When searching for popular keywords, search results are usually mixed with Blended Search results, as shown in Figure 1-1. This is perhaps the worst-case scenario in an SEO context. How do you stand out in all of the clutter? Typically, part of the answer is by targeting less popular keywords.

Not all search results are cluttered. Searches for niche keywords often produce 100% organic results. Figure 1-2 is one example (for the keyword electrodermal testing sensitivities toronto). As you can observe, nobody is bidding for this keyword.

Figure 1-2. Google SERP: Niche keywords

Optimizing for niche keywords helps to attain greater conversion rates. To fortify their brands, the big industry players will also optimize their sites for the more (broad) popular keywords, irrespective of the conversion rate.

In an eye-tracking study conducted by Didit, Enquiro, and Eyetools, 50 participants were observed while browsing through Google search results. The results of this study uncovered what is termed the “Golden Triangle.” This refers to the screen area (in the shape of the letter F) that 100% of the participants viewed, as shown in Figure 1-3.

Figure 1-3. The Golden Triangle

Another interesting finding of this study included an analysis of the percentage of people looking at specific search result(s) as well as the percentage of people looking at specific paid results. Table 1-1 shows the breakdown. For more information, visit http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/03/prweb213516.htm.

Although big companies have large marketing budgets, they too can benefit from receiving (almost free) hits. When it comes to large departmentalized organizations with marketing (or e-business) and IT departments operating in isolation, it can be difficult to adopt a common SEO vision.

Typically, large organizations have complex, dynamic websites. In these cases, marketers depend on IT (usually web development and infrastructure teams) for publishing their content, for site maintenance, and so on.

Most software developers or web server administrators do not think about SEO. Most marketers today employ SEM (PPC) and do not know all of the technical details of SEO. This is where a bit of education and training is essential.

Industry giants can run hundreds of different websites with millions of web pages. Having so many web pages (typically) manifests many unique challenges. Some of those challenges include:

Many small-business owners often struggle with the concept of the Internet, web design, and SEO. A smaller company generally means a smaller budget. With this in mind, SEO can become the most important tool for gaining online traction and eventual sales leads. Many free tools are available on the Internet, including content management system (CMS) portals, blogs, and forums—with built-in SEO. Leveraging these tools can significantly lower the total cost of SEO ownership while achieving most of the benefits. Refer to Chapter 3 for more details.

Before doing anything else, learn about your business in relation to its online presence. In this phase, you need to answer lots of questions, and most of them may be specific to your business. What does your company have that the competition does not? What is your selling point?

Many other questions and topics need to be asked and explored, and much of this may be outlined in your standard business and/or marketing plans as well as in your (website) business requirements. When it comes to your online marketing, ask yourself: how much do you understand about SEO and PPC? Are you looking to target certain demographics or geographical locations? What are your general and specific expectations? How do you measure success? What do you perceive as failure? What is your budget? Do you have resources available to handle SEO and/or SEM? Who is the owner (driver) of your SEO efforts? What does the project schedule look like? Are there specific timelines?

The more you know about the business, the better. The clearer the picture you have at the start, the more focused your efforts will be. Find answers to all of your questions early.

Once you know what the business is like and what the expectations are, it is time to see what others are doing. How can you base your SEO if you are not aware of the playing field? Rest assured that your site will be looked at, crawled, and scrutinized by your competitors or their SEO consultants!

Learn about all the players in your business area. Understand where they are now and how they got there. Find out who is linking to them. Explore how much content their site contains.

See how many pages they have indexed in Google and other search engines. Estimate their website traffic and investigate what keywords they are targeting. In general, the more you know about your competitors, the better. This book talks about a number of tools you can use to analyze your site and your competitors’ sites.

So, you are tasked with increasing the visibility of an existing site. Now you must dig deep into the site, dissecting it from all angles. In SEO vocabulary, this is labeled as the site clinic. This research process is very similar to competitor analysis, only this time your focus is solely on the site you are assigned to work with.

First things first: you check the current site rankings (if any). Next, you start examining the internal (on-page and on-site) factors, including site age, <title> tags, <meta> tags, internal linking structures, content duplication, search engine traps, and so forth. In parallel, you also look at the external factors. How many backlinks does this site have? Who is linking to this site?

From there, you inquire about current technology being used, current practices, the availability of any in-house technical expertise, web server logs, web analytics, and so on. Knowing the current website size and the current website performance can also help. Resource availability and budget need to be defined.

Conversion rate can mean several different things (depending on the site context). For some sites, conversion rate can be the number of visitors that bought a particular product. For other sites, it can mean the number of visitors that registered on the site. Conversion implies a specific gained value. In PPC, if the conversion rate is too low, the gained value may be less than the invested value, defeating the purpose of the PPC campaign.

Keyword research is the activity of identifying and targeting specific keywords with the goal of creating relevant search engine referrals. For existing sites, keyword research identifies keywords that are already “working” (i.e., keywords that convert) and tries to find new ones that can assist in attaining additional quality traffic.

Keyword research does not apply only to on-page textual elements. It also applies to domain name selection, inbound links, link composition, directory listings, and many other elements. The basic question is always: what keywords do I target? The answer is not always the same. Do you target the most popular (broad) keywords? Or do you target the niche (narrow) keywords?

After all of the research is done, it is helpful to produce a document (the SEO research artifact) summarizing the findings of the research phase. This document should contain all of your findings, including the business research, competitor analysis, current state assessment, and keyword research.

Your content strategy needs to address all aspects of content: creation, modification, dissemination, and archival. It also needs to address the area of content presentation: how will this content be presented to end users? Your content strategy also needs to answer many additional questions, such as whether the site will include blogs, press releases, testimonials, syndication, media files, and similar items. Also consider which content needs to be crawled (and indexed) and which does not need to be in the search engine index.

One of the pillars of SEO, a link-building strategy is crucial. Whether you are going after (paid or free) directory submissions, social media sites, social bookmarking, blog comments, direct solicitation, news syndication, or press releases, you must have solid inbound links. Content with no links can go only so far. Good content can foster natural link acquisitions. However, you cannot rely only on content.

Engaging your clients on social media sites can be helpful and rewarding if done properly. You can consider this strategy as an important extension of the overall link-building strategy. The phenomenon of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, among others, is changing the landscape of link acquisitions.

A search engine targeting strategy can mean several things. First, what search engines will you be targeting? This includes targeting regional as well as major search engines. There are search engines besides Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. If you are concerned about your presence overseas, there are many other search engines you need to worry about.

Big search engines also operate on several different search engine verticals. Do not confuse search engine verticals with vertical search engines (which specialize in specific areas or data). The reference is to the Blended Search results shown on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. These are additional avenues that you may want to explore.

Using PPC in parallel with SEO can be helpful. The benefits are multifold, especially if the site in question is brand new. PPC can provide accurate forecasts for targeted keywords. For example, within the Google AdWords platform you can target the same keywords in your ads that you are currently targeting on specific pages. You can then accurately forecast how your pages will convert for the same keywords once you start getting the equivalent SEO traffic.

Developing a sound technical strategy involves many technical considerations. For starters, you should think about URL rewriting, avoiding content duplication (canonicalization), error messaging, and linking structures. After the basic SEO technical elements, think about some of the other elements.

For instance, what tools and platforms are required to build the site? Will you be developing custom software? In the case of custom software development, understanding the underlying software architecture is important. Even more important is for the custom software to make architectural provisions to allow for proper SEO.

You need to ask many other questions as well. What browsers will need to be supported? Do any hosting considerations need to be taken into account? Information on DNS, file space, traffic bandwidth, backups, CPU utilization, and so on can be helpful in painting an accurate technical picture. Make sure you understand the acceptable performance baselines, the scheduled maintenance times, and the change request methodology (if any).

Website performance is important. It is essential for large sites with many thousands of pages. In general, slow sites waste everyone’s time and tend to be a big distraction to your web visitors. Also, web crawlers may not crawl all of the pages in a big site (if it is very slow).

Your technical strategy also needs to include provisions for monitoring, reporting, and analyzing SEO progress. Web server log analysis and web analytics are part of SEO monitoring. Analyzing web traffic is at the core of SEO activities. Converting traffic is what matters. Ranking high with no conversions is a wasted effort.

The output of the planning and strategy phase is the SEO plan. The SEO plan contains information on internal and external proposed optimizations. This includes on-page and off-page optimizations as derived from particular strategies. The SEO plan is really a proposal and a call to action to address pertinent SEO requirements.

The SEO plan is also a road map. It documents the steps and activities that are required to get better rankings for a particular site. It also documents steps and procedures that will need to be followed for the addition or modification of any new content, after the SEO plan is implemented. The SEO plan should be revised every few months, as search engines and your rankings never stand still.

Internal optimization refers to on-page and on-site activities. On-page activities include keyword optimizations of <title> tags, description meta tags, page copy, and link anchor text.

On-site optimization refers to holistic sitewide activities. Domain selection (in the case of new sites), website design or redesign, web server configuration, and sitewide performance tuning are all part of on-site optimization activities. For more detailed coverage of internal optimization, refer to Chapter 4.

External optimization is just as important as internal optimization. The major goal of all external optimization activities centers on link building. It is all about your site’s visibility. Each link referral can be viewed as a vote for your site. The more quality links you have, the more popular your site will be. For more detailed coverage of external optimization, refer to Chapter 5.

The implementation phase can vary drastically in size and complexity depending on the project. It does not have to be done all at once, and it usually never is. Introducing too many variables can get confusing when tracking SEO progress.

The output of the implementation phase can be several artifacts detailing any new technical knowledge gained, problems encountered, and lessons learned. Furthermore, any deviations from the original SEO plan should be documented with appropriate rationale noted (and any future actions that would need to be performed). Procedures and processes for adding new content or making website changes (e.g., backups, maintenance, and deployment) should also be formalized. Sticking to the SEO plan is a must. Introducing deviations could be counterproductive and could hinder (or confuse) the benefits of other work.

You’ve just done a lot of work on your site (in the implementation phase). No spider activity could signal problems. Watch spidering activities closely.

Knowing website referrals can help you identify which link-building strategies are working. It is all about time. There is no point wasting additional time in specific link-building avenues if they are not producing any referral hits.

The search engine page rankings are important. Without good rankings, you will not get any traffic. With no traffic, you will not get any conversions. Don’t get too obsessed! Initially, your page rankings could be in a state of flux. Focus on your most important pages.

Although website traffic is different from converting traffic, it is still an indicator of your relative site visibility. An increase in visitor traffic is always good news (unless your site is having performance problems). Examining your web server logs can help you spot particular trends. You may even get some surprises in terms of which pages are getting hits.

Ultimately, it is the conversions that matter. If you are selling products or services, you want to know how many people that came from search engines bought the product or service. More specifically, you may want to know the entry pages that contributed to these conversions. Depending on your organization and your level of expertise, this could be a challenge if you are employing SEO and SEM at the same time. Knowing how to differentiate SEO from SEM conversions is essential. Utilizing Google Analytics can help you achieve these goals.

The output of the monitoring phase is sets of data, typically organized in monthly report summaries. This usually includes data from web stats tools and web analytics tools. This output serves as the input to the (re)assessment phase.

The output of the assessment phase is the recommendation artifact. At times, this could be a call to action for further research or a call to action for further minor tweaks.

The output of the maintenance phase is a confirmation of all the SEO work performed, in addition to any problems encountered and any lessons learned.