At Sparxoo, SEO is a priority as digital marketers experts in strategy and execution.  If you are serious about Internet as a traffic driving channel, there’s a pretty good economic argument for search engine optimization.  As part of our SEO immersion we are constantly learning from other experts and reading great tips.  Below we share some of these tips and a presentation from Nick Stamoulis of Brick Marketing who recently hosted a great SEO Webinar.

1.  Select Key Words:  There is an art and a science to selecting key words.  You’ll need to get into the mindset of potential customers who are searching for your products and services and then develop a list of key search words.  You can use a free Google search tool, free tools on SEOBook.com, or a paid discovery tool such as KeyWordDiscovery.com which has a free trial and is $70 per month for a subscription.  Build a broad list and then narrow it down to a manageable list of 20 to 50 key words for most sites.  As you are selecting words you’ll need to weigh both the quantity of search as well as the competitiveness.  Do you have a realist shot at ranking on the first page of a first term?  SEO Expert Jill Whalen, head of search consultancy High Rankings, says the best key words “are being searched but may have been overlooked by other web sites.”  Inc Magazine recommends that you run search through Google and divide the number of indexed pages by the number of daily searches.  Ideally, the ratio should be 500-to-1 or less.  You can further qualify keywords and add geographic terms to top level keywords to find key words with a better ratio.

2.  Optimize Your Content.  Each page of your site may have a slightly different content focus.  Accordingly, you’ll need to prioritize key words on each individual page, focusing on 2 to 5 unique key words or phrases per page of content being optimized.  In the visible content, your keywords should appear frequently in the text as well as in the post title and in descriptive “alt” tags.  With that said, be sure that the content provides a good reading experience for human visitors so that they have a good experience.  For the best user experience, create the page initially without worrying too much about SEO and then go back and make tweaks and adjustments for better alignment against SEO keyword objectives.  The search engines will look at code, so be sure to optimize the head tag that defines the page’s overall characteristics and incorporate keywords into the title, description, and keyword (or meta) tags.  A title of 6 to 12 words and description of 12 to 24 words is common.  The URL should also have the keywords.  Other technical musts are a site hosted on a fast server, codes free of bugs, and sitemaps that are submitted directly to the search engines.

3.  Gain Links and Trust.  Search engines will look to see how many (and how quality) links are pointing to your content.  Link building campaigns increase your website and brand visibility for search engines and in general.  You should build a long-term link building strategy that includes blogging, article marketing, social networking, online publicity, industry associations, local profiles, blog comments, video marketing, and directory submissions.  For example, put together newsworthy press releases with 2 body links, and distribute through services such as PRWeb, PRLeab, BusinessWire, and 24-7 press releases.  Services will range anywhere from $25 to $400 per press release.  Buid your local profile on Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Bing, Yelp, Yellow Pages, Verizon Super Pages, Merchant Circle, and City Pages.  For further reading, read social marketing tips, optimizing blog post headlines, top 5 SEO marketing tips, and online marketing strategies.  See below for Nick’s SEO Webinar presentation.

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