Search Engine Optimization

Mike Wilson, the SEO guru in charge of SEO Internet Marketing Inc (www.searchengineoptimizationcompany.ca or SEO Expert) always says “walk before you run”. This precisely applies to link campaigns you should be deploying. Don’t go for “mortgage”, but start out by dominating 3 – 4 word keywords. Then move up into the 2, and only then go for the 1. Obviously if your link building is continuous, then constantly drip feed that 1 golden key phrase, but do not hope to get it before you get lower search volume phrases.

Lets take mortgages as an example and assume “mortgage” is the golden phrase you want to go after. Everybody wants to get it, and it is possible, but prepare for some heavy investment in links, content, conversion optimization, and a lot of time and effort put into SEO.

We’ll pretend you already have a decent site, with a good design, that converts well, and has… 250 pages in total. Seems like an average well maintained site on the internet. We’ll assume there was no SEO work done on the website, and we are starting from scratch.

So where do we go? How do we do it the smart way? Remember, the keyword we’re after is mortgage.

First, install Google webmaster tools and check the keywords you’re already showing up for. You might find there are some good positions for some of the keywords. If that is the case, then find exact search volume for those phrases, and do some targeting. For instance, if the keyword is “fixed rate mortgage costs” do a query in the Google keyword tool to find out the volume. If the volume is low, then check how you are doing for 3 word phrase “fixed rate mortgage. What you might find is that you simply need to tweak the titles, add in some content and fix internal links to move up in the results (don’t hope for that thought and always think of link building in perspective, especially in competitive field like mortgage).

Find all the keywords like that in Google Webmaster tools. Cross check current rankings on Google. Write them down or put it on a spreadsheet. Then do the same with analytics, thought you might find that for the most part it is long tail.

Once you have some general idea where you site falls, go ahead and do the onsite SEO.

Doing the onsite SEO and Planning Linking Strategy

Having established some of the pages that rank for good keywords somewhere in search results (does not have to be first page), it is time to heavily target them. Select pages that are going to go after those words, and put keywords in the title. Tweak H1, H2, H3 titles with different instances and variations of the keyword. Put the keyword (or a set of keywords related to main targeted one) in the content. Put links from internal pages the with targeted anchor text to that page.

Do this for all of the pages on your website, including a homepage. Once done, it is a waiting game for Google to spider all the changes (internal pages take longer then index), and then put them into the index. You might want to start with the linking efforts right away, and apply approximate number of links to each page, for each of the keywords, or you can wait to see the actual changes on search results.

If you do choose to proceed with link building right away, then use the following as a benchmark:

• the more competitive a keyword is, the more links you will need for it.
• the higher your page is in search results for a particular keyword, the less links you will need for it

Correlate those 2 together and map out your link strategy. It may look something like this:

There is no need to be precise here, since this is the first set of the lins, it will help you get a feel of how things move, which keywords are easy, and which ones will need more effort. Place linka as planned for each of keywords, to targeted pages, and wait for results. Once results kick in, check where you are for each of the keywords, and record to keep a log of the progress.