SEO and Web Marketing Help for my friends ….. Reply to one of my friends and all my friends

October 9, 2013

SEO, wow, a big topics.  

I still remember I help my friend to boost up his business (I focus on business and small business but rules apply to small and big sites) site search engine optimization (so-called SEO) and ranking (almost get him to the top of his keywords)?? At that time, I have done a lot of research and get my hand dirty with it.  I cannot say I am an expertise (15+ year web developer life in different PR, advertisement and marketing firm & department doesn’t make you know everything) and guarantee the result is the same (you know google and other company always change their rules and I might be wrong too), but I can share what I have done to help his site to boost up to ranking.  But one thing, please forgive my typo or wrong wording because I write this in a very short time (let me know if there is any).

I write the this because a lot of friends ask me about it, so instead of reply email of my friend, I post this up.  I will change this posts from time to time and hopefully help you or give you some directions in some way.  Some of them is free without a dime, some of them is paid but certainly you need to put effort in it.  Now, let’s go …..

First thing, remember, SEO is a point system in two main categories (there are more categories for sure):

1.)  How closed related content you provide with a certain keyword, and

2.)  How popular it is, this includes back links and related keywords (includes how many people search you, with a certain keywords).

There are something you can help to do SEO free or paid, I will only focus on a few things:

 1.)  Google webmaster and webmaster tools — free

  • Basically get your site to be indexed by Google in a effective way.
  • Important to do that if you have competitors because Google wants accuracy of the search instead you give money for advertisement.
  • Free but a bit complicated.
  • Usually people paid some money to do this unless you are a bit more like web geeks.  But certainly you can go through it if you like to do it yourself.  You have to quite a few thing and usually XML sitemap, tweak your pages, title, keyword, location, hours, and etc.  Although google will spider on your site and index it anyway, but better pages tweaks and right info in a right way that google likes will ensure gains of higher position.  This probably means you have to do a marketing research on your pages, your competitors, and a lot info.  That’s why a lot of time Marketing, PR and advertisement firms or its related marketing department will do it for its clients and products.
  • Once you get your site indexed, Google Analytical is also available to you so you can take a look and see your site performance too.  (Very interesting thing because you can see how many hits, impression, visitors, tech info and etc).
  • For yahoo and bing I post it later on.

2.)  Google Adwords — paid

  • Paid service but get you to appear in the top pages fast and quick.  You can almost say it is a traditional pay-per-click service.
  • Still need some expertise but be sure you understand what keyword people choose, you business scope, cover area and etc.  It sounds like a marketing campaign isn’t it??  It means you need a good strategy.  (That’s why I am already in marketing department instead of IT department as a web developer.)

3.)  Your business in Google+

  • It will help Google to get your business.  You got more points in the SEO.
  • take a look here if you have time

4.)  Content providing:

  • even one posting of twitter and a tip review will contribute your popularity.  Don’t say a video tutorial on youTube and Dailymotion.
  • Remember, if you don’t have related content, or really useful content that gain more “like” or gain more “followers”  (subscribers) , I don’t recommend you post it.  Because as a programmer, google and other SE counts them all, and got programming API for us to get those “like”, or “followers” info so I can write programs to count them too.

Social Media Sites likes so, mini-blog, groups (with a niche):

  • Mini-blog and Groups: Twitter, Facebook, Google+.
    • These group I find they are
    • I find the kind of mini-blog like Twitter is more effective because it is more active and google monitor it for popularity.
    • I still remember the time I do stuffs for canada.com on evri.com on its web popularities, twitter counts as a main calculation in their web trends tools and charts.  Now apple bought evri.com and become their web tools to monitor on the very current posting in a particular hot news (the niche) and topics.
    • Remember, those people are your clients.  Use these groups to keep them to come back, inform, and feedback.

Video, Photo and Apps Content Providing:

    • Let’s say video tutorial on youTube and Dailymotion.
    • Not only they let you provide backlinks, but google and other SE rate you higher because you provide related contents.  More related content got more SEO points.
    • Also, the reviews and chat that is provided by the Video

Forum, web directories, review sites:

    • They can mixed and can separated.
    • Generally, more sites submitted is better but better be related because google and SE always try to use programming rule to deduct SEO points for non related one.  They even can fire complaint for spamming.
    • Static Web Directories (free or paid): (provide back links without reviews)
      • Kijiji, hotfrog and free web directories.  Also, canada.com, toronto.com, or redflagdeal.ca is also something like that.  There are so many, but you got to research a bit in order to get the good one, right one and big one (because they also do SEO for your entries)
    • Web Directory with review site that related to your categories of business or topics.
      • Yelp, tripadvisor, Linkedlin (at least provide you backlinks for popularities) and many others that related site with its own niche.
      • That’s why if you are webmaster or site admin you always get a lot of Junk comments or compliance about it.
      • Also beware with review because it will also damage your image of your business.  Therefore, you better provide a really good product and service.  Success business needs “WORD of Mouth” more than SEO but generally it is good for your business because they become your free marketing and QA department (free survey, right??)

5.) Tools to monitor your SEO ranking

There are too many stuffs you can do for SEO in a way of technical aspect and PR aspect.  For an example, a technical changes for your site from static HTML pages type to a Content Management type is beneficial to SEO and general marketing in some sense, because it provides a easier content additions and updates which googles likes newly added and updated contents.  The dummy book cheat sheet on web marketing might be useful for you and this book is also a good start for you if you want something solid (Hey, solid physically).  Sure, you can get on google and research this.

Also, one thing I have to point out, it is a constant fight for SEO.  The company sites that I do SEO before has dramatically leaped in their SEO ranking, but because of competitors and many other reasons, it is will drop.  So, you need to monitor it, do some PR work with it, do a lot of free stuff such free info session for people.  In other word, SEO reflects how good your marketing, PR, QA and even engineering (product and service provide) is.

Last few word, SEO is only one of important web marketing tools (still there are google adsense, banner exchange, email marketing and etc), and also one area on marketing.  Traditional marketing and PR method always help. (I am not professional in those area)  There are still so many things for a business to be success (not only popular, but also ethical and benefit to the society).  I wish you and your business become not only top in the search engine, but the top one one in the world.

Your Friend,

Henry