Search Engine Optimization for Small Business Owners Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Introduction and Summary On-Site Optimization Off-site Optimization Google Adwords Summary CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY Hello, and welcome to a free ebook on Search Engine Optimization for Small Business Owners. Here I will summarize the general areas and basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Search Engine Optimization is the art of ranking higher in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and all search engines now and in the long run. SEO is really a long-term process, though results can usually be seen in the matter of a couple of months. There are two parts to search engine optimization: 1) On-Site Optimization: This involves keyword research, adding keywords to a website page’s title, headers, filenames, directory names, and content. The keywords in the content should come naturally. I’ll explain what keywords are shortly. 2) Off-Site Optimiation: This involves link building, either by going out and soliciting one-way links, or by having such a great site that people naturally link to you. I’ll go into more detail later. There are a number of online tools, some by Google, some by Yahoo, and some by others. For reference, I’ve given links to some good online tools below if you have experienced and want to dive right in. You might make a mental note of where this list is for later use. LINK SECTION 1: www.adwords.google.com/select/keywordtool (You must be signed up with Adwords. Signing up for Adwords costs $5) www.seroundtable.com (to keep up to date) http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ (great keyword suggestion tool) www.wordtracker.com (paid keyword tool) www.experts-exchange.com (paid tech site with good SEO area) www.yahoo.site-explorer.com http://labs.google.com/sets (to come up with keywords) http://www.google.com/webmasters/ (Google tools) http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 (Google Webmaster Guidelines – a good read for small business owners) www.seo-blog.com (The best SEO resource on the internet) CHAPTER 2 – ONSITE OPTIMIZATION As promised, here’s a summary of keywords: Keywords are the heart and blood of SEO. When someone types in words into Google Search (or the others) if you come up then you are optimized for that keyword phrase. For example, if you ran a lumber company in Colorado you might have keywords “Lumber Company Colorado” or “Lumber Company Denver”. Once Keywords are chosen with the tools in link section 1, you optimize each website page with their own 1 to 3 keywords. Keywords are added to the page’s domain name, title, the headers, the filenames, and to the directory names. Keywords should naturally occur in that page’s content. If it doesn’t, you might want to rethink your choice of keywords. For example, if you have one keyword for a page and it is “real estate Las Angeles” then Your title might be “Real Estate Las Angeles”. Your

header tag might be “Real Estate Las Angeles” Your filename for the page might be “real-estate.html” Your directory name that holds the page’s file name might be “Las Angeles Estate” 5) Your content should include the words “Las Angeles Real Estate” in any order at least a couple of times. The keywords should occur naturally in the page’s content. If they keywords don’t occur naturally, then it is time to re-think what keywords are appropriate for that page. 1) 2) 3) 4) It is important that a person doing on-site SEO does not do perfect on-site optimization. On-Site SEO should look natural, and thus is best if it has a bit of randomness to it. For example, in the above ordered list, the filename is “real-estate.html” and not “LasAngeles-real-estate.html”. Each page is considered separately by Google and the others, and thus keywords are separate for each page. The home page is usually given more general keywords and inner pages’ keywords are usually more specific. CHAPTER 3 - OFF-SITE OPTIMIZATION: Off-Site optimization is a rapidly changing art. Google is starting to keep track of a person’s searches and customizing search results based on a user’s search history. This is placing a wrench in what used to be commonly used past SEO tactics. Below is a description of how to solicit links, but 10 years from now I doubt people will still be soliciting links. This is also partially because Google is getting very good at telling the difference between naturally occurring incoming links and solicited incoming links. Incoming links are a huge factor in SEO. The best links are one-way links from another site to the optimized site. Link Exchanges are less useful. The title tag that I mentioned in on-site optimization is the most determining factor in search engine ranking. The second most important factor is incoming links. A large number of incoming links are many times the determining factor among competing sites, determining who will rank the highest. Now I will cover 1) Solicited one-way link (a factor which is depreciating) 2) A naturally occurring link campaign (which will work for a very long time) 1) SOLICITED ONE-WAY LINKS Now it is time to discuss how to go out and aquire good one-way links. A good oneway link is on a site that is in the same industry as the optimized site and pointed towards the optimized site. A good incoming link also uses proper anchor text. Anchor text is the following (if you know a little HTML) www.siteurl.com (OK anchor text) keywords here (Great anchor text) There are numerous strategies for gaining one-way solicited links: 1) Paid Links 2) Using Links of competitors 3) Typing in your keywords and looking for candidates 4) Using Terms such as “keywords + add url” 5) Submitting to quality directories 1) PAID LINKS. The best paid links are ones from text-link ads.com (which I have no affiliation with) They can be fairly expensive, but they can also at times allow you to skip the Google Sandbox (which I will discuss later). Paid links from TextLink-Ads.com can be very useful. If you purchase links, you want to purchase only one link on each website that text-link-ads.com offers you. Of course, you also want to place links only on sites in your industry. 2) USING LINKS OF COMPETITORS. Here’s how this works. Type your keywords into Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Take a site (of your choice) in one of the top 3 listings that comes up (the listings are called the SERPs – Search Engine Page Results) Copy the URL at the bottom of that site’s listing, and go to www.yahoo.site-explorer.com. Type that site’s URL into Yahoo’s Site explorer, and choose “Inlinks” (as opposed to “Pages”). Yahoo’s Site explorer will give you a list of all of the sites that link to your competitor’s website. You can simply go down the list and call or email those sites that you would also like one-way links on. The concept is that if they link to your competitor, then they are more likely to allow a link to you. In competitive industries, this list from Yahoo’s Site Explorer can contain hundreds or thousands of candidates to choose from. A confident respected phone call to the site owner or webmaster is many times useful in soliciting a one-way link. Also, a personalized email can work, but unless it is personalized, it will be deleted 99 times out of 100. 3) TYPING IN YOUR KEYWORDS AND LOOKING FOR CANDIDATES. Another option is to go to your choice of Google, Yahoo, or MSN and type in your keywords. Then you can go down the list (with the top sites being most important) and solicit one-way links from the sites that come up. Some sites will have link sections that you can solicit to. Which brings us to an important note: NOTE: In soliciting one-way links you want to solicit a variety of different kinds of links (some link sections, some links on a page with few or no other links, some directories, and some niche directories) Looking natural is important. Also, links in your industry on a page that contains few or no other links are the most powerful in gaining higher ranking. 4) USING TERMS SUCH AS “KEYWORDS + ADD URL”. If you type in phrases such as (say you are in the real estate business) “real estate las angeles add url” then Google (or the others) will find sites that have your keywords AND that contain the phrase “add url” This means many more sites will come up that have link sections or are directories and that are in your industry. Here’s an exhaustive list. You can take them one at a time. SEO experts use them all: “Add link" +"your keyword(s)" “Add a link" +"your keyword(s)" “Add site" +"your keyword(s)" “Add a site" +"your keyword(s)" “Add your site" +"your keywords(s)" “Add URL" +"your keyword(s)" “Add a URL" +"your keyword(s)" “Add an URL" +"your keyword(s)" “Add Website" +"your keyword(s)" “Add a website" +"your keyword(s)" “Add your website" +"your keywords(s)" “Submit link" +"your keyword(s)" “Submit a link" +"your keyword(s)" “Submit site" +"your keyword(s)" “Submit a site" +"your keyword(s)" “Submit your site" +"your keyword(s)" “Submit URL" +"your keyword(s)" “Submit a URL" +"your keyword(s)" “Submit an URL" +"your keyword(s)" “Submit Website" +"your keyword(s)" “Submit a website" +"your keyword(s)" “Submit your website" +"your keywords(s)" “Suggest link" +"your keyword(s)" “Suggest a link" +"your keyword(s)" “Suggest site" +”your keyword(s)" “Suggest a site" +”your keyword(s)" “Suggest URL" +"your keyword(s)" “Suggest a URL" +"your keyword(s)" “Suggest an URL" +"your keyword(s)" “Suggest Website" +"your keyword(s)" “Suggest a website" +"your keyword(s)" “Suggest your website" +"your keywords(s)" “favorite links" +"your keyword(s)" “favorite sites" +"your keyword(s)" “favorite places" +"your keyword(s)" “favorite websites" +"your keyword(s)" “recommended links" +"your keyword(s)" “recommended sites" +"your keyword(s)" “recommended places" +"your keyword(s)" “recommended websites" +"your keyword(s)" “cool links" +"your keyword(s)" “cool sites" +"your keyword(s)" “cool places" +"your keyword(s)" “cool websites" +"your keyword(s)" “link exchange" +"your keyword(s)" reciprocal +"your keyword(s)" directory +"your keyword(s)" directories +"your keyword(s)" exchange +"your keyword(s)" resources +"your keyword(s)" links +"your keyword(s)" 5) SUBMITTING TO QUALITY DIRECTORIES – There are several lists of quality directories on the web. Here is a good one – http://info.vilesilencer.com/main.php?rock=seo-friendly.php It’s easy to go overboard with directories since they are easy to submit to. The title is usually the anchor text. Be sure and fully balance directory links with all kinds of other links. Someone doing SEO simply goes down the list, goes into a directory, and looks for a link such as “add url” or “suggest a site”. Click on that and a form comes up to fill out and the directory usually adds a site in 1 to 6 months, depending on the directory. It is also useful to search out niche directories in your industry, through the search engines, that only list sites in your industry. 2) A NATURALLY OCCURRING LINK CAMPAIGN Now we’re getting to the most useful way to do off-site SEO, and the way that will persist on into the future. It is especially important for competitive industries. What’s done is to make your site one of the best in the industry. How this is done varies from industry to industry, but many times it includes adding hundreds of pages to the website with articles from authority figures in your industry. Also things like forums, blogs, job boards, chat, great link sections, and anything else that will make your site the most powerful in your industry. The most common form of this is to add hundreds of articles from authorities in your industry. And this is expensive. If you don’t have access to authority figures, add as many resources as possible to your site with your budget. The bigger your site is, the higher it will rank. The more tools, resources, and articles it has, the higher it will rank. What happens is that many people naturally link to a site that is a good authority, and Google, especially, is looking for this. Also a few SEO notes:                   Avoid Flash whenever possible. (Never! use an all-flash site) Avoid Javascript whenever possible Place your content as high up in your code as possible. Make your pages fast loading (20k-40k) Use hyphens in your domain, your file names, and your folder names but don’t go overboard. Point only one domain to your website Use a sitemap (I’ll explain what a sitemap is later) Never try to hide things from Google or to trick Google Avoid redirects whenever possible. If you use a redirect, use a 301 redirect Avoid link farms (sites made specifically to generate inbound links) Avoid very bad quality sites Use W3 compliant code Use CSS instead of tables for the layout. (But tables are good for tabular data) Avoid meta tags except for the description meta tag Keep your code clean Avoid dynamic pages that use a question mark in the URL If it’s in your budget, use text-linked-ads.com to overcome the sandbox (I’ll explain what a sandbox is later) Purchase domains for at least 5 years in advanced SITEMAPS A sitemap is a simple page with text links to all of your website pages. The sitemap should be no more than two clicks away from the home page. THE GOOGLE SANDBOX For many industries, Google waits six months (give or take) to place a site high up in it’s rank. After 6 months of being indexed a site many times ranks a lot higher. Indexing means that you are in Google’s index, which usually takes a few incoming links. You can avoid a sandbox through paid links at Text-Link-Ads.com. The older the site is, the more credibility it has with the search engines. CHAPTER 4 – GOOGLE ADWORDS COMING SOON! CHAPTER 5 - SUMMARY In the future, the sites that rank the highest will be the biggest and most authoritative in that industry. That is many times the case even in the present. Soliciting incoming links will work now, but is less desirable for the long run than having a huge, authoritative site. Soliciting incoming links is still acceptable in non-competitive industries. Never try to trick Google or the others in any way. Google spends billions on keeping its SERPs clean and it will ban you if you try to trick them or make a link farm. On-site optimization, though rare with web designers, is an important part of the system and is a prerequisite in competitive industries. Most searchers, as you may know, don’t go past the first page. Adwords is a good alternative either as a way to get a site started, or as a way to gain additional temporary ranking. The natural SERPs position cannot be bought, though, and are aquired through on-site and off-site optimization. There are many key features of SEO like using CSS, avoiding Flash, and keeping pages fast loading. Thank you for taking the time to explore SEO and Adwords. Although the information is technical, it is not rocket science and can be learned by almost anyone. SEO is time consuming and takes a lot of willpower. Good luck with building and marketing quality websites.