‘How to SEO your site’ may not be grammatically correct, but it’s a common use of SEO. As Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes said “I like verbing words, it weirds the language.” So, here’s how to SEO your site.
There are some basic steps that you can use to Search Engine Optimize your web site. These could definitely be used by enterprising individuals to execute the fundamentals of SEO on a site. Some in my trade would consider this giving away the farm, but if years of experience could truly be focused into a few posts, we’d all be out of jobs – it’s just harder than that. However, this string of posts will stand as a bona-fide, doable way to move your site far from the zero point where every site starts.
Basic steps to SEO your site:
Assess search demand
It’s common for people to get this concept backwards. People say “I want to rank well for yadda”, where yadda is their wild guess as to which term it would benefit them to rank for. In this simple sentence are many errors. Breaking down the errors will provide a better understanding of assessing search demand.
Errors:
- Saying ‘I want to rank…’ without logic is irrelevant. This is a business. What you want is to make money, get leads, get donations, build a brand, etc. If you don’t have this part clear, stop immediately and figure it out.
- Another reason this is limited thinking is that it implicitly assumes that ranking = results. Noooo. Ranking is one piece of a string of hoops that you must entice people through to get them from doing a web search to doing what you want them to do (purchase, sign up, donate, read, etc.). It is only the number of people who get through all the hoops that make up a successfully attained goal, putting too much importance on any one step is faulty logic. In fact, ranking isn’t even the first step. (More on that in the next post.)
- To add a point of clarification the hoops concept, I’ll use a negative metaphor to explain what it isn’t. Some people hear the ‘string of hoops’ idea and misunderstand it to be like taking a course where the final grade is the average of several tests. It’s not like that. It’s like water in a hose – a big leak anywhere in the hose will make the sprinkler at the end fail. You must get through all of them.
- Thinking there is a single term, or even a few, in many cases hundreds of terms is to misunderstand the basics of search. The terms that are relevant are determined by the sum of all the possible terms that the rest of the earth might think up to describe that which you have. It will be your imagination that is the seed to approximating this big list, along with some tools.
What to do:
Understand the purpose of assessing search demand:
Validate that there is a business to be had – if there is no search, there is nothing. If you wish to sell elbow hair removers, you can’t do it directly with search if no one is searching these terms. You may do it indirectly if you determine that those seeking elbow hair removers also seek other things and there is search for the other things. Or if you just really really think there is demand, you can purchase radio or tv or some broadcast advertising.
Determine which terms to go after – this is the real point of this post. Doing proper search assessment will help provide the knowledge you’ll need to choose which terms to hunt for, which ones to hunt first (sequence matters), and to understand the relationship of the terms – this will drive your site’s construction.
Stay tuned for more…
