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SEO for CEOs - Search Engine Optimization Unmasked for CEOs
By Glenn Murray

If you're like most other CEOs, the term "search engine 
optimization" will mean very little. Either that or it means 
expense! But it doesn't have to be that way... If you feel like 
you're standing in a dark room handing money to strangers to get 
you in the search engines, then this article is for you. 

This is an article written by a business owner for other 
business owners and CEOs. It explains Search Engine Optimization 
(or SEO) in layperson's terms. It won't make you an expert, but 
it will give you some insight into what you're spending your 
money on, what you should be spending your money on, and just 
as importantly, what you shouldn't. 

But before launching straight into an explanation of SEO, let's 
talk a bit about search engines. Approximately 75%-80% of website 
traffic comes through search engines. What's more, research shows 
that most people don't look beyond the first 2 pages of search 
results. This means if your website doesn't rank in the first 2 
pages of the major search engines, it's only receiving 20% of 
its rightful traffic... and revenue. (And remember, being ranked 
number 1 when you search for your company name or web address 
doesn't count. You need to rank highly for the words your 
customers use at search engines.) 

The biggest concern for search engine companies like Google, 
Yahoo, etc., is finding content that will bring them more 
traffic (and thus more advertising revenue). They do this by 
using complex algorithms to determine whether a site is useful 
and should be included in their search results. 

This is where SEO comes in.

SEO is the art of ranking in the search engines. Nothing more, 
nothing less. 

SEO means creating your site such that the search engines 
consider it useful. The two main weapons in your arsenal are: 

· Keywords
· Links to your site

KEYWORDS

Figure out what words your customers are looking for at search 
engines, and use those words at your site. By frequently using 
keywords that are important to your customers, you tell the 
search engines what you do. These keywords are used in your copy 
and in the code behind the page. Generally speaking, the more 
you use the keywords, the more relevant you are to searches in 
that field.  

Keywords in Your Copy

The use of keywords in your copy is easy to understand. But 
it's not easy to do. You can't just pepper your site with a 
meaningless array of words. The trick is using the most 
important keywords a lot without compromising the readability 
of your copy. It's a balance between writing for the search 
engines and writing for your reader.  

TIP: If you find this too time consuming, a website copywriter 
can take care of it for you. And if you know your keywords 
already, it should cost you no more than normal web copy. 

Keywords in Your HTML Code

The use of keywords in your HTML code is harder to understand, 
but it's easier to do. There are four main places these keywords 
are used: 

· Keywords
· Description
· Alt
· Title

TIP: When you hear people talking about meta tags, this is what 
they're talking about. To see how meta tags are used in practice, 
go to Google and pretend you're a customer. Search for something 
your customers would search for. e.g. If you're in car audio, 
search for "car audio". Click on the first couple of results to 
bring up their website. Right-click on the home page, and 
select "View Source". You'll see a whole lot of code. You can 
ignore most of it. What you're looking for are the following. 

meta name="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="keyword 1,keyword 2,keyword 3" 

meta name="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Meaningful description of 
page using the main keywords" 

img src="filename.gif" alt="Meaningful description of 
picture using the main keywords" 

 

Take a look at the way the creators of the site have used 
keywords in these areas, and follow their lead. You already 
know they're ranked highly, so chances are they've done a good 
job. Alternatively, take a look at my site, 
http://www.divinewrite.com to see how I've done mine. 

Links to Your Site

Now that you know how to tell the search engines what you do, 
let's talk about how to convince them you're important. 

Links to your site (or "inbound links") are the most important 
factor in ranking. The more links you have to your site from 
other sites, the better your ranking (related sites generate 
better rankings).  

TIP: Think of the Internet as a big election. All the websites 
in the world are candidates, and all the links to those websites 
are votes. The more votes (links) a candidate (website) has, the 
more important it is, and the higher its ranking. 

There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are dubious 
(like auto-generation software). Others are legitimate, but offer 
limited results (like asking customers and suppliers to list you 
on their sites, and adding your site to various business 
directories). You can experiment with these methods, but I've 
always found the best way to generate inbound links is to write 
helpful articles and let publishers of newsletters and e-zines 
use them for free - on the proviso that they link back to your 
site.  

People who publish e-Zines and newsletters are always hungry for 
quality content. And there are websites out there dedicated to 
giving them just that. If you submit a well written, relevant, 
helpful article to one of those sites, you can have thousands of 
newsletter publishers ready to snap it up. Then you just sit 
back and watch the links multiply! 

TIP: This method is beneficial in other ways too. Readers of 
your article will see that you know what you're talking about, 
and because you're published, they'll see you as an authority. 

It's impossible to say how much time you'll need to spend 
generating links. You just have to keep at it until you have 
achieved a high ranking. Even then, you'll still need to 
dedicate some ongoing time to the task, otherwise your ranking 
will drop. 

Summary

So to cut a long story short, it comes down to this. If you have 
a lot of the right keyword phrases, used in real sentences, 
distributed realistically throughout your site, and a lot of 
links from other relevant sites, you stand a good chance of 
being ranked highly. 

That's what you're paying your providers for. And that's what 
SEO is all about. 

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Glenn Murray is an advertising copywriter and heads copywriting 
studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 
or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com 
for further details or more FREE articles. 
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