SEO checklist for beginners

Here is a simple overview and checklist for businesses and individuals just starting the search engine optimization (SEO) process. What is SEO?

The goal of search engine optimization is to create sales through Internet search engines, such as Google. Google has over 70% of the market share and Bing/Yahoo has around 26%. The differences between the results are minimal since each has the same economic incentive: to provide search results that are more accurate and relevant to any given query. Since only 10 will make it to the first page, both Google and Bing are happy to sell advertising so you can get to the first page, even if the search engines don’t think you deserve it.

Most people never get past the first page of search results. Why is SEO important?

SEO is one of the most effective ways for a small business to compete against a large corporation. SEO reduces customer acquisition costs while promoting a business, product, or service to only those people who are interested. This type of promotion is often called “inbound marketing” because it draws people to a business by giving them the information they want, when they want it. In addition, inbound marketing allows an advertiser to understand customers in much greater detail than they can find in advertising in traditional media such as newspaper, television, radio, and direct mail. Each search term (collectively called a keyword) can generate a specific landing page that addresses the unique needs a person is searching for. One of the most important parts of SEO is providing landing pages with a call to action that converts website visitors into potential customers by getting them to “sign up” for more information or to purchase a product. The process of getting people to volunteer information to an advertiser is called “permission marketing.” SEO checklist for beginners:

There are your tools to do this. Here are three of my favorites:

1. Examine your search engine value with HubSpot’s free website rater. Easy to use. Provides a free report with suggestions for improvement.

2. Decide how you want to be known. Make a list of the 10 most important keywords for your business. These are the terms you want people to associate with you and you alone. A good keyword will have several individual words. For example, “internet marketing san diego” is a great keyword because it’s so specific.

3. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to determine which keywords drive the most traffic. This tool will also give you suggestions on other keywords that might be better for your business based on the number of searches done in your local area, how competitive it is to get the term, etc.

4. Create content that people want to read. Pick a single keyword and write a blog post about it. Don’t have a blog on your website? Create one. Immediately. Blogging allows search engines to associate a single concept (search term) with a single page on your website, increasing the relevance of that page to the search query. If you don’t have a blog, you’ll need to create static pages for each piece of new content, which quickly becomes burdensome for the webmaster and impossible to navigate for the search engine and potential customer visiting your site. Check out my Checklist for a Great Blog for tips on how to write great content.

5. Optimize your website. This is a huge task, so don’t feel overwhelmed. Here are some simple steps you can take to ensure search engines can see your content and consider it for ranking:

BEFORE posting.

This is a huge task, so don’t feel overwhelmed. Here are some simple steps you can take to ensure search engines can see your content and consider it for ranking:

Yo. Include the keyword in your page title. The easiest (and probably best) way to do this is to simply name your page after your blog article.

ii. Put the most important words first. In the case of this article, I think “SEO” is the most important word followed by “checklist” and then “beginners”.

iii. Create a 140-character summary of the article. Use this simple summary for your meta description. You will reuse this description later.

IV. Use headings within content to add meaning. Header information will help readers scan the post faster (that’s good for usability) AND help search engines organize information (that’s even better).

v. Add tags that are specific to EACH article (not the entire blog). A common mistake is to focus tagging on the content of the entire site. Search engines already know what your site is about at a high level. The key to good SEO is to provide depth to your topic. So repeating the labels over and over again won’t do anything. In fact, such a tactic could hurt your SEO. Rather, tag only a few keywords in your blog post that are related to the single keyword it is about (see above). AFTER posting.

Yo. Build links. This is the most important part of SEO. Many links mean that search engines see your site as very important and relevant. Make sure to create links that come from relevant sites. If you are writing about SEO, get links from other sites that are about SEO. Google will judge your site by the company it maintains, so avoid link farms or other ways of artificially building links. I highly recommend laying out a blueprint for links (a topic for a future blog). Here are several activities recommended by SEOBook.com that will build links.

ii. Promote. Get people to read your content. The goal is for them to further promote it by passing it on to others, ideally in a way that search engines can crawl. Here are the absolute minimum requirements to promote:

1. Twitter about the post with a link. Use the 140-character summary you created (as mentioned above). I use Tweet Deck to manage my Twitter communications because it automatically shortens URLs. I’m experimenting with the paid version (don’t worry, it’s only $9) of TwiPing to manage connections on Twitter. The jury is still out on this one. However, I’ve tried several others that don’t work.

2. Post a link to the article on social networks. I use Twitter’s feed tools within each social network to automatically update my status to show that I’ve made a new post on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Remember, your goal is to convert website visitors into customers. Be sure to engage customers with a call to action. If you like this article, contact me for a free consultation on how inbound marketing can help you build your business.

Following these steps will help beginners start building a good online presence using good, honest techniques recognized by Google, Bing, and other search engines. Remember that SEO is a LONG WAY. It takes six to eight months of consistent work to build a strong online presence. The best way is to create and post remarkable content that is easy for others to find. Links naturally grow at a slow rate. You may want to consider hiring an SEO consulting company if you want to speed up the process.

My next topic will be about the remarkable impact a single entrepreneur can have on a community by using SEO to support a corporate social responsibility initiative.