2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Local Sites
Web Marketing Today Premium, Issue 86, Winter 2005
Once you've developed a website, you need to tell the search engines that it's there. This is called "submitting" your website to the search engines. There's really not much to it. Here are the most important US sites to submit to:
Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html
Yahoo! Search http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
In addition, you'll want to submit your site to some directories, such as The Open Directory Project. http://www.dmoz.com
You can find much more about search engine optimization in my brief book Dr. Wilson's Plain-Spoken Guide to Search Engine Optimization (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/seo.htm) and free article, "The Web Marketing Checklist" (www.wilsonweb.com/articles/checklist.htm) so I won't go into it all here. But let's look at the very basics.
Keyword Indexing
What you want to accomplish in setting up your website is to give clues to the search engine spiders that "crawl" your website to index your webpages so that they know what your webpages are all about. Let's say you have a local candy shop that specializes in handmade chocolate truffles. You want the spider to conclude that your site is about candy, chocolate, truffles -- and that you're located in the Denver suburb of Westminster. If you can achieve this, you've succeeded, since clear and accurate indexing of your site should help you get high search engine rankings for those keywords in your community.
How to Place Keywords in Your Webpage
There are several important areas of your webpage you don't want to neglect.
Title
Every page needs a title -- not the headline that shows up on the webpage, but the title that shows up on the search engine, blue, underlined, and linked to your webpage. This is found in the HTML code between the TITLE tags. In web design programs such as Microsoft FrontPage it is found under File > Properties.
Your title for every webpage in your site should be about 5 to 8 words in length and include the main keywords on your webpage plus your locality.
"Chocolate Truffles from The Candy Temptress, Westminster, Denver, Colorado"
Search engines rely rather strongly on the words in the title to determine what the webpage is about. So with this title, someone searching on "chocolate Denver" or "chocolate candy Westminster" should come up with your webpage.
Meta Description Tag
A description meta tag is a sentence or two of about 200 to 250 characters that describes what is on the webpage. Make sure that the description includes the main keywords or keyphrases that you want to be indexed under. For example:
"The Candy Temptress specializes in creamy chocolate truffles, plus dark and milk chocolates. We are located in the Denver suburb of Westminster, Colorado."
At 141 characters, this description could be a bit longer. Avoid the temptation of stuffing too many keyword repetitions into the description. I've used "chocolate" and "chocolates" which could be a bit too much.
Search engines can index a site without a meta description tag, but it gives additional clues to reinforce the main topic of the webpage.
A keyword meta tag is discounted by Google for ranking purposes, but Yahoo! Search still considers it. I recommend that you write a careful, keyword-rich description meta tag. Next, copy the words into the keyword meta tag. Finally, remove all the "throw-away" words that no one would search on. What's left would be:
"candy, creamy, chocolates, truffles, dark, milk, Denver, Westminster, Colorado"
Notice, I don't repeat the word "chocolate," but put it in plural.
Headline and Sub-Heads
Next, give the search engines some clues by including keywords in your Headline and Sub-Heads. Technically, these are known as H1, H2, and H3 tags. You might give this page the headline: "Chocolate Truffles."
Sub-heads could be "Milk Chocolate" and "Dark Chocolate," though you don't want to overload each headline with the same keyword.
Body Text
The search engine also expects to see important keywords in the body text, the article itself -- especially in the first paragraph. Be aware that search engines are getting more and more sophisticated, so synonyms of chocolate truffles in the first paragraph also give the search engine clues to the focus of this webpage.
Other Areas
Other areas where you might want to include keywords are the ALT tags under each graphic and Comment tags, but these aren't nearly as important.
Fine-Tuning Your Webpages
If you are in a larger metropolitan area and have a number of local competitors on the Web, you may want to fine-tune your webpages using a tool like WebPosition Gold from WebTrends. Its Page Critic feature allows you to see exactly what concentration of keywords is recommended for each section of your webpage so that you can gradually increase your search engine rankings, even in a competitive environment. http://www.wilsonweb.com/afd/webposition.htm
Clues to Your Location
So far, I've discussed the principles that apply to optimizing any webpage. But since you have a local business, it's vital that you include local terms on every webpage. Besides in the title tag, make sure to include your store's location and contact information at the bottom of each webpage on your site. People may search for major streets or shopping centers, ZIP codes, area codes, city names, neighborhood names, and other regional indicators, such as county or metropolitan area, so don't be afraid to include these. I've also heard that you should include longitude and latitude (available from Astro Dienst Atlas, http://www.astro.com/atlas), though how important this is, I'm not sure. Coordinates for Westminster, CO would be: 39n50, 105w02.
Gathering Links from Local Businesses
Being ranked high on the search engines involves two factors: (1) getting your webpages indexed or classified accurately for the keywords that are important to you, and (2) the number of links to your site from other sites.
Of course, you should have some links from directories, such as the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com) and perhaps the Yahoo! Directory (though a link may cost you $299 per year). Links from these large, prominent sites are worth more on Google's scale of values (known as PageRank) than a link from a small, out-of-the-way website. So by all means find online directories you can be listed in -- preferably for free.
If you're in a small city, you may not need many incoming links in order to rank high. But the larger the city, the more competitive will be top rankings "chocolate truffles" or whatever you're trying to rank high for. In this case you'll need to get links to your website from two kinds sources:
- Local links from other Denver businesses. These are considered "relevant" links since they have the location in common.
- Topical links from chocolate websites on the Internet in general. Here the common denominator is the mutual interest in chocolate truffles.
Reciprocal linking involves you exchanging links with complementary but non-competitive websites. You prepare a webpage on your site where you put links to other sites and they do the same for you. If you get serious about this, you can use one of the Reciprocal Linking Tools that I discuss in my book by the same name.
The way you find reciprocal linking partners is to search on Google for the top sites for "PT Cruiser," then e-mail them asking for a link, offering a link from your site, and explaining that the more links, the higher both sites will rank with the search engines. If e-mail doesn't work, try telephoning. Smaller companies are more likely to respond than larger, more prominent ones, since they are more needing to be noticed.
Be sure, however, to avoid unrelated links. Let me explain why. One of the ways that search engines categorize and rank your site is by the links that point to your site. If they all have something to do with cars, especially chocolate -- or something in Denver -- they help put you in the right context. But if you link to mortgage sites in London or merchant credit card account sites in Victoria, BC, it will confuse the search engines. Rather than help your rankings, it could hurt how the search engines classify you. Be careful!
When you have optimized your webpages with keywords for the search engines to index and begin to develop a number of incoming links from other sites, you are likely to move to the top of the search engines for any local search for your type of business. In larger metropolitan areas, however, you might need to hire a search engine optimization firm to do its magic to help you get top rankings for competitive local keyphrases.
