Apr

How to NOT SEO Optimize Your Web Site

By Sid

A good friend of mine is building a new business. It’s a wonderful business, and something this country and the planet sorely needs.

I really love what they’re doing… except for how they’re putting their web site together. Like most B2B companies, they are in love with their vision, as they rightly should be. While their’s is not a product (they find hot eco-technologies, then help them fund and market the technology), the principles are the same. They need to locate customers – in their case the technology inventors and investors – and woo those prospective clients until they have signed and sealed contracts.

And of course they want to optimize their site so that people can find them on the search engines (in particular, potential investors).

What They Did That Was Bad SEO Optimization

My friend sent me an email yesterday that asked if there was a tool that could scan their web site, look for keywords, and add those keywords to their meta tags for them. They wanted to save some time in their SEO optimization practice.

Can you tell me what’s wrong with this picture?

I could have pointed him to a dozen different tools that will scan a site and come up with a list of keywords, but that wouldn’t have been a helpful answer. Having seen the copy they wrote for their brochure, I’m pretty certain that the web copy is filled with college-level poetic phrases that include combinations of words nobody in their right minds would use as a search phrase.

My guess is that when they scan the site, whatever tool they used would come up with a hodge-podge of words and phrases that are anything but focused on their primary industry – eco-technology. Then what?

What To Do For SEO Optimization Instead

I only had a few minutes to respond last night, so my short answer was this:

Don’t worry about the <keywords> meta tag.
Focus on the <title> tag, <h1> and <h2> tags, and image tags
Make sure the primary keyword(s) are in each URL

I admit that this terse answer wasn’t entirely helpful, so this morning I took a few minutes to write a longer explanation. Here’s what I told him:

You’re going about it kind of backwards. First, your web copywriter should have done the keyword research, and not by using the standard keyword tools (although they do help). Instead, do this:

Go to user forums, activeblog sites and even Yahoo Answers. Scan for headlines, questions, and topics related to the kind of business you do. See the actual phrases people in your target market are using to describe their problems and questions. You can bet that these phrases are what they’ll type in to the search engines when they’re looking for a solution to their problems.
Then, create an a Google Adwords account because their keyword tool will give you traffic volume estimates, as well as hundreds of other, related phrases. Copy all these related phrases because you’ll use them in your copy.
Focus on the keyword phrases with decent volume. There are other tools you can use that will tell you which of these higher-volume keyword phrases have relatively little competition for ranking in Google [ask and I'll point you to my favorite tool, which is free]. This will give you your primary keyword phrases for the pages on your web site. You’re directly addressing the issues/problems/questions your prospects have, and you’re using the same words they’d use.
Now that you’ve got your list of primary keyword phrases and related phrases, write the copy for the web site. This is where you had the cart before the horse, and it is a common mistake B2B and B2C companies make – they write the copy first, and THEN try to do SEO optimization on the site.
Write the copy so that each page is filled with industry-related words, and the title tag of each page includes the keyword phrase that is the focus of that page. That page should also include an <h1> tag with the same keyword phrase.
Create a separate page for each primary keyword phrase using the above technique. The URL, <title> and <h1> should all have the primarykeyword phrase, and there should be at least 450-600 words on the pagefilled with industry-related words.
Finally, make sure that you build an XML sitemap for Google (many tools to dothis, but it’s why I love blogs – it’s all automatic).

Now that your pages are built, you’ll want to get the search engines’ attention. A good way to do this is to “syndicate” several of the pages through social media – Digg, Delicious, Social Median are all great. [Again, ask, and I'll tell you about my favorite system to do this]

The reason for all of this is that the search engines love relevancy. Relevancy is determined by how well each page relates to the topic of the page and site (this is why you fill it with industry-related phrases); by the depth of the site (number of pages related to the industry); age of the site (make sure that you register the domain name for more than 2 years); and the links back to the site from other industry-related sites.

Nobody knows the exact formula Google uses, and I’ve seen a well-written article out-rank an established web site because the article is deemed “more relevant” to the searcher by the Google algorithm. That’s why I emphasize taking the time with each page as you write it. And… that’s just the SEO part of the puzzle. You still have to write copy that gets your visitor to take your desired action once they find the site.

Once you get the site built, go to: http://grader.com to see how well you did with the site.

I have’t heard back from my friend yet, but my guess is that he’ll say, “maybe we’ll get to that later.”

And B2B businesses wonder why they don’t do well in the search engines…

Happy searching.

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