Do you know about the Search Engine Optimization Basics (SEO)?

Here’s some very simple questions:

1. Do you know what the Search Engine Optimization Basics (SEO basics) are?
2. How many inquiries per month does your web site generate?
3. How often does an inquiry lead to a sale?
4. How much is each sale worth?
5. Do you know anything about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
6. What is Pay Per Click?

If you can’t answer all the questions above then don’t feel too bad. There are a lot of company bosses who can’t either.

I can’t fix a motor car but I can understand the basics of how one works. The basics of how a search engine works are fairly straightforward as well:

1. If a 10 year old types in ‘Earth’ in a search engine such as Google / Yahoo / Bing the search engine will search through the trillions (that’s right trillions) of web sites round the world and find web sites that discuss the topic ‘Earth’.
2. The 10 year old is probably hoping to find web sites that are discussing ‘Planet Earth’ and not some spill cleanup company that sells ’an alternative to Diatomaceous earth‘.
3. Some ‘clever’ web designers still think that if they used very common words like ‘Earth’ they will trick the search engines into sending lots of people to their web sites.

I’m here to tell you now that if that’s how you have your web site set up you will get what you deserve for wasting every-one’s time. I am constantly amazed how many companies don’t even know if their company name listed in their keywords (many actually don’t)! When I ask: “Would you print a business card without your company name on it?” most bosses just think I’m being stupid. “Stupid is as stupid does.” People, if you take nothing else away from this page, at least make it your mission to know for sure your company name is in your keywords before someone else puts it in theirs.

So here’s the very basics:

1. In our case we sell spill cleanup products and spill kits. Not surprisingly we have made sure our SEO keywords (the words hidden in the source code of our web site ) include: Bio-Smart / Spill kits / spill kit / etc.
2. In fact if you are not sure what words you should be using go to www.adwords.google.com and the helpful people from Google have a special site set up which will show you exactly what words your customers use to find you. It is a FREE tool anyone can use.
3. Get your web designer to add those words to your keyword list, your page title, page URL, meta description and then make sure they appear on your front page e.g. Bio-Smart Spill Kits - at Bio-Smart we sell spill kits.
4. What the search engines look for is ‘relevance’ so you need to have the SEO keywords you use in all of the areas of your web page the search engine might look (i.e. keyword list, your page title, page URL, meta description).
5. Your keywords must to appear on your front page at least 3-4 times in context. That means don’t just right your keywords on the Home Page 4 times like you are learning to spell them (the search engines aren’t stupid) they must be in sentences that a human would understand.
6. If all you have on the Home Page of your web site is pretty pictures then your job is a lot harder. You will need to have code written to describe each ‘pretty’ picture.
7. If you need help then we can get you started for less than the cost of a tank of petrol in most cases with a site review.
8. Your web designer can then make the changes we recommend in less than 10 minutes!
9. There are still so many people who don’t know the rules of the web that if you are a local business you can dominate the internet in your local area in you specific industry usually with very, very few changes.

For many small businesses struggling to be found the cost of phone directories such as Yellow Pages has gotten out of hand. I don’t know about you but last time I went to place an add the guy said that if I didn’t take a full page add I was wasting my time. So I stopped wasting my time and money and learned how to get my web site found. Instead of paying $50 000 per year to take out an add in the local Yellow Pages I now pay a few hundred dollars a year to list all over the world!

Moreover ask someone under the age of 30 if they even use a phone book and they will look at you blankly and ask you ‘what for when you can just Google it’?

If you want to learn more about the search engine optimization basics (SEO) then tour our web site or contact us. You will be amazed how simple and inexpensive it really is. If you are in an industry that is very ‘web savvy’ we will tell you that too before you spend a fortune. We will explain everything we do in simple terms you will understand. We will show you what we are doing so you can either do it yourself, have us review your site quarterly or know when someone is ‘taking you for a ride’.

Here’s one more little tip: One of the search engine optimization basics is that there are over 500 search engines world wide. We all know about Google, Yahoo and Bing but there are at least 497 more! It is now possible to list your website with over 500 websites using automatically using a computer program and all for less than $50!!!