The majority of Web site owners have fewer than 10 incoming links to their sites. The search engines view incoming links as verification that your site has quality content. The more related links your site has from other sites (with the underlined clickable text that includes your targeted keywords), the higher your ranking in the search engines will be. Here is a step-by-step overview of this entire SEO process:
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1. Select your keywords.
Use tools such as the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool, Google's
Search Term Suggestion Tool, and Word tracker to determine which related
keywords or key phrases it would be best to optimize your site for. Once you
have a list of potential keywords, go to Google and type in those keywords.
Then see how many incoming links the top few sites have. You can determine
this number by typing in "link:http://www.competitordomain.com." Take a look
at whether the first few sites have the targeted keyword in the domain name
or in the title, or whether they appear often on their page. Use this
information to estimate what it would take to get your site above the
current sites in the rankings.
2. Ensure that your site has those keywords on it.
Make sure that the keywords you are targeting are on your home page at
least five times. Having a 5 percent to 15 percent keyword density for your
targeted search term on your home page is optimal. Also ensure that your
title tag and image alt tags contain your targeted keyword. Add your
targeted term to an H1 header tag for added prominence.
3. Build good-quality content on your site.
I call this phase the "content campaign." Either write articles yourself
for the site or go through the search engines to find related content. If
you find an article on another site that you'd like to publish on your site,
send an e-mail to the author, site owner, and/or publisher to request
permission to syndicate the article on your site. Present it as a win/win
quid pro quo in which you receive good-quality content and the
author/publisher receives free exposure and a link to his or her Web site in
the byline of the article. I'd suggest having at least 25 quality articles
on your site before going forward. Optimize your home page for the two or
three most competitive target terms. Optimize your in-site pages for the
more unique and less competitive terms. You can also outsource the creation
of this content to copywriters, using a service such as elance.com, for
about $30 per 400-word article.
4. Build links to your Web site.
Without incoming links to your site, it will never have a chance at being
at the top of the search engines for competitive terms. Use the research you
did earlier on the number of links the sites at the top of the listings have
or your targeted keywords to set a goal for how many related incoming links
you want to build to your own site.
To obtain links, go through the search
engines and find related Web sites, then contact the owners of those sites
and offer to exchange links. Add their links to your Web site and e-mail
them to let them know that you've linked to their sites and would appreciate
a reciprocal link.
I'd suggest contacting them first via e-mail and then via
phone if necessary. In your initial e-mail to site owners, include the URL
and description of your site, as well as the location of where their links
are and which sites of theirs you are referring to. I'd suggest creating a
resources section on your site and placing your link partners in the
appropriate category within.
You can also build links naturally through
press releases or by having great content, a useful tool, a viral video, or
an interesting blog. If you have more money than time, you can also purchase
relevant links from quality Web sites through a service called LinkExperts
or purchase reviews with links from sites such as PayPerPost, ReviewMe, and
Blogvertise. Ensure that whatever links you build to your Web site have your
target key phrase in the anchor text, the words that are clickable and
underlined. Finally, text links are much more valuable than image links, as
the search engines can follow text links and associate the link text with
your Web site, but they cannot do this for image links.
5. Continue building your site's reputation.
Once you have built a few related incoming links, the search engines will
find and index your site. If your site is new, it can take up to nine months
for Google to allow it to show up for competitive search terms. During this
time, continue building good-quality related content and work to build as
many incoming links from related Web sites as you can.
From the book
Zero to One Million
by Ryan P. Allis Published by McGraw
Hill; December 2007;$16.95; 978-0-07-149666-7
Author Ryan P. Allis is CEO of iContact Corp., a venture-backed marketing
and online communications firm that has grown from nothing to over $10
million in annual sales and 80 employees. He is also the Chairman of the web
marketing firm Virante, Inc. For more information on Ryan Allis and Zero to
One Million, visit www.zeromillion.com
