Organic Search Engine Optimization Tips

Basic SEO Tips Every Site Owner Should Know

1. Find keywords that are relevant to your business. Think about which words are most likely to get people to do what you want them to do (convert into leads) and focus on those words. Then pick one word (or phrase) to use for each page of your site.
   
   
2. Put keywords in Page Title. The Page Title is one of the most important things that Google and other search engines evaluate to determine what is on a web page. Put your keyword or phrase in the title, keep it short.
   
   
3. Put keywords in Page URL. Google and other search engines also use the text of the URL of the page to determine the content of the web page. You should use your keyword or phrase in the URL of the web page.
   
   
4. Put keywords in Meta Data. While the page metadata (Page Description and Keywords) are not nearly as important as they used to be, they still count. Take advantage of them by putting your keyword or phrase there. The description should be readable by a person and make sense and the keyword metadata should focus on your keyword or phrase - do not make it long, less is more. You can find the fields for your metadata in the Define button for each page.
   
   
5. Put keywords in your H1 text. The H1 text is usually the title of an article or some larger bold text at the top of your page (the page header). Google and the smaller search engines can see this and they put extra importance on the words in the H1 text. Make sure your keyword or phrase is there.
   
   
6. Use keywords in the page content. Putting the keyword in your page content also signals to search engines that the page is actually about the keyword and should show up in search results. We have heard from "experts" that you should use your keyword anywhere from 4-6 times to 10-12 times. Our advice is to just write naturally.
   
   
7. Monitor your traffic. Give the search engines some time to do their thing (few days to a few months) and then keep checking your site traffic to see what happened and track your progress. Use Google Analytics to do this for free.

Submit Your Site To The Search Engines

Go to these three links and add your site:

• http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
• https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit (you need a yahoo account for this)
• http://www.dmoz.org/

When you submit your site to these, don't expect to immediately see it there in a search. You are just telling them to please go to your site and rank its relevancy. The most important one would probably be getting yourself listed in the Open Directory (dmoz.org). MANY search engines get their information from there, including Google and Yahoo (although they also gather it elsewhere). Don't keep resubmitting to these or they will think you're a spammer. Have patience. You can submit to search engines every month or so. But the Open Directory takes awhile. If you don't see yourself there, wait a few months before you try again.

On another note, If you decide to "verify" your site with Yahoo, Google, or Bing, they will provide you with meta tags to be placed in the head area of your site. You can find where to paste those metatags into your site in the Main Manage Page.

Lastly, another great idea for your local business would be to add a GeoURL to your site. Google uses these when people do a local search. Having this on your site will get you recognized.

http://geourl.org/

Click 'Add your site' at the top and go through the process. When you get the code they give you, log in to your website's management section. You'll place this code in the same metatags field you found above.

Organic SEO Resources

Here's some great Search Engine Optimization (SEO) resources that might help you when you decide to customize the content of your site:

• http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#design
• http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156401
• http://searchengineland.com/
• http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156221
• http://www.highrankings.com/forum/
• http://www.organicseo.org/book/

Because your site is brand new it can take weeks, months, and maybe even years before Google will recognize it's value. It is a good idea to keep the content of your site current. If Google goes to your site and sees that content has changed since the last time they were there, they will come by more often. If you start watching the progress in Google Analytics you'll see the gradual progression in search engine popularity.

Keep your listings current, and your links page. The more valuable links you can put there, the better. Put links to the tour providers, attorneys, title companies, builders, developers you work with, etc., and ask them to put a link to your site on their sites. Incoming links weigh more with search engines than outgoing links. It's all about them being able to find you and the more relevant sites that link to you the better.