Day 11: Getting Found with SEO

Online Marketing Program Day 11 Video:

Welcome to Day 11 Part 1! So glad to see you today :-)

Today’s Learning Points

Part 1 covers:

SEO and the IMPACT Marketing Formula;
SEO Basics;
and, what’s coming ahead.

Part 2 covers:

SEO for busy people;
Tackling on-page factors for SEO;
Leveraging off-page factors for SEO;
and, what’s coming ahead.

Part 3 covers:

IMPACT SEO CheatSheets;
IMPACT Marketing Calendar and Action Guide for SEO;
and, what’s coming ahead.

Important Note: Today’s itinerary is ambitious and lengthy so we’ve broken it up into 2 parts. For many of you, finding the time to work through all of it may seem daunting. All I can say is, it’s well worth it. Understanding SEO and how you can easily and quickly apply SEO best practices is VERY important to your online marketing success. No, you do not need to become an SEO guru (we’ll show you shortcuts). Yes, you do need to have an understanding of it and integrate your knowledge into every facet of your online marketing (again, we’ll show you shortcuts). Take the time, you won’t be sorry

SEO and the IMPACT Marketing Formula

Target - IMPACT Online Marketing Formula

Remember from Day 3 Understanding Target, “Target is all about getting found by your ideal audience. Target is about understanding your audience (beyond demographics), how to find them, and how best to initiate “touch points” with them — in order to engage, IMPACT, and convert them. It’s about the “reach out” — knowing when, where, and how to reach out to your audience.”

It seems basic, but lets break down the important points there — getting found + ideal audience. Your goal, in everything you do online starts with achieving the fundamentals of Target. At the root of that goal is to do so efficiently and effectively to ensure profitability and sustainable growth… this is especially true if you’re a one man show or small operation.

SEO is one of the most valuable means of Target you’ll find in online marketing. Now I know, many of you, will likely try to argue that social media and blogging are at the core of your success. Let me explain it this way:

Online marketing is the car, that gets your business from one place to another.

Bloggging, social media, and such are the wheels and body of that car.

SEO is the engine and the power behind where your car goes, how far and fast it goes.

When integrated into every aspect of your online marketing, SEO will help you kick *ss online. More targeted traffic, more reach, more visibility, more branding, more awareness, more leads, more sales… more of everything you want to achieve online.

Integrated SEO will help you:

Increase your targeted traffic from search engines, which converts better than any other form of traffic, including social media traffic;
Increase your social media reach, as most people still search, find, and friend via keywords and topics;
Increase visibility because the more people who find you, the more people can share you;
Increase your content marketing results, for all the reasons above;

So, why aren’t more bloggers, small business people, and professionals taking the time to learn SEO? Misinformation. Information overload. Who knows… so let me help put you at ease. You do not have to be an SEO guru to see results. You do not have to be a total techie to see results. SEO is all about fundamentals, time, and consistency. And, there are ways to ensure you’re including SEO best practices in everything you do – from blogging to Facebook to Twitter to videos – it’s all relevant.

A Word of Caution Moving Forward

Not on our itinerary, but this needs to be said. Inevitably, there will always be some “SEO guru” or guy that sells SEO services that will want to post a lengthy comment about all the advanced strategies that should be listed here. Ultimately, he’s going to break down all the reasons why SEO is much more complicated than it needs to be. Shut your pie hole and save it

The sole purpose of this learning tool is to help the person who either can’t afford a so-called SEO guru, doesn’t have a team to dedicate to aggressive SEO, or is running a small operation — all of which still need to get results without being a complete techie. Of course there are more advanced strategies. There is a time and place for such things.

With that said, we’ll be covering SEO best practices — the kind of things, when all else falls short, do these and you’ll gain serious, consistent traction across all your online marketing efforts and in the search engines.

SEO Basics

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the process of optimizing your web content (blog, sites, etc) for organic search engine rankings based on keywords or search queries. Organic search is the “free” part of Google that returns rankings based on relevance to a users search terms (versus paid SEM or search advertising).

Organic search engine rankings have been and still are the holy grail of online marketing. If you can get found by your audience, consistently, in the search engines — you’re off to a great start in your marketing online. Some would even argue that SEO can make or break any business serious about marketing online.

There are 3 major players in the SEO game:

Search engines crawl the web, index content, process queries (searches) and rank the results.
Search users seek and find, using queries (based on keywords), to find content, information, etc across the Web.
You optimize for the search engines and provide the content to be found.

You can ONLY control your part, but you CAN study and understand the other players on the field. That’s what SEO best practices are all about.

Your goals in SEO should be 3 fold:

understand how the search engines rank content,
understand how your ideal audience finds you,
understand how you can use this knowledge to optimize your content/blog/site.

How Search Engines Rank Content

Note: For the purposes of this guide, we’ll focus on Google, who happens to hold the overwhelming majority of SEO benefits for your business.

Two major factors of how Google (search engines) rank content: on-page factors (those you can control) and off-page factors (those you can not control, but can contribute to). On-page factors make up about 30% of what Google considers, with off-page factors representing the remaining 70%.

On-page factors include:

Accessibility from the user and search engine perspective,
URLs, title tags, and meta data (SEO techie stuff),
Site and content structure (how your site is built and how you deliver content),
Canonical links and duplicate content (SEO techie stuff),
Page and content optimization (SEO techie stuff).

Off-page factors include:

Links,
Links,
and more links.

Obviously that’s a bit simplified, but from an off-page perspective links are really what it’s all about.

Google uses a pseudo-democratic system when ranking your site. Links are votes that tell Google what one site thinks about another site (relevance). The more valuable the voter (site linking to you), the more value a vote (link) has. When someone or some site links to you, that is one vote in your favor.

Google then looks at each vote (link) and evaluates it (relevance). The most important factors Google uses to value a vote (link) include:

The words that make up the link (anchor text);
the words around the link (content on page);
the content or subject matter on the site voting (linking) for you;
the overall popularity (links) the voting (linking) site has;
and the overall popularity of both sites (one receiving vote and one giving vote) within relevant communities;

Basically, votes (links) from popular, relevant sites that are trusted across the web are more valuable than others. The more votes (links) you receive from these sites, the better you will do in the search engines (given your on-page factors being good).

So… what does all this mean for the business professional or small business? Let’s dive into that!

SEO for Busy People

There are two sides to SEO for busy people — the stuff you just need to invest the time and energy into doing and the shortcuts. Many of you will want to only do the shortcuts, expecting a return when you haven’t really invested in the foundation of good SEO. All I can say to you is… take the advice of a 12+ year online marketing veteran. Some things you just can’t shortcut, setting yourself up for good SEO is one of them. If you’re serious about your business success online and truly leveraging the power of integrated online marketing you’ll do the work and hence reap the rewards.

Important Note: Throughout SEO for Busy People, we’re going to focus on SEO best practices for Wordpress Blogs (whether used as a blog, site, or hybrid blog-site). Why? Because you can’t build on a better platform that is SEO friendlier than Wordpress. If you’re one of the few not using Wordpress, you’ll need to adapt what we advise here for your specific platform. If you’re interested in getting on a Wordpress blog or thinking about a Wordpress Blog Makeover (that includes SEO), we offer that! I know, shameless plug, but heah, we do it and we do best so why not

What’s coming ahead…

Tomorrow in Part 2, we’ll take a look at SEO for the Busy Person and how to use your IMPACT Marketing Calendar and Action Guide to manage your SEO efforts. You’ll also have access to our SEO IMPACT Cheat Sheets.

See you tomorrow!

Maria Reyes-McDavis

and WebSuccessDiva Team

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About the Author...

Maria Reyes-McDavis is a colossal geek brainiac, certified genius IQ with university degrees in Finance, Economics, Business Management and an MBA. Maria has served over 300 pro-level, digital marketing clients as founder of online marketing firm Digital Peas & Carrots. Maria is Founder and Editor of Hyphenated Americans, a conservative politics blog and Proverbs 31 Project an online women's ministry. Most importantly, Maria is a wife to her king, mother of 3, lover of basketball (Go Lakers & Clippers!), classic cars and is currently training for professional women's roller derby!