Tips & Tools: Website SEO

Over the past two weeks, I have received many emails and calls with questions about website SEO for digital sign companies. In fact, in the past 5 days, 4 business owners have posed very unique questions, all around website development. This is indicative of the newest trends in web development, but also the outcome of seeing the phrase "website ranking" or SEO appear in every other spam that hits the inbox! Our convention in April will feature a great workshop on this very subject! In the meantime...

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or "Increasing the Visibility of your Site" - What do you need to do to show up in search engines? It is both a complex and simple issue. It is complex because search engines often change the criteria that will ensure your site gets a high listing in the results of the major engines. It can also be simple if you pay attention to a few key fundamentals about keywords and search engines. Search engines are way past the old tricks of 1999!

While the subject is truly large, complex, and beyond the scope of one blog, large as mine are, there are seven key elements that can be addressed which will hopefully provide clarity, cost-effective steps to optimize your search engine rankings (organically and inorganically), and a NEW way of thinking about websites that needs to be observed before embarking on any website redevelopment....

Okay, the 7 Basics:

1) Focus your home page on your target audience and their needs. Websites can no longer be static pages of your company information. The world is about change, new news, and dynamic content, and interaction, that keeps visitors engaged, and keeps them coming back for more. Clearly state your solutions to their problem. What does this mean to you? You need to get a news feed, a Widget, Wikis, forums, a blog and / or an RSS feed. These are all available at little or no cost. Embed the code, and make sure the feed, Widgets, blog contain content that relates directly to your back office, your production, your clients, your market niche. In other words, don't add an RSS feed about Mars explorations. Set aside some time every day to review and refresh if necessary.

2) Basic basic "Keywords": Make sure your Meta-tags are right! Use a separate meta-tag title for each page, that accurately reflects what is on the page. The description and keywords should also be very relevant. DON'T use the tricks of yesteryear, ie, putting in big-name company brands, "hot" issues, repeating the word "signs" etc.

Know what keywords are used to find companies like yours. Take a look at the Keyword Suggestion Tool to find out: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=2. This site lets you know what keywords are searched for most often and will help you draw up your list of keywords for submitting to search engines.
Where to put keywords on your website is equally important. The four most important areas to place keywords are:

* The Title Tag.
* Description Meta Tag – Include a sentence here that contains both the keywords and a phrase such as your value proposition.
* Keywords Meta Tag – Include a few keywords like your business name and address.
* Body Copy – be sure to include your main keywords in the first few paragraphs in particular.

3) It's all about giving value... Would you pick up the same newspaper every day, year after year? Wouldn't you get tired of reading old news? Would you visit the same retail shop, every week, if the contents NEVER changed? And, if you were buying a book, a recipe book, and you had 15 to choose from, would you buy the book that used exotic terms and never explained them? For example, "poulet de Bresse (the esteemed French chicken) or induction cookers (the electromagnetic cooktop), or pitanga (aka the Surinam cherry). OR, would you, a better than average cook and in charge of a Holiday meal for the family, choose a book that broke it down, gave you useable information, in terms that you could understand?

Think of your website the same way. Give fresh, meaningful information - actual pithy content. No Lingo, and NO tomes, mind you! Place a separate subject on each page, and use your signage pictures as examples to illustrate a point. Demonstrate your expertise in some compelling way with the likes of testimonials, key clients, case studies, white papers, and the backgrounds of top management.

Big, bold, exciting titles, PLEASE! Rather than: "Here is a Vehicle Wrap..." Have a page that answers this title question: "How To Make A Dollar Go Farther" and give a series of high-impact statistics about vehicle advertising, cost of impression, and how fast this mobile ad could be up and about town. Throw in a client case study, with pics, and then title your page correctly, add keywords related to "advertising dollar" and submit to search engines. Also, if you like your article a lot, and it has been proofread and edited well, submit to www.SignWeb.com and www.signindustry.com. Provide the website address for readers to visit! Gee, the "website" is starting to sound like a cool source of needed information!

4) Are you credible? If "Joe the Signmaker" says "We are the best!" .... does it have as much impact as a web page that lists and links to some worthy affiliations / clients (sign associations, sign biz network affiliation, chamber memberships, USEPA WasteWise, the local mayor, a Fortune 500 brand name) and simply says, "Judge us by the companies we keep..."? The links should allow visitors to view the affiliation, but not leave your site, so set the"a href" as "target=_blank"

5) Thinking about a shopping cart? Use the same principles here, and look for a well-tested cart that can provide a recommended "merchant gateway" for the transactions that will ultimately go to your bank. The cart and gateway must be compatible with each other. Many good carts are available for around $400. One popular one is: ShopSite® - http://www.shopsite.com/demo.html You will add a payment gateway, to process payments in real time, and that will be another fee, and some paperwork. Expect about $26 per month for basic charges for the payment service (ie, one of the largest is Authorize.net).

With this, and an annual "security check-up" as required by Visa and MC, you are ready to sell on-line. There are likely to be some products that work well for online orders. For example: "Pair Magentics, 18" x 30", 2 colors, no logo," Or "2' x 8' banner, pick your color (blue, red, white, yellow) and two lines, max 12 characters per line." etc.

6) Submit your site! It is not that hard! After you have found the best keywords and put them in your website, the next step is to get listed in the top search engines. These are:

Google www.google.com
All the web www.alltheweb.com
Yahoo www.yahoo.com
Search MSN http://search.msn.com
Lycos www.lycos.com
Ask Jeeves www.askjeeves.com
LookSmart www.looksmart.com

Some of the above search engines impose a fee to be listed. The key thing is to pay close attention to their submission processes and the information that is required.

7) Finally, Market your site, and Track Results: Promote your site, but more than that: Get all of your prospects and clients to visit your site.
Why and How?
Guide EVERY visitor to take at least one step towards learning more about your company and wanting to contact you. Some ways to do this include:
- White papers in PDF format
- Offer a free consultation
- Make a specific offer and say it is available on your website.
Why? So you can build your email marketing list! Capturing e-mail addresses for lead generation is extremely valuable!

Then, be sure you track visitors in and out of pages, missing links, and all the invaluable information that comes with your site's statistics page. How many leads did you get from your site and what adjustments might you need to make to improve the numbers? How many "landed" on one of your internal pages because of it's content?

Yes, it requires time each day to monitor, to build, to market, and to refresh content. Over time, the payoffs will be great. You need to allow about 90 days for your work and site submission efforts to pay off. You can speed this up by signing up for Google's AdSense, allowing Google Ads to appear on your site. The catch? Visitors who click on these ads will be directed away from your site. Second hitch? Some ads may be from your competition, as you may not know which domains to block when setting up Google Ads.

Quick Tips:

1. Make sure your actual page titles look like this: "Vehicle_Advertising.html" and not like this "Vehad.html"
2. Try to keep your relevant, important content no more than two levels down in the internal link hierarchy
3. Use an FTP upload feature for client files and proofs. Makes their life easier!
4. Crisp, clean images, and pages that fit the average screen size are important.

Hope this helps, and until next time...
Google yourself!

Warmly,
Teresa :-)