SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

The fact that you have a website is great.  In and of itself, though, this is not enough to ensure that your site is properly advertised, optimized and that it receives a steady, targeted stream of visitors.

Great keyword research

The first step in SEO is great keyword research.  You don’t need anything fancy; Google’s Keyword Tool (or, AdWords Keyword Tool) is sufficient.  If you already have a Google AdWords account, login.  Otherwise, go to http://www.googlekeywordtool.com and verify that you’re human by typing the text presented in the box.

The first step is to minimize the ‘Saved ideas’ on the left.  For a more precise search, deselect ‘Broad’ and select ‘Exact.’  We’ll start with ‘Broad’ and move to ‘Exact’ in this example.

If your website is about digital media, start by typing in ‘digital media’ (without quotes) in the box labeled ‘Word or phrase.’  Now click ‘Search.’  Scrolling down, you’ll see that the results of your search are depicted in several columns called:  ‘Keyword Ideas,’ ‘ Competition,’ ‘Global Monthly Searches’ and ‘Local Monthly Searches.’

The majority of the results in my example are listed as ‘Low’ competition.  This is favorable  because I know that if I use any of the keywords or phrases associated with ‘Low,’ I have a reasonable chance of elevating my website’s ranking (i.e., in Google’s search results) since I won’t be up against strong competition for the same spot.  For example, the phrase ‘digital signage software’ has a ‘High’ competition.  Using this phrase would pit me against strong competitors (who, most likely, bid high for ads), so I’ll avoid it.

I’m highly interested in ‘Global Monthly Searches.’  These numbers tell me how many times per month people will type in a particular keyword or phrase when doing a Google search.  A cursory scan of the results reveals that people type in the phrase ‘what is internet’ 338 million times per month; ‘what is management’ and ‘what is java’ result in over 83 million global searches per month (gsm); and a search for ‘digital’ produces nearly 56 million gsm.

In my example, I’d like to narrow my search to ‘digital media’ and ‘social media.’  An ‘Exact’ search results in the keyword phrase ‘social media’ showing low competition and 201,000 gsm.  This means that I can safely use this phrase to optimize my site.

Now try typing ‘social media’ into the ‘Word or phrase’ box.  Click ‘Search.’  This results in 201,000 gsm with low competition.

It is in this experimental manner  that you will find the best keywords or phrases (sometimes misspelled) to optimize your site.

Great quality content

If you’re going to optimize your digital media website focusing on social media, you want to make sure that you deliver what’s been promised!  Once you drive traffic to your site, visitors have the right to expect top-notch, quality content about digital media and social media in particular.  This includes inserting keywords (often bolded and italicized) within the body of your website’s pages’ text.

Optimize your pages in WebPlus X5

Once you’ve experimented with the Google Keyword/AdWords Tool, it’s time to optimize your website’s pages.

Open your website.  In ‘File,’ select ‘Site Properties.’  In the pop-up box, select ‘Search.’  In the box entitled ‘Enter the description to be displayed when a search engine finds a page on your web’ type in, for example:  ‘E-books about digital media with an emphasis on social media’ (without the quotes).  Note that the first ten words are most important which is why I excluded the preliminary words ‘This website is about….’

In the box titled ‘Enter a list of words for search engines to use to find pages on your Web site…’ insert the series of keywords or phrases you researched with Google’s Keyword/AdWords Tool.  I selected ‘en-us’ for the language code on my website.

Don’t click ‘OK.’  Instead, select ‘Search engine.’  For my website, I selected all available categories setting my page change frequency indicator to ‘Monthly’ with a page priority of ‘0.5’.  I named my search engine sitemap file ‘sitemap.xml’  making sure to upload the special file provided by Google when I registered my website using their Webmaster Tools in my public/html folder.

Don’t click ‘OK’ yet.  Select ‘Analytics.’  Check the box for ‘Enable web analytics.’  In ‘Paste from Clipboard,’ insert the text (i.e., tracking code) that you received when registering your website with Google Analytics.  If you aren’t ready now, you can do this later.

Now select ‘Summary.’  Type your name (or pseudonym) in the ‘Author’ field.  Repeat (or type in a variation on the theme) the keywords or phrases you used when completing ‘Search’ above for ‘Comments’ and ‘Subject.’  Finally, click ‘OK.’

You’ll need to optimize each page.  So, for every page, with the page selected, right-mouse click to select ‘Page Properties’ and, in ‘Navigation’ choose a relevant page name, title and file name making sure to fill in a page-specific description.  For ‘Search’ and ‘Search Engine’ use the information I provide earlier in the article.  Under ‘Indexing,’ do not select ‘Override site search engine settings’ and observe that this section appears dimmed.  That’s because you expressed your preferences in ‘Site Properties’ globally, for the whole site.

Don’t forget to save and publish your newly optimized website to the Internet!

Although I haven’t discussed off-site optimization, schema.org and rich snippets, I hope this brief article on how to do SEO for a WebPlus X5 website helps you.