Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website and website pages, as well as managing factors outside of your website (i.e off-site factors), to acheive top rankings or positioning at Google, or other search engines, on a search engine results page.

As a result of this increased online visibility, which shows up in people’s browsers when they are searching, you get more QUALITY traffic to your website, increase your brand/company awareness, more effectively compete in the marketplace,  and ultimately increase inquiries and sales (i.e. conversion).

Many of the people I’ve talked to think just building a website and getting online will be the key to new sales and business growth. This is bad thinking and actually a mistake.

It’s not a mistake because I say so.

It’s a mistake because dozens of people have called me who tried that approach and it didn’t work. So now, they’ve been online for six to sixteen months, have little to show for it, and have a new problem - they’re six to sixteen months behind their competition. Playing catch-up on the Internet is not fun.

Q: Would you open up a new restaurant and then not advertise, market, and promote it - and it’s location?

A: No, certainly not.

But that same logic seems to get lost on the Internet.

I think it’s because in days gone by there was this mentality that the Internet was free - and a lot of people are stuck with it. Sure, it sounds good, but it’s not true.

Add onto that bogus success stories about online success and even infomercials at wee hours of the morning promising Internet millions while you “sit back, it’s on auto-pilot” on the Internet Marketing Speedway… ouch.

Here is why you probably want to develop and implement a search engine optimization strategy for your business website:

1) More Sales

2) More Leads

3) You Make It Easier For Your Existing Customers To Find You

4) You Make It Easier For NEW Customers To Find You

5) Your Existing Customer Expect To Find You

6) Don’t Let Your Existing Customer Find Your Competition (you lose sales)

7) More Visibility For Your Company, Brand, Products and Services

8) Reaching New Customers From Outside Your General Marketplace

9) Enhanced Credibility and Legitimacy

10) Testing New Products

11) Competition

12) Gives You Competitive Advantage

13) Predictable Costs

14)  Measurable ROI

15) Long Term Benefits

Google is probably an important part of your online marketing to brides strategy. A top position at Google is like owning a money tree. So if your inquiries are off noticably, or significantly, in the recent past there’s a good chance your search engine positioning at Google has fallen. Read more …

SEO is not a “set it and forget it” type thing. Not if you want to get your website and pages top ranked.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process similar to building a multi-tiered wedding cake.

There is ongoing SEO, that sits on top of advanced SEO techniques, which are put on top of basic search engine optimization – or the “fundamentals.” You can’t get a top ranked website without building one layer at a time. And like the best wedding cakes, it takes the right “ingredients,” expertise, time, and patience.

Basic search engine optimization includes:

* Creating a search engine friendly, or “crawler” friendly website (design)

* Reviewing competitive sites, their current placement, their strategies (strengths, weaknesses)

* Identifying the appropriate keywords and keyword phrases

* Optimizing page content to create “relevancy” (which is what Google is primarily looking for)

* Building an optimized navigation scheme that is search engine friendly but also user-friendly

* Correctly programmed/written page title tags that are unique for each page of your website

* Correctly programmed/written meta-tags: description, keywords, robots, etc.

* Getting your website recognized by Google

* Getting ALL of the pages of your website recognized by Google (and other search engines)

* Installing Google Analytics for tracking website traffic, configuration, testing

* Installing Google Webmaster tools, configuration, testing

* Monitoring movement (i.e. are we moving up in rank, yes, no, how quickly)

* Making adjustments to pages and page title tags as necessary

* Building inbound links to the website from outside sources (very important!)

In most cases, this is a process that takes between an hour and two hours per page. Keep in mind, these are just the basics and primarily “on-site” factors.

If any of these variables are not appropriately and precisely addressed, it will adversely impact your ability to get pages at your website top ranked.

Also see: New Website Design & Development Overview

There was a time when you could hire a webmaster and pretty much put all the responsibilities for your online marketing and website management in their hands.

That’s not the case anymore. Internet marketing is much more complicated, sophisticated, and competitive these days.

If you want to get the best ROI you’ll have to jump into the deep end of the pool and get wet. Your success online depends on it.

Here is my list of 25 Things Your Webmaster Didn’t Tell You.

Advertising your website online, that is, paying for online advertising, should be part of your overall traffic building strategy.

Yes, you are going to have to BUY advertising for your website as part of your overall Internet marketing strategy, if you want to effectively compete with your online competition.

“Free traffic” is almost always poor quality traffic and not the type of traffic that will convert into inquiries or sales. If you don’t believe me, look at your Google Bounce Rate and these type of Referring Sites.

The benefits of advertising online include:

* More overall online visibility for your company name, brand, products, and services
* It makes it easier for brides to find your website
* Brides can find you first vs. finding a competitor who does not advertise online
* If your website converts well you will get a positive return-on-investment
* More inbound links will help your search engine optimization strategy
* Builds trust and integrity

To measure the effectiveness of your online advertising, when marketing to brides online, you have to have some type of analytics in place.

I recommend Google Analytics.

If you don’t have some type of  measuring in place, then you’ll have no idea how well your online advertising dollars are working or what your return-on-investment is.

Would you buy and drive a car without a speedometer? Of course not, how would you know how fast you are going or how far you’ve gone?

The same theory applies to buying online advertising: measure, monitor, make smart decisions.

Generally speaking, if an advertising buy delivers 4 to 10 visitors per week to your website, that being 200 to 500 qualified visitors per year (i.e. brides and grooms), I think that’s probably a good buy in the $100-$250 range.

That’s about .50 cents per click.

Of course, these would be brides and grooms - qualified traffic.

Of course, this assumes your website has a high conversion rate and you know this in part because you know what your Google Bounce Rate is.

Also keep in mind buying advertising online *generally* creates and builds inbound link value to your website. So not only are you getting traffic, you’re building inbound links to your website - links that Google (and other search engines) sees, crawls, and simultaneously creates a ”popularity” value for your website.

Bottom line: quality traffic and inbound link value. Win-win.

Learn more about optimizing your Internet marketing strategies and join my Book More Weddings ADVANTAGE program today. Click here for more information.

Meta-Tags & Google

Q: Chris, I updated my meta-tags and the page title tag on my home page and then checked but Google isn’t showing any changes, particularly in my page title tag? Why not?

A: Changes are not real-time so your expectations are wrong. Updating your meta-tags, or optimizing them, I should say, is a great idea, but don’t expect Google to see those updates or update your listing with them immediately. Chances are it will take a week to a month for you to see anything different at Google, particularly with your page title tag. Google might visit and crawl your website daily, or regularly, but that doesn’t mean they’ve updated their index and the results you see in a search engine results page with any of the information they’ve crawled at your site.

Flash Websites Still Don’t Index Well at Google

Q: My webmaster is telling me Google is indexing and crawling Flash websites just like .html websites now. Is this true?

A: Not true. Google has made some announcements that it has improved it’s ability to crawl Flash websites (all Flash websites) but it’s sort of a “qualified” announcement. Your webmaster will have to follow their guidelines but you should only expect this to help some - not put you on the same “crawlability” scale as a .html/non-Flash website. An all Flash website is still at a disadvantage to any competitor’s website that is NOT all Flash and is optimized for top ranking at Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. That’s what I’ve been saying for three years and I’m sticking to it (for now!).

You’ll find more of the frequently asked questions I get answered by following this link…

I offer free tips and advice via my e-newsletter, which you can subscribe to by following this link.

If you’re looking for more expert Internet marketing advice to help you get better results from your website, improve your search engine marketing, convert more of the brides who visit your website into inquiries and sales, and a lot more… you might consider joining my ADVANTAGE program.

ADVANTAGE members get better results from their websites, they beat their competition, and they know how to get top ranked at Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

They have more traffic (because they know how to create an effective traffic building strategy) and they convert more of the brides who find their website into inquiries, phone calls, appointments, and sales.

Click here to learn more about my Book More Weddings ADVANTAGE program.