Search Engine Academy of South Carolina

One of the hardest challenges you may face as a SEO Professional is getting your customers to understand the importance of your work.

Search engine optimization goes beyond just making a Web site search engine friendly. Understanding how the search engines work and how all the different relevancy factors can affect your optimization efforts. As well as how you can communicate your skills as a search engine optimizer to your potential clients. This is really what your SEO Certification is all about.

As a SEO Instructor I am often ask by my students; “How can I take what I’ve learned in your workshop and apply it to my business, plus find a real value in offering search engine optimization to my clients?”

My answer to this question is always the same:

• First you need to be confident in your SEO skills.
• Second you need to be able to show your customers examples of your ranking results.
• Third you need to be honest and not play up on any industry hype to sell your client on search engine optimization.

If you follow those 3 simple step rules you will not need to prove anything to your clients you will earn their respect instantly and they will want to use your professional services.

Read more on Finding the Value in Your SEO Certification >>

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Here are some pointers to remember when writing your sales letter for your home page.

• Pay attention to layout. Place your headlines where they will be seen first and arrange your presentation in an orderly fashion. An effective sales presentation is arranged somewhat like a tour. There’s a beginning, middle and an end - in that order.
• A good way to start a sales letter is to ask a question it makes the reader stop and answer it in their mind. DO NOT ask a question that can be answered with “yes” or “no.” You should control both the question and the answer!
• Answer the question in one or two sentences. Explain why your product or service is essential or special.
• Give a convincing answer.
• Address doubts before your potential customer has a chance to think of them.
• You want to describe your product with a benefit.  Describe the value of what you are selling.
• How well does your headline speak to the reader? What is it saying? Is it talking about the services you offer or is it actually describing the benefits of owning, possessing or using your product or service? Far too many people are talking about themselves rather than clearly dialoguing about those benefits. 
• Adding an If/Then statement can be very effective
• Price comes after the benefits. Unless you are offering a blowout bargain, and price is the main benefit of your offer, mention price after describing the benefits.
• Keep the reader’s eye moving by using several “tricks of the trade.”
  • Vary paragraph widths
  • Add personal notes using a script font
  • Use different colors to mark key phrases
• List three good reasons that demonstrate how your product will make the reader’s life better, make him feel more secure, or motivate him to action. Keep the reasons short and powerful. Use statements that suggest positive results, facts, and figures.
• At the bottom add the trust building graphics with credit cards or industry related trust building logos. 
• Tip: Keep your vocabulary simple, short, and to the point.

Your whole focus should be writing sales copy to help compel a visitor response. 

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The questions of the day is… should Web Designers know search engine optimization?

Not all of us can create a professionally designed Web site nor do we expect that all Web designers  completely understand what it takes to do well in the search engines.  Wouldn’t it be nice if these two professional could work together. 

Many times our students will come to us with Web sites that they have spent thousands of dollars on only to discover it was created all in frames, solely reliant on flash, or better yet discover it is a sub domain of someone else’s site all together. 

Search engine optimization and a good solid web design truly are the backbone of every successful Web site on the Internet.  If we can educated Web designers on some of the basic SEO principles and get the SEO’s to consult with designers prior to the development of a site I believe that the two professional can form a great working relationship.

Web designers need to understand some basic SEO principles like:

• Use of keywords in the title tag
• Proper use of meta keyword and description tags
• Internal linking when designing the structure of the Web site
• Only using elements of Flash and not designing the whole site in Flash
• To stay away from Frame sites
• Proper use of CSS and JavaScript files

These are just a few but they all will help a great deal if taken into account when first designing the Web site.  This is the first step in creating a successful site. 

The next step is to get SEO’s to work together with the designer and understand and be open that the visual aspect of a site is as important as a search engine friendly site.  The buying audience is not the search engines they are just the tool to guide a visitor to a site. 

If the site has the basic search engine friendly structure from the start then a SEO’s can start working on building its reputation on the Internet.

Combine the basic SEO principles (which is the science of SEO) with the techniques (which is the art of SEO) and you have a team working together to create an awesome Web site.

Are you a Web Designer or a SEO?  Which ever you are create a business relationship with the other and the two of you working together as one will make a success story for many Web site owners. 

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We are always looking for new and unique ways to build links. We have read or been taught the most obvious but have you thought about these few as well?

• Join your local Chamber or Association and be sure to add these affiliations to your site and get your site listed on theirs.
• Even though Yahoo! is pricey at $299.00 it is a gold mind in your link building with vertical directories.
• Submit to Joe Ant and GoGuides.
• Issue an online Press Release through www.prweb.com
• Backlink your competitors and those ranking ahead of you for link and advertising leads.
• Develop how to videos and submit to YouTube.
• Check into Podcasting.
• Comment of Blogs in your industry.

If you have more that you have tried and would like to share them with us please go ahead and comment to this blog entry.

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It may be a silly question to ask yourself but making sure your site is sticky is imperative to having a successful site. 

Take a minute and look through your bookmarks on your own computer you will come across a list of sites that you bookmarked because there was something on that site you found interesting or something you wanted to go back to another time.

I looked through mine and I had everything from how to cure black spots in my rose garden to inspirational quotes plus everything in between.  But the most important thing about all of them was that each and every one of them had something that made me save it. 

Take a  good look at your Web site, really try to look at it from your visitors point of view. Ask yourself these couple of questions:

• Do you have anything on your site that is unusual or different from most other sites?
• Do you have your most important call to action above the fold?
• Do you have anything of value you can offer your visitors?
• Do you offer a library of resources or industry related information?
• Have you tried to add visual content to keep your visitors attention?
• Do your photos or graphics appeal to your specific buying audience?

Take a good look at your site and try to add or change your site with some of the above tips in mind and you can make your site a sticky one.

Here is a great way to add unusual but unique content to your site…add a “Did you know section.” 

For example:

If your site is an online toy store you could add this content to your site in a catchy highlighted box or graphic on the home page that said;

Did you know…The ratio of Barbie dolls to Ken dolls sold each year? Roughly two to one. 

How about this one;

Remember Pac-Man?The name comes from the Japanese word paku, which means “eat.”

You could even use some nostalgia information like this;

In 1900 the Sears, Roebuck and Co. Catalog sold wire jump ropes for .10 cents.

Have fun with your content, make it different and your site will stand out in the crowd and be different which really does make it sticky.

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• An inbound link has more value if the text is a relevant keyword phrase, and even more so if the keyword phrase is used in the title tag, H1 tag, and body text of the URL being linked to.
• Submitting articles to directories is a great way to build creditable inbound links.
• Submit your site to industry related directories.
• Syndicate your content with blogs or RSS feeds.
• Taking advantage of the power of press releases? - Check out pweb.com!

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What is the longevity factor?  To put it simple, it is how long your domain name has been visible on the Internet.  Often times a Web site may not have the greatest search engine optimization going for it but often we see the longevity factor come into play in these cases. 

Web sites that have been up and online for a number of years will most likely by pass newer sites with better optimization.  Lots of times longevity sites will have strong link reputation and link popularity which will always out way perfect optimization.

There is evidence that the search engines will actually consider your domain history in their ranking algorithms.   The longer your domain name has been active the better and more trusted your site becomes in the eyes of the search engines.

A couple things to think about if your site may be benefiting from longevity;

1. Always renew your domain name for more than one year.
2. Use a dedicated IP address.
3. Don’t change hosting companies.
4. Don’t change your URL 

This is one case where age is better then beauty!

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A recent survey done by Jupiter Research of 2,300 Web users found that 67% of those that participated said they had searched for a company name, product or service names, or advertising slogans they saw in offline marketing.  Those who started with an offline marketing message 30% eventually made a purchase.

Amazing isn’t it! As a marketer I have said all along that your offline marketing is as important as your online marketing and this survey certainly holds true to that statement.

The big questions is are you making it easy for those people to find you online?

Here are a few tips:

1. Include yoru site address on all your companies marketing material.
2. Display your URL in all print ads.
3. Be sure to mention your sites’ address on all TV or Radio Spots.
4. Include your phone number with area code plus city, state and zip on your Web site in straight HTM code for the search engines.
5. Get your site listed on Google Maps
6. Optimize your sites pages for specific products or services and your company name and geographical location.

The survey tells us that our customers are already trying to combine both offline and online marketing methods so lets make their search easier by following some of the guidelines above.

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When was the last time you reviewed Google’s Webmaster Guidelines?
You should re-read it from time to time. It is an excellent resource and it can and does get updated from time to time.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

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Most of us concentrate so much on optimizing our sites for the popular keywords that we completely forget about making sure our site is optimized for our local area. If you are a “Google Junkie”, like I am, you will have noticed that Google displays 3 local search results before the regular organic results.If you are a local retailer or offer a service that is mainly purchased by local customers it makes more sense to be sure your site is getting good listings for your local area then fighting for those popular keyword phrases?

Here is a list of sites that play a key factor in local search results. Most of these sites will let you register your site for free.

Google Maps
Yahoo! Local
MSN Live Local
SuperPages
YellowPages
Switchboard
CitySearch

Another key factor in getting your site to show up in local search results is to include your geographical information, such as zip code, area code, street address and city and state. The search engines read this information and use it when displaying local search results. A clue to this is being sure this information is in straight html text and not embedded in a graphic you want it spiderable to the engines.

These are just a couple tips to help guide you along the way to making your site appear more local search friendly.

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