What You Need to Know About Search Engine Optimization

What good is a great website if nobody visits? The single most important factor in whether or not anyone clicks to your site is where the site comes up in search engines. If a potential client runs a Google search on a product or service you sell, and your site does not turn up in the first few pages of results, odds are you won’t be found by the prospect.

That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. SEO is the name for a whole array of techniques that you can use to improve your search rankings.

Probably the single most important concept in SEO is this: Keywords drive traffic. Keywords are simply the words and phrases that people type into a search engine to find what they are looking for. Coming up with a good keyword list is the foundation of all effective optimization. But remember: It’s not always obvious what the best keywords for your site are.

For example, say you are the seller of commercial office cleaning services in New York. You will want people looking up those search terms to see your site ranked high in a search, but you also want someone searching terms like “commercial cleaning” or “window cleaning” or “construction cleanup” to land on your site. This is a niche type of market and you need to capture as much as you can through the search engines.  “Cleaning,” “commercial,” “window cleaning,” “construction cleanup” and “New York” are all keywords that you want to have embedded into your Web pages as text, so that search engines will index your site and searchers will find you.

Because you want to attract the people who are searching specifically for what you have to offer, you want to include relevant keywords throughout your site. The search engines try to judge relevancy, which means they’re trying to match the search query with results that are useful to thesearcher. (Someone looking for information on diamonds doesn’t want to waste time on websites discussing baseball diamonds, for instance.) Search engine methodologies vary, but most try to gauge relevance by how often keywords are mentioned on the site. If enough keywords appear on a certain page of your website, that page will be deemed relevant to a search for that particular word or phrase.

How do you determine your keywords? First try to think like a searcher. What words or phrases would I look for if I were searching for my website? Use common sense, but also go a few steps further.

It also helps to do some research. There are products that actually compile this information and will tell you how many times a day someone is looking for a particular phrase. The leading online keyword research tool is Word Tracker (WordTracker.com; currently $30 for a one-week subscription). Word Tracker provides tools for finding the right keywords for a search engine campaign. The site offers a number of ways to research and choose keywords and provides an approximate count of how often a particular phrase has been searched for over the previous 60 days. Google Keyword Sandbox (https://adwords.google.com/select/keywordtoolexternal) provides some suggestions for keywords, but does not include the number of searches. Yahoo/Overture Keywords (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/) is another resource. It compiles keyword searches on Yahoo/Overture (Yahoo’s sponsored search Internet advertising service) and partner sites over the previous 30 days.

When coming up with a list of keywords, it’s also helpful keep the following in mind: Consider singular and plural versions of words (search engines will look for both; it is generally thought that plural versions are better if your site is used for commerce, and singular versions if it’s simply an informational site). Also be aware of misspellings and alternate forms of words, although increasingly if a searcher types in a misspelling the engine will offer up a correct spelling and ask if that was what the searcher intended. You could also look at a thesaurus to come up with similar words, or look at your competitors’ websites to see what keywords they’re using.

Consider specifying your location in modifying your keyword phrases. If you have a site for a New York City hotel, instead of just targeting “hotels,” you would want to target the keyphrases “Manhattan hotels” or “New York City hotels.” You don’t want to attract people who are searching for hotels in California. Also remember that some terms will be heavily used. “New York accountant” will be used by lots of other websites; “New York corporate tax accountant” will be a less crowded field, so there is less competition in the results.

Brainstorm as many good, quality keywords as you can. A group of people might produce different ideas of what would constitute relevant keywords. One person might think that “sugar-free foods” is a great keyword for a site that sells sugar-free products. Another person might realize that “diabetic foods” and “sugarless foods” would also be relevant — and could expand the market too. Come up with a basic list of keywords and phrases and then conduct thorough research on them in Word Tracker.