Are You SEO’ed?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization needs to be understood and set into motion at the beginning of a website development project. If you have a great site and nobody visits it, or is able to find it in the Search Engine based on the keywords that they may type in, your site will be a gigantic waste of time sitting there all by its lonesome self. That’s why you need to pay attention to whether or not your website is optimized so that a Search Engine bot can find out what it is all about, and ‘lead’ people to it. Anthony Mitchell and Haris Nadeem explain.

Anthony explains, “It is impossible to fix a website for SEO issues once it has been built without regard to SEO.  Do it right first, or throw it out and start over. Pay attention to keywords, which are the words that search-engine users will include in their search queries to find you.”

Your major business specialties should be included in text and keywords on the landing page.  Too many websites use soft language that search engines cannot convert into the keywords that you want potential clients to use to find you.  If you provide cheap Oracle maintenance services, for example, those words should be included in your contents and tags.” Haris Nadeem, creator of sizzledcore.com adds on, “The titles of your pages should be unique and, at the same time, contain commonly searched keywords. Make sure your title also gives a meaningful description or you won’t get more hits from search engines even if your site is on the first page of search engines.” And regarding keywords? Haris says, “First thing, keywords should be taken seriously in SEO. You need to first know what keywords to target before you start optimizing. Spend a few hours researching for the right keywords to use – it could make a big difference! Remember, the criteria of choosing keywords should be kept specific to content.”

Anthony also points out that once you know which markets you are targeting, you should spell the keywords to suit them. “British and American spellings make a significant difference. Keywords and tags should be oriented towards target markets, so ‘call center’ instead of call centre will probably need to be added.” Test your keywords on keyword tools for the major search engines and adjust keywords so that you use popular ones.  “To find free keyword tools, type in the name of a major search engine and ‘keyword tool’ in a search engine.”

Have You ‘Meta’ Search Friendly URL?
Haris talks about Search Engine Friendly URLs and Meta data. “After a search engine spider crawls your page, the first thing it looks for are the meta tags. That’s where it gets the title to use in search engines, keywords and the description for the page. Rest of the page crawling is done after META tags.”

“On-page SEO is an important part of optimizing your sites for search engines. Try not to have a site with session IDs, instead, use a static URL.” He explains with the following examples:
Session ID: http://www.harisnadeem.com/?p=123
Best URL: http://www.harisnadeem.com/2009/02/sample-post/
“Try to keep the title clean and the fewer parameters you use, the better it will be.”

Search For It Universally, Will Ya?!
Anthony brings up the Search Universal option. “It can make it easier to achieve top rankings for images and videos than for text so tag and use ‘alt-text’ under each photo and video that you are seeking to push up in search rankings.  Link to those photos and videos from other sites, using your priority keywords in the anchor text of the link.  Anchor text is the visible text in a hyperlink, not the underlying URL.” He continues to explain that the link anchor text within and into your site should all include your high priority keywords.   “No link should have anchor text that merely states ‘click here.’  Don’t use images as links because search engines can miss these links and will ignore them for SEO purposes.” Oh yes! Click here is so 3-years-ago!!

Anthony brings up an area that many webmasters find themselves confused about.  Site maps. “Site maps that search engines can quickly find when reaching your site is a good thing.  The site map should consist of hyperlinks with appropriate anchor text.” Haris explains this further by saying that, “Sitemaps are a way for you to give Google information about your site. It is a list of the pages on your website providing additional information about your site to Google. It helps Google crawl more of your site and it regularly checks for new links in your sitemap.”

Anthony leads the discussion towards direct, organic searching. “Direct search with generic domains offers low-cost SEO alternatives to paid search.  A direct search campaign can be set up with low-cost domain extensions such as dot-info.  Use dashes for full effect because search engines find it easier to parse these words.  Domains should be selected according to your highest priority keywords, e.g., Banking-software.info.”

Link Together, Boost a Friend
“Help other companies achieve search engine prominence by linking to them from your website, possibly on a ‘friends’ page.  The anchor text of each link should include keywords that are a priority for the party that you are linking to,” explains Anthony. In fact, if your site has a low page rank and it is frequently linked or cited on a site that has a higher rank, your site will benefit by moving up.

Haris hits the nail on the head by saying that, “If you write a unique content keeping the SEO factor in consideration, it is more likely to index on the first page of Google search results and target those keywords that are more likely to be searched.”

Anthony explains that branding is one of the greatest handicap facing companies in Pakistan. Before spending time and money on SEO and other marketing, it is vital to acquire a proper brand that corresponds with your domain name.  Domain names are brands.”

“The goal of SEO,” continues Anthony, “has to be identified and clear. Is it to engage visitors and expand your client base?  If so, make it easy to connect with visitors as soon as they reach your site.  On InternationalStaff.net we have a free Meebo chat widget to immediately enable visitors to begin asking questions about our services and get to know us.”

“Last but not least, there is no reason to obscure the fact that you are in Pakistan in your website.  Pakistan offers tremendous advantages as an IT destination and service provider.  Clients will find out sooner or later, so it’s best to take pride in who you are and what you have to offer.  Confidence and openness is contagious and builds trust.”
Feedback:
What did you think of this article? Do you agree with Anthony or Haris or have more tips to share back with them? Do you have any SEO horror stories to share? How do you use the web to get in touch with your customers?

Leave your comments on this article at ciopakistan.com/cmo/seo