Guest Post by Jon Wuebben
Every small business has a ton of things on their plate every day, especially in today’s economy. Prioritizing and allocating the appropriate time to each can be a challenge. So, we need to find shortcuts. In my marketing consultation work with over 200 companies in the past few years, I have determined that there are ten important, high priority things you should do from a site content perspective to improve rankings and conversion. Here are two:
1. Do Your Keyword Research: The importance of this step cannot be overstated. The surprising thing to find out is how many companies have never done this or rarely do it. If you do business online, it’s absolutely imperative. And, of course, you want to do your research correctly. So what’s the process?
The first thing you want to do is look at your competitor’s sites. What keyword phrases are they using? Find out my looking at their Meta tags (see next point). Then, use Wordtracker’s Free Keyword Tool. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ This is incredibly easy and can be very insightful. Plus, it’s free. I use it a lot myself. If you want to find out more, get a subscription. Its money well spent.
Keyword Discovery is another good tool to use. Be sure to try them out to see what the differences are. If you are a local, brick and mortar store, and get most of your business locally, be sure to use the local city names in your keyword phrases.
2. Dig into your HTML Code to Analyze Meta tags: Do this right now: go to each page of your site, right click on the page, select “view source code” and look for the words “META” near the top of the page. You want to look for the Title tag and Description tag. See them? What do they say? There should be some phrases there. If not, then you definitely have work to do.
The Meta tags are where you want to use your important keyword phrases, and they should be different for every page on your site. I recommend 2-3 unique keyword phrases/page tailored to what that page is about. For each page, use the same keyword phrases in the title tag as you would in the description tag.
Of course, there are many more things you’ll want to do…and continue to do to improve site optimization and ultimately, conversion. But to improve online lead generation, these are a couple of the more important ones. Good luck as you work to build your online presence and move the sales needle in 2009!
About the Author: Jon Wuebben is a veteran copywriter, speaker, entrepreneur and online marketing leader. He is the author of Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth on the Web, a book reviewed here on this blog in November. The book is an excellent resource for creating website content. The Marketing Spot blog has three copies to give away.
How to win a free copy of this book? Simply comment on this post using your complete name and include a link back to your website in the comment form. (deadline for entry is 5pm CT this Friday, April, 10th) I will announce the winners this weekend on this blog. Leave a comment by clicking here.
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10 comments:
Thanks for the great post. I learned something new in the third paragraph. I wasn't familiar with Wordtracker’s Free Keyword Tool, but I'll use it as I prepare for a website redesign.
Thanks for adding the keyword tool websites. Quality post! I surely agree that keyword research and testing goes a long way in online lead generation.
This is very helpful. I am going to give the keyword research links a review this morning.
You provide some very interesting and useful information
(Psssst! You have a typo in the third paragraph. I think "Find out my looking at their Meta tags" should be "Find out BY looking at their Meta tags")
Thanks for this post. The more technical second part was very interesting. I'm going to do some experimenting with this because I am always looking to learn!
Thanks for the post. I keep explaining to my boss about the importance of keyword usage.
This book sounds interesting. As an online media planner, this would be good to know.
www.strategicality.com
This is a great post!! I am always interested in ways in which to optimize my web site. I have learned a lot. I didn't realize that right clicking each page of my web site and going to source would show me the written code. I know I will learn a great deal by reading the book to optimize my presence on the web. Awesome Job!!
Awesome post - I still can't my head around the number of ugly small business websites once I've found their stuff. Content is king but being pretty goes a wong way.
http://iloveclosing.com/2009/03/29/stinky-sales-collateral-101/
Cheers
The Closer
This blog is a winner. Thanks Jay - I'll be back to learn more from you for sure.
Great post! I think keyword research is imperative when designing a website, or redesigning it to target your prospects. You may think that your customers are finding you a certain way, but keyword research makes or breaks these assumptions. Thanks for sharing!
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