Chris Cardell Review

As we discussed last month, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is about getting your pages ranked well and helping you profit from search engines.

SEO: -Brings traffic – this means more eyeballs on your business

-Increases visibility so you can be found

-Is usually a necessary step to marketing your business online

I’m going to take a fictional business and show you some of the basic steps to SEO, so you can do the same for your business.

Fictional business – Townsends Carpet Cleaning Service Location – Nationwide Franchise Typical Customer – Homeowner who uses the service twice a year Goal – To optimise webpages to attract more business

Website Domain – www.TownsendsCarpetCleaning.com – the domain contains the keyword ‘Carpet Cleaning’, making it easier for the search engines to find.

Keywords – Carpet cleaning, carpet cleaning service, carpet shampoo, carpet cleaning tips. After extensive research using keyword tools, these are some of the most profitable keywords for the business, ie: most likely to be used in a search. Knowing your best keywords is the essential first step to good SEO.

Page Titles -Carpet Cleaning Coupons, Carpet Cleaning for Spring. Google sorts by pages, not websites, so each page has a keyword title. This is very important as it tells the search engines what each page is about.

Metatags -Same as the keywords. These are not as important as they used to be, but they still help along with a brief description of each page.

Content – Articles, tips and testimonials about carpet cleaning, plus a FAQ. All of these contain optimised keywords that are carefully placed and balanced

Link Building – This is the big one. Google is obsessed with incoming links. This business gets good incoming links from quality sites by writing articles, commenting on forums, writing a blog, commenting on related blogs, registering with directories and using social media to promote all the above marketing efforts. Search engines reward good quality incoming links by giving the site a higher page rank.

If this seems like a lot to do – welcome to SEO – and this is just the beginning. Good SEO takes time. It’s not a race (and if you try to do it too fast, Google can penalise you.) We’ll be coming back to SEO frequently in the months ahead. For now, focus on optimising your pages for relevant keywords and building incoming links each month. Then you’ll be well on your way to increasing your search engine listing and attracting more business.