SEO or Search Engine Optimization is one internet marketing strategy that any internet entrepreneur would want for their website. Well maybe except for those that really established a strong name over the web, but as for those that started out in ecommerce would really need to learn about SEO. Let’s get to the point, SEO is used as a way to raise a website’s rank in any search engine like Yahoo! and Google (any of the top 10 slots will do, but It’ll be greater if it would be in top 1). By doing so, the possibility of visitors that visits a website would increase, thus increasing sales and profit margin. So long-story-short, SEO is all about increasing the visibility of a website in the world wide web by use of search engines. Now the question is, how do you do SEO?
SEO companies are now available for hire around the world, such as SEO Philippines companies. Some companies have outsourced their SEO needs to these establishments. But it can also be done by anyone that knows basic SEO procedures, even at home. So here is a step-by-step, do-it-yourself, guide on SEO and how to increase visibility in the world wide web.
Step 1: Get Your Keywords
The first step that any SEO Philippines company would do is to research on keywords that perfectly describes the website. Free online keyword research tools like Google Adwords Keyword tool or SEO Book’s Keyword tool are popularly used by many SEO specialists. Highly competitive keywords is the main ingredient in any successful SEO dish. But highly competitive doesn’t only describe single words such as “SEO”, it also emphasizes on the keyword structure, if it really describes the website like “SEO service in the Philippines”.
Note: In a keyword research, always make sure that the keywords are relevant to the website to be optimized. Irrelevant keywords pointing to a website could earn a one way trip to “Ban”svill courtesy of search engines.
Step 2: Know Your Enemies
Well not exactly “enemies” per-se, but competitors. After doing a keyword research, It’s time to look up on your competitors by use of your chosen keywords. Try looking at what SEO tactics or strategies they’ve done. By viewing their source code (ctrl+U for Firefox), you can see the keyword density, meta tags they used, alt tags, and title tags (I’ll explain these later on). To learn the number backlinks (I’ll explain these later on) of a website, try using SEOpen’s free backlink tool, this way you’ll know what you have to beat to gain their spot. Using your competitor’s strength against them is one successful way to succeed in an SEO campaign.
Step 3: Start On-Page SEO
So here we’ll start the first pace of SEO, the on-page optimization. Actually, SEO is divided into 2 parts, the on-page and off-page (which I’ll discuss later on). On-page optimization involves making changes within the website to make it more “search engine friendly”. The strategies and tactics used here are as follows:
* Content Optimization – This strategy involves changing the content of the website, particularly with it’s text elements. One way is to embed the researched keywords on texts found throughout the website, focusing mainly on the headers (those with the big bold letters). It is said that keywords used should be take about 7% of the total number of words in a content. Let’s say you have 400 words in a single page, so 7% of that 400 (which is 28) should be keywords. Note: Make sure that the content is still readable after placing those keywords. Remember that the users are still your prime target, not the search engine spiders.
* Site Map – Site maps are an important part of websites optimized for search engine. This way, search engine spiders (or robots) could easily crawl through the whole website by use of site map. Making it easier for spiders to crawl through the website is one way to make a website “search engine friendly”.
* Meta Tags – Meta tags are comprised of the Title, Description, and Keywords of the website. Other than the content of websites, meta tags are also the perfect place for keywords. The only difference is that these things are like a “Free Buffet” sign for search engine spiders, it’s the one responsible for attracting search engine spiders to crawl your website. But remember that it still depends on the structure of the meta tags.
* Alt Tags – Alt tags are those found in HTML image codes. Let’s say your keyword is “SEO Philippines”, your image tag should now look like this: Just like the meta tags, alt tags are also an appropriate place to put several important keywords. Note: Make sure that only one (1) keyword should be placed on every alt tags found all over the website to avoid keyword spamming (which is part of black hat SEO)
* Title Tags – Like meta tags and alt tags, title tags are also an appropriate place to put some keywords in. By adding a keyword, let’s take for example “SEO Service”, in the title tag, the HTML hyperlink tag should look like this: <a href=”default.aspx” title=”SEO Service Online”> Note: Alt tags are not seen by visitors, only the search engine spiders so it wouldn’t hurt to just leave it with the keyword. But title tags are seen by visitors, so make sure that the title tag is still readable after embedding the a keyword or two.
Step 4: Start Off-Page SEO
Unlike the on-page, off-page optimization involves SEO strategies outside of the website. This part of SEO is divided into two categories, backlinks and public relation strategies. Backlinks are links all over the world wide web that points back to your website. It has long been considered that the many backlinks you have, the more popular you’ll get. Another theory added is the weight or importance of the website where the link is coming from. Tools used to determine the popularity of a website is through Google’s PageRank and Alexa traffic tool. Here are some of the strategies used by SEO specialists to get backlinks.
* Link Exchange – One of the earliest forms of backlinking involves exchanging links with other relevant websites.
* Article Marketing – This type of off-page SEO can be considered both for backlinks and public relations. An article commonly generates an average of 3 links (depending on the kind of article directory it was submitted). It’s also considered as public relations because these articles commonly promotes the business they’re trying to market.
* Blog and Forum Commenting – Forums and blogs are also a popular trend to generate backlinks by using their signatures as links linking back to your website.
* Blogging – Other than commenting on other blogs, creating your own blog and embedding links is another popular way for generating backlinks.
PR or public relation strategies of off-page SEO involves generating traffic not only through search engines but also with other types of media. This type of off-page SEO mainly works by marketing their service through word of mouth. These strategies involves the use of:
* Social Media – Social media such as Friendster, FaceBook, Twitter, and MySpace are the perfect place to start a buzz that could benefit the website through the marketing strategy they call “word of mouth”. Adding a link could also help in getting more backlinks.
* Social Bookmarking – By using the articles in bookmarking sites such as Technorati or Digg, people could easily learn about your services through your article. This is also another way for the articles to gain more importance in the web, thus increasing the chance for your websites to be visited through your articles.
Other forms of off-page SEO is submitting your website to search engine directories. Make sure to submit your URL for free to Google, Yahoo!, Alexa, www.altavista.com, www.alltheweb.com, www.excite.com, www.lycos.com, www.webcrawler.com, www.Jayde.com, www.whatuseek.com, and more. DMOZ and Yahoo Directory listings are tremendously valuable. There are a lot more free and paid search engines and directories to submit, but if you do not have time to search for and submit, you can also use our search engine submission service.
