4/21/2010
Author; Jonathan Lackman
Often, it's hard to know where and how to start on a large project or undertaking. Like the old saying goes; "how do you eat an elephant?" - answer "one bite at a time". Similarly, starting SEO on a new or unoptimized site is something you have to prioritize and start taking steps in the areas where your focus can have the most impact. In this article, we will outline some of the fundamental steps to get in place to set a good foundation.
We will not be talking about "how to make it to #1 on Google in 60 days" or anything like that. You see enough of that spam already. We will focus instead on reasonable steps that could be easily undertaken by a small company, individual, or corporation with whatever budget is available.
Keywords; the first step is to identify your keywords. First, what is a keyword? A keyword is what a prospect or customer types into a search engine when looking for your product or service. I am constantly amazed by how often I see or hear folks working on SEO and who do not have a documented (written), prioritized list of critical keywords. You have to know what your keywords are. They should be stack ranked by popularity (which is also cost and competition). Then, I would also divide into three groups;
How do I build my keyword list? This is a question I often hear. It sounds challenging to build a list of 100+ keywords, so here is some help on strategies to build your list.
Now you should have a good list of 50-100+ keywords, segmented from long tail, high priced, and #1. This can be done in one evening, maybe 2-4 hours. Add on a couple hours if this is all new to you.
What NOT to do. Perhaps the most common mistake, even among some sophisticated companies, is to confuse your company or product name with your keywords. Often your company or product name are NOT keywords at all.
Lets say you have a new product with a new, made up name. Let's say the name of the product is "arftut". In the beginning of your marketing, nobody in the market is aware of your name. Nobody is typing "arftut" in Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Your name, although you love it, is unknown in the market. In this situation, you have to focus on keywords that describe the product until you build brand awareness. So, you would use keywords like "wheel polisher, polish, chome" etc. assuming this product is something that helps polish wheels. Only after you have built significant brand awareness can you treat your name as a keyword. For example, Microsoft, Apple, Chevy, Coke, are all products like this; the name itself is meaningless, but can be used as a keyword since it has great brand awareness. To recap, don't be so in love with your new product or company name that you automatically use it as a keyword. You have a limited amount of web space for critical keywords, they should be filled with keywords from your list until after you have built brand awareness.
Next steps;
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