Learn With Me: Search Engine Optimization

Learn With Me is a new series where I research some stuff and then blog it out in order to help 1) solidify the concepts in my own mind and 2) share these learnings with you.

Lately I have been spending a lot of time trying to wrap my head around SEM or Search Engine Marketing. The craft of marketing (defining your audience, creating messaging, etc.) may have not changed much, but delivery certainly has.

You see, a while back this thing called The Internet happened. When I was a wee lass, they called it The Information Superhighway and I was convinced it would never happen. I was wrong, but I was also 10, so cut me some slack.

Anyway, the Internet changed everything. Suddenly we have access to all of the things. But for marketing purposes, the internet is kind of too big and too wide.

Enter SEO.

Search Engine Marketing is made up of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. Today I’m going to focus on very basic SEO.

Search pages like Google and Bing act like the Table of Contents of the Internet. You want to find a local hairdresser, so you type something like “hair cuts Los Angeles” or “salon Santa Monica” or some other such phrase and Google (I’m just going to say Google from here on out, because let’s be honest, Bing will never beat it) will look through the entire Internet and then spit back information on places where you can get a haircut in your area.

Sounds simple, right? Well, to the person looking for a haircut it may be, but what if you are the salon? How do you make sure that your business ends up on the first page of search results? The answer: with SEO.

The exact way that Google chooses what shows up in what order is a mystery to those who do not work at Google. But there are some general guidelines that you can follow.

Create keyword rich content.

Google is basically the plot of a skin-crawling horror movie. It sends little digital spiders out to crawl all over your site to find out what you have going on. Yes, it’s basically the plot of Arachnophobia. These spiders go through the pages on your site to find out 1) how often it is updated 2) what you are talking about and 3) if you are trustworthy.

Let me give you an example. Hair Salon A has just a front page that basically says, “Hey, we cut hair! Here’s our address and hours of operation!” The spiders come and say, “Ok, this site seems to be about hair, but it hasn’t been updated in 2 years, so it must not be that important. Also, the site doesn’t link to any trustworthy sites and no one links to them. Super lame.”

Hair Salon B has several pages. One of which is a blog that talks about all things hair like which organic dyes to use so that you won’t have split ends and what the new looks for summer are. They also have an image gallery of the various styles they do.

Now, if you type “Hair Salon A” by its exact name in Google search, they may come up. But if you type in “asymmetrical bob cut” they won’t show up, because they have not said anything about asymmetrical bobs on their site. Hair Salon B however not only has a few articles about that particular haircut, they also have some images that have been carefully tagged, and they provide helpful links to respected sites. Even if Salon A is the best salon in the world, that does them no good if a potential new customer is searching for a place to get their hair cut on the internet.

And let me be clear: Everyone is doing everything on the internet. Word of mouth is still important, but other than that, everyone is doing their research online.

SEO breakdown: Keywords

So, the first piece of the puzzle is to make sure you are updating your site often with content that is helpful and keeps people coming back. And, by the way, content can come in a lot of forms. It can be a blog, pictures, white papers, infographics, videos, and more. Don’t let content creation scare you. Find a format that works for you and go with it.

What to put in that content though is important. Let’s go back to the hair salon example. Let’s say you have a salon and you want to be known for mullets. The content you create needs to use what are called keywords to get a prized place on the Google search page. This means you come up with a list of words and phrases that are going to lead people with mullets (or those who want a mullet) to your page. Those keywords might include mullet, business in the front, party in the back, Billy Ray Cyrus, and so on. The idea is to use those keywords a lot, so the spiders go, “Ah, ok. This place is the place to go for a mullet. Let’s put this site up top.” Maybe you write a blog titles “How the Mullet Is Making a Comeback” or “Billy Ray Cyrus: Sexiest Man Alive” and then you use the keywords a lot in the body copy.

A word of caution here that you should go for quality over quantity. You could probably get some traction by just writing “mullet’s are awesome, get your mullet cut here,” over and over, but no one wants to read that. Eventually people (and the spiders) are going to realize that there is nothing of value on your page and you will get pushed farther down the line and into oblivion (aka the second page of Google search results).

SEO breakdown: The backend

There’s all sorts of stuff you can do to the back end of your website as well. Salesforce has a nice checklist you can check out. All that stuff is a little more technical and we can dive into that later. For now, just note that when you are loading stuff on your website and there are spaces available for you to add descriptions or titles—do it. Keywords are good, but make sure what you put actually fits the picture or copy.

SEO breakdown: Link Building

Link building is another way to up your SEO game. When you link to a well-known or trustworthy site, Google thinks you may be trustworthy too. If you are an organization that works with cancer patients and you link to The American Cancer Society, you look legit. If you link to creepy sites and sites that have nothing to do with what you’re about, the spiders dislike you.

It’s also good if you can get other sites to link to you. Ever wonder why you get a bunch of spam comments on your blog that link to Viagra and such? It’s not because they want YOU to buy Viagra, it’s because they want to use your site’s credit to make their own site’s SEO better.

There are ways to get other sites to link to you, but it often includes asking someone to include a link to your site, which just seems weird to me. A more difficult, but less creepy way, is to make comments on blogs and news stories that are relevant to your business and include a link back to your site. This takes time and some thought, as it works much better if you include a thoughtful comment.

Another interesting thing that I just learned is that the anchor text that you use to link matters. For instance, I could write:

To read my blogs on the Center for Nonprofit Management’s page, click here.

But a more preferable way would be to say:

I write about nonprofit management on CNM’s site, you should check it out.

Keyword-rich anchor text makes the spiders happy. Moz, which as far as I can tell is the Jesus of digital marketing, has more to say about anchor text that you might want to read.

What this means for you.

There’s an overwhelming amount of information out there on SEO, as well as about a zillion tools that make various aspects of it easier.

Start small. You don’t need to become a master of code or spend your day linking to your website on every site imaginable. Start with quality, customer-centered content on your page. Because in the end, SEO is only designed to get people to your page. Once they are there, they need something to do and a call to action to respond to. Create content that educates your audience on what you do, what people have done for you, and how you can help. Take the cancer organization again as an example. You might create content listing early warning signs, or ways that a caregiver can support the patient, or local resources. The more you can help, the more people will stay engaged with your site and follow through with your call to action.