Steve Wiideman, the foremost expert on SEO, (if you wonder about whether that’s true, just type “SEO Expert” into Google and there he is in the number one spot) states in his book that the most important and critical phase of SEO is what he calls the Analyze phase in his four-fold approach to SEO, Analyze, Optimize, Develop and Promote. That is so true. I just had to email a client who is working with more than one SEO firm. The folks at brand-x had sent him a list of about 50 or so keyword phrases for his business. Only about 10 of them had any real value for his business. I’m absolutely positive that the next step is going to be a quick mini-campaign on some of the other 40 near zero value keywords so the Brand-X firm can claim “We got you to the top of Google for soooo many of your keywords- success!”
No success. Just a con-game.
SEO is somewhere between blood-sport and a military campaign, or more like the Afghanistan war- it never really ends and you have to stay on it indefinitely if you want to keep the upper hand over your problem.
Business owners, especially small business owners need to carefully and thoroughly analyze their keywords using the readily available and free tools by Google, the Adword Keyword search tool and Google Trends. What’s important and what people are typing into Google and what they are not typing in searches will soon become obvious.
Then the more labor intensive part- analyzing your competition. When you find out what your keywords are, look at the businesses in the top spots in Google and find out what they’re doing to get there. It will be a mix of three things: site optimization, backlinks and traffic. That’s it. Everything else is fluff and noise. You have to beat them by the numbers in all three categories to pull ahead.
Orange County Web Design and SEO by Dave Keys
Orange County Photography
