What is SEO? A Non-Technical Introduction for Web Site Owners

What’s the Most Important Thing You Need to Know About SEO?

What’s the most important thing to You Need to Know About SEO?

First, What IS SEO?

You’ve got products and/or services to offer. You’ve got a Web site. You’re all set, right?

Wrong. You’ve got a problem.

Like any business, you need potential customers to visit you. That means they need to know about you.

There are two ways for this to happen:

1st) They already know about you, your products and/or services.  They love you and your products and/or services, and when they need what you’re selling, they come to you, again, and again, and again. It goes without saying: this is the holy grail for any business.

2nd) People need the product and/or service you offer. However, they don’t have a preferred provider of that product and/or service (or if they do, they’re looking for better quality and/or lower price). So they go looking for what’s out there. They do this is by using search engines.

So how do people find you using a search engine? Well, they don’t look for you, specifically. They enter in “keywords” that describe what they need.

For example, let’s say I need bird food for my outdoor feeder. I’ll go to Google.com, for example, and I’ll type “bird food” into the search window. If I want a specific type of bird food, like “black oil sunflower,” then I’ll type in “bird food black oil sunflower.” If I’m cool with ordering it online, I’ll leave it at that and see what comes up. However, if I’m looking for a shop to go to in my area (and say I live in Brooklyn NY), I would type something like “Brooklyn NY bird food black oil sunflower.”

Technically, search engine optimization (or “SEO”) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to your web site from a search engine. The goal is also to get you to rank as high as possible on a search page, to be in the #1 position ideally. SEO is a critical internet marketing strategy. Someone who does” SEO” needs to understand how search engines work, and they need to understand how your potential customer searches for your site.

Now, of course, you’re probably not the only one offering your particular product or service. You have competitors. If I type into Google “black oil sunflower bird food,” I’ll get a lot of businesses that sell this type of bird food. The immediate question is: what determines who is on the first two or three search pages and who is on the 50th search page (a page that most people will never take the time to look at)?

It’s outside the scope of this article to get into the details of how someone gets into the top position on the first few search pages. Basically, it takes a ton of time and effort and/or a ton of money, probably more time, effort and money you have to spare. However, your goal, really, isn’t to rank #1 on a search page.

At this point, you might be thinking, “wait a second, come on, being #1 is the only goal! All I need is to come up with the ‘best keywords,’ SEO the hell out of my site and, more or less, force my site to be in the top 5 or 10 search results.”

Now, there are a LOT of SEO companies that you can pay (and you’ll pay a LOT) to do this for you, but let’s look at all of this from the perspective of a search engine provider. What are their goals as a “search engine” business?

First, Google and other search engines are aware that the inner workings of their search engines (i.e., their search algorithms) can be “hacked” by someone in order to figure how out to get a Web site to the top of their search rankings.

You might ask, well, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that the point of SEO?

Yes and no – there’s a right way and a wrong/stupid way to go about this.

What You Must Absolutely Understand | Smart SEO. Dumb SEO.

Think about it like this: you’re walking down the street, and you walk past a bunch of bird seed vendors, all screaming and yelling and waving their arms to get your attention. The one that probably gets your attention is the guy who screams the loudest, right? However, common sense tells you – so what? What is he really offering? Should I buy bird seed from this guy just because he’s out-screamed everyone else? No.

When you think about it, search engine businesses want to do just what you want them to do:  find for you, the potential customer of some product or service, the best sites based on the search terms you’ve given them. They want to offer you a set of credible and valuable Web Sites you can use. If you’re looking for information about learning how to skydive, google wants to bring to you the best, most appropriate sites it can. That’s how search engines help you. That’s what they offer you. That’s their business. It’s as simple as that.

The last thing Google or any search engine business wants to do is to provide search engine results that have little or nothing to do with what you want. In fact, it’s their business to keep this from happening.

Yes, there are individuals and companies that can “hack” the system and “force” a Web site into a top position, but search engine business are constantly on the look out for such “tricks” and those site 1) won’t stay in the top position very long and 2) the search engine can penalize and even ban the Web site from their search pages.

OK, so what’s the right way to go about it? At this point, give your eyes a rest and listen to Stephanie Leffler, Senior Vice President of Network Solutions, explain the three most important things you can do, in non-technical terms, when it comes to SEO:

So, what did Ms. Leffler talk about? She talked about web content with substance — what’s substance? Substance is good authoritative quality content, well-written and SEO-ed following normal standard SEO principles (that I’ll outline later). When you have substance on your site, other Web site owners will recognize your value and link to your site (one way link). Search engines love that. It’s like a vote for your site.

Again, Google’s job is to find good quality web sites that potential customers want to see given the search words they’ve provided. That’s their business.

So – there’re no tricks with SEO. There is just planning and work. Here’s the basic plan:

• Have something real, of value, to offer.
• Add good quality SEO copy to your site.
• Do good basic SEO.

Do all that, and you’ll be fine.

Finally, in case you’re convinced that’s there’s got to be more to it than this, some magical formula I have not acknowledged, give an ear to Lisa of How To Create a Web Site. She gives the basic philosophy, attitude and approach you need to have when trying to SEO your site. If you “get” what she’s talking about, you’re on the quickest path to success with your web site.

Resources for Do-It-Yourself SEO

First: when trying to do SEO yourself, the first step is to find the right keywords. What are “keywords,” exactly, and how do you find them? Start with this excellent article by Stephen Mahaney, The Ultimate Keyword Primer.

Second: once you’ve got a set of keywords, you need to put them into the text of your web page. How exactly do you do that? This excellent article by Ken McGaffin is really all you need: Using Keywords In Website Copywriting.

Third: finally, for a good non-technical SEO overview article for small business owners, check out SEO Explained for Small Business Owners.

OK, OK. If you’re still convinced that there’s got to be a secret to SEO, to getting ranked high – alright, Lisa does have a secret, and she reveals all here:

Effective Newsletters: They are LOve Letters

I’m working with a company that’s trying to upgrade it’s ecommerce site (which it badly needs to do), and they are looking at a comprehensive solution provider, i.e., a company that specializes in designing, building ecommerce web sites and marketing its products. The design and building of your ecommerce site is definitely something you want to delegate/outsource, but –

my gut tells me that marketing is the most difficult aspect of one’s business to delegate to someone outside your company. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t delegate at all, it just means you need to know what can and cannot be delegated.

For example, some third party marketing companies have great services, e.g., sophisticated email tracking so you can target email newsletters to customers who’ve previously purchased specific products. This is a terrific idea because you can suggest other products your customers are likely to buy. Amazon.com actually invented this type of marketing, e.g, when you log in, you get a ton of helpful, effective recommendations based on your purchase history.

But no package or service can, will or should write your email newsletters for you – you have to do that.

Now, you can hire an outside expert to write your newsletters for you, but — you need to be careful. This is very personal marketing, and hiring someone to do this is like hiring someone to write love letters to your boy/girlfriend/husband/wife.

You make love to them — don’t hire someone to make love to them.

You really should be writing your own love letters. If you do hire someone, they’re not replacing you — to continue the “making love” analogy, think of them like a sex toy you’ve purchased on a dark street corner and then scurried home.

Once home, you then need to be VERY involved to make sure the emotional tone and style is just right. Your customers are your babies — part of being successful is knowing them, knowing what they want and how to make them feel loved. Here, your own gut, heart and experience is all the “expert” knowledge you need.

But — you can still benefit from expert advice and — example. For example, you may be confused about how to structure/format/organize a great business to consumer newsletter. “Follow by Example — Follow the Leader” is a great way to learn anything, i.e., find people who are great at doing what you want to do, and then do what they’re doing.

So — go right now and check out Magic Beans and — right this second — sign up for their newsletter.

Magic Beans is a retailer of baby products with a storefront and online presence, sends its beanstalk newsletters once a month. While the goal of the newsletter is to make customers aware of new products, Magic Beans includes helpful educational information as well.

In the April issue, highlighted here, the content on the left side of the newsletter has an Earth Day theme. Articles give ideas for how moms can be green and point out the opportunity to reuse the shop’s bags.

On the right rail of the newsletter are featured products, many of which relate to the “going green” theme.

From a design perspective, the newsletter is attractive to look at, easy to read, and is a great representation of the company’s visual brand. (From Constant Contact’s Hints & Tips Email Marketing)

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