Contents
Introduction 1
Why Write a Book on SEO & Online Customer Service? 5
Internet Opportunity for Small Businesses 10
Part I: Optimizing For GOOGLE & Other Search Engines 15
Chapter 1
What is SEO and How Can it Help Your Business? 17
What is SEO? 20
Relevance 21
Example of Non-Relevance 21
What to Expect 23
Free Business Listing with Google 26
Chapter Action Steps / Notes 27
Chapter 2
How to Get Banned From Search Engines 29
Invisible Text and Other Deceptive Tricks 29
Link Sharing 30
Duplicate Sites (Severely Penalized) 31
Keyword Stuffing 33
Don’t use Special Characters or Punctuation 33
You Must Have a “Contact Us” TEXT Link from Your Home Page 35
Don’t use a “Splash” Page 36
NO Broken Links 37
Bottom Line on Upsetting the Google Search
Gods 37
Chapter Action Steps / Notes 39
Chapter 3
KEYWORDS KEYWORDS KEYWORDS 41
The Most Important Thing Regarding
Keywords 42
Naming Files 44
Example of a File Name with Keywords 44
Image File Names 46
Example on naming files 49
Text Links 50
Meta Tags and Keywords 51
Example of Meta Tag Programming Code 51
ALT Tags 52
Naming Your “Other” (Not the Home page)
Web Pages 53
If it’s not too Late, Start Out With A Main
URL That Contains Keywords 54
Launch Additional Websites with Your
Keywords in the URL 56
Chapter Action Steps / Notes 57
Chapter 4
Incoming Links to Your Site – “Backlinks” 59
Doing a Press Release 60
Writing an Article 60
Monthly Newsletter 62
Site Maps 63
Chapter Action Steps / Notes 65
Chapter 5
Content is King 67
First Two Sentences 68
Chapter Action Steps / Notes 71
Part II: Optimizing Websites For Customer Service Helps Google Ranking 73
Chapter 6
Great! You Have High Ranking – Now What
Do You Do? 75
How to Get Picked From the Results Page 76
Chapter Action Steps / Notes 78
Chapter 7
Then Once They Get to Your Website 79
Chapter Action Steps / Notes 82
Chapter 8
Generally Accepted Good Business Practices
for Internet Retailing 83
Chapter Action Steps / Notes 95
Personal Note from the Author 97
Speaking / Consulting Engagements 98
Useful Websites 99
Action Plan 101
Author’s Websites 103
Glossary 105
Introduction
“I thought a lot about my intended audience for this book and came to the conclusion that it was small business owners with little or no internet marketing nor web design experience.” – Greg Bright
My wife and I run our businesses, by ourselves. Technically, our businesses are Micro Businesses, also known as a Mom and Pop businesses.
With our businesses located in Austin, Texas, I tend to get caught up in the technical jargon and buzzwords thrown around in some of the networking groups I belong to ( Austin is a very “techie” city). I did not want to speak that same jargon to my audience, if they could not relate to it.
When I first circulated the rough draft of this book around to some of my networking contacts, the feedback I got was “Shouldn’t business owners hire out the things they don’t do well – like website design and search engine optimization?”
I realized then that my audience was not the recently “funded” venture that had a fresh infusion of cash to go out and hire a full time website designer. My audience was not the “techies” with their techno jargon, acronyms and buzzwords. My audience was Micro Business owners who has to wants to do everything themselves – just like my wife and I.
I don’t know about you, but in our businesses my wife and I share the responsibilities of Bookkeeper, Accountant, Salesperson, HR Director, Technician, Janitor and yes, Website Designer.
Small business owners (and charitable causes) need an easy to understand/easy to implement process for gaining an advantage over the corporate giants in the internet world. How did I come to realize this? When I first started this process for my own business twelve years ago, no such manual existed. Sure there were (and still are) books on the subject written by programmers, for programmers. These programmers had tremendous skills in programming but lacked the fundamentals of real world business practices, especially at the Micro Business level.
This book was intentionally written to help anyone at any level (or no level) of website design knowledge, whether you are just preparing to organize your start up business or your neighbor’s kid launched your website five years ago.
I am not a programmer, nor do I understand the basic programming language for website design (HTML) all that well. I am, however, very successful at getting my websites high ranking.
Truth is, you really don’t have to know the programming language of websites to know how to optimize your website for search engines and customers. That would be the same as saying that you have to know the programming code of Microsoft® Windows® just to turn on your computer, or the programming code of Microsoft® Word just to type a letter.
There are website design programs out there classified as WYSIWYG programs – “What You See Is What You Get”. This just means that as you type text on the web page, or insert a picture, the program displays (on your monitor screen) how the actual web page will look to users on the internet. Adobe® Dreamweaver® is one of these WYSIWYG programs. Dreamweaver® is very user friendly and intuitive.
This really isn’t rocket science here. Computers are just a tool to help you succeed. Utilize your tool in the most efficient way you can, without having to go through a huge learning curve.
I tried to keep the book brief, at the most basic understanding level, and to the point. I tried to put myself back into my own shoes, twelve years ago, when I set out learning how to build a website and I knew nothing – back then it was sink or swim for me.
Optimizing your website to get higher search engine ranking just takes a little research and a little patience. It goes the same for optimizing your website for great customer service. They both involve the basic marketing skills you are already doing in going about the every day promotion of your business.
I plan to place the feedback and up-to-date Search Engine Optimization information on the website for this book – www.get-top-ranking-on-google.com. I also plan to come out with a new edition of this book every year, since the world of SEO changes constantly. So, if you don’t understand something in this book, probably other people are asking the same questions and I will try to answer them on the website and improve the next edition of the book.
Please see the Website for Consulting / Speaking Engagements
www.get-top-ranking-on-search-engines.com
Please visit my website for contact information – feedback is always welcome.
Define: HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) The programming language that most websites are written in.
By the way, I don’t see very many of those recently funded ventures doing most of the techniques that I will share with you here – probably because they are not doing their “due diligence” (jargon / buzzword). It’s easier for them to just hire one of the many amateurs out there who promise to get them “High Ranking”.
So, I direct this book to you, the Micro Business Owners/Mom and Pops who are the front line of our free enterprise system – the risk takers – the seed planters – the backbone of our economy. The best news (for me) is that there are a heck of a lot of you out there in the world. After all, I would like to sell a few of these books J
Why Write a Book on SEO & Online Customer Service?
When friends and acquaintances found out how successful I have been with my own websites, they asked me to help them get better ranking on search engines for their businesses. These friends knew I had attended the “SEO School of Hard Knocks” for the past twelve years, scratching and crawling my way up. Finally, I am at the top with numerous websites (see the end of this book). What started as a few notes to some friends kept growing until I had enough information for a small book.
I wanted the novice to be able to get some quick knowledge which could be implemented immediately without a lot of effort nor a steep learning curve. This makes my book unique.
My book also differs from other books on SEO in that my advice comes from a customer service perspective. After all, the ultimate goal is to build lifelong customers for your business. I have spent the last 33 years in customer service and had the ultimate retailer as a mentor – my father. Dad was very well respected in the Ace Hardware community – nationwide. Dad always put the customer first!
I also saw an opportunity to share some “insider” secrets and lesser-known techniques, which (to my amazement) are not utilized on most websites – even the corporate giants.
Define: SEO – SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization” and involves designing your website to be search-engine-friendly with the goal of high ranking – so your website can be found on the internet through search engines. (more about SEO in the next section)
I highly recommend that all business owners take charge of their website and the constant updating of it. You don’t want to have to turn to a website designer every time you want to make a change. If you make changes and updates to your website on a regular basis (which you should do at least every week), then your website designer could end up costing a fortune! Furthermore, does a website designer really understand your business the way you do? Can they make recommendations based on looking at your business in its entirety? Does a website designer know your customers like you do?
If you do hire a website designer, find one that asks you lots of questions about your business. The website designer should rely on you for input for the design of the website – it should be a combined effort. Find one that will show you how to make subtle changes/updates yourself, and only rely on them for major updates.
You and your web designer must also consider the three main elements needed in order for a website to function. First you have to write a program that gives birth to the website (website design program). Second, you have to register a name for your website (www.yourname.com also known as the URL), and finally you have to have your website “hosted” on the hard drive of a server on the internet – more on this later.
You can start with any tip or topic in this book. Just pick one that makes sense to you, take some baby steps and then master the next tip. There is no order to it. Don’t worry if I mention a tip or talk about something that you don’t understand. Just keep going. You will pick up many ideas throughout. Don’t get “hung up” on any one particular topic.
Even if you don’t want to take charge of your website yourself, this book will help you talk intelligently to your website designer. It will help you separate the players from the amateurs.
No one knows your business like you do, and it’s up to you to keep it fresh. A fresh and consistently-updated website not only gets you higher ranking, your customers appreciate it as well, hopefully coming back for more.
Define: Spider – Search engines have programs (called Spiders or “Bots”) that go out and look at every single website on the internet. They “crawl” every aspect (including file names, text and the actual programming code), of every page of every website on the internet attempting to rank them by subject matter. They rank both the home page and the individual pages – mostly relating them to keywords that searchers might enter into the search box of the search engine. Again, the page being ranked could be the “Home Page” (the home page is the most important) or any other page within the website.
Internet Opportunity for Small Businesses
Etailing (online retail) was up another twenty plus percent as 2007 came to an end. Shoppers would much rather surf the internet than spend time in traffic and pay high gasoline prices driving all over the place. Even my wife bought all of our Christmas presents last year “online”. Now, that might not mean a lot to you, but to me it’s huge. It says a ton about the shopping habits of folks. We’re talking about a woman that loves the retail shopping experience and did not order any gifts online the previous Christmas! Don’t get me wrong, she still shops “brick and mortar” stores, but now she’s pre-shopping the items (online) before she hits the road.
Define: Brick and Mortar Business – a brick and mortar business is a business in the traditional sense. It has a physical location, verses an internet business, which only exists on the web.
Another opportunity for small business is that the internet is the perfect advertising / marketing vehicle. If you think about it, most advertising is intrusive. You’re reading a news article and you have to navigate through all of the ads. You’re watching TV and the commercials interrupt your experience. In contrast, internet shoppers are actually looking for your information. They are searching for your products!
I also feel that there is a paradigm shift going on out there in the “brick and mortar” retail store arena which will highlight the need for small business owners to have a better web presence. Back when my family and I owned our Ace Hardware stores (and also when I moved on to work for Ace Corporate in the early 90’s as a retail consultant), the experts said that there was simply too much retail square footage in the United States, for the population to support it.
Well, retailers just kept on building! There are some pretty large egos at work. (For example, you might have seen major home centers built right across the street from one another.) The bottom line is that there is going to be some fallout – which small business owners can take advantage of, if they are prepared, and if they can be found on the internet.
Compounding the “overbuilding” fact is that the “Big Box” stores have to draw from a very large market area, requiring some of their customers to drive quite a distance to get to them. With high gas prices, customers are going to start cocooning around their neighborhoods more and more, benefiting independently owned – local Mom and Pop businesses. To be sure, customers are becoming thriftier in their shopping escapades and doing much of the “leg work” of the shopping on the internet prior to hitting the road.
It’s not enough for Mom and Pop businesses to simply have a website on the internet. They have to be found through the search engines allowing the customer to “pre-shop” their store inventories, in preparation for stopping by the physical location for a purchase.
Internet retailing is much more than just making a sale on your website “online”. It’s about acquiring and building customer relationships that can turn into lifelong purchases at your “brick and mortar” location.
Furthermore, society is becoming “surrounded” by the internet. The “Low Cost” laptop market segment is gaining some unexpected steam. (I try to stay on top of the laptop market for my patented Laptop Stand invention at Keynamics® LLC www.keynamics.com.) This low cost laptop segment is good news for both you and I. Laptop manufacturers are talking about coming out with a laptop that costs under $100 in the near future. Talk about putting the internet everywhere! Market researchers are estimating that 145 million laptops will be sold in 2008. That’s up from 100 million units in 2007 and 80 million in 2006. Everyone will have a laptop eventually. Even people who already own one will be getting a second and third just to throw around, say in the trunk of the car, a gym bag, under the car seat. You can even get a pretty good version of the internet on cell phones these days. The point is that the internet is truly everywhere, meaning customers everywhere can have access to your business 24/7. Will you be found?
Whether you sell a product on the internet (etailing), offer a service, or run a charitable/worthwhile cause, it’s all the same. To be successful, it’s not a matter of ifyou will have a strong internet presence, it’s when. That when is now.
Before moving on to the main part of the book, I would like to mention a few programs that I personally use. I only point them out so that you know my perspective and my point of view from the various examples given. I use the Microsoft® Windows® (operating system), Microsoft® Internet Explorer® (web browser), Adobe Photoshop® (photo editing program), Adobe Dreamweaver ® (website design program) and Google™ (search engine).
Define: Micro Business – Technically, a small business as defined by the SBA has less than $5 million in sales and less than 500 employees. A Micro Business might have zero employees and can be run by one or two people (typically family members). I tend to view a Micro Business and a “Mom and Pop” business as one in the same.
Part I:
Optimizing
For GOOGLE
&
Other
Search Engines
“Optimizing for Google also optimizes for the rest of the search engines” – Greg Bright
Chapter 1
What is SEO and How Can it Help Your Business?
If you are one of those people (like me) that skip the introduction of most books, please go back and read it – instructions are given there that will guide you through the rest of this book.
Micro Businesses or Mom and Pop businesses are perfect for marketing and selling on the internet for numerous reasons. For example, you can cater to a niche, something that is difficult for larger corporations which are most interested in turning fast moving items to the masses. You can focus on a few of your most important “niche” items. Larger chains can’t focus because they have such a huge inventory which changes constantly. Larger enterprises also have to be broader in scope which dilutes their efforts on the web.
A Micro Business isn’t tied down to bureaucratic red tape. It can implement new ideas and changes quickly without having to get approval from upper management, go through several committees, then get stuck in the Legal Department or (worse yet) the Finance department.
Micro Businesses engage with and listen to the customer, something that upper management of larger corporations has a hard time with because of all of the layers. This “front line” knowledge provides better insight, understanding, and responsiveness.
Business basics don’t change with technology. Small business owners know how to cater to and “Love their Customers to Death” (Dad-ism). Mom and Pops can rely on their wisdom of good businesses practices and customer service much better than the latest “Virtual Store”. After all, who is the local shopper going to trust? The local community folks they drive by every day, or the mega-store in cyberspace? Parlay this business wisdom into your website design, both when optimizing for search engines and optimizing for customers.
Furthermore, web surfers pay a lot more attention to the “Natural Listings” because they know these listings are relevant to their searches and not simply “paid for” advertising. This is the same principle as “Ad Blindness” where readers of print materials simply “tune out” all of the ads.
Another advantage is that most search engines run on a philosophy of democracy. Meaning, the huge corporations can’t “out spend” you, or influence the search outcome of the “Natural Search” results.
Define: Natural Search Results – Most search engines return about ten individual website results on the first page after a searcher types a keyword into the search box – this is called the Search Engine Results Page – SERP. The individual ten listings are referred to as the “natural” search results. Do not confuse them with the sponsored (paid advertising) links that are usually listed on the right side of the page with a few sometimes listed just above the natural results. These “advertisements” are usually indicated as “Paid” or “Sponsored” ads. Natural search results are free.
All of these advantages level the playing field on the internet for Micro Businesses. In reality, you have the upper hand against the corporate giants! With a little time and effort you can outrank the large corporations on search engines – especially in your niche areas.
What is SEO?
We are talking about Search Engine Optimization also known as SEO or "Website Optimization". Basically, this involves designing and programming your website to be search-engine-friendly with the goal of high “natural” ranking on the first page of the search results (search engine results page – SERP).
Of course, we have to balance the need for search engine rank with a little common sense. We do still want to attract the paying customers to our site. Therefore, apply basic internet marketing principles as well (explained in Part II).
There is an entire industry created by professionals who do this, and charge for it. There are varied opinions out there as to what works and what does not work, and there some hard and fast rules which can be followed. But remember, the information is proprietary and changes daily. To help keep yourself constantly updated, subscribe to various newsletters and magazines on the topic of SEO and perform routine Google searches on SEO.
Google is very secretive about what algorithms they use to index websites. Algorithms are plugged into the computer programs that rank websites, but I am certain that Google has a lot more “Human” involvement in website ranking than they would admit. Why? Because they can afford to hire the people to manually look at a lot of websites and rank them based on relevancy. Just one more reason to only employ legitimate techniques for high ranking.
Define: Algorithms – The rules that search engines use to rank webpages.
Relevance
Try to put yourself in Google’s shoes. What is Google’s main philosophy, and why do most of us love using the Google search engine so much? Because the search engine provides a good experience by returning results that are relevant to our search words.
An Example of Non-Relevance:
I sell my patented laptop stand and I know that Hewlett-Packard (HP) sells a lot of laptops. Therefore, I would love for everyone who searches for an HP laptop to land on my webpage and learn how my laptop stand can help them use their laptops more comfortably. So, I could optimize my website with the keywords “HP Laptop”, in hopes that everyone searching for this would end up on my site. Wishful thinking – but “laptop stands” are not very relevant to a search for “HP Laptops” and Google would never rank me very high for those keywords.
Google even ranks its paid search results or “sponsored links” (It’s called the Google AdWords™ Program) by relevance to the searcher’s search words. In short, you can’t “buy” your way to the top of the sponsored links list. Pretty cool, huh? Again, it levels the playing field.
One way Google measures the relevance (on the Natural Search Results and the AdWords program) is by how often a searcher clicks on any particular website (or sponsored link) in relation to other sponsored links or websites. They assume that more people clicking on your website must mean it is more relevant to that particular search keyword (or phrase) that the searcher typed into the Google search box.
Bottom Line: There are some commonly known things that will help you with Google (and all the rest of the search engines). There are also many deceptive things which can get you banned from Google altogether (or penalized, so you show up on page 100).
The idea is to show up on page one, two, or three on the “natural” (and free) search results. Page one or two being the best on most search engines. As of 2008, Google commands more than 60% of the search engine market, with Yahoo!® next, then MSN® Internet Services. Anything after page three on any search engine is pretty much worthless.
I will share some techniques that I have learned over the years, but I also strongly suggest that you start your own research project. You will gather the best information from the internet itself by searching for "SEO”. This should be a never ending research project because the search engines are constantly changing.
What to Expect
Everyone reading this book probably has a different expectation of the success level that they can achieve in their businesses or organizations using the internet. It might help if I give you a range of expectations to shoot for. Aim high!
If you are selling a very popular or competitively branded item like the iPod®, for example, do not expect to be ranked number one for that keyword any time in this century. It just won’t happen. I’d love for you to prove me wrong on this, but let’s be realistic. However, you might expect high ranking for some unique niche service you offer based on the iPod®.
You should expect to be ranked number one for the basic things like a search for your business name, or a search for your business service or product along with the keywords of your town or area. Building upon that, the sky is the limit!
You should also expect that once visitors get to your website, you will convert them into paying customers, get them to call on the phone, or convince them to walk into your physical location. You can do this all by utilizing good internet retailing practices.
High ranking will not happen overnight, probably not even within the first year. In fact, some people refer to the Google “Sandbox”. They say that Google and other search engines purposely keep new websites at a lower ranking for the first several months after launching a new website. This does make sense, if you think about it. Google wants to supply their users with the most relevant search results. Most times, new businesses are still trying to work out the “kinks” during the first year of operations, plus this keeps “fly-by-night” businesses from competing with legitimate businesses. Search engines figure that a more “seasoned” business will have the experience to serve the customer better. So start early!
Chapter Action Steps / Notes
1. What to Expect (set your goals here).
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2. Think about what separates your business from the competition (be thinking about keywords and text that are relevant to your uniqueness).
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3. Apply for Local Business Listing on Google.
Copyright © 2008 Greg Bright
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