On Wednesday, September 15, at 8AM (Pacific) I will be sharing my secrets on how to move your website onto page 1 of Google. My methods work even on very competitive keyword phrases. Many of my clients enjoy number 1 spots for their most important phrases.

I will be using my original business consulting website as the example of how to apply my methods. This site has been ranked #1 on Google for small business consulting and small business consultant for many years. (check it out, www.dwassoc.com). It is has first page rankings for terms like business consulting and dozens of other phrases.

In the past few months I have been developing and testing newer and even more powerful SEO methods that give even faster results. These of course are purely “white hat” methods.

Oh yes, did I mention that this webinar is free. Of course my hope is that some of you would like to hire us to help you with your site, but this presentation is purely educational and not a sales pitch.

Webinar registration link: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/892292042

I hope you will join me Wednesday morning September 15, the webinar will last 1 to 1-1/2 hours depending on questions. I will make available a video of the presentation for those that attend.

Just because visitors are coming to your site does not mean they are qualified prospects. Frequently I will look up the website on Quantcast.com to get a profile of the demographics and then look at the website analytics to see what pages are being viewed most.

This will give me an idea of who is coming to the site and what their motivation is. Let me give you an example. I had a medical products company contact me last week and they were getting a steady flow of traffic, but they were convinced something was wrong.

The company manufactures medical devices meant to be used primarily in the treatment of 50-70 year old patients. Their website was designed to be informational rather than transactional. Their website was meant to be educating potential patients using their products in their treatment and physicians wanting to learn about available treatments.

They had only very basic website analytics that only showed traffic, keywords, pages visited, etc.

We started by looking at the demographics of their visitors. We went to Quantcast.com and noticed that their primary audience was 18-34 Female. We then looked into their analytics and saw their most visited page after their home page was their careers page.

We went back to the company and they confirmed they had been doing substantial recruiting and they were not surprised by this.

With a little more checking we confirmed they were only being searched for by their name and their site was not optimized for any of the industry standard terms that physicians or consumers might use.

What did we recommend? This organization is working to become a prominent medical products company. Their website needs to reflect what they will become. They need a website that creates confidence and trust in what they do. The first recommendation was to replace their current site and create a new high image website structured with separate sections tailored for the physician and for the consumer.

They need to have a prominent positioning on the search engine for terms and phrases that will attract qualified prospects. Identify these keyword phrases and then create a comprehensive keyword plan for initial web pages and future pages. Technical medical phrases would be placed under the physician section and more common lay terms would be used in the consumer sections.

Create a content growth strategy with keyword rich text using articles and blog postings. Create back linking strategies to build of the link popularity of the site.

Having text on your web page is critical for organic search engine optimization. Unique, original, keyword rich content is the key to make your website search engine friendly. Use these words to draw in your customer and convince them to purchase. These same words will be spidered and indexed by the search engines and make your website available for search.

You are writing your content for two audiences. Use keyword rich content for the search engines. Engaging and informative content is for converting visitors into buyers. It takes both to make a successful website.

Develop a content growth strategy for your website. Don’t just create a website and forget about it. Fresh information offers an incentive for visitors and search engine spiders to keep returning. Use blogs, press releases, articles and new product sections as ways to regularly grow your website content.

Natural SEO is more than adding keywords into your website content. Keywords are how people think and search for what you offer. Use these keywords to attract attention and engage your visitors. You Engaging SEO writing will attract visitors as they search and then engage them once they arrive.

For SEO to be truly effective it needs to focus both on attracting targeted visitors and then to engage them with compelling words that answer the question arriving people are searching for. The voice, tone, and formality needs to speak to your audience in a way they understand.

Adding a blog to your website is a great way to attract search engine spiders. Each post should be enriched with keywords that are focused on your topics.

SEO can be confusing to someone that is pondering how to get their website to the top of Google. SEO is many things. It is an art, it is a science. It is technical, it is logical and at the same time creative. Doing SEO, you need to be part marketer and part techno Geek.

Most of all SEO is a methodology where you look at how visitors search using keyword phrases. Not all keywords are created equal. Some will be better at attracting researchers while others are better at bringing  buyers.

The goal in organic SEO is to get well placed in the natural search results. You want to choose keyword phases that will attract people who are interested in what you offer. If your business sells to the local community, then you need to focus on using community names in your keyword phrases.

There are three major facets to search engine optimization.

1. Keywords: Research and select the phrases that people are likely to type when they are doing a search. Buyers will tend to use more specific 3-5 word phrases. They will frequently use manufacturer names and model numbers rather than broader phrases. Create a written plan with your selected keywords , assigning phrases to specific web pages.
2. On site SEO: Here the keyword phrases are used visibly on your actual web pages. Keywords are used in the page names, in the page headlines, in the text on the pages and in the hyperlinks on the pages.
3. Off site SEO: These are steps you do outside of the website. Getting other websites to link to your site is a large part of off site SEO. Links should be from relevant websites, blogs, directories and social media. Ideally the hyperlink text (anchor text) will include your keyword phrases.

SEO is the art and science of increasing the traffic your website receives from the search engines. This optimization includes improving internal and external aspects of your site.

Let’s suppose you have a chain of restaurants or even a regional office products company. How can you optimize your website when you serve multiple communities within a region? People will search using the local community name and you want to rank well for every community within your service area.

The solution is to create a separate page for each community. The page URL should include the community name. Each page should be highly optimized for your most important keyword phrase and the community name. Let me give some examples of how you could implement this.

Restaurant Chain: Let’s suppose you have a dozen restaurants within a 2 state region. Create an “Our Locations “ in your website navigation. Create a page for each location with the address and phone number, a paragraph of unique text, driving directions, hours of operation and anything else your customers would find interesting.

Office Products Company: Let’s suppose you have a single location that serves a dozen communities. You take orders online or by phone. You have trucks and crews that deliver, install and service in each of these communities. Create a page for each community optimized for the services available. Each page needs to have unique text so it is not detected as duplicate content by the search engines.

Whether you’re optimizing for a single location or a multiple location business, you still want to create a separate page for each location served.

You will want to create great marketing copy that provides helpful information for your visitor, not just content for the search engines. After all, once a visitor arrives, you still need to get them interested and guide them into your conversion process; otherwise the effort in search engine optimization will be wasted.

Wikis are a collaboration tool right? Wikipedia is a reference tool and not an advertising platform? The answer to both questions is yes. Wikipedia isn’t a direct marketing medium. It is the largest online encyclopedia that is created, and maintained by its user community. Wikipedia however can be an excellent source for referral traffic.

Wiki marketing methods are an indirect type of marketing. You are NOT trying to promote your company or your products. You are presenting valuable resource information that would appeal to your targeted website visitor. You are also contributing to the wiki community.

Wikipedia is the most popular wiki on the Internet and it is highly valued by users of the Web. Today, Wikipedia has a Google PR9 with over 75 million unique visitors each month and is ranked by Alexa as #7 on the entire Internet. Yahoo reports over 6 million links directed toward Wikipedia. Links from Wikipedia are very valuable and can produce a nice stream of visitors to your website.

Wikipedia is a Web-based, free-content encyclopedia where any visitor can edit or add content, including links to valuable references. The Wikipedia community will quickly remove biased or self promoting information. Your goal needs to be to enhance the articles or write new ones.

Here is a process that works.

1. Find Wikipedia articles that are already flagged as looking too much like an advertisement and still related to your website content.
2. Write an unbiased, authoritative page on your website or blog that is a great resource to the Wikipedia article.
3. Re-write or edit the Wikipedia article to improve it.
4. Add a link to your new website page or blog posting under the References section or External Links section. Note: This must be a great resource page that supports the article.

You have now added a highly valued link to your website that will stay and you have helped improve Wikipedia. This is a great win-win strategy.

Begin your SEO journey by defining how you will measure success. Decide what is important and select multiple measurements that you will track. Each metric gives you a slightly different view of how your website traffic initiative is working. Start by measuring each metric for several weeks to give a snapshot to establish your baseline.

1. Rankings reports: Check the rankings of your primary keyword phrases. Do this on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Chart these on a weekly or monthly basis to detect trends and improvements. you will also want to implement a companion long tail strategy.
2. Search traffic: Measure the volume and percentage of daily unique visitors that resulted from organic search. You will want to separate search traffic from referral and paid (PPC) traffic.
3. Keyword traffic: Measure the volume and percentage of traffic coming from your targeted keywords. Track your daily averages of both unique visitors and total visits that occur.
4. Indexed pages: SEO should include a content growth plan for your website. Measure and track the number and percentage of pages indexed by each of the major search engines. This can uncover structural issues that exist on your website.
5. Number and quality of links: Measure the number and quality (Pagerank) of inbound links to your website. Measure the percentage of links that have keywords in the anchor text. Measure the percentage of links that are deep links (not to the home page).
6. Visitor engagement: Is your campaign attracting the right visitors? Measure how well your website interacts with visitors by measuring and tracking bounce rate, time on site and page views per visitor.
7. Conversions: How well does your organic search traffic do in converting into leads, sales, subscriptions or downloads? Set-up goals for each type of conversion and track the total number and percentage.

Use these metrics to measure progress and show opportunities to make site changes and changes to your SEO campaign.

There are many technical aspects to Search engine optimization (SEO). Too many people get caught up in the detail. In SEO there are only two things to focus on: keywords and backlinks. Everything else is a distraction.

It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner or an expert. It doesn’t matter if you are starting from scratch or trying to tune up an existing site. Keep your attention on keywords and backlinks and then measure your results. It is as easy as 1-2-3.

1. Keywords: Research and select keywords that are relevant to what you do. Many people try and select phrases with high numbers of searches first and relevance second. Make relevance your first priority. If you attract someone to your website, they won’t stay if you don’t have what they are looking for. You will want to use these keywords visibly and prominently on your website… not just in the META tags.
2. Backlinks: Getting incoming links from other websites is very important in your SEO effort. A large number of backlinks from relevant websites signals the search engines that your website is very important. Using your keyword phrases in the anchor text tells the search engines what your web page is about.
3. Measurement: Track your major metrics on at least a monthly basis. I like to track number of pages indexed by Google, number of links as reported by Yahoo, Home page authority and domain authority as reported by Open Site Explorer, Alexa rankings and actual rankings in the SERPs for my 5 primary phrases. Each month I work to get some improvement in my measurements.

I have my own Theory of SEO Relativity that has to do with search engine optimization and should not be confused with Einstein’s Theory dealing with space-time. In this Williams theory of SEO relativity, the more closely related and cohesive the content is on your web page, the higher your website rankings will be on Google.

It is about creating highly focused content on your web page AND on your entire website to get the best possible search engine rankings. The idea is to create a sharp and crisp definition of what your website is about in the eyes of the search engines. (if search engines had eyes). You do this by keeping keywords, content and even all your web pages laser focused around a single topic or theme.

WILLIAMS THEORY OF SEO RELATIVITY

1. Search engine rankings for an individual web page is proportional to how closely related the keywords, the text content and topic are around a single idea or concept.
2. Search engine rankings for an entire website will be proportional to how closely individual web pages relate and are organized around a single idea or topic.

So how do you apply this SEO theory of relativity?

Let’s suppose you want to create a website both for your local landscaping business and also include a section about your hobby of collecting hand-painted thimbles. You reason that you don’t want to spend money on two websites.

This is a bad idea. These are two very different topics and two very different audiences. These two topics create confusion. This should be two separate websites if you want to be found in the organic search results.

Let’s suppose you have a website that focuses on your local florist business. You want to expand your business and maintain the great rankings you currently have on Google. You would do better staying with very closely related services such as wedding bouquets and funeral flowers than you would expanding into gift baskets. ( still related, just not very closely related)

Keep your website focused and your topics very closely related for the best SEO results.

How can adding a blog to your site improve your entire website’s search engine rankings? Blogging is one of the best ways to attract links and targeted traffic on a website. It does this in three ways.

1. A blog regularly adds fresh keyword rich content to your website. Each blog posting adds another page to your website.Larger websites generally do better with the search engines.
2. Blogs written with interesting original insights and opinions attract links from other blogs which build up the link popularity of the entire website.
3. On new blog postings are broadcast via RSS automatically so new visitors will begin arriving within minutes of a new posting.

Keywords: Before you start blogging, select a topic related to your website that your best customers will find interesting. Blogs are about reaching your target audience with an interesting and useful message. It could be opinions on the latest industry trends or how to advice. Prepare a list of keywords from your topic that you can use in your posting titles, links and in your content.

Writing: Blogging is not about selling, it is about educating and engaging readers with thought provoking writings. You are branding yourself as the authority and expert in your market niche. Do it right and people will return over and over to hear what you have to say.

Attract Links: If what you write about is interesting and original, you will develop a readership who will return over and over to read what you have to say (stickiness). Others will comment about your postings on their blogs and they will naturally link to your posting as a reference to support what they are writing about. These links help not only your blog, but your entire website with its link popularity, improving your website rankings.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS): When you publish a new blog posting, RSS “pings” out the blog title, the first 25 words of your post and the URL location of your blog post to the search engines. These are indexed and can appear in the organic results within minutes of publishing a new posting.