SEO: For Chicks!
Hi, my name is Vanessa, and I’m a chick who likes technology.
I don’t presume to understand everything about it, but I’m not afraid of it, and I love to try and understand new technologies and try to utilize them to improve work efficiency, workflow and ultimately improve the lives of work at home moms (WAHMs) and freelancers all around the world.
Many of my graphic design clients are work at home moms, stay at home moms, bloggers, entrepeneurs and small business owners, all of whom are trying to harness the web in some way to improve their business and lives.
So I’m passing on the bit of knowledge that I’ve gleaned from here in there in the hopes that it helps others.
So. SEO. For those who don’t know the term SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. A search engine is a web based thingamajig that allows you to search for information and products and just about everything else on the web. The most popular of which of course is Google. Another example of one that is gaining in popularity is Bing, which is a Microsoft product.
So here’s the lowdown at its most basic.
Let’s say you’re an ace at making childrens linen, and you start a business from home making custom linen and develop your own line of products that you want to market on the web.
So you find a designer, get a website made, and then marvel at it’s wonder and beauty.
A week goes by, and you wonder why the phone hasn’t rung, because after all, you just paid a handsome some, for the most beautiful website in the world. Surely folks should be tracking down your ip address, routing it to the GPS and virtually banging down your door to get their hands on your awesome stuff?
So, you go to Google, type in “Custom Childrens Linen”.
…
…
That’s odd, your website isn’t right at the top of the search results.
But why!? It’s a thing of beauty that website!
Hold on a second, it’s not on the second page of results either!
There must be something very wrong!
Surely after a week the traffic should be streaming in!
In fact your website doesn’t get picked up in the first 3.79245 MILLION results.
But rather than throw in the towel, and can the great business idea that was going to let you quit your dayjob, let me tell you that there is something that can be done to help you, and that, my friends, is SEO.
SEO is the very thing (along with a few others in hand) that directly seeks to improve your search engine rankings within search engines like Google and Bing.
At it’s most basic, there are several things you can do right up front.
- Keyword Selection: Choose several phrases that you want your customers to find your website with, when they go to google. i.e. “childrens linen” “childrens bedroom decor” “kids custom linen” “cute bedding for kids” my rule of thumb for all my new web design clients, is to pick ten and work on them. Focus. Analyze the results and either keep at it, or move on.
- Use of Keywords: Then you use those keyword phrases in the content of your website. Not excessively, but repeatedly and in a fashion that is pleasing to read.
- Blog: Yes, every business needs a blog these days. Why? Because search engines pay attention to fresh content. They are far more interested in websites that post new and exciting content (using your keyword phrases) on a regular basis rather than a static website that says it once, and keeps quiet for all eternity.
- Links: Inbound links are the best way of improving a websites ranking, and search engine listings. This means that you should be posting content to your website or blog that is so fresh and hot and interesting, that other folks are creating links to it. See how I linked out to the phrase “work at home mom” in the very beginning of this article? That creates good SEO for the website that I linked to. If a website that is ranked higher than yours, links to you, it counts heavily in your favour, but a link of any kind (except from a spam site), will count in your websites favor.
- Deep Links: Sometimes you post content, and want to refer back to a previous article that you’ve written, or a category of articles. This is great for SEO if you can refer back to your older articles to keep them fresh. When you link to content that you’ve already posted on your own site in the past in order to help folks find information more easily, it’s called Deep Linking. Take a look at the link I created at the very top of the article on the words “work at home moms” that link takes you directly to an article that I wrote about work at home moms and the challenges they face.
There are a multitude of ways in which search engine optimization can help your website and these five that I have listed have really only touched on the tip of the iceberg. For complete help in this area, you need to enlist the help of an SEO specialist, and usually your web designer can put you in touch with one, or will in fact be working in conjunction with one to optimize your site anyway. It’s not however your designers responsibility to provide this service as a matter of course, and should be requested by you. Also, SEO is not an overnight thing. It takes time, and quality interesting content. If you have those two ingredients then success will surely follow.
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