Hyper Dog Denver, Colorado SEO Blog

Archive for the 'optimization' Category

9 Tips: Treat your SEO like a PPC Campaign

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Unfocused SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is just as much a waste as an unfocused pay per click campaign. Keep your SEO campaigns more focused with the following tips:

Tightly define your targeted keyphrases
Instead of targeting the keyword “real estate”, make sure you are targeting keyphrases much more relevant to your site. After all, real estate encompasses loans, titles, homes for sale, and much more. If your business is as a real estate agent in Upstate New York, your focus should be primarily on “Upstate New York Real Estate”. For extremely competitive markets, focus on neighborhood names and streets.
Targeted keywords and titles per page
Take those targeted terms and make sure you have at least one page for each. Use the terms in the page title, and appropriately throughout the text of the page. Be sure the keywords are present in a text heading(preferably using HTML’s H1 or H2 tags).
Unique, enticing metadescriptions for each page
Remember that your metatag descriptions are shown in Google’s search results. Treat thaat metadescription like you would a PPC ad. Put some thought into your copy, and include a call to action! Like an ad, entice your prospects to click.
Relevant URLs
Think of the URLs shown in the search result pages as “Destination URLs”. Take a look at your website in the search result pages now. What does your listing communicate? Does the URL look relevant? Be sure to have a domain or page location with relevant keywords. Search visitors are increasingly saavy about what they click. Make sure you are communicating your relevance to them.
Identify landing pages
Think about where your prospects are landing. Make sure they are not landing on your privacy policy page when they should be landing on a product or service specific page. Be sure to optimize your pages with the landing process in mind. Who we land on this page? Who will navigate to it?
Identify desired action
It is also important to think about the desired action you’d like a visitor to take. You want to get sales from your prospects, but also think about other conversion goals: An opt-in newsletter, a bookmark, or a social bookmark!
Remove barriers and distractions
Look at your pages, or watch a friend surf through to your landing pages. What distractions are there? Perhaps you are hosting adsense ads from competitors? Or maybe navigation to other parts of the site is a little TOO prominent? You want your prospect to take that desired action before they go any further.
Split testing
Not sure what would work best in SEO. Try split testing It’s especially easy if you have two product listings for the same product. Try to see which one results in better rankings, more visitors, and more conversions. Don’t wait weeks or months to see if a new SEO strategy is going to pay off: Split test, just as you would a PPC ad.
Conversion is more important than traffic
Of course, keep in mind that traffic is nice but conversion is what pays the bills. If you are getting great traffic, think about whether you could target more precisely and get better CONVERTING traffic.