First Day of Smart SEO School

Most kids have been or will be heading back to school over the next couple of weeks.

Altogether now parents: “YES!”

Now it’s time for all of us to relax and do a little learning of our own.

Lesson #1 – What is Smart SEO?

Well, perhaps first we should cover a couple of things that have earned more than a few websites a loss of ranking or a complete de-listing from Google.

I know there are other search engines, but let’s be honest – Google is King.

A recent study conducted by Chitika confirms that no matter which browser is used (even the one that defaults to Bing), Google still grabs the vast majority of searches.

What does this mean to a business owner? It means you want to follow the rules of Google to get your website ranked and keep it there.

The Bad Stuff 

What’s good for the Google will be good for all the other search engine sites. None of them want to deliver spammy results.

For instance, that means no keyword stuffing.  Have you seen those sites? They obviously look like they were written to simply use as many keywords as possible without regard to information provided. Most of the time they  cannot even manage to have sentences in proper English! Sites like those will not hang onto their ranking for long.

Additionally, if a site garners back links by paying for them? Google will sniff those out right away and smack them down.

Now, most people who work as SEO’s already know this but many business owner’s don’t. So if a less than smart or reputable SEO consultant tries to sell you on methods like that, RUN. You might be able to fool Google for a little while, but not for long and after you have lost that trust it is harder to get back in their good graces.

Better to be smart from the start.

What you want to hear from an SEO is talk of organic search engine ranking. Organic, of course, translating to natural.

That includes targeting the best possible combination of keywords, writing content that is informative, conversational and incorporates those keywords but only at a rate of 3-5% per article or page.

Targeted keywords for SEO should also be placed in article titles and tags. And those titles? They should entice the reader to hang around and stay awhile.

Back links are still desirable, but you want to earn them through providing content that is high quality and worthy of being shared via social media channels and linked to from other’s websites or blogs.

Keep it real

That’s really the basic mantra. Don’t do anything spammy or artificial. Target and tailor those keywords to your ideal customer. Not only will you climb higher in the rankings, but you will be able to stay there.

The best part of all? You’ll be converting those visitors to paying customers at a higher rate of return than ever.

Super Bowl value SEO on a Happy Days budget

As I covered in my introduction, the language of Online marketing is new to me.

Two years ago SEO or Search Engine Optimization was not even remotely in my vocabulary.

If you are like many small business owners and entrepreneurs whether starting out new or even if you have been around for awhile, this is most likely true for you too.

What is SEO?

SEO is simply another way to describe getting yourself ranked highly on the top search engines. That primarily means Google, but it includes Yahoo and Bing. Unless you have the budget of a company like Amazon or Federal Express you are not going to suddenly leap to the number one position on any of those sites. The top spots are taken by companies that can pay for them. Most search terms bring back at least three and sometimes five paid results. Everything under that is up for grabs and still gets quite a lot of exposure.

How much does SEO cost?

I like to equate this to ad buys on TV. Do you have a Super Bowl budget or a midnight replay of an episode of Happy Days budget?

How many eyes are going to see your website and how much time and money are you willing to invest to get seen by the maximum potential customers?

Amazon has a Super Bowl budget.

Everyone else is more than likely in that Happy Days bucket but, let’s be honest, they may think they want those millions of Super Bowl viewers seeing their product, but unless you are in a market like soft drinks or beer or potato chips, are those football viewers really your target customer?

That is where really GOOD SEO can be a huge value.

FOCUS on the keywords that your ideal customer would use to find you.

It is entirely possible that those night owls watching Happy Days are exactly who you want to target. It may not be as large a pool of potential customers, but it also may be where the largest pool of your IDEAL customer is hanging out. Therefore it is worth it to you to spend the money to run that ad.

And it is worth it to pay for an integrated online marketing solution that maximizes your visibility in front of your specifically targeted customer.

What you want to do online in order to maximize your ranking is to make sure your business offers the right solutions/products to the right audience (your ideal customer) using the right language (keyword combinations) that your audience understands.

It wont drain your budget, but it will make sure to bring in customers who will buy from you.

And that will have you humming the theme song to Happy Days!

Welcome to my new adventure

Hi – my name is Christina and a little over a year ago I started learning from a long time Lead Generation and SEO expert all about internet marketing, keyword research and niche identification, content writing and SEO copy writing. Now, given that my skill set up until then was as a 25+ year accountant who dabbled extensively in non-profit and some personal tax form preparation as well – you can imagine that there were previously undiscovered corners of my brain that had to wake up!

Debits and credits add up nicely, but writing compelling content that also grabs SEO ranking? Not always quite so black and white!

One thing I did know how to do from the start was Social Media promotion. I’ve always been an early adopter to whatever fun new space the internet has to offer. I had also been writing for my own personal blog sites for many years and have really enjoyed surfing other blog sites and meeting bloggers around the world through regular commenting.

In other words, the one part of an Integrated Online Marketing Solution that I was already expert at was the Social Media Marketing piece

After some successes with affiliate marketing and e-learning sites, Eve Gersich and I are  now ready to help YOU get your business perfectly positioned online. Submit your email so that you will be among the first to receive her video series showing exactly how it can be done.

I’ll be here sharing with you what she has taught me as well as what we have learned together through our experiences. Yes, I promise to share some mistakes as well.

To put it in biking terms: We will show you how to go *around* the rock on the trail instead of tumbling head over handlebars after running into it!

Check that – forget going around – we will be able to move that rock entirely out of your way!