Modern businesses must have an effective online marketing strategy. The internet is an invaluable tool, but getting started with an effective search engine optimization (or SEO) strategy can be a bit confusing for first-timers. Before you ever even think about starting a link-building campaign, you need to get your on page SEO in order. This is the most basic kind of SEO, and is fundamental to an online marketing strategy.

Search engine optimizers live by one motto: “Content is king.” What this means is Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines want to provide the most relevant website for a search, and use a website’s body copy to determine search results. If you own a dry-cleaning business in Chicago, you’d want to be on the first page when a potential customer searches “dry cleaning in Chicago,” or “Chicago dry cleaners” or “best dry cleaning in Chicago.”

These terms are referred to as “keywords,” or “search terms,” and are relevant search strings for your business. You should start by making a list of potential key words and phrases that you think potential customers might enter when trying to find your business. Next, head over to Google Insights and enter some of these keywords. This is a handy tool for showing just how popular a given search term is. After all, there’s no point in trying to rank for a term that never gets searched, right?

Using Google Insights to compare the possible search terms I listed above, I see “Chicago dry cleaners” is by far the most popular. Obviously this is the term your imaginary dry cleaning business should try to rank for. But how do you rank for a term? What can you do on to show Google, Bing and Yahoo that your site is more relevant than others?

Search engines love descriptive, original content, and this is one of the best ways to prove that your site is relevant for the keywords you want to rank for. Write the body copy of your website in an informative, conversational tone, using the keywords you want to rank for in a natural manner. Provide some quality information about your business and why a customer should choose your business over others. It’s also a good idea to make regular updates, edits and changes. This shows search engines that your website is current, valid and operational, and you’ll be rewarded accordingly.

There are a few other things you can work on to further optimize your site. Are you using your keywords in the alt tags for your images? How about in the URL itself, your domain name and your header tags? If you aren’t familiar with these terms, taking the time to familiarize yourself with basic HTML is another good idea.

At the end of the day, effective SEO isn’t really difficult. It’s time-consuming, and you have to be smart about how you approach it, but if you put user experience above search engine optimization, the rankings will follow naturally.

This is a guest blog post from Evolving Interactive featured Blogger, Tyler Moore. A bit about Tyler…

Tyler Moore lives and works in Indianapolis. His interests include blogging, web design and development, marketing, SEO and technology. He specializes in both on and off site SEO, and currently works as an SEO consultant for DocRaptor. DocRaptor is a Ruby on Rails application used to convert HTML to PDF format with a simple HTTP POST request. DocRaptor is a subscription based SaaS with a freemium business model, and handles styling better than competitive services. You can contact Tyler via email at moc.liamgnull@eroomlrelyt.

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Here in Chicago, it’s raining links and blogs. (SEO joke. Sorry.) In our last blog post, we discussed being proactive and original with your SEO campaigns, wowing potential customers with your freestyle, outside the box thinking. But, today I don’t feel like it. With the dreariness of a long Chicago winter ahead, and days like this, here is a list of five SEO strategies that can pass the time and still help you market your business.

Link Building – This is one of our premier SEO services for our clients. It’s the strategy (art) of connecting with relevant sites and having them link back to your site because you have something important to share; like an idea, product, or service. Link Building is my #1 favorite lazy day SEO activity. I turn on a movie or play a few albums, and just plug away at the computer. Most of link building is research, and reaching out to websites. It takes a while, but it is the backbone of search engine optimization. Plus, you can get in the zone and make a lot of progress when not distracted with the dreary outside world.

Blog Writing – Considering our last post, you can look for inspiration in anything to promote your website with a new blog post. A grey day is no exception (re: this post). Grab a hot beverage and just write. Try to keep it loose and comfortable. Come up with a few topics you haven’t blogged about in a while, and give a few reminders and updates to your readers.

Social Media Promotions – From a marketing standpoint, this is a slam dunk for local businesses that are social media savvy. In order to get a few extra followers, likes, and shares; target the people nearby passing the rainy day blues in front of their computers. Offer a promotion that will warm them up a bit. For example, “Rainy Day Special – The first five people to repost this on their wall receive two free movie passes, Starbucks Giftcard, etc”. If you’re running a restaurant or local service, you can give away a little something to get people to call you, as well as promote your company online. (I know this is skirting a fine line between being creative and proactive…I’ll fix that)

Organize Your Monthly Schedule – Don’t do today what you can put off tomorrow. While this seems like the ultimate lazy brush off, it can actually be quite helpful. Take a look at what needs to get done for the month in your marketing campaign. Go to your calendar; mark your time for link building, social media updates, blog posts, and more. Get organized, and it will help you when you feel like be more proactive on the next sunny day. I’d actually recommend doing this once and a while anyway, but why not on a day with nasty weather?

Website Maintenance – This is another thing you should do every once in a while anyway, but it can be tedious, so better to get it done without the allure of the great outdoors (of Chicago). Go through the back end of your site, and make sure everything is working properly. Make sure each link on your site is working, that your 404 page is in order, and update your content with some fresh, keyword rich text.

These tips should help maintain your valiant SEO efforts while keeping your occupied mind off of the rain, sleet, and hail of the longest season. Happy internet marketing!

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Of all of the various SEO strategies, link building shares time between being the most tedious and frustrating, or the most effective and rewarding. In most cases, it is all of the above.  Link building is the on-going process of reaching out to other sites that share interests or subject matter with yours, and having them link back to your site. I liken it to having one of these sites “Like” or “+1” your site, in that it is essentially a vote from one site to another, to be taken into consideration by both search engines and searchers.

With this in mind, the benefits of effective link building are great. The more “votes” you have pointing to your site from relevant sources, the better. Search engines tally these votes and factor them into their algorithms when sorting sites in search results. The sites with the most links from the most relevant, authoritative sources will appear at the top. In the case of searchers, you want to put your site out there as best you can. So if they can find out about you through a search engine query, fantastic. If a potential customer finds your website through a partner site linking to you; equally fantastic.

At Evolving Interactive, our SEO analysts have developed the foundation for effective link building strategies that we put to work for our clients. We personalize each campaign, attaining the links that are most suitable for our client’s respective industries. Over the years, we have honed these strategies to understand which links are the most effective, and yield the best results. There are several ways to get a valuable link to your site. Here are a few examples of the links that will help boost your sites visibility and page rank.

Blogs 

As every industry has its experts, there is no shortage of places to find valuable updates and opinions on any subject. Search for the people making the updates in your industry, and follow their blogs. After reading a few of their posts and joining in on the conversation, send the author a message asking if you can write a guest blog post. This is mutually beneficial, as they will get a fresh perspective and some new content for their blog, and you will have the opportunity to link back to your site. The author may not always agree, but some will, and it is a good idea to build your relationship with these bloggers by swapping guest posts. Even if your guest blog post is rejected, many of these blogs have comment sections that will link back to your site, so join in on the conversation.

Press Releases

If you have a product or service to promote that has topical or current value, you can write and submit a press release. Many sites accept press releases, and this can be a good opportunity for a link back to your site. Most press releases are informative with a promotional element, and this line has to be walked carefully. The type of sites that will receive and post a press release will be high in value, with expert resources, so it is a valuable target in a link building campaign.

Quality over Quantity

There are thousands upon thousands of sites that will provide you with free links that can incrementally boost your page rank. It’s a good idea to submit to these types of sites that are relevant to your industry. However, 100 links from these types of sites won’t be as valuable as one link from a high ranking site like The New York Times or a .gov. Spend time searching for link opportunities from high ranking sites. They are much more difficult to get, but will make your website look like an authority to the search engines and its users.

Link building is an ongoing process, and takes a lot of patience and organization to be really effective. It is one of the most important aspects of SEO, and professional SEO’s never stop searching for ways to improve and expand their link building strategies.

If you are interested in learning more about link building strategies and their benefits, contact Evolving Interactive at moc.evitcaretnignivlovenull@ofni or 312-454-4550.

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