 SEO for CEOs – Search Engine Optimization Unmasked for CEOs
First Published: July 2004
Last Update: July 2004
Author: Glenn Murray
If you’re like most other CEOs, the term “search
engine optimization” will mean very little. Either
that or it means expense! But it doesn’t have to
be that way… If you feel like you’re standing
in a dark room handing money to strangers to get you
in the search engines, then this article is for you.
This is an article written by a business owner for
other business owners and CEOs. It explains Search Engine
Optimization (or SEO) in layperson’s terms. It
won’t make you an expert, but it will give you
some insight into what you’re spending your money
on, what you should be spending your money on, and just
as importantly, what you shouldn’t.
But before launching straight into an explanation of
SEO, let’s talk a bit about search engines. Approximately
75%-80% of website traffic comes through search engines.
What’s more, research shows that most people don’t
look beyond the first 2 pages of search results. This
means if your website doesn’t rank in the first
2 pages of the major search engines, it’s only
receiving 20% of its rightful traffic… and revenue.
(And remember, being ranked number 1 when you search
for your company name or web address doesn’t count.
You need to rank highly for the words your customers
use at search engines.)
The biggest concern for search engine companies like
Google, Yahoo, etc., is finding content that will bring
them more traffic (and thus more advertising revenue).
They do this by using complex algorithms to determine
whether a site is useful and should be included in their
search results.
This is where SEO comes in.
SEO is the art of ranking in the search engines. Nothing
more, nothing less.
SEO means creating your site such that the search engines
consider it useful. The two main weapons in your arsenal
are:
- Keywords
- Links to your site
KEYWORDS
Figure out what words your customers are looking for
at search engines, and use those words at your site.
By frequently using keywords that are important to your
customers, you tell the search engines what you do.
These keywords are used in your copy and in the code
behind the page. Generally speaking, the more you use
the keywords, the more relevant you are to searches
in that field.
Keywords in Your Copy The use of keywords in your copy is easy to understand.
But it’s not easy to do. You can’t just pepper
your site with a meaningless array of words. The trick
is using the most important keywords a lot without compromising
the readability of your copy. It’s a balance between
writing for the search engines and writing for your
reader.
TIP: If you find this too time consuming, a
website copywriter can take care of it for you. And
if you know your keywords already, it should cost you
no more than normal web copy.
Keywords in Your HTML Code
The use of keywords in your HTML code is harder to
understand, but it’s easier to do. There are four
main places these keywords are used:
- Keywords
- Description
- Alt
- Title
TIP: When you hear people talking about meta
tags, this is what they’re talking about. To see
how meta tags are used in practice, go to Google and
pretend you’re a customer. Search for something
your customers would search for. e.g. If you’re
in car audio, search for “car audio”. Click
on the first couple of results to bring up their website.
Right-click on the home page, and select “View
Source”. You’ll see a whole lot of code. You
can ignore most of it. What you’re looking for
are the following…
meta name="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="keyword
1,keyword 2,keyword 3"
meta name="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Meaningful
description of page using the main keywords"
img src="filename.gif" alt="Meaningful
description of picture using the main keywords"
<title>The title of the page using the main
keywords</title>
Take a look at the way the creators of the site have
used keywords in these areas, and follow their lead.
You already know they’re ranked highly, so chances
are they’ve done a good job. Alternatively, take
a look at my site, http://www.divinewrite.com to see
how I’ve done mine.
LINKS TO YOUR SITE
Now that you know how to tell the search engines what
you do, let’s talk about how to convince them you’re
important.
Links to your site (or “inbound links”) are
the most important factor in ranking. The more links
you have to your site from other sites, the better your
ranking (related sites generate better rankings).
TIP: Think of the Internet as a big election.
All the websites in the world are candidates, and all
the links to those websites are votes. The more votes
(links) a candidate (website) has, the more important
it is, and the higher its ranking.
There are many possible ways to generate links. Some
are dubious (like auto-generation software). Others
are legitimate, but offer limited results (like asking
customers and suppliers to list you on their sites,
and adding your site to various business directories).
You can experiment with these methods, but I’ve
always found the best way to generate inbound links
is to write helpful articles and let publishers of newsletters
and e-zines use them for free – on the proviso
that they link back to your site.
People who publish e-Zines and newsletters are always
hungry for quality content. And there are websites out
there dedicated to giving them just that. If you submit
a well written, relevant, helpful article to one of
those sites, you can have thousands of newsletter publishers
ready to snap it up. Then you just sit back and watch
the links multiply!
TIP: This method is beneficial in other ways
too. Readers of your article will see that you know
what you’re talking about, and because you’re
published, they’ll see you as an authority.
It’s impossible to say how much time you’ll
need to spend generating links. You just have to keep
at it until you have achieved a high ranking. Even then,
you’ll still need to dedicate some ongoing time
to the task, otherwise your ranking will drop.
Summary So to cut a long story short, it comes down to this.
If you have a lot of the right keyword phrases, used
in real sentences, distributed realistically throughout
your site, and a lot of links from other relevant sites,
you stand a good chance of being ranked highly.
That’s what you’re paying your providers
for. And that’s what SEO is all about.
* Glenn Murray is an advertising copywriter and heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com for further details or more FREE articles.
| 
