Do it yourself SEO
It takes as little as an hour a week…
How much time you actually spend will depend largely on what keywords & search terms you want your website to show up for in the organic (FREE) search results.
The more specific the search (“your city” + “jewelers”) the easier it is to get results.
If your goal is nationwide sales then you’ll want to SEO for broad terms like “engagement rings” & “diamonds” & you’ll need to expend more effort freshening your page content & generating links. You’ll also need to be patient since it can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years to get any kind of decent ranking & you may never get first page results for extremely popular keywords (there’s a lot of people ahead of you…)
Set a short term goal of achieving specific local keyword search results & a long term goal of nationwide results. Your local results will improve quickly while it may take years to get decent ranking for the more broad search terms.
If you start showing up well for broad search terms then it’s time to consider expanding your platform capabilities like adding a shopping cart to take advantage of your new market position. Shopping carts are an unnecessary site complication for local marketing campaigns. You can find more information about shopping carts on our other pages.
A good set of keywords & phrases to include in your pages for local search are
- “jewelers” + “your city/state”
- “your city/state” + “jewelry”
- “designer/manufacturer” + “your city/state”
- “diamonds” + “your city/state”
- “your store name”
- “jewelers reviews” + “your city/state”
This list is by no means exhaustive. There are a lot of sites which will help you analyze your own site & anyone else’s for good keyword ideas. I like SEO Digger & SpyFu (both FREE!)
Make sure your site includes complete sentences with all of your chosen keywords & phrases & don’t forget to add any online articles you or your publicist may have written.
SEO & Site Management
You need a Google Webmaster Tools account (it’s FREE.) If you’re unsure of how to get started I’ll set up accounts for JEF Excessories customers (no charge) & show you how to use the features.
You’ll also need 2 software tools. One to help you generate site maps & another to transfer files (FTP) from your computer to your web host & vice versa. I recommend GSiteCrawler for site map generation & FileZilla for FTP. Both programs are FREE & have good online documentation to help you use them. Each one also has a huge community of users who are ready to answer your questions on their forums. Visit the “FREE Tools” page on this Blog for more information on how to obtain, set up & use both of these programs or just ask & I’ll send you a disk including both programs & then walk you through the process of installing & using them.
From now on I’ll assume you have a Webmaster Tools account & the necessary software.
Let’s say you decide Mondays are going to be SEO days.
Spend 10-15 minutes searching Google & Yahoo for the keywords & terms you are optimizing your site for & note what page numbers you are listed on. This will help you to gauge what effect your efforts are having & you’ll also find a lot of potential link swap partners.
Deal with New Content (15-20 minutes)
Teaching you how to actually author new pages is beyond the scope of this website. Editing content on existing pages is relatively easy with most sites unless the designers used Flash graphics or other complicated scripting. Speaking of which; Flash looks great but search engines don’t like it. Your Flash site should always be accompanied by search engine friendly (HTML) pages. Learning how to make small changes to your site can save you a ton of money! Don’t try to change anything if your not sure of what you’re doing!!!
Upload new or changed pages to your web host with FileZilla or another FTP program & be sure to also generate & upload a new site map with GSiteCrawler if you are adding new pages so the search engines will find & index them as quickly as possible. For details on how to use FileZilla & GSiteCrawler visit the FREE Tools” pages on this Blog.
Log in to Webmaster Tools (15-20 minutes)
Now it’s time to log in to your Webmaster Tools account where you’ll be taken to your accounts dashboard which will show a list of websites (you can set up more than 1 website) & you’ll click on the website you want to work with.
The next page gives a site overview & allows you to choose from a menu of options.
If you’ve added new pages to your site & uploaded a new site map to your server with FileZilla then go to the “sitemaps” link & check the box next to your site map (probably sitemap.xml) then click “resubmit” to get the Google bots to look at the new content & add it to their index.
For the next task you’ll choose “links” from the left menu & when the next page appears click “pages with external links” to see who has linked to your webpages. A list will appear with each of your site’s pages that someone has linked to (there will hopefully be more than one link for each page.) As you click on each one you’ll be presented with another list of all the individual webpages with links to your site. You may recognize some of these pages & you may not. If you’re curious then click a link to see the exact webpage linked to your site. Use this information to contact the owner of the page & see if there are any opportunities for business development between the two of you.
Articles discussing the use of Google Webmaster Tools will be posted on this Blog soon. Call 850.206.2251 or email your questions if you can’t wait.
Check Your Website’s Performance (10 to 15 minutes)
From here on it is assumed that you have access to site statistics provided by either your web host or Google Analytics. Information on how to set up your analytics account can be found on Google Analytics help page or call 850.206.2251 & I’ll help you set up your site so it will send information to your Google Analytics account.
Check your site statistics for
- unique visitors
- traffic sources
- most popular pages
- common exit points
These are all important in determining how your SEO program is working.
Visitor Information
Google Analytics will report your site’s total number of visitors & then break this figure down into new & returning visitors. The reports will also show you the cities & states your visitors are browsing from. This can help you determine if an existing billboard, radio or print ad is working. This information can also be used to decide where to place new non-internet advertising to reinforce your web presence.
Content
Google Analytics will tell you which pages get the most visits & how long people spend on each one. The reports also show you which page your visitors exit your site from most often. This can be useful in evaluating changes you’ve made to your site.
Traffic Sources
This part of the reports will show where your traffic is coming from. It lets you know how many visitors typed your domain name (website name) directly into their browser (maybe in response to a print ad) & how many found you through a search engine (and which search engines & keywords they used.) The report also lists other website referral traffic some of which may be the same links you saw in your Webmaster Tools links report. The difference between the two reports is that analytics only shows referring sites that are generating traffic for the time period you set to report. If a site has a link to your pages but it’s not getting hits then it won’t show in “traffic sources.” A discussion of the finer points of webstat analysis can be found on the Google Analytics help page.
An hour or so a week can improve your ability to get in front of customers more often!
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