Noah Minard Consulting

Keyword Identification

• Make a list of your known keywords
• List the misspellings, derivatives (e.g. filter –ing, filter-ed), and plurals
• Check competitors' websites
• Use keyword tool(s)

Broad terms are difficult to rank highly for and won't convert to sales as readily as more specific phrases. A searcher for “shoes” may be researching how shoes are made or beginning the shopping process but someone who searches for brown wingtips size 9 ½ is more likely to convert to a sale and “brown wingtips” will be easier to rank well for than “shoes.” Also, don't assume you know what keywords your potential customers are using to find you. Use keyword tools and research to create your master keyword list

Content - Must be Unique and Valuable

• Valuable articles and other quality content can become great link bait
• Testimonials (see new FTC rules)
• Unique product descriptions
• Contact Us and Policies information or page links should be prominent

Meta Title Tags - The Most Important Meta Tag

• 60 Character Limit
• Minimize common words – and, the, of, etc
• Most important keywords should be to the left
• Blue bar at top of browser
• Manufacturer (e.g. Ford), Description (e.g. Pick Up Truck), Part # (e.g. F150)
• Other pertinent info

h1 Tags

• 2nd Most Important Meta Tag
• Use a wording strategy similar to Title Tags but work more words in
• Vary wording from Title Tag at least somewhat

Meta Description

• Should describe product and include sales/conversion message
• Will display in the SERP (search engine results) of many search engines
• Google often ignores this and pulls from other text on the page

Meta Keyword Tags

• Keywords in meta tag MUST also be present elsewhere on the page
• Not considered by most search engines
• 5 keywords are plenty
• Better to not use the keyword meta tag than to it incorrectly!

General Body Copy

• Use natural language to work keywords into the text
• Write for the customers and conversion
• Typically more is better
• Use Images Alt tags for any images here
• Apply h2 h3 h4 tags, bold, italics etc to keywords

Incoming Links

• No other factor helps more with SEO
• Be sure that important keywords are present in text of link pointing to your website
• Links should vary thus looking natural to search engines
• Links should point to various pages within your website
• One link from a high quality, relevant page is worth 100 or 1000's of low quality links
• Avoid 'run of the site' links
• Search engines must not know when links are purchased
• See 'miserable failure' incident
• The increase in the quantity of the links needs to appears natural to the search engines

Video

• Create and imbed on your site where appropriate
• Expect increase in importance to SEO in the future
• Expect voice recognition technology to begin striping words from video soon
• Video increases conversion
• Use a web cam or inexpensive flip camera. Professional level production is not practical or necessary
• Video Example with low production

Directories - Top tier (e.g. Yahoo, DMOZ) and 2nd tier (e.g. www.01webdirectory)

• DMOZ – take your time and do it right. Can take 6 months or longer but well worth it. Your site must have something to offer visitors. They won't take affiliate sites, sites devoid of useful content etc.
• Google Business Listing
• Yahoo Directory $299 per year. Does not feed yahoo's search results (Yahoo's search results are feed by Bing search as of Oct 2010).
• Business.com 199 per year
• Joe Ant $39.99 one time fee
• Only about dozen of the best directories are worth your time
• Any related directories and especially related trade directories
• Most 2nd tier directories are not worth the effort UNLESS they are related topically

Points to Consider

• Write all the above for humans, not search engine robots
• Keep code clean e.g. don't use Microsoft Word to generate html
• Never link to outside websites without careful consideration. One bad outgoing link could permanently delete your domain from Google or other search engines’ search results! 1. Cached in both google and Yahoo? 2. Google page rank of at least FIVE? 3. Never link to a directory or site that has tons of outgoing links. 4. ANY question about a site then don't link to it.
• If a SEO technique you intend to employ seems like it might 'trick' the search engines DON'T USE IT!

Domain Naming and URL

• not-more-than-one-dash
• Keep site structure as shallow as organization allows. Boats crawl deep only occasionally.
• File and directories names should include keywords
• E.g. www.domainnamewithkeyords.com/keywordhere.html
• Domain names with .com create trust in customer's minds
• Landing page names should include keywords

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