Throughout this ridiculous post I’ll be using the example of “toys” to expose to you the cult of SEO experts. Why toys? Well with my young daughter growing up, toys have become as important as bread, meat or eggs. So I have to regularly replenish the stock, if you know what I mean.
Ok; let’s say you sell toys but you are not ToysRus. However with a foot in the future, you have decided to sell toys online via a new shopping cart which you paid a pretty penny to get setup. I shall discuss how you can setup your own shopping cart for free in one of the next posts (all good things come to people who wait). For now let’s just say you have a website which showcases all your toys but is not getting to customers as it does not popup on Google when a lazy dad (such as moi) searches for toys on his favourite search engine. BTW Google is not the only search engine out there. Some of us prefer Yahoo! and some even search on Bing (hopefully they find what they want eventually) . So how can you get the attention of such a lazy dad?
Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Introducing your website to all the search engines (well at least the important ones)
If you think search engines such as Google or Yahoo! will come looking for your website you have another thing coming. i.e. you have to introduce your website to them. Follow the links below and introduce your site to Google, Yahoo! and Bing. This will ensure that they send their search BOTS (web hounds or reporters if you like) to scope out your website and make a note in their humongous diary.
Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
Yahoo!: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit/
Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
These are the three main search engines used by the world. There might be nerds who use other cottage stuff but most of those engines feed on these three as well. So unless you sell Star Wars figurines, you should be ok with only these three. It normally takes about two weeks for the BOTS to visit your site.
Step 2: Getting the title right
When the BOTS strip apart your site, they will take notes; and since there are millions of sites they need to visit in a day, it’s unlikely that they would visit yours for at least another 15 days. So if time-to-market is important to you then it pays to get it right the first time.
Let’s say that you sell toys in Penang, Malaysia (for all of you who have no clue where that is, try searching for it. I guarantee it’s a nice place). So what should the title of your website be?? Remember: the BOTS will use your website title to make their notes.
Option 1: using “Toys” as your title. But how many of us really use “toys” to search for a toy shop near to us??
Option 2: “Toys in Malaysia”; a bit better but Malaysia is huge and has a lot of toy shops.
Option 3: “Toys in Penang Malaysia”; much better as it is more focused on a certain geography.
Option 4: “Outdoor toys in Penang Malaysia”; a lot better. Here you have geography and demography.
Option 5: etc. etc. etc. I’m sure you get the point. However remember that you will only have about 80 characters to play with as the BOTS will abbreviate any long titles.
Step 3: Getting the description right
Once the BOTS see your title, they will start recording what your site is selling. So it is important to give a proper description (around 40-50 words) which sells the site in a nutshell. It could be something like the following:
“We have a variety of soft toys for sale which cover teddys to mickeys to the Simpsons. We are located in Gurney Drive Penang and store brands such as “ABC, 123, etc. etc. etc. ….”
I’m sure you get the point but if you are really not that gifted in writing then it will be worth your while to get someone who knows what they are doing to write for you. Of course you tell him/her what you want written and they just put it into grammatically correct sales pitches.
Since you have the option of setting different titles and descriptions for each page, it is best if you make full use of this feature by focusing the title and the description on what you are selling in a particular page. This will boost your search engine ranking and will ensure you come up for more keyword searches. Speaking of keywords;
Step 4: Keywords or key phrases
Even though the stuff which were sold a few decades back could be explained in one word (i.e. television, car, lard etc.), today we have so many varieties of each. So keywords are no longer the best way of taking notes for the BOTS. If they are taking a note about a toy car, instead of jotting down "car", they will want to know the colour, make, size, model etc. So an ideal key phrase for a car would go something like “1993 Dodge Viper RT10 red”. You can have any number of these key phrases per page but the BOTS will only jot down about 10-15. So make sure you have the most important ones first.
Step 5: Getting the content right
The first 20% of any webpage will determine 80% of its success on search engines. So ensure that you don’t waste the first 20% of your website by using large ridiculous banners which put off most customers; but use strategically written keyword (or key phrase) rich paragraphs with attractive images in between to entice the BOTS. Although the newer BOTS can extract meaning out of an image (they can understand that an image of a shampoo bottle describes hair care) most of the BOTS who would visit your website would only be able to read well formatted text.
These five step would get you well on your way with respect to “organic” or "natural" SEO. It will take about 8 weeks before you will see your site appear in related searches. Once this happens you will be ready to take the next step. I’m sure you will visit this blog once more when you come up for vanity searches done by yourself. The next article will discuss how you can monitor your SEO standing, the tools available for improving your ranking and how you can start competing with the big boys.
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