SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - Attracting high caliber, high value leads from Google
Part 1- Introduction
Here is part 1 of the series that I am going to write about SEO, and how you can use it to generate leads for your online business free of cost. This is merely an introduction, and the purpose of it, is to help you get the big picture, and understand the whole story. Do not worry if you do not understand some part of what you read. We then are going to go through each part in detail, so you can take action on each part, and optimize your blog or web site. In this article, you can substitute the word “blog” with “web site”, and vice versa wherever you want. I had to write this article this way, so the article directories would accept my article, and would not object on excessive use of certain keywords. SEO is a very powerful strategy, and if you do it right, you can automate your business, and your business keeps running pretty much on its own, even when you are on a vacation or when you are sleeping at night. Okay, let’s get started.
SEO is a traffic strategy to achieve higher search rankings on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.
As you know, people search for what they want on Google, and Google returns the results for their search criteria. Google shows the search results according to some rules and regulations they have, and the keywords specified. If you know about their rules, and how to use them to your advantage, you can have your landing page shown on top of the search results. Once you do this, people searching for a business opportunity that matches yours according to their keywords and Google’s rules, they will get to know about you, and your business, and if they decide that it is beneficial to them, they will join your business.
Some of the benefits of SEO are:
-Free targeted traffic to your web site
-Free ongoing leads, traffic, and customers
-Millions of dollars in free traffic available
-Difficult for competition to compete with you
When you search for something on Google, you get a screen that has two major parts to it:
1- The right hand side of the screen, which is where the results for the Google AdSense appears. This is a paid advertising strategy through which you can find a lot of leads. You would have to pay per click to use this service from Google, and so it is called, "PPC"
2- The left hand side of the screen, which is called the organic search results. This is where Google shows you the results for the pages they have indexed in their directories, and it's free of cost. The pages those links point to, have not paid for this service at all. The purpose of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is to get Google to show your blog in those search engine results through the ways you are going to learn from these series of articles.
Researchers have studied human eye attention area on a computer screen, and they have found that the upper left hand side corner of the screen is the place that gets the most attention when somebody looks at a computer screen, and that is the free service that Google offers- SEO.
Since people might misuse this free service if they knew about Google's algorithm of showing web search results, even Google employees do not know how the search engine works. But there are a few points that if you know them, you can have your page/blog/website shown on the first page over time.
Let's go through some of the characteristics of PPC, and SEO, and compare them to each other. Here are some of the characteristics of PPC:
- PPC costs money- $0.03- $10.00 per click
- PPC needs ongoing maintenance
- Others can knock you off of the first ranking simply by paying more than you do.
- You could get instant traffic through PPC.
- PPC forces you to optimize for conversions because you actually have to pay for it.
And here are some of the characteristics of SEO:
Traffic through SEO is free, and you could rank for high value keywords.
It's difficult for others to overtake your position since they need to know SEO better than you, and that is what most of the marketers don't really know.
Through SEO, you would get passive ongoing traffic, but it takes some time to build your campaign. You would not have immediate results, but the results last for a relatively longer time or even for a lifetime.
You would generally get more traffic through SEO than you would get through PPC.
There are three parts to SEO that if you learn them, and do them diligently and consistently, you will get the results in a short amount of time relatively depending upon how you apply them, and how consistent you are. They are as follows:
1- Your keywords
You should research your keywords, and find the keywords that actually convert for you. You also need to understand the intent behind the typical keywords that people use to search for the information they are looking for. You want to focus on the keywords that convert into traffic, leads, and money for you. The 80/20 rule for keywords is that only 20% of the market keywords will convert. If you find a handful of the 20%, you will dominate your market.
2- The content of your web log
The content of your blog/site is very important in that, the search engines determine how important and informative your blog is based on their criteria. You should be very careful about your content, Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, and your blog organization. Google considers those who search for information as their customers. They want to serve them in the best way they can. So Google pays close attention to giving their customers exactly what they are looking for. If someone went to Google, searched for something, and got the results not relative to what they searched for, they would probably not go back to Google for searching for anything again, if that happened a couple of times.
3- Links from other blogs
Incoming links from other blogs/web sites are also very important. Google has to make sure that the link has come from a blog/site that has similar content as there is in your site, and also the ranking of the referrer blog is important.
Also you should use the relevant anchor text to link to the content in your blog. “Anchor Text” is the text that is used in the body of the link. It is actually what you see, read, and click on, when you want to go to some other page. The link should point to what it is supposed to refer to, according to the meaning of the text in the link.
There are different levels of SEO:
1- Rank for your name
When people find their way to your landing page, and they want to buy from you, they definitely will search for your name. They want to know who you are, and what you have been doing online. They want to know what kind of person they are going to work with. So you definitely want to let them know that you are a real person, and you have something to give them, teach them, or they can solve at least one of their problems through you. Build your online presence.
2- Rank for Company/people's names (We will discuss this later)
3- Rank for generic industry terms (We will discuss this later)
If you use SEO to promote your business, you should keep the following points in mind:
1- Do not write any negative content.
2- Do not bash anyone.
3- Be helpful, and add value to people.
4- Write constructive reviews.
5- Comment on news, rumors, or gossip in your industry.
6- Do your research, and be intelligent about the comments and keywords you use to promote your business.
When you write content, keep the following points in mind:
1- Do not promote your opportunity.
2- Do not be biased; be objective.
3- Your goal is to be an information center.
In regards to generating the leads, the following points may help you:
1- Have an opt-in box in your side bar and make a compelling offer.
2- Or simply place a banner in your sidebar to your capture page.
What we have covered so far was the mindset behind SEO. Now we are going to cover some technical aspects of SEO:
The content that you use in your blog, and the way you organize it, are very important in your page ranking with regards to Google. The following points are of great importance:
1- Use your keywords in:
- Title Tags
- Meta Descriptions
- Header Tags
- Your Articles/ Content
2- Do not spam as it will not help you. Try to spread your keyword out all over your content, and use a variety of them.
On organizing your blog, it is important to know that when you organize your blog properly, it is much easier for Google, as well as your readers to find the information they are looking for. Think of your whole blog/web site as a compartment you use to keep the different folders containing your bills. You would not mix your bills all together, or put a mortgage bill in the category that was related to your "electric bills"
You want to have categories, and then sub-categories, that would break the information to digestible pieces, so people can find their way easily through your blog. Also if you do that, it is easier for Google to decide what your blog is all about, and rank it accordingly.
On linking to your blog/web site, pay attention to the following:
1- Create as many inbound links to your blog as you can. Think of links as votes your blog as an entity gets. The more votes an entity gets, the more credibility it has among those who know them, which in this case, would be Google. When Google realizes that you have many links to your blog, they decide that your blog/web site is important to others, simply because they have linked to it, and so they will rank it much higher in their own ranking system.
2- Google wants to know if you trade links with other blogs/sites, or it is just that other blogs link to your blog. If a blog links to yours, and you link back to that blog, which is called a "reciprocal link", you will still be ranked higher, but it is always better to have only inbound links from other blogs wherever possible.
3- Google puts weight on the quality of the link. They decide according to the following criteria:
- Where is the link coming from? Social Media web sites, other blogs, article directories, etc.
- Where is the link pointing to?
- Is the link relevant to the page it points to?
I hope you have found something of value in this article. As I mentioned earlier, it was just an introduction, and I will discuss each aspect of this topic in detail in subsequent articles. If you want to read the rest of this series, please go to my blog below. Thanks for your attention.
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