Why "do it yourself" search engine optimization?
It would be difficult to find someone who cares as much about your business success as you do. Furthermore, many SEO "professionals" use tricks that gain your initial satisfaction (and money), but put your long term search engine standing at risk. Search engine optimization is an ongoing effort that takes ongoing experimentation, which can mean some hefty marketing expense if you're paying a legitimate expert. So, for the small time operator, getting more traffic at a lower cost than your competitors will probably mean doing the SEO yourself.
And given that between 50-75% of individuals only look at the first page of search results, getting your website optimized for high placement is critical. It may take some hard work, but the efforts will be worth it. Left neglected, even the most useful new website will be pushed into obscurity by e-Darwinism.
Start with Google SEO
Google accounts for over 50% of online searches, and uses what is probably most intelligent formula for serving relevant search results. Therefore, it makes sense to focus your initial SEO efforts on Google.
Start the process by understanding Google's motives... Yes, Google wants to make money. BUT, there's more to Google's success than simply displaying ads from the highest bidding advertisers. First and foremost, Google needs people to continue using their search engine into the future (continued market dominance = long term profit). And the only way they're going to keep people coming back is by continually providing users with the very best search results, regardless of whether those results are paid (Adwords) or free (organic).
Therefore, search engine optimization is primarily a matter of increasing the correlation of your web pages to the keywords that you want to target, and ensuring that your pages are truly useful to users who are searching for those keywords. Trying to "trick" or "beat" Google's ranking formula would probably be a lot more work than simply providing high quality content, and would more often lead to ranking penalties. All the search engine optimization tips on this site assume that you are starting with a good foundation -- webpages that will be useful to visitors who have searched for your target keywords.
Keyword selection tips
Choice of keywords will be the first step of your search engine optimization efforts. The best time to choose keywords is probably before even developing your site, so that you can design pages around them and avoid major re-arranging. But if your site is already up, now is the time to make corrections. Begin your keyword selection process by:
- Guessing what your target customer would search for.
- Using the Google Keyword Tool to get suggestions based on your guesses.
- Analyzing competitors sites to see what they've found useful. View their homepage source (e.g. use your browser's dropdown menu for "View -> Page Source") and look at the meta-keyword tags.
- Using the Google Keyword Tool to scan your competitors keywords (e.g. check "website content")
- Personally, my favorite technique of getting keyword suggestions is to simply type keywords into the Google homepage, and see what they recommend as I type each word. I place the most trust in suggestions that Google gives to its searchers.
Keywords should usually be 2-4 word combinations, or more accurately "keyphrases". The majority of your keyword selection decisions should be based on what you forecast your target customer to be searching for. If you have a lot of competition for those keywords, then your keyword phrases should probably be on the longer side (3-4 words) to target niche searches that will differentiate you from the masses.
You can optimize your site for multiple keyphrases (I suggest 2-3 max), but those keyphrases should be highly related to each other. For example "find an apartment" and "find a rental" are related. "Find a rental" and "buy a car" are not. If there are multiple or unrelated aspects to your business/subject, then you should really have separate websites catering to each.
If you're torn between multiple keyphrase possibilities, use Google Trends to compare popularity for your region. Simply type all your possible keyphrases into the box (separated by commas), and then drill down to your target geographic location.
