1. Defining & Building To Fit A Niche
   It’s not uncommon for a website developer to want to dig in and just get a site up as quickly as possible — all while giving little or no thought at all to SEO. This is probably the essential mistake many newbies make, and also the primary reason that SEO pros are called in to help produce traffic later on. The thing is, by researching and defining a specific niche and site plan before building out the site, the other components of good SEO can just kind of fall in place from this foundation. And every organization has a unique niche — it’s just a matter of identifying and capitalizing on it with the website.
2. Following A Keyword Plan
   Keywords are essential to ranking well in the search engines. This means that ideally, each page of a website will be based on a specific keyword phrase or keyword theme. By doing so, the search engines are able to recognize this association and level of focus. It helps if there’s a good keyword plan in place from the very beginning stages of site development. This plan can be used as a map or blueprint to build on as growth continues.
3. Building A Solid & Natural Link Profile
   Links are vital to a well SEO’d website. Obtaining a variety of relevant and natural incoming links to your site from across the web and including links from high-importance sites is often an automatic way to tell search engines that your website matters. And it’s not just incoming links that matter — outgoing links affect SEO too. Most well SEO’d websites have an ongoing plan to develop valuable links.
4. Optimizing On-Site Components
   Optimizing on-site components is about as far as many web designers go (and alone, this along doesn’t get a site too far). Well SEO’d websites definitely pay close attention to the on-site components of SEO — things like meta-tags, sitemaps, clean and compliant code, etc. Doing so is an incredibly important part of a comprehensive SEO plan.
5. Creating Plenty Of Content
   Creating valuable and relevant content is so important to a well SEO’d website — both for human visitors and the search engines. Many folks fall under the impression that once a site is built, the work is done. Unfortunately, this couldn’t be any further from the truth. Good SEO means continuing to develop helpful and informative new content for your site and for use externally to support your site. Content is king.

Don’t believe these five components are necessary? If not, just take a few minutes to look around the web at the most successful, best SEO’d websites you can find. They’re doing things right — and almost always integrating all of the components shared here.

Until Next Time.
George Chaney
President/CEO
SEO King, Inc.

Keyword & Topic Research Tools

The foundation of every successful SEO campaign is building around optimal keywords and keyword phrases. The following keyword tools help to identify opportunity and narrow down the focus when it comes to keywords.

• SEO Book Keyword Tool (http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/) – Free with registration to the site, this keyword tool presents a variety of relevant information from different sources, mash-up style.

• Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) – Get keyword details straight from the "horse’s mouth." A great feature here is being able to enter any site’s URL and data-mining a list of similar keywords to what that particular site is using.

• Wordtracker (http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/) – There’s both a basic free version and a premium paid version of this popular keyword tool.

• Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends) – Great for coming up with new site ideas or following up-and-coming niches.

Competitive Research & Information Tools

A good part of SEO knowledge is understanding the background of what other successful websites are doing when it comes to optimizing for search engines. Oftentimes, studying what your leading competitor is doing can lead you to developing an incredibly successful SEO strategy of your own.

• SearchStatus for Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/321) – In addition to conveniently displaying both PageRank and Alexa ranking for the current site you’re visiting in Firefox, this plug-in gives one-click access to a host of information including Meta-tags, Whois info, keyword density, backward links, and much more.

• SEO for Firefox (http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html) – Free with registration, this Firefox plug-in presents its users with a wealth of competitive research information.

Tracking & Testing

Tracking, measuring, and testing are vital to any SEO campaign. The following tools can help immensely in this process.

• Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) – This free tool from Google is pretty much the authority when it comes to tracking and measuring your website’s traffic details and visitor metrics. It’s free, but does require installation on your website. Also, there’s a bit of a learning curve — but the door opened by the information Analytics provides you with is invaluable.

• Google Website Optimizer (www.google.com/websiteoptimizer) – Another free tool from Google, the Website Optimizer enables you to do A/B testing of two different versions of your site or landing page side-by-side. A great way to improve conversion rate.

• CleverStat Free Monitor for Google (http://www.cleverstat.com/en/google-monitor-query.htm) – This free downloadable tool measures and charts out a website’s Google rank within the SERPs.

In Conclusion…

It’s a good idea to remember that while they can be helpful, none of these tools is perfect; nor can they guarantee success. SEO success begins with good knowledge and good research; but ultimately, practice and experience have a lot to do with it t

Until Next Time.
George Chaney
President/CEO
SEO King, Inc.

One – Building a Website With No Purpose

Yay, you’re on the web.  Why?  If the answer is something along the lines of “all the other kids are doing it,” you’re not there for the right reason.  You want your business website to do something for your business, not just sit there and be pretty.  Be intentional with your web presence.

Two – Not Regularly Updating The Site

I know, I know.  You made the website already, what more could the world possibly want?  Yes, you moved buildings so the address is wrong and the phone number doesn’t work.   Okay, and that link over there misdirects…and that link is flat out broken.  But the website is up, and that’s all that really matters.  Sound troubling?  It is, but by keeping things tidy and up to date on an ongoing basis, there’s just much less to worry about.

Three – Ignoring Customer Needs

Visitors come to your website looking for something.  Please, do the world and yourself a favor—know what your potential customers want and make it easy to find.  Don’t hide data, and don’t forget to make your site easily navigable.  It takes a user about 5 seconds to get annoyed and go search for someone else to give them what they want.  Professionals focus on getting each of these site aspects just perfect—no matter how redundant the process can be.

Four – Failing To Capture Customer Names

Just like with an offline business, many people swing by who are “just looking,” and if you don’t provide an opportunity for them to engage with you, they’ll be gone without a trace.  It doesn’t have to be a free report or newsletter, but you should have some way for your visitors to give you their contact information for a follow up opportunity.  It’s the only way to build an ongoing relationship with the people who find you in cyberspace.

Five – Under-investing In Webhosting

Web hosting packages don’t need to be overly expensive, but they do need to be solid enough to support the data and traffic for the website.  Many businesses have sites that are down or grindingly slow on a regular basis.  You can have the best content, the cleanest layout, and an airtight offer, but none of it will matter if the site is down.  Looking for the perfect solution?  Why not give SEO King Web Hosting a shot—we’re really good at it and we stand behind our hosting customers 100%.

Until Next Time…
George Chaney
President
SEO King, Inc.

Essentially, the sitemaps program is designed to make it easier for the bots to index the content on your site.  If you are already working on getting good organic traffic, as you should be, then this is another tool for your arsenal.  The sitemaps are fairly straightforward to put together (and an essential part of our SEO strategy), plus they offer a number of tangible benefits to you.

Again—Easy Set Up

If you’ve avoided dealing with the sitemaps issue to date because you are worried about the technical side of things, stop.  This is one area where the industry leaders have all gotten together to make things easy.  Though sitemaps may be written in HTML or XML, the industry has officially settled on an XML file format to make things consistent across search engines.  The capacity to create or build the file is part of many professional web development tools.

There are also a ton of piggy-backing applications that do nothing but create the sitemap, sometimes in as few as a 3 – 5 clicks.  The thing that most folks stumble on though is how to go about regularly updating the sitemap and pinging it to the search engines each time there’s a relevant website update or change.  This is where it can significantly help to have the assistance of web development professionals backing you up!

Tangible Benefits

Using sitemaps offers you real, tangible benefits.  This is because sitemaps make it easier for the bots to discover the content in your website and to ultimately reward you for it.  The improved discovery process adds speed to your rise in the search rankings, bolstering your position as a value-added provider.

As your site continues to be indexed, the sitemaps protocol will help prove to the bots that you have a well-organized, useful website that visitors will be pleased to find.  While the industry people working on the latest sitemap system protocols may still be ironing out random kinks across platforms, the long term benefits of its advanced categorization and updating systems will be to your advantage.  If you haven’t tried it yet, I encourage you to take the plunge.

Just let us know and we’ll be happy to sit down and explain how this all works in your favor!

Until Next Time…
George Chaney
President
SEO King, Inc.

Well, it’s actually simple…SEO is the use of techniques that help to optimize the results of searches done online. SEO is just one way of doing internet marketing. The term internet marketing encompasses SEO and many more marketing techniques. While SEO is extremely important, it isn’t the entire story when it comes to getting your website noticed.

If you have an online business, it’s important to create a marketing plan. Many people think they need a large budget to make a marketing plan, but that isn’t always true. Many internet marketing strategies are affordable and easy to do.

Website marketing is the best way to bring traffic to your site and to generate sales. At its most basic definition, SEO consists of using keywords and tags to help search engines rank your site high in results. Internet marketing uses SEO strategies to bring traffic to your website.

Know Your Customer

When you want to start an Internet marketing campaign, you need to first have a good understanding of who your customer is. This will help determine the best places to put ads and how to create marketing materials that appeal to your particular market.

The better you can find your niche market, the better the marketing efforts will pay off. Once you know your customer, you can use good ad placement to attract interest.

Pay Per Click

PPC is a type of online advertising that is useful for generating traffic to your site. With PPC, you place ads that appear on various sites online. Whenever someone clicks your ad, they are taken directly to your website.

You pay only for the amount of times people clicked on your ads each month. You can get reports that will be helpful in determining which of your PPC campaigns is working the best for you. PPC is a quick and inexpensive way to create interest in a site.

Article Submission

Another time-tested way to promote websites is to submit articles online. There are various article submission sites (such as EzineArticles.com and ArticleDashboard.com, just to name a few).

The key here is to make sure that your articles are interesting and informative. They typically need to be between 400 and 500 words in length; and while they can’t contain blatant advertising, they can contain a link to your site along with a site mention in the final paragraph.

Free Giveaways

You can use free giveaways to help attract interest in your site. Free giveaways may consist of e-books, reports, manuals, newsletters, and products or services. Offer giveaways or discounts to people in exchange for their email address.

Signing up on your site gives you a perfect base for future marketing mailings. Send emails regularly to help generate renewed interest in your site.

It Pays To Use A Professional

If all of this is foreign to you don’t despair—that’s why the pros are here!

Until Next Time…
George Chaney
President
SEO King, Inc.