If you take away anything from this post, it is crucial you learn two things:

1. Link-building is fundamental to ranking your site for a specific keyword or key phrase.

2. Not all links are treated equal.

Link-building.

Improving the rank of your site is highly influenced by the number of links coming in to your site. This is because search engines view links as ‘votes’ toward your site’s credibility (and the keywords it interprets on your site). Once you have selected the key phrase you are targeting for your site, you need to generate an ongoing link-building strategy. A solid linking strategy includes creating a good site and interesting content AND actively pursuing linking opportunities from other people or sites.

• Create and share interesting content. Give people a reason to link to you – generate content they need and can use. A blog is a great way to host your own content.

Once you have a great site, product, or content, chase down some links. Here are a few ideas:

• Bloggers. Get featured by bloggers in your niche, or offer to write a guest post.
• News. Look to online news outlets relevant to your industry or community and pitch them on why they should cover your product or service.
• Customers. Be clever about how your current customers can link back to your site – maybe you write an overview about what you did for them, or have them list your on your site as a partner.
• Events. Host an event, and be sure to promote the information (and your company or site) on a variety of news sites, blogs, event calendars, Twitter, etc. Do a blog write-up on how it went, and be sure to post some pictures.
• Relevant directories. Look for industry lists or directories that can promote your site or service (and link to you). The operative word is relevant; link neighborhoods are important, so aim for links from the most authoritative, quality sites.

The link neighborhood.

In search, it is imperative you understand that not all links are weighted the same. This is where the link neighborhood comes in. Similar to the keyword stuffing, search engines are too smart to value any link. Because search engines are in the business of providing the most relevant and credible search results, they look at the bigger picture: what types of sites are linking in to yours?

For example, imagine two sites are trying to rank for a specific key phrase and each of them have 5 links. One has links from link farms and low-quality sites, and the other has links from news sites, industry leader blogs, or other sites with credible editorial. The search engine will favor the latter. Your link neighborhood is important – you want a diverse portfolio of links from credible, trusted sites.

On paid links.

Bear in mind, Google frowns upon paid links. Do your due diligence in seeking authentic, quality links and be wary of paid link opportunities.

Search marketing is an ongoing, constant process. To stay a competitor in your niche, you must consistently be working to add quality links. And don’t forget that Google and Bing don’t owe you anything: Search engines can change their algorithms, which can also affect your ranking. This is part of the game, and in the case of search marketing, the best defense is a great offense.

Be thorough and strategic in your approach, and plan wisely for an ongoing effort to build relationships and garner quality links.

One of the most common ailments of less-than-ideal traffic numbers, is that the site was not built around specific keywords. By doing your research, you can determine the most profitable keywords in your niche and build out a site that aims to fit the needs of those searching for what you provide. This is a simple process which can make a dramatic impact.

The webmaster tools from the respective search engines provide a wealth of valuable information. As a site owner, hopefully you have already accessed their tools, but if not, here you go:

Google Webmaster tools

Bing Webmaster

Authenticating your site with Yahoo Site Explorer*

*Note that Microsoft owns Yahoo, and much of the Yahoo Site Explorer functionality is being transitioned into the Bing Webmaster tools.

Complete a site audit for search

Once you have determined the keywords you aim to target, do an audit of your current site. Make notes of how your site is built, and where you could use some improvement.

1. Review the use of keywords throughout your site.

Keywords/key phrases should be:

• In page titles
• Once in the H1 tag
• In the text a minimum of 3 times, and a few more if there is a lot of text on the page. However, do not ‘keyword stuff.’
• Close to the beginning of the headline… and a mega bonus if you can creatively work it in a second time within that same H1 tag.
• Once in the alt attribute of an image

Keywords/key phrases should not be:

• In the anchor text pointing to a different page than the one you want to receive the traffic. For example, if you were creating a site for hardwood floors Seattle, and you want most of the traffic going to the home page, do not link the terms ‘hardwood floors Seattle’ on that specific page to a different location.
• Stuffed, which means you pump your page and text full of the keyword. This is spammy, tacky, and unprofessional.

2. Review any non-HTML content

This could include images and graphics with important information, Flash content, or content in a video or audio file. Search engines can’t read that content, thus will not help your ranking in any way. Do note, however, that alt-text of your images is crawled. Be descriptive of the image, but think about ways you can be descriptive and include the keyword.

3. Use a diagnostic tool to review the crawl-ability of the site.

In order for your site to rank, the search engine robots need to crawl through it… so it needs to be easy for them to do so. Orphan pages (pages that are not linked to any other page) and broken links do not make it easy for the robots to travel through your site, resulting in many pages being overlooked. The Web Crawl inside Google Webmaster tools identifies any problems the Googlebot experienced when trying to crawl your site, which could include broken links or errors.

There are a lot of simple, quick fixes that can make a huge difference as you move forward and pave the way to more visitors engaging with your site and buying your product or service.

First things first: If you currently have a site (or if you’re about to build one), you need to sign up for the webmaster tools on the respective search engines. Although Google is the leader in gross online searches, both Bing and Yahoo site master/web master tools include some beneficial information you will need. Here are the links to sign up for each tool:

Google Webmaster tools

Bing Webmaster

Authenticating your site with Yahoo Site Explorer*

*Note that Microsoft owns Yahoo, and much of the Yahoo Site Explorer functionality is being transitioned into the Bing Webmaster tools.

Step 1: Select the keywords for your company or business.

When building a site, you want to select a key phrase to target your site around. You can figure out which phrase to target by looking at the monthly search statistics in Google’s keyword tool:

https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none

Be sure to select ‘exact’ (instead of broad). You will see the monthly traffic locally, which means in your country, or internationally. This tool will be your best friend when beginning to build or update your site.

Use this guide to determine the keywords or key phrases you will optimize for BEFORE creating your site content.

Step 2: Optimize your site content to align with your chosen keywords

If you are creating a new site or editing an existing site, here are some guidelines to follow to optimize your content:

Page titles

The page title is what you see at the top of the browser—it’s not usually on the actual page. Think about the ‘question’ users have when searching, and how your site is going to be a multi-page response. Include your keyword in the page title where relevant and applicable.

Headlines

Write your page title to include the keyword toward the beginning of the H1 tag. Headlines should be H1s in the HTML of your site. A good way to find out is to check your source code; it will say <h1>The best value on hardwood floors in Seattle</h1>. Be sure H1 tags are the visible headline in your site design—some designers don’t realize their impact on search. Your keywords should be in the H1 tag on the applicable page.

Text

Your keyword should be in the page content up to three times on the page. If the content is long, you can include it a couple more times, but at all costs avoid keyword stuffing.

On Keyword Stuffing

A lot of people misread the notion that keywords on the page help a site rank for specific keywords, and believe that stuffing the page with the keyword again and again is a clever approach. It’s not clever at all. In fact, because so many people believed this, the search engines built in ways to spot and penalize it. When it comes to optimizing the content on the page, there isn’t a specific formula to follow: just focus on writing thorough, helpful information.

Meta data

Site descriptions also play a role in the ranking, but more poignantly help your site get traffic once search results are served up. When a viewer sees search results, the short description of the site is the ‘meta description’, and helps a user determine if the site will provide the information he or she needs.

This is an opportunity to include a 155-character explanation of what information your site provides… and include the keyword. Years ago it was standard practice to list out keywords, but it is important to emphasize this is no longer used by search engines. A meta description should be created for each page, and to learn more about this, I recommend SEOmoz’s page on Meta Descriptions.

Sitemaps

In order for a site to be returned as a search result, the search engine robots must crawl it and—in a sense—“review” its content. Because this is such an important component of the search puzzle, make it easier for the robots to review each page by creating a sitemap. Google Webmaster tools provide an interface to submit and update sitemaps directly. To learn more about creating sitemaps, I recommend you visit www.sitemaps.org

Once your site has been developed, your next step is to promote your content and go out and chase some traffic. Gone are the days when building a site earned you thousands of visitors, but completing some key steps will keep you in the game… and to learn about that, see our post on increasing traffic through link-building.

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Marketing your business is not an activity left for when you’re without sales, projects, or leads. It’s an ongoing movement both reinforcing your brand message as well as maintaining an active pulse on assisting customers with their needs. Companies large and small, in early stages as well as established businesses need to consistently check in with their efforts and how they are contributing to the upward swing of your business, revenue, and opportunities.

1.) Who is your customer?

Describe the person who is buying your product or service: where do they live, what do they do for a living, what are their interests, and why are they choosing what you do? What other products and brands are they buying? How are they spending their time, disposable income? How old are they, and spend some time thinking about the steps they go through to make their purchase decision.

2.) Why is your product/service/company different?

List the reasons why what you’re offering is different than everyone else. No free rides for those that really aren’t very different… list the nuances if it’s not an obvious differentiation. Even if your business thrives because of a location it serves (but is really the same as everything else), it behooves you to hop on the differentiation train and get articulate in case competition pops up. Once you identify why you’re different, consider how this makes your product or service better. You’re in it to win it, right?

3.) What are the top three words that describe your brand?

The intricacies and art form of branding will be covered in another post, but put simply, attributes of your product or service are core component of your brand. While you just listed why you’re different, list three words you would want your customers to use to explain your brand.  Luxurious? Clever? Modern? Safe? Efficient? Trend-setting?

4.) List the top three things you do to market your product/service/company.

Rare is a business that has customers pouring in without any effort. Promoting what you can do and staying in the eyes of your customer is an ongoing endeavor. How are you actively, or passively, attracting customers and business? List the top three efforts you currently engage in.

5.) What marketing activity is giving you the most result?

Of the efforts you’re currently engaged in, which is delivering the most leads, the most attention, the most fodder for promotion?

6.) What activity is not pulling its weight?

What’s not working? Say it out loud. Devising how to change the approach or whether to drop the effort can be decided later, but facing things head on is always time well spent.

Once you’ve answered the questions, now what? This quick evaluation helps identify a clear and efficient means to attack and address a baseline foundation for your business.  Answering these questions will indicate which areas you need to firm up (brand, message, differentiation)…  and with that, stay tuned for a playbook on how to improve in each of these respective areas.