The Zen of Social Media Marketing. Shama Hyder

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       Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

       The Art and Science of Driving Traffic to Your Website

      “It is not the job of search engine optimization to make a pig fly. It is the job of the SEO to genetically reengineer the Web site so that it becomes an eagle.”

      Bruce Clay,

       Bruce Clay, Inc.

      SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, also known as SEO, is the process of improving the position and visibility of a website on search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. The most important reason to get higher rankings is that you will get more targeted leads and conversions, which in turn means you will get more people knocking on your door to buy your products.

      The most beautiful thing about search engine marketing is how targeted it is. Traditional marketing is like a funnel, with a wide top and a small bottom. The top is the whole audience that sees your marketing effort (say, a commercial on TV or radio, or an ad in a magazine or newspaper), and the bottom is the people who might actually be interested in your product or service—the people you actually want to reach. Search engine marketing targets the bottom of the funnel. You don’t get a large general audience. You get the audience who is searching for exactly what you’re selling. Google will never show a user something that is not relevant to his or her search query. Google and other major search engines will never list your website high on their results page otherwise. The key to getting high search engine ranking for the audience you want is relevancy. Your site must appear relevant to a specific search query.

      Google, as well as other search engines, uses more than 200 factors in their search engine algorithm to rank webpages. In order for your site to appear at the top of the search engines for specific search queries, you must follow strategic step-by-step guidelines to ensure that your site is search engine–friendly and fully optimized for search engines. In this chapter, you will learn how to optimize the pages on your site to get search engines to rank your site as the most relevant in the search query or queries your target audience is using, which will lead more business to your website.

      You might have heard the saying around SEO blogs and discussion boards that “Content is King,” which is true. But optimizing that content is how to ensure your site performs better than your competitors’.

      Let’s begin our search engine optimization process and discover how you can dominate the Search Engine Results Page with the most competitive keywords for your company.

       Keyword Research

      One of the most vital steps to take in starting your search engine optimization process is to identify your target audience, and the keywords those potential customers and visitors use in search engines. If you know what your customers are searching for, you will be able to build your site and marketing campaign specifically around those customers and their inquiries.

      There are many legitimate keyword tools out there, but for this example we’ll use the Google Keyword Planner, which provides you with keywords users are searching for on Google.com, to identify our target audience and build our keyword research from the ground up.

      To use this tool, you’ll need to register for a free Googe Ad-Words account at https://adwords.google.com/. Once you’re signed up, click on “Keyword Planner” under Tools.

      It looks like this:

      Click on “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category” to launch.

      Let’s say we’re building a site for a company that specializes in fundraising. Type “Fundraising” into the “Your product or service” box and click “Get ideas.”

      Once your results load, click on the “Keyword Ideas” tab to display the list of relevant keywords.

      Begin your keyword research by searching for broad keywords. As you continue, drill down to more specific keywords within your industry. This will help you reach a more specific target audience. For example, type in “raise money for” under “Keywords to include” on the left.

      You will get the following results:

      Notice that there are quite a few searches for keywords such as “how to raise money for a cause,” “ways to raise money for charity,” and “how to raise money for charity.” These are all great keywords that you can use to expand your site’s content and pages.

      Google allows you to download each list of keywords you generate with your searches to a separate file. This is a great process to help you stay organized. When you finish a keyword search session, click on “Download.”

      Then export the list as an “Excel CSV” file.

      Organize your Excel file by grouping your keywords into categories. Every category will contain a set of keywords associated with it. For example:

      The Fundraising category will have keywords such as fundraising, fundraising ideas, and school fundraising ideas. The Fundraiser category will contain the keywords associated with it: fundraiser, fundraiser ideas, school fundraiser ideas, and similar phrases.

       Note: You should export all the CSVs and then combine them into one document yourself. This will ensure that you have all your keywords in one spot.

      This keyword identification process will assist you throughout the duration of your search engine marketing campaign, as you create new content or edit your existing content to include these keywords.

       More Keyword Research

      Keyword research is an ongoing process. You can always find and identify other keywords potential customers are searching for as your business grows and develops. In particular, there are two easy-to-use tools that can help you keep your keyword list up-to-date.

      Google’s keyword suggestion function is a great way to identify additional keywords you may have missed. In the following example, we are trying to find additional keywords Google suggests to its users (which are based on what others are currently searching for) when typing “how to raise money” into the search box:

      Google suggests that the phrases “how to raise money fast” and “how to raise money for a cause” would be very useful keywords to use in optimizing specific pages on your site tailored to different audiences.

      Google’s “Searches related to” feature is another tool to identify additional keywords. Go to Google.com and type in “Fundraising ideas.” Scroll down the page to the very bottom, and you will see:

      These