This conversation is a good example of how humans might process information.

A friend comes to you and says, “I saw a bear.”
“Wow.”, you say. “Where?”
“Across the street!”
“Across the street from here?”
“No. Up in the mountains.”
“What mountains?”
“In Helen, Georgia.”
“Was it a big bear?”
“Huge!”
“What kind of bear was it?”
“No idea.”
“Well, what color was it?”
“It was a black bear.”

While this conversation may seem silly, it could have been avoided if the person simply started the conversation by saying, “I saw a huge black bear across the street when I was up in the mountains of Helen, Georgia.”  At that point, you have all of the information that you need.  However, this is the exact same thing that happens when a person puts broad keywords into a search engine.  They may have a vision of the results they expect to see, but they simply put “bear” in the search window without giving the search engine the data it needs to know the whole story.  Depending on the broadness of the keyword will determine how much interpretation the search engine has to do.

This is why website siloing is so important is because it allows you to start broad, but still lead the visitor down certain paths depending on more specific data. It’s also why keyword research is so very important. You may think you want to rank for “bear”, but if your website focuses only on Georgia black bears, you’ll kill yourself trying to rank for “bear”.  Then you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to figure out why “Build a Bear”, the “Chicago Bears”, “Bear Bryant” and tons of other sites outrank you. And unless you expand your content to include all things “bear”, they always will. This also goes back to building out the respective areas for specific terms and then optimizing those areas for those longer tail keywords such as “Helen Georgia black bears”.

Customer Intent (But what did you really mean?)

This brings us to customer intent. What did the searcher really want to find? But more importantly, does your website capitalize on that intent? And if it does, can it capitalize on it even more than it already does?

For instance, if a person searches for “windows”, are they trying to find a glass window or are they looking for something to do with the Windows software? You would definitely know if the person used the keyword in “plate glass windows”, but now you don’t know what they want with plate glass windows. Do they want to find more info on types of plate glass windows? Do they want someone to install them? Are they looking for pricing? How can you know for sure? The answer is in your Analytics.

Your best bet is to look at the keyword area under “Traffic Sources” in Google Analytics (assuming that you’ve installed it). You’ll see that people arrived to your site using a variety of keywords and your telltale sign is in the column called “bounce rate”. When a person “bounces”, they are leaving your site within a pre-defined time frame (typically under 5 seconds).  The higher the bounce rate, the less relevant that page probably is to the term they searched for.

However, it doesn’t always mean that it’s not relevant. If the person has searched specifically for “toddler girl dresses” and your page is all about “toddler girl dresses”, then maybe there could be something else on that page is turning them off.   The page could be taking too long to load (check Google Webmaster Tools). Maybe your pricing is too high (try doing some A/B split testing using Google Website Optimizer). Maybe your designs or selection sucks (more A/B split testing). Either way, you should always pay attention to how the person arrived at your page in the first place and pay close attention to keywords that have high bounce rates.

Alternately, if you see a high bounce rate for “blue toddler girl dresses“, and you have 4 blue toddler girl dresses, it’s once again time to analyze why.  Are those blue dresses mixed in with dozens of dresses of another color? If there’s a substantial amount of traffic bouncing for blue toddler girl dresses, maybe it’s time to move your blue dresses onto their own page. That way you can optimize that specific page for various blue dresses keyword terms and start landing those sales.

“Well, I did that and now they’re not bouncing, but they’re still not buying.”  If that’s the case, then you should start looking at your sales funnel. You have that set up, right?  If not, you should head to the Goals area of Google Analytics and get cracking.  Once you have that set up, you can see where they’re leaving the sales process. If they leave before anything even goes in the cart, then maybe it’s your pricing. If they leave on the shipping page, then maybe your shipping cost is too high.  If you end up in that conundrum, than it’s time to fire up Google Website Optimizer and do some A/B split testing and start analyzing different shipping or pricing.

The beauty of all of this is that it’s readily available to you for free via Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer.  So if your sales have slowed down, or you simply can’t even get found on the web, it’s time to research your site structure first, then your page structure, and then the content of those pages. In that order. If you don’t analyze and test, you’re leaving major money on the table.

While this may concern some people, this is yet further proof that Google is doing everything possible to keep people connected and with the incorporation of Twitter connections into the SERP’s, it’s now easier than ever. Upon clicking the “Learn more” link, we are shown that this action will further skew the results pages to what my friends are searching for, what they’re linking to, and even their tweets.  Some of this is not in place as of yet, but the tweet section already is.  One might see this as a great personal experience that is coming to a fruition, while others will not.

From an SEO standpoint, however, this creates another quandary.  If a user is signed into Google, these new additions provide even more “custom” listings on the SERP’s and the loss of even more real estate on that sought after front page of results.  While there still is (and probably always will be) the top 10 listings on the page, that front page now also houses Twitter feeds, news results, videos, paid ads (top and side), social bookmarking, images, etc.  Long story is that the front page is even more convoluted than ever.

The positive side is that this means that true SEO strategists need to get very serious about their social media activity and offering true value to their customers because getting on the front page of Google is not only coding and site structure, it’s now video, bookmarking, networking, tweeting, images, and more.  Anyone searching for SEO services need to make sure that these efforts are included, because it’s yet another avenue onto that coveted Google front page.

If you’re not looking for an SEO expert to provide that assistance, you need to know that your involvement in the social arena is officially imperative.  It has been for the last few years, but now it’s on your doorstep with a tidy red bow.

Google launched an algorithm update called Panda and it affected more websites than they probably expected.  The update was in response to the overwhelming presence of spammy scraper websites that “scraped” their content from other sites.  It affected the sites where the content is primarily duplicate content and who get their popularity from worthless spam links.  These types of sites dominated the search engine results while sites that spent quality time creating unique content struggled to get on page one while they watched these other spam sites flourish.  It seems like a well needed update, but there was tiny problem that Google probably didn’t foresee or maybe they did.

Some of the sites that were caught in this cleansing probably didn’t deserve to be and they were “work from home” resellers.  Those overnight pop-up websites like the Tom Bosley pushed SMC sites were a prime example.  But it’s not the sellers fault.  They just want to make money online and are romanced by the get rich quick mermaid songs.  And there are many companies that operate just like them on a smaller scale. A very large portion of resellers get their content from the manufacturer of their products via CD’s or downloads that they in turn upload to their websites.  That means that multiple websites will have the same exact content since all of the product descriptions and photos are the same.  Since the Panda update was designed to clear out websites that duplicated content, many online retailers got slapped and literally disappeared off of the rankings into the land of double and triple digits.  Whether or not Google foresaw this problem is unknown and whether they plan to fix it is even more of a mystery.

If you’ve been hit due to spam links, it will be a vicious uphill battle to undo the problem and especially if you have an external linking company buying or submitting link requests on your behalf. Your best bet is to cut them off and ask them to stop the black hat tactics or you’re going to get buried in Google penalties. Acquire your links naturally through hard work and social media and you’ll reap the benefits sooner than you think. The Panda update has less to do with this and more to do with the content issues, so let’s talk about that for now.

If you’re a retailer that has experienced the problem of your site being penalized for duplicate content, tell us about it.  Meanwhile, you should dedicate some time to manually change your product descriptions as soon as possible and swapping out your images with alternate photos (if you have the capability to do so).  It may be time to dig into your analytics and see what pages took the hit, because most likely the slap are page specific and don’t typically apply to the entire site. Unless your entire site sucks.  Start with your best selling products first and work your way down from there.   If you have the means, you should also consider adding content like in-depth reviews or blog posts to the product pages.  The goal here is to differentiate yourself from the original content you received from your manufacturer and especially if it constitutes the majority of your website.  And the next time you get a CD or downloadable update from them, be sure to copy your changes over or risk overwriting your changes.

Google will always side on the mantra that content is king.  Gone are the days of plopping down a website, uploading content and raking in the money.  Google is apparently insisting that you work for it.

If you have a hundred pages that talk about Barbie dolls, you would expect to rank well for those related terms. But if those hundred pages are spread out, scattered, and buried among hundreds of other pages that are not related to Barbie dolls, your pages won’t see the light of day in the rankings compared to even someone who only has 10 pages that are well organized in a Barbie doll area and all neatly tied and linked together.

Take a look at this graphic below that is a representation of what a good silo’ed site would look like;

In this example we have a kids site, which silos down to a toys area and a fashion area separately.  Then each of those areas silos down into even more specific areas (girls and boys, etc.).  This may seem like an obvious setup, but in companies where the lines may appear to be blurred, you can miss it.  For instance if you have a heating and air company, you would be wise to keep your heating services pages away from cooling services pages.   Even though it’s very common to see them together, they have very distinctive sets of keywords.  Heating has furnaces, heating, etc. and cooling will have air conditioning, freon, cooling, a/c, etc.  Keep them separate so that you can build up those areas with the respective keywords. Keeping them together muddies up the relevancy of the pages and dilutes your page strength. Just like in the above example, boys and girls pants could share a page but boys don’t wear capris. Stop diluting your message.

I’ve personally worked on sites that have had this problem and when you get into thousands of pages that are all a convoluted mess, it’s extremely difficult to fix and if there are other forces involved that refuse to organize the site the way it needs to be, it’s very frustrating since rankings are few and far between. If you’re in this position, you can slightly overcome it by doing what’s called Virtual Siloing where even if the content isn’t actually residing in neatly crafted directories, you can still present them and link them in that way. It’s second fiddle to directory siloing where not only is the linking structure that way, but also the site directories.

The last thing to note about silos is the interlinking patterns. For instance, in the example above, avoid linking the “Dress Up” page to the “Boys Toys” areas or even worse, another branch of the silo like the “Kid’s Fashion” branch. Cross link to pages on the same level and in the same branch. But if they’re not really relevant just avoid it since it’s not really necessary (like linking video games to trucks, for instance. Same branch, but not really relevant).

If you do decide to cross link branches, make sure that it’s somehow relevant and that it links to the broadest relevant silo possible.  In the example above, if you were to link the “Dress Up” area under “Girl’s Toys” to actual “Girl’s clothes” on your site (a stretch I know), link to the “Girl’s Clothes” area and not to the “Girls pants” or “Girl’s Shirts” area.  Go as broad as you can and stay relevant.

Apply this linking strategy externally also. If you find a kid’s clothing site that’s willing to link to you, have them link directly to the Kid’s Fashion branch page and NOT directly to your home page.  If it’s a boy’s clothing site, have them link to the Boys Clothes branch and not Kid’s Fashion since that also includes a Girl’s Clothes branch that stems off of it which isn’t relevant.

The larger the website, the messier this gets, but once you get it under control, your rankings will move up the charts quickly and you’ll continue to get more powerful the longer you keep this practice moving forward and stay true to it.

Putting “Welcome to the my Company” in the title tag is costing you greatly.  Google looks at the title tag heavily.  SEO guru Brad Fallon used the title tag trick early on to rank for “Coolest Guy On The Planet“.  No one else had put that in their title tag and the result was that when someone searched Google for “Coolest guy on the planet“, he came up number one because he was the only one nutty enough to actually put that text in his tags.   In your case, you are probably competing for something a little more widely used like a dentist office or maybe greeting cards.  So let’s look at a couple things with the title tag.

First thing to say about the title tag is that every character is golden.   Use your title tag for keywords only.  I can’t stress this enough.  Don’t use your company name, don’t say “Welcome to..”, etc.  It’s a waste.  If they’re on your website, they will see your company name and you can use your meta tags to welcome them if you must (that will be discussed in Step 3), so again, only use keywords in your title tags.  There are arguments that using your company name promotes branding, but my vote is to ignore that advice.

Here are three programs you can use to find out what the best keywords are to chase for your business.

1. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
2. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
3. or download the Good keyword Tool Here.

Make your list and then you can proceed with wild abandon.

Assuming you’ve done that, let’s pretend that your business is greeting cards, use one of those programs to look to see what people are actually searching for.  Pick out the top 20 or so and then analyze each page of your website to see where the best fit is for those keywords.

To start, if the service you provide is local, then you have a good advantage because you can use keywords like “Atlanta Dentist“, or if that’s proving too competitive, then you can use your county name like “Gwinnett County Dentist“.  But you’ll use your top 3 or 4 general keywords on your home page title tag.  So instead of your title tag saying “Welcome to my website”, it would say something like “Atlanta Dentist | Gwinnett Dentist | Atlanta Dentistry“.   This way Google knows that the page is about dentistry.

The other trick is that each of your pages should almost serve as a “home page”.  So it’s not just that first main page that people could come to, but any of your pages.  So make sure that you do NOT copy the title tag from your home page onto all of your pages.  That will have a negative effect and accomplish nothing for you.   Make the title tag on your page on orthodontics contain orthodontic keywords.  Each page should be different.  For pages that are what we refer to as “no money” pages like your terms and conditions, privacy policy, contact page, etc, just use the most general keywords from your list.  Be sure to mix them up.  The other thing to be careful about is that the page actually is about what you indicate in the title tags. So if you have dentistry keywords in your title tag, make sure that page is about dentistry.  Having mention of those specific keywords from the title tag in the actual text of the page is important.

Businesses that aren’t local are a little tougher because your products can be purchased from anywhere by anyone and is not strapped to a locality.  You don’t get the benefit of using a location in front of your keyword.  Atlanta dentistry is pretty competitive, but nowhere near as competitive as just dentistry by itself.   You’ll want your keywords to focus on some of the low hanging fruit.  In the greeting cards example, maybe you’d want to focus on “sympathy greeting cards”, “my first birthday greeting cards”, etc.  Those are less competitive than the broad “greeting cards” which you can use on your no money pages.

We’ll touch on title tags more heavily later off and on in various lessons because you can’t just use them willy-nilly. Google is more interested in relevance and if you’re keywords don’t match what’s actually on the page, you’ll fail miserably.  Yes, content is king no matter how cliche it may be.

That’s where this guide comes in.  I’m going to discuss what people are doing to get into those coveted top 10 slots.  What works, what probably doesn’t and most importantly, what to expect. Because the truth of the matter is that there is no definitive answer.  On top of being the Director of Horton Web Design (hortonwebdesign.com), I have also worked side by side with people who do nothing but search engine optimization (SEO) and online marketing.  I’ve been a member of a lot of these places that claim to have all of the answers, when in truth, they’re just as clueless as the next person. The answers they have are typically always the same from SEO site to SEO site. Same answers just displayed differently.  You shouldn’t have to spend thousands of dollars to get those answers because when things go wrong (and they will), these membership places always seem to have an excuse for everything.

If you were #1 on Google one day and then the next day you were nowhere to be found, you’re going to find a host of overpaid people who are going to tell you one of 3 things; 1) that you did something wrong, 2) someone did something better than you, or 3) the search engine changed something.  So write down those 3 excuses on a piece of paper and put them in your pocket to save them for later.  You’re going to be doing great one day and then poorly the next.  When that happens, you can simply pull that piece of paper out of your pocket and read those 3 excuses. You’ll save yourself a lot of money by simply reading them off to yourself instead of paying someone to say them.

I strive to be as straightforward and non-geekspeak as I can in order to make this as plain and as simple as I can. Just know that nobody has the exact right answer for all of the search engines or for every case. The guys that created Google’s algorithm can’t tell you exactly what Yahoo or MSN is doing.  They have an idea, but not the total picture.  So don’t put your eggs all in one basket.  Use this guide as one of many resources out there because even I don’t practice everything I preach.

Lastly, there will be some people who will ask the following questions and so I’ll answer them now.  “I typed in website design and I can’t find you on the web, so why should I listen to you?”  The answer is simple.  I don’t want to be found for web design because that’s not my focus anymore, nor is my site optimized for that.  I’d rather focus on terms like Georgia SEO professional, Georgia SEO Expert or even the broader Georgia SEO.  Try some of those terms and you’ll find me in the top 3.  My business is a home based business that I do on evenings and weekends.  I like designing websites, but I don’t want to do it full time nor do I have the time to dedicate to it and once you implement the things I’m about to tell you, I probably won’t hold my position for long.

The other question would be, “What makes you the authority on search engine optimization (SEO) or search engine marketing (SEM)?”  Let’s put it this way.  For 2 solid years, I worked under the greatest minds in SEO and SEM.  I was personally taught one on one by some of them and it was my job to take the tools they provided and keep their companies ranking high on the search engines and to make them look good.  Yes, I was the man behind the curtain. I studied under all of them in some form or fashion.   I’m also a member of multiple SEO organizations to keep up on the latest trends and changes. I gathered all of the information and drained them of what they knew.  My job is to implement strategies by these individuals and put them to work.  I implemented everything I learned and it worked.  I’ve watched it work and use these strategies daily.  The companies I work for are in the top ten across the board for their markets and most of which are #1 and are there because of my efforts.

One more question would probably be, “Why are you offering this information to me?” I know how difficult it is for small business owners to get up and running.  Around every corner is another expense.  So I wanted to write some basics that you can do for your website to get out there and be seen.  It’ll be tough, but you can do it with good effort.  If you only use a fraction of what I’m telling you, you’ll only get a fraction of the results. All of these things I’ll explain work together to get you the results you’re after, so don’t cut any corners.  If you have to go back and fix something, go back and fix it.  Don’t ignore any existing problems.  That being said, let’s dive into it.