 Site Makeover You can find out a lot just by looking at the Web page in the browser

Potential Problems  Having a (usually pointless) Flash intro on your site  Embedding much of the text on your site into images, rather than relying on readable text  Banking on flashy visuals to hide the fact that your site is light on content  Using the wrong keywords

Solutions  Kill the flash intro on your site  Replacing images with real text  Look at the HTML for the page and then see if you can find the actual words in the text

SEO Basics  Using more keywords, search engines have a bias for content, for text they can read  the more text — with the right keywords — the better  Where keywords are placed and what they look like are also important  Search engines use position and format as clues to relevance

More on Keywords  Use particularly important keywords — those that people are using to search for your products and services — near the top of the page  Place keywords into (heading) tags  Use bold and italic keywords; search engines take note of this  Put keywords into bulleted lists; search engines also take note of this  Use keywords multiple times on a page

Index Shimdex, getting yours indexed  Keywords in links are a powerful way to tell a search engine what your site is about.  Having a popular website linking to yours is a way to get indexed in the engines

SEO Strategy  Don’t rely on your Web designer to manage your SEO project  PPC ads on the page  Bold words on the page  Bold words in the links (page titles).  Complete phrases on the page

Targeted Keywords  Go local. One common strategy is, of course, to focus on local keywords. If you’re a real estate agent, don’t target real estate. Instead, target real estate in your area: san diego realtor, chicago real estate, dallas homes for sale, and so on  Focus on more specialized search terms. A realtor might target traffic on keywords related to commercial real estate, or condos, for instance  Incorporate spelling mistakes. Some realtors target the very common misspelling realator or reality

Search Tail

SEO Variables  Keywords  Content  Page optimization  Submissions  Links  Time

Plan of Attack  Do a keyword analysis  Create readable pages  Create keyworded pages  Register with the search systems  Let the search systems know where those pages are  Get the search systems to include the pages in their indexes and directories  Get other sites to link to your site

More to do  Register with other places  Register with the shopping indexes  Use Pay Per Click.  Create large amounts of content  Go after links in a big way