With nearly 70% of the search market share, Google deserves to get the lions share of attention when we plan our search engine optimization strategy. Following right on Google’s heals is Yahoo – The former king that has now found itself trailing the Google behemoth with approximately 17% of the market. Last, we have Microsoft’s Bing, desperately trying to hold on to their 10% of the market. Their search engine is only mildly more successful as their Zune music player and Kin mobile phone. Not very impressive, but still work a look.

Do any of the other search engines matter? Not really.

If you are targeting the US market, then you should be concerned with these three search engines, in that order, if you want to succeed. You can throw good money at services that promise to “register your site with 300 search engines per month”, but this so-called “registering” won’t help your search engine rank one bit.

To elaborate on how I quickly earn high ranking search engine positions, I’m going to use Proline Air Conditioning as an example. Proline is a start up AC and heating service company that has put all of it’s eggs in one basket – Online marketing. I structured their site in a way that earned a first page rank on Google and Yahoo in only 5 days. These results aren’t always “typical”, but they are possible, and I’ll explain how.

It’s all about the keywords, right?

Sort of. Ask yourself this – “What keywords am I supposed to be targeting and what do I do with those keywords?” Do you just take a guess and hope for the best? That’s what most people do. They’ll use the most obvious keyword that comes to mind and stuff it everywhere on their site. They’ll stuff the meta tags, paragraphs, alt tags, and maybe even hide a few keywords in the background for good measure, just to make sure that they’ve got it covered. This is a good way to have your site completely banned from the search engines – Not improve your rank.

You should never guess what people are searching for. This data is available to anyone by using Google’s keyword tools and other similar services. They’ll show you exactly what people are searching for, suggest phrases that you might not have thought of, or a variations of the phrase that will give you better results. For example, when building the site for Proline AC I learned that the difference in “air conditioning repair” and “ac repair” was substantial. One phrase was pulling in 50% more searches than the other! This is vital information you need when planning your search strategy.

You’ve got to have “good bones”.

Not real “bones”. I’m referring to the structure that websites are built upon – The markup.

Search engines like to see properly structured semantic markup on your website. It helps them identify what your website is about and what content would be most useful to your readers. You can have the prettiest site on the internet, but if Google can’t read your content, or can’t tell your “headline” from your “paragraph”, you’re not going to get far. Don’t place your text in an image or Flash animation. Search engines can only read good old (X)HTML text, so learn to keep your content in this form and structure it with proper titles, heading tags (H1, H2, H3 and so on), paragraphs, links, etc. Go through your entire site from top to bottom, starting with a good descriptive, keyword rich domain name, all the way down to your footer, making sure that you are including your keyword phrases in the best way possible. Don’t blindly stuff your keywords in every section, just included them appropriately in a manner that is easy to read and makes sense to your readers.

Write your content for humans, not search engines.

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. By having a website link to you, they are giving you a “vote of confidence” that you are indeed worthy of reading. If you have several inbound links from reputable websites, the search engines figure that you have something of value to add to the online world and they will index your site and give it a decent rank (theoretically).

This is a topic for several more blog posts, but I will just say that because I have worked with online marketing for many years, I have a network of website and developers that I can use to give your website several relevant inbound links quickly. This will get your website indexed FAR faster than by submitting your site to the search engines.

You are letting the search engines come to you, instead of submitting your site to them and hoping that they index it.

When should you pay attention to SEO?

A lot of people make a good living offering SEO services. The companies that actually do a good job will charge at least $1200 per month, and some even charge as much as $1000 per hour for this service.

Why pay one service to design your site, and another to make it actually work? I’ve always found that it’s much for efficient to consider your SEO strategy while you are building your site. This saves a lot of time and money doing it right the first time. I’ve always offered my clients website design, SEO, SEM, linkbuilding, social media and more. They are all important aspects of your online marketing strategy, so why do the job twice?

Use a company that offers well rounded online marketing services, not just pretty design. Reputable marketers (including us) look at the big picture and take care of a lot of the things that you would be paying someone to “re-do” otherwise.

Search engine optimization us a journey, not a destination. The techniques mentioned n this blog post only scratch the surface of the work involved to achieve and maintain a great search engine rank. No two businesses are the same either. What might work in one industry may not work in another. We look at each client individually and identify where we can enhance their search engine position. For some it might be link building. Others may require a lot of on-site reorganization. For a free review of your website, contact me at Matt@ApacheAdvertising.com.

Recap

This is a complex topic that has been the subject of thousands of blog posts and articles, but to give you a quick recap:

1. Don’t guess at keywords. Use tools that will tell you what people are searching for and what phrases will offer the most opportunity for a good rank.
2. Use a rock solid, well organized, markup and link structure that allow search engines to fully index your site and identify what text is important. Ex: headline, paragraph, etc.
3. Build solid inbound links to your site from reputable websites related to your industry. This is critical!
4. Register Google sitemaps and follow all the recommendations outlined in the Google Webmaster Guidelines. They will tell you exactly what they want you to do in order to rank well. Deceptive tricks will always hurt you in the long run, so just follow their guidelines and you’ll do great.
5. Last, but not least, WRITE GREAT CONTENT! If your site is amazing and provides useful information to your readers, then the search engines and customers WILL find you.

Want to talk about this further? E-mail me at Matt@ApacheAdvertising.com.

Kingwood is a 14,000 acre community located in northeast Houston, Texas. The majority of the community is located in Harris County with a small portion in Montgomery County. Known as the “Livable Forest,” it is the largest master-planned community in Harris County and second-largest within the 10-county Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area.

With it’s vibrant online community and local businesses, we feel right at home. Although we continue to serve the web design and marketing communications needs of businesses nationwide, we have already made several great businesses relationships right here in our local community.

If you are a resident of the the Kingwood Texas area and are interested in working with a local business for your print and Internet design, email marketing, search engine optimization, copywriting, and other marketing communications, please give us a call.

Hutchinson’s new campaign website standbykay.com, promoting her run for the Governor’s seat, was blocked from Google and Yahoo for using “black hat” SEO tactics, including stuffing over 2200 hidden keywords within her web site.

Aides said all the phrases were computer-generated based on terms that computer users searched for who also searched under Rick Perry, Kay Bailey Hutchison or Texas or a combination of the phrases. They said the many phrases were appropriately intended to help target online banner advertising for Hutchison.

Whatever the true purpose was, this will certainly give a black eye to Hutchinson’s campaign. Only one day after the keyword stuffing was discovered, the Senator parted ways with the guilty web firm that added the computer generated keyword spam, and redirected her web visitors to a new domain.

The major search engines have evolved into highly intelligent systems that can sniff out any website that attempts to “cheat” the system with hidden keyword spam. The best practice to follow when promoting a web site, especially one as sensitive as a campaign website, is to handle all SEO and marketing carefully and manually, avoiding all computer generated spamming firms at all cost.

So what now? Should you pack in the pay-per-click (PPC) adverts? After all, you probably only got them to increase visibility while you boosted the site’s natural optimization, didn’t you?

I read about this very topic in a recent article by Kevin Gibbons. You can read his full text here >>>

Gibbons elaborates on this topic and suggests that marketers continue to purchase pay-per-click advertising to prevent competitors from obtaining valuable ad space, to protect your name, and to appear that your business has more authority.

I too recommend adding pay-per-click advertising into the mix even when your site ranks well organically, but for slightly different reasons.

I advise my clients to run a PPC campaign to help balance out all of their targeted search phrases. If one targeted search phrase is performing well organically, throw a little more PPC money at a more competitive phrase that might be ranking slightly lower than the others. If that particular search phrase improves in the organic search, adjust your PPC to a different area, and so on. With regular attention paid to your PPC and organic SEO, you can make sure that your business is always found near the top.

Pay-per-click also gives marketers a great tool for testing a variety of headlines and unique-selling-points (USP) that could benefit your advertising in other media as well…but that’s a whole other article I’ll save for another day.

When asked about the first steps that she took to market her new business, her answer was very interesting. Did she take out a yellow page ad? Did she purchase magazine ads, or perhaps a billboard? No. The very first step taken was to revise her web site and to invest in search engine optimization (SEO).

Her online marketing efforts show that the most cost effective and successful means of marketing a business is still online. Whether you are starting a new career like Tarah, or if you are looking to grow your existing business, investing in your online presence is vital to your success.

Everyone gets this email. Even Google!

The fact of the matter is, they don’t know your industry, they don’t know your target market, and they don’t know what keywords you are using to target those buyers. It’s just a scare tactic to generate new business.

I want to offer an effective and ethical alternative for businesses in my industry, and this is why Apache Advertising and Design is accepting 10 new EQUESTRIAN RELATED Search Engine Marketing clients in 2009. Anyone that is familiar with my portfolio knows that equestrian businesses are a very important part of my clientele, and I’ve had success gaining quality search engine rankings for many of them.

There’s no magical tricks to Search Engine Optimization. I use logical techniques in a specific order to help the search engines index your site properly and thoroughly, with the ultimate goal of putting your business in front of more paying customers. No automated programs that spam your link to thousands of web sites, no “black hat” methods, just industry specific, proven, quality optimization at far less than half the price of other search engine optimization companies.

I’ll use the same techniques I used for putting BurkhalterTrailers.com on the first page of Google for the phrases “Gooseneck Stock Trailers”, “Sundowner Horse Trailers”, “Horse Trailers In Texas”, and many others. The same techniques used for putting XtremeBarrelRacingPlus.com on the first page of Google for the phrase “Texas Barrel Racing”. The same techniques that put EquineAuctions.com on Google’s first page for the phrase “Horse Auction”.

This offer will be limited to only 10 new clients working in the equestrian industry – Trainers, breeders, tack dealers, trailer dealers, barn manufacturers, event organizers, auction/sales, veterinarians, and ferriers should apply immediately.

Our search optimization process includes, but is not limited to, the following:
Client Interview
Web Site Analysis
Competitor Web Site Analysis and Comparison
Keyword Research & Planning
Optimizing Your Written Content
Title, Meta, and Alt Tag Development
XML & XHTML Site Map Implementation
Link Building
Modification/Re-Structuring of Your Current Web Site
Directory Submissions
Social Networking
Article Marketing
Review the Optimization Plan, Make any Adjustments Necessary and Repeat

For information on our search engine optimization and pricing, please leave a comment below, or contact me at matt@apacheadvertising.com.