like running into them on other sites, why would a Google spider bot like finding them on your site?
3. Regularity is the key – Google likes to know you are putting out regular content. This is the key to getting Google spiders to come back to your site time and again.
4. Check your domain expiration date – Google has no way to knowing whether you are planning on renewing your domain. If it sees that in 3 months your domain is going to expire, it perceives that maybe the people running this site aren’t serious and therefore give it a lower ranking.

I have been doing SEO since the dawn of time, more specifically 1994. I am not the best at it, but I have been able to consistently drive triple or quadruple digit growth in whatever website I touch via SEO. If you have any deeper questions and are curious on how to drive real traffic to your site, please feel free to contact me.