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New and Improved 10 Tips to the Top
By Jill Whalen (c) 2005

Having a website that gets found in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, etc.
isn't hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to
begin. Here are my latest and greatest tips to get you started:

1. Do not purchase a new domain unless you have to. Due to
Google's aging delay for all new domains (see this forum thread
(http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12535)),
your best bet is to use an existing domain/website if at all
possible. If you're redesigning or starting from scratch and you
have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, you can expect
to wait a good 9-12 months before your site will show up in
Google for any keyword phrases that are important to you.

2. Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the
search engines. This may sound counterintuitive, but hear me
out. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the
keyword phrase someone types into their little search box. If
those "someones" are typing in search words that relate to what
your site offers, then they are most likely members of your
target audience. You need to optimize your site to meet *their*
needs. If you don't know who your target audience is, then you
need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online
that might provide demographic information, and visit other
sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might
hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will
be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research,
and copywriting.

3. Research your keyword phrases extensively. The phrases you
think your target market might be searching for may very well
be incorrect. To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use
research tools such as Keyword Discovery
(http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/), Wordtracker
(http://www.wordtracker.com/), Google AdWords, and Yahoo Search
Marketing data. Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for
your site, and choose a few different ones for every page.

Never shoot for general keywords such as "travel" or "vacation,"
as they are rarely (if ever) indicative of what your site is
really about.

4. Design and categorize your site architecture and navigation
based on your keyword research. Your research may uncover
undiscovered areas of interest or ways of categorizing your
products/services that you may wish to add to your site. For
instance, let's say your site sells toys. There are numerous
ways you could categorize and lay out your site so that people
will find the toys they're looking for. Are people looking for
toys to fit their child's stage of development?

(Look for keyword phrases such as "preschool toys.") Or are they
more likely to be seeking specific brands of toys? Most likely,
your keyword research will show you that people are looking for
toys in many different ways. Your job is to make sure that your
site's navigation showcases the various ways of searching. Make
sure you have links to specific-brand pages as well as specific
age ranges, specific types of toys, etc.

5. Program your site to be "crawler-friendly." The search
engines can't fill out forms, can't search your site, can't read
JavaScript links and menus, and can't interpret graphics and
Flash. This doesn't mean that you can't use these things on your
site; you most certainly can! However, you do need to provide
alternate means of navigating your site as necessary. If you
have only a drop-down sequence of menus to choose a category or
a brand of something, the search engine crawlers will never find
those resulting pages. You'll need to make sure that you always
have some form of HTML links in the main navigation on every
page which link to the top-level pages of your site. From those
pages, you'll need to have further HTML links to the individual
product/service pages. (Please note that HTML links do NOT have
to be text-only links. There's nothing wrong with graphical
image navigation that is wrapped in standard tags, as the search
engines can follow image links just fine.)

6. Label your internal text links and clickable image alt
attributes (aka alt tags) as clearly and descriptively as
possible. Your site visitors and the search engines look at the
clickable portion of your links (aka the anchor text) to help
them understand what they're going to find once they click
through. Don't make them guess what's at the other end with
links that say "click here" or other non-descriptive words. Be
as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on
your site. The cool thing about writing your anchor text and alt
attributes to be descriptive is that you can almost always
describe the page you're pointing to by using its main keyword
phrase.

7. Write compelling copy for the key pages of your site based on
your chosen keyword phrases and your target market's needs, and
make sure it's copy that the search engines can "see." This is a
crucial component to having a successful website. The search
engines need to read keyword-rich copy on your pages so they can
understand how to classify your site. This copy shouldn't be
buried in graphics or hidden in Flash. Write your copy based on
your most relevant keyword phrases while also making an
emotional connection with your site visitor. (This is where that
target audience analysis comes in handy!) Understand that there
is no magical number of words per page or number of times to use
your phrases in your copy. The important thing is to use your
keyword phrases only when and where it makes sense to do so for
the real people reading your pages. Simply sticking keyword
phrases at the top of the page for no apparent reason isn't
going to cut it, and it just looks silly. (Purchase and read our
Copywriting Combo (http://www.highrankings.com/combo.htm)> for
exact tips on how to implement this correctly.)

8. Incorporate your keyword phrases into each page's unique
Title tag.

Title tags are critical because they're given a lot of weight
with every search engine. Whatever keyword phrases you've
written your copy around should also be used in your Title tag.
Remember that the information that you place in this tag is what
will show up as the clickable link to your site at the search
engines. Make sure that it accurately reflects the content of
the page it's on, while also using the keyword phrases people
might be using at a search engine to find your stuff.

9. Make sure your site is "link-worthy." Other sites linking to
yours is a critical component of a successful search engine
optimization campaign, as all of the major search engines place
a good deal of emphasis on your site's overall link popularity.
You can go out and request hundreds or thousands of links, but
if your site stinks, why would anyone want to link to it? On the
other hand, if your site is full of wonderful, useful
information, other sites will naturally link to it without you
even asking. It's fine to trade links; just make sure you are
providing your site visitors with only the highest quality of
related sites. When you link to lousy sites, keep in mind what
this says to your site visitors as well as to the search
engines.

10. Don't be married to any one keyword phrase or worried too
much about rankings. If you've done the above 9 things
correctly, you will start to see an increase in targeted search
engine visitors to your site fairly quickly. Forget about where
you rank for any specific keyword phrase and instead measure
your results in increased traffic, sales, and conversions. (You
can sign up for a free trial of ClickTracks
(http://www.clicktracks.com/download-optimizer.php), which easily
tracks and measures those things that truly matter.) It certainly
won't hurt to add new content to your site if it will really make
your site more useful, but don't simply add a load of fluff just
for the sake of adding something. It really is okay to have a
business site that is just a business site and not a diatribe on
the history of your products. Neither your site visitors nor the
engines really give a hoot!

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Jill Whalen of High Rankings® is an internationally recognized
search engine optimization (http://www.highrankings.com/)
consultant and host of the free weekly High Rankings® Advisor
search engine marketing newsletter
(http://www.highrankings.com/advisor.htm). Jill's handbook,
"The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines" teaches
business owners how and where to place relevant keyword phrases
on their Web sites so that they make sense to users and gain high
rankings in the major search engines.

Jill specializes in search engine optimization, SEO consultations,
site analysis reports, SEM seminars and is the co-founder of the
new search marketing and website design
(http://www.searchcreative.com/)company, Search Creative, LLC.
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