Ten Tips for SEO -- #2 - Domain Name Optimization

This post is part of our introduction to the basics of search engine optimization, or SEO. At Translucent Media, we encourage you  to learn as much as you can about SEO so you can make informed decisions about your website. If you want help with your SEO efforts, please contact us and we'll handle all the details for you.

2.) Domain Name Optimization
Your domain name is an important part of your SEO strategy. Google considers sites with keywords in the URL to be more relevant, and keyword-rich URLs subtly influence users favorably. Your new domain name should contain a keyword phrase for your site - preferably the BEST term for your site.

First, run a search for this term and see what turns up. You might find that your competitors are already using this technique. Next, go to Godaddy.com to register your domain name. You can usually find a discount code for Godaddy if you search for "Godaddy promo codes" or "Godaddy discount codes" -- you might have to try several to find one that works. Most of the really broad terms like "redshoes.com" will be taken, but you may be able to buy a keyword domain like "womensredheels.com" or something creative. Godaddy will suggest related terms for you to consider.

If the only URLs available are .net or .biz (etc.) you are in for a rough road. 95% of your visitors, if trying to type in your address from memory, will type .com. You certainly can organically optimize an unconventional extension, but the clever marketers make it part of the name, such as bit.ly and del.icio.us

In our next post we'll discuss HTML Title Tags...stay tuned!

Ten Tips for SEO -- #1 - Keyword Selection

We're starting a new series discussing the "Ten Tips for SEO". Each day will bring a different point that you should review if you are interested in optimizing your site for the search engines. Today's topic is keyword selection.

Search engine optimization is not rocket science. It's also not some secret, mysterious art only known to the "masters." Search engine optimization takes a lot of ongoing work but it's pretty easy work overall, as long as you know the basics. At Translucent Media, we encourage you  to learn as much as you can about SEO so you can make informed decisions about your website. If you want help with your SEO efforts, please contact us and we'll handle all the details for you.

1.) Keyword Research
The first step in a successful SEO campaign is to determine the keywords that you will optimize for on your site. Your goal is to choose keywords that a large number of people are searching for. You want to choose keywords that are more specific, or take advantage of "the long tail" of search.

Some people think that the goal is to just generate as much traffic as possible. This is not true... you cannot reach your goals with your website with generic visitors. What you want is TARGETED traffic from visitors who are actively looking for what you are selling.

Let's pretend we are optimizing pages for an online shoe store that specializes in women's dress shoes. In our example, "red shoes" is not a good keyword phrase. "Red shoes" could be anything -- women's shoes, men's shoes, kids' shoes, the possibilities are endless. The traffic that you could get based on "red shoes" would not be as valuable as more targeted search terms. You could use "red Steve Madden women's heels" which would give you more targeted traffic. Steve Madden is a brand name, and you could easily optimize a page showing women's red heels by Steve Madden. In this example, "red shoes" would give you virtually useless traffic. The traffic from "red Steve Madden women's heels" is much more valuable, because the searcher knows specifically what she is looking for. She's closer to buying than the searcher who is looking for "red shoes".

To find keywords and determine their potential for traffic to your site, you can use any number of paid tools (including Wordtracker, the industry standard) but if you're on a budget, the free keyword tool from Google Adwords is excellent. Just run a Google search for "Google keyword tool" and you should get to it. Run a few searches on the keyword tool, based on the words that you think your visitors would search for, and look at the related terms that the tool suggests. You are looking for a few terms with a large number of searches, and a low amount of competition.

It's a good idea to "map out" your content at this point. If you already have a website put together this is easy. You need to keep track of the names of the pages and a list of the keywords you want to optimize each page for. We use a spreadsheet to keep track of pages and keywords. Usually targeting more than 3-4 keyword phrases per page is nearly impossible to do well. It's better to focus on fewer keywords and do them well, than to be mediocre at optimizing for a larger number of keywords. Remember that the majority of your traffic will NOT come in through your home page, it will come in through your carefully optimized secondary pages in your site. Each page should be designed with this in mind, and should have navigation that is easy to use.

In our next post, we'll discuss domain name optimization... stay tuned!

Why use Google Analytics

* Translucent Media includes free installation of Google Analytics on every site we design and develop. *

Google offers a free statistical tool to analyze your website visitors, called Google Analytics, which is very easy to use. All you need is a Google account. We can set up your GA account and install the tracking code (Javascript) for you.

Google Analytics tracks visitors from all sources, including display ad campaigns, PPC (pay per click) campaigns, organic searches from search engines, email marketing, bookmarks, websites that have your inbound links, and other digital sources like URLs embedded in PDF files or Power Point slides. It designed for online marketers who want to track visitors to their sites for improving user experience and conversions.

Using Google Analytics, you can not only view the number of unique visitors to you site, you can also see which sites they came from (backlinks), how long they spent on your site, how long the average visitor spends on specific pages, the keywords that bring them in from the search engines, and specific budget/conversion info from Google ads.

Why do you want to use Google Analytics?

One reason to use Google Analytics is if you want to know if your marketing campaign is going in the right directiont. For example, if you are doing article marketing to drive traffic to your site, you want to know the article directories that are the most effective in sending visitors to your website.

You don't want to waste your time submitting articles to directories that are not sending you any traffic or a very low amount of traffic. You can use the info from Google Analytics to write more articles and submit to only those directories that are sending you a good amount of traffic.

If you are using a pay per click (PPC) marketing campaign, you should use split testing to test the effectiveness of different ads. You want to know which ads are performing better than the others in terms of conversions. If you integrate Google Analytics with your AdWords PPC campaigns, you will be able to track the effectiveness of each ad you are using in your PPC campaigns.

Using data from Google Analytics, you will be able to find the pages that are getting the most traffic from search engines, bookmarks and inbound links. Knowing this information helps you spend time on optimizing only those pages that are getting the most traffic. Knowing which pages are the most popular is invaluable when you are deciding where to spend your time optimizing.

You can work on providing improved user experience of your site on those high traffic pages. You can make it easier to navigate those pages from anywhere in your site -- for example, place a "What's New" on a sidebar on those pages.

If you're selling ads on your site to advertisers directly, you need a visitor portfolio of your site. This portfolio contains information about the number of monthly unique visitors to your site, visitors' geographic locations, the number of page views per visitor, the bounce rate of visitors, etc. The more information about your visitors you can provide to your prospecting advertisers, the better is your chance of commanding a premium price for advertisement spots on your site. Google Analytics will help you develop a visitors portfolio of your site, and you can export your data as a PDF file to send to your prospective advertisers.

Even if you are not going to use visitor data immediately, you can still sign up for Google Analytics and let the tool start collecting visitor data about your site. When you need the data, you will have it ready to go in your Google Analytics account.

Let us know if you want us to design or redesign your site, with free Google Analytics included.