Blog About All Things Creative

Every now and then I get a phone call from a client concerned that they are not getting any traffic to their site. What is the problem? A website is a tool – you have to learn how to use it. Having a hammer is great, but it is not going to pick itself up and bang a nail into the wall.

This article will come in a few sections. I have originally thought that I could cover everything in one shot, but I quickly realized that it might be a bit of an overload. This first section is going to be about Search Engine Optimization. The subsequent sections are going to be Pay Per Click / Pay Per Inclusion and Off Line Marketing.

Search Engine Optimization

The definition of Search Engine Optimization according to Wikipedia: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.

Once your website is search engine optimized it is going to show up in “organic” search results. You can also get your business listed on Google’s map and show up directly on the search results by registering at the Google Local Business Center (according to marketingvox.com).

The image above shows you where to find the organic results and local listings on the Google search page.

Search engines measure the following:

• The number of times end users click links to your site
• How long end users stay on your site
• How often end users return to your site

There are two types of SEO: on page SEO and off page SEO. The two are drastically different, therefore require a different approach to each.

ON PAGE SEO

On page SEO has mostly to do with creating a valuable and relevant content for your visitors.

Here is a check list to make sure your on page SEO is up to date:

1. Content is ‘King’. (via Wikipedia) High quality, unique content is what search engines are looking for and content development specialists therefore have a very important role to play in the search engine optimization process. One issue currently plaguing the world of web content development is keyword-stuffed content which are prepared solely for the purpose of manipulating a search engine. This is giving a bad name to genuine web content writing professionals. The effect is writing content designed to appeal to machines (algorithms) rather than people or community.
2. Title tags should have no more than 5 words. Using more than that dilutes the strength of each word. Important words should come first – they are the ones that receive the highest reward.
   

   Title tags displaying in browser tabs

3. Description meta tags don’t help with SEO but help with the search engine result to get clicked.
   

   Description meta tag displaying on search engine results page

4. Meta tags keywords. Search engines don’t rely on meta tags as heavily as they used to due to the number of people cheating their way through to better rankings by stuffing meta tags with irrelevant keywords. Therefore, search engines now only pay attention to no more than 7 keywords in the keywords meta tags. If the search engines find that a site has more than 7 or 8 keywords a page, they might ignore the meta tags altogether. So overstuffing the meta tags won’t help and will probably hurt you in the long run.
5. URL – search engine friendly URLs are important especially for dynamic sites. An example of a search friendly URL is www.yoursite.com/iphoneapps/superapp.html instead of www.yoursite.com/?462?ieyry99)*@&*(&()
6. Header tags – <h1>, <h2> – help search engines prioritize the information on your site.
7. Link Structure – your pages should be interlinked between each other. In other words, you should be able to get to any page from any page on your site.
8. Anchor text in links – according to Wikipedia – The anchor text, link label or link title is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines.
9. Images’ alt tags – since search engines cannot “see” images, it is always a good idea to put a description of the image in the alt tag.

OFF PAGE SEO

Off page is SEO is the aspect of a website that is not located on the site itself, rather elsewhere on the web, but can influence the ranking of this website. More precisely this aspect is the incoming links from other websites. It is much more difficult to control the off-page factors, than the on-page SEO. (via activemedia.com)

There are a few things to look out for:

• Watch out what kinds of websites you are linking to from your site. Credible websites usually link to pages with valuable information.
• Link Popularity. Sites with three high-quality links pointing to them (Yahoo Directory etc) often rank higher than sites with hundreds of low-quality links pointing to them. Thus, before beginning a link-building campaign (see the definition below), carefully select the places from which you want to obtain links, beginning with the most credible.

The most popular technique in advancing with Off Page SEO is Link Building – a practice of obtaining links from outside websites to yours to draw traffic and improve search engine rankings.

Search Engine Optimization Advantages

• The rankings a web site achieves through SEO can continue for a long time after the work has been done.
• Over the long term SEO can be more cost effective than PPC
• Visitors are more likely to trust a site they find in the rankings, they feel it has been “approved” by the search engines.
• Improvements to your site made from a search engine perspective usually result in a more user friendly website.
• A well optimized website can appear across multiple search engines and search markets, at n extra cost.
• Once good search engine rankings are achieved, as long as optimization is ongoing and monitored then the rankings acquire a “snow ball” effect, increasing over time.
• High search engine rankings can have a positive effect on branding.

Search Engine Disadvantages

• The time it takes to achieve results.

BEWARE! BLACK HAT SEO

Via Wikipedia:

Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking. Invisible iframes is yet another black hat SEO technique, where a page you see is not necessarily from the company that is hosting that webpage. People create these types of pages in order to download software on your computer in the background without your knowledge.

Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines’ algorithms, or by a manual site review. Infamous examples are the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.^[42] and the April 2006 removal of the PPC Agency BigMouthMedia.^[43] All three companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google’s list.^[44]

Further Reading:

What are SEO and PPC?

Page Rank Explained – Keeping SEO Simple

Seth Godin’s riffs on marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread

Also, here is an old, but, strangely, still relevant book on SEO (AND IT’S FREE!!!)

SUMMARY

• ON PAGE SEO. Make sure you use properly the following aspects of your site: content, title tags, meta tags, description tags, URLs, header tags, interlinking of all pages of your site, link anchor text, images’ alt tags.
• OFF PAGE SEO. Link building campaigns – make sure you link to relevant sites and relevant sites link to you.
• STAY AWAY FROM BLACK HAT SEO!!!

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