How to Get Search Engine Optimization

Lindsay Smith: Well, it about time again when we go out to the viewers and today’s Inbox question is from Tamara Leslie. She runs a jewelry website and she wants to know how she can get her website rank better in the search engines. Well, I’ve got John Blown from 6S Marketing in studio today, your search engine expert and you’ve got some tips from Tamara. So let’s start off, what can Tamara do in order to get herself better racked? John Blown: Sure. Well, the first thing I looked at when I look at the website if to make sure that it’s professionally designed website and I really liked to look at the site, the design is professional, so that’s great. So once we’ve made sure that the site is professionally designed, the next thing you want to do is look at your key phrases. And one of the services that I use is the resource called Word Tracker, you can find it at wordtracker.com and it tells you the number of people searching for a specific key phrase and it also tells you how competitive that term is. So for example, with Tamara Leslie, I’m going to guess that fine handcrafted jewelry is probably one of her top terms that she wants to rank for, so she could put that term into service such as Word Tracker and it will tell her how often that term is searched for and how competitive it is. Lindsay Smith: So once you’ve picked your keyword phrases, what would be the next step, where do you go from there? John Blown: You want to start theming your pages around the various key phrases, so for example if we go into necklaces. This is a sterling silver necklace, so you could look at how that term is searched for and then you can start theming your page around that term. And when I say theming, I mean talking about your title tags, your meta tags, your alt tags, those are all HTML coding components of the page. And then, you also want to look at your actual content or the text of the page. Lindsay Smith: So I’ve heard that how many people linking to your website or referencing to your website will actually help you in search engine ranking, can you explain a little more about that? John Blown: Yup, definitely. Google looks at how many links arte pointing towards your website and you can imagine that Google looks at it as kind of a vote for your website. Implementing a linking strategy is very important. There’s a lot of free listings available through directories, there is also—you can buy listings in various directories. One of the best ones is Yahoo.com, the biggest directory in the world. And then there’s also—there maybe jewelry information websites out there that she could contact to get links pointing back to her. Google also looks at how often your site is mentioned in the internet in general. So the more often that your website is mentioned, not even necessarily a link, the greater chance your site has in raking. Lindsay Smith: What are some of the things that we can do? John Blown: One of the things I’d like to mention as well is to add a site map. That’s a great way for users and for search engines to find all the web pages. Lindsay Smith: And what are some of the things that people should stay away from or that Tamara should? John Blown: Right now, we’ve got necklaces, as well as earrings as well as bracelets on one page, so you definitely want to break those out into separate pages because Google would come to this page and will say, “Okay is this page is about necklaces or is it about earrings?” It gets confused. Lindsay Smith: And I imagine that the more pages that you have in your website, based on what you are saying today, would actually be helpful because you would be able to theme and show up for more keyword phrases. John Blown: Definitely—the more content, the better, and the greater chance that you can have a ranking for more key phrases. On the point of having more pages, you will also notice that on each of these pages, you can see at the top of the screen here, Tamara Leslie fine handcrafted jewelry order online or call, that is the HTML title tag, and that’s the same throughout the website, Google will see that every title is the same on the page, it will lower your ranking. So having a unique title tags on each page is very important. Lindsay Smith: If any of our viewers are more interested in finding out tips for search engine marketing, where can they get that information? John Blown: We actually have our learning center on our website at 6smarketing.com. It’s one of the main links on the website so you can go there. And that’s got a lot of information on how to rank your site. As well, we have our 6S Marketing blog which talks about all the latest happenings in the search engine world. Lindsay Smith: Well, viewers if you are interested in making sure that your website shows up number one, two or three in those pages at the beginning of the search engines, you’re going to want to check out 6s Marketing website, thank you John for joining us. John Blown: Thanks for having me.