March "Web Workout"

Each month, this section will focus on specific web trends, best practices, tips, tricks or techniques for effective web marketing. Search Engine Optimization and How DO They Find You on the Web Anyway? are the first in a series targeted at business owners and marketing professionals, and anyone else that may be trying to successfully conduct business on the web.

This series will guide you, step-by-step through a proven methodology that will result in higher search engine rankings for your website. With some hands-on work, and consistent follow-up, you and your web developer can take your website to new levels!

Topics in this series will include:

• Competitive Keyword Research (this month)
• How Do I Choose the Right Keywords?
• Optimizing Your Pages, A Search Engine Checklist for Google
• Optimizing Your Pages, A Search Engine Checklist for Yahoo and others
• Cross-Linking Strategies
• Monitoring Your Rankings

Search Engine Optimization. What does that really mean?

We frequently hear references to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and many of us wonder: "What in the world does that mean?" It sounds difficult, technical and, well, if it's got an acronym tied to it, forget about it! Here's the real story...

The big search engine companies use their servers to "spider" the web. By spider we mean that they use automated tools to go from site to site looking at page structure, special tags in the code, and the words on the page. They also follow the links from your website to other sites and back again. Because it is such an intricate and twisted path through billions of pages, it is apt that the process is called "spidering."

One of the top search engines boasts over 8 BILLION web pages spidered. If you were to print a book with one billion dollar signs, printed 1000 signs per page, the book would be 1 MILLION pages long, and would be 166 feet 8 inches thick So, how in the world can your website compete with that many web pages?

Here are some great tips to make it happen without any gimmicks. These tips will walk you through the process of Search Engine Optimization, which simply means making your pages attractive to the spiders so that they will find them, crawl around on them for a while, and boost your site up in the search engine rankings.

Why Can't I Use the Tricks I've Heard Already?

The top search engines not only travel farther on the web than ever before, but they are SMART too! Spiders will actually report back to the search engine any websites that are trying to SPAM them. We all know what spam is--those thousands of unwanted messages in our inbox, or captured in our spam filter that we have to take time to review everyday. Well, like those email spammers, your site can be a search engine spammer, and THEY DON'T LIKE IT EITHER!

For awhile, it was quite popular to pick a keyword you thought would be good for your site and "hide" it in the page code--over and over again. This is a bad practice that will surely have you marked as a search engine spammer. What happens to those marked websites? The big search engines put them on a sort of probation for a period of time. During this time; the spamming site will not show up at all in a search until you fix the problem.

What if you fix the problem right away? It doesn't matter, as some of the bigger search engines only spider the web once a month! So you won't see your site back in action for up to a month, sometimes longer. Obviously, that is no way to do business on the web.

What you have to do is optimize your site "organically," which means improving search engine rankings without tricking the consumer or web visitor -and without PAYING the search engines to do it for you.

Competitive Keyword Research

The First Step: What's the Competition Doing?

Do you know who your competitors are on the web? You should keep a close eye on them! The first step in picking the right keywords is to identify words that you think visitors will use to find your website. These keywords can be phrases as well as single words. Start with ten keywords or phrases and realize that you will have a lot more when you finish this exercise!

Exercise: Analyzing the Competition

1. Compile a list of 10 keywords that you think appropriately identify your website.
   
   
2. For each of your 10 keywords, conduct a search on Yahoo and Google.
   
   
3. From the search results, pick the top 5 competitors for each keyword.
   Note: Do not include the paid links that are usually in the top of the page or on the right, and may be titled something like "Sponsored Link."
   
   
4. Record the web addresses for each of these pages.
   
   
5. For each keyword, visit the top 5 web addresses.
   
   
6. For each web address, right click on the page, and select View Source from the menu (don't worry, it will be fine!)
   
   
7. Look toward the top of the code for the following tags:
   <meta name="keywords"
<title>
<meta name="Description"

   
   
8. Copy these tags and their contents from each competitive website. The content you are looking for in the tag is similar to the examples in blue below:
   <TITLE>San Jose and Silicon Valley Web Design and Development by M3iworks, Inc.</TITLE>

<META NAME="description" CONTENT="San Jose Web Design, San Jose Web Design by M3iworks, Inc., Web Design and Web Development for the San Jose and Silicon Valley Area.">

<meta NAME="keywords" content="web design, website design, web page design, m3iworks, m3iworks.com, linda gold">
   
   
9. After you are done, compile all of the competitive keywords.
   
   
10. Remove duplicates and words that you feel do not honestly describe your website.
    
    
11. Remove any keywords that carry a copyright or trademark symbol.
    
    
12. Don't forget to save your work!

You are done! You have completed the research portion of your analysis.

Tune in next month for the next step and our next article: How Do I Choose the Right Keywords?

About M3iworks

M3iworks provides web strategy, design and development built on a foundation of usability. We focus on generating ROI for your web investment by ACQUIRING qualified site visitors, CONVERTING them to action, and RETAINING longer-term relationships with those visitors. Selected as a top-10 web design firm by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, guaranteed satisfaction is a hallmark of our success. M3iworks serves clients such as Sun Microsystems, Extreme Networks, Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group and SonicWALL as well as medium-sized firms and non-profit organizations. M3iworks was founded in 1981.

M3iworks' corporate headquarters are located in San Jose, CA. For more information, call (408) 293-9654 x841 or visit M3iworks at: www.m3iworks.com