Getting Ahead SEO-Style

As I look back over the last decade, I can’t help but be amazed at the evolution of the online industry. Back in 1996, Very few people were shopping online, conducting research, or even checking their email in comparison to today’s standards. At the time, I was a budding web developer that had just started learning what it took to drive traffic to my own web sites while chatting on my spiffy AOL dial-up account.

Yeah, I was that cool back then too.

It was hard to sell web development services then as many of the small and mid-sized companies couldn’t understand why they would ever need to have a web site, let alone services like Internet marketing to drive traffic to that web site. Fast forward to 2008 and it amazes me that some figures estimate that we spend over 48% of our leisure time online – for most of us that’s over 125 minutes a day. I have also seen numbers bouncing around that the online ad spending for 2011 could hit between 40 and 50 billion dollars. Wow, times, they are a changin’.

When you factor in that a considerable amount of our time is spent on a search engine looking for things, it would seem logical that many companies would want to learn how to get their web sites ranked on the first page of sites like Google and Yahoo!. The companies that have learned how to do this are reaping the benefits at almost zero cost.

So, how do I get my web site ranked on the first page of search engines? Well my friend, this process is dubbed “SEO”, short for “search engine optimization”. Mastering this process could send your online sales through the roof and help put your brand in front of millions of people worldwide.

SEO, however, is not a onetime fix or magic bullet by itself. It is a process that starts before your web site is built and its tweaks are ongoing. It covers everything including; your domain name, the theme or topic of your web site, site architecture, and content. The SEO process gets further complicated when you add in the fact that there is no manual published from the search engines that guides you through the process.

Implementing SEO on your site basically boils down to two methods, off-page SEO (changes you make outside of your site) and on-page SEO (changes you make within your site). There are many different sides to this argument, but the most effective thing you can do to help build targeted traffic and higher rankings is off-page SEO. In a nutshell, off-page is focused on getting your web site linked on someone else’s site. This is called a “back link” and can be acquired in many different ways. The more back links you can get, the more your site appears popular to search engines. This popularity will help you rank higher and receive more traffic.

You should keep in mind that you want to get back links from sites that are related to the content of your site. This helps the search engines identify what you’re all about. When you start getting back links from related web sites, your site starts to look like an authority in its niche and it helps build a targeted profile of your site in the search engines. A good starting point would be to research your online competitors and find some of the places they have acquired back links.

On-page SEO requires a bit more work and involves a few more concepts, but it boils down to getting your site organized, so that search engines can understand your overall concept and how all of your pages are indexed. When you start to branch out from that main “theme” you need to incorporate new sections of your site related to that expansion. Each branch of your web site should be tightly focused on just that idea alone. And remember, it all comes down the quality of the written content within your site.

On-page SEO also looks at how your web site is structured. Having well-designed navigation will be needed so that the search engines can find your content easily. Make sure important sections of your site can be reached in several different ways and that every page of your site can be found without hassle. Having a sitemap is always a good idea too.

This may sound like a lot of work – and it is! However, the benefits you will gain far outshine any amount of time you put into it. Even though this is an entry level look at SEO, it will help you get the ball rolling on producing more and better targeted traffic to your web site from the search engines.