SEO: It’s All in the Wrist

Posted on Mar 10 by Kelly Johnson

There are companies that will gladly take hundreds, even thousands of your hard-earned dollars to improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website. My best advice? Pay it.

Quality SEO is well worth it.

I’m not saying you can’t do it yourself. You absolutely can. But if you own a business, the hours you would spend researching and mastering SEO could be better spent elsewhere. SEO is kinetic, evolving constantly. Even Darwin would be stymied. Search engines often change their criteria for top placement. And the qualities that Google finds attractive may repulse Bing. It’s like the blind date from hell or a box of chocolate with no user-friendly guide in the box.

Even if you know the ingredients comprising the secret placement algorithm for each search engine, you still have to make it happen. That takes time, lots and lots of time, time away from your business.

Still game? Well, I do admire that can-do, pioneer spirit. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Broaden your keywords. If you sell kayaks, sure “kayak” is an obvious choice. Less obvious, and likely less expensive are “inflatable boat,” “canoe,” or “watercraft.” If you’re stuck, run your site pages through Google’s keyword tool to generate suggestions and analyze keyword popularity.


Choose related keywords. GeekBabel ranks #6 on Google for San Diego tech bloggers.


2. Write. Or, hire someone to write for you. Incorporate keywords into the articles. Aim for a 3-percent keyword density, based on the number of words in your article. Then place those articles all over the web. Sites like Ezine are good for this.
3. Become an active participant in blogs related to your keyword. Some blogs offer backlinks, links back to your own site. These are valuable
4. Give stuff away – for free. Remember intellectual property is more valuable than swag. The more you give away, the more visitors your site will attract. It’s true; the good you do really does come back to you!
5. Purchase optimization software, such as SheerSEO software or Brute Force. Both are invaluable in helping you shape your content for various search engines and also keeping tabs on how your keywords rank.
6. Socialize. Twitter, Facebook, Buzz – publicize your site and yourself. Never spam. Engage in useful conversation and sponsor a contest or two. People will get to know you gradually and you may even make some friends.

There’s more, but the above 6 tips are a good place to start. Feel free to email or post questions here (see step 4 above) and I’ll help as much as I can.

Good luck!

Additional Resources:
Google Webmaster Tools
Mashable’s Weekly Guide to Social Media Events
SEO Made Simple: Strategies For Dominating The World’s Largest Search Engine

GeekBabel, a San Diego website design company, specializes in budget website design in San Diego. We work with a number of san diego web designers to provide website design services San Diego, web development in San Diego, and web design in San Diego.