I get this question all the time from clients and people I work with. “Derek, what exactly is SEO, why do I need it and how does it work. More importantly, what specifically do I need to do about SEO?”

Well, let me explain it in very simple and easy to understand language so you can incorporate the right SEO strategy online for your business that will help you authentically build your list and get more clients.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Simply put, SEO is the process of optimizing your website by improving the internal (behind-the-scenes web techy stuff) and the external (web content, pages, images, etc.) setup in order to increase traffic to your site from search engines like Google.

Why does my website need SEO?

The big commercial search engines – Google, Bing, AOL and Yahoo, drive a lot of web traffic. If your site cannot be easily found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their database, you miss out on an incredible opportunity available to websites who appear in the search engine results for the keywords you want to be associated with. As a result, less people who want to have what you have will be visiting your site. Whether your site provides content, services, products, or information, search engines are a primary method of navigation for almost all people online.

How does SEO work?

Search queries, the words that users type into the search box which contain terms and phrases best suited to your site, carry huge value. These “keywords” dictate what sites the search engines deem worthy of appearing in the results. To do that, search engines really have four main functions – crawling, building an index, determining relevancy & rankings and providing results. Crawling and indexing the zillions of documents, pages, files, news, videos and media on the Internet – and – providing answers to user search queries, through lists of relevant sites / pages via search results and rankings.

What do I do about SEO?

It comes down to doing what I call the ABC’s of SEO.

A is for Architecture

The architecture of your site is critical for SEO success. And, I don’t mean having tons of funky widgets and menu options on your site with flashy design or cool features. Your site needs to have the right framework – like a solid design and well-implemented architecture (i.e. like a house) to support the content and links within the site.

Think of the site like a house where the rooms, stairs and other internal parts of the house require a solid foundation – floors, walls, wiring, mechanics, etc. Without a solid internal architecture, the house (i.e. your site) won’t support it. Equally as important is the external architecture of the house to support the roof, siding, doors, windows, etc. The architecture matters on both the inside and outside.

B is for Back links

The more your site and individual pages are referenced by other sites – the more “back links” you have and the more the search engines will favor your site. It’s basically like other sites giving your site the “thumbs up” indicating they recommend or endorse your site.

One of the best ways to get back links is by submitting your articles to article directory sites. As a result, the search engines will “listen” to their recommendations based on the articles submitted on their site and linking back to your site and content. (Tip – always have a call to action at the end of your article to refer people back to your site so they can opt-in to your list!)

C is for Content

Any site won’t really amount for much in terms of SEO unless it provides good content. The content has to be keyword “rich” for the search terms you want to appear for and be extremely relevant and valuable for your visitors. Be sure to include the keyword terms and phrases in your content that would be relevant and valuable for your visitors.

For example, if you portray your site to be all about “skiing” in terms of the URL, site name and page names, etc. and you only talk about “underwater basket weaving” and nothing about skiing, people will click on your site and then click away. This tells the search engines your site is not providing useful content or relevant information for what it portrays to be providing. You have to provide high-content and high-value information using very useful and authentic content.

Follow these ABC’s of SEO and you’ll be on your way to improving the rankings of your site in the search engines and as a result – improving your authentic online marketing to build your list and get more clients!

Until next time… Learn It, Love It, Live It!

Your Assignment:

Follow my model of the ABC’s of SEO to review what’s in place for your site.

[A - Architecture] Do you have a solid architecture in place for your website with the right menu items, images and content? If you’re using a stand-alone website, can you easily change it and update the content with new and fresh information?

[B - Back links] I’m a huge believer in a solid article marketing strategy to ensure your high-quality and high-content articles are being distributed and picked up by high-profile article directories which the search engines love. Follow my recommendations for some of the article marketing sites above and ensure you have a call-to-action in each of your articles.

[C - Content] You’ve got to put out really excellent content – nothing else. Make sure you’re giving as much as possible in the content you’re putting out – don’t hold back or think you’re giving away too much. I’m a firm believer the better the free content you provide, the better potential clients you will receive.

About the Author: Derek Fredrickson, Authentic Internet Marketing Specialist, is founder of the Authentic Internet Marketing System, the proven step-by-step program that shows you exactly how to authentically market your business online, in record time…guaranteed. To get your F.R.E.E. videos and receive his authentic internet marketing articles on attracting more leads and converting more sales online to multiply your current revenues, visit http://www.derekfredrickson.com

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Digital Word of Mouth: Let Customers Transform Your Marketing Complimentary 21-Page eBook

Customer evangelism is one of the most affordable marketing channels; yet it provides some of the highest return on investment. More and more companies expand their reach thanks to the help of existing customers.

Have You Let Your Customers Transform Your Marketing?

Download the ebook to learn how word-of-mouth marketing has evolved online and how you can use these changes to your advantage. Ebook offered by HubSpot.

This ebook covers:

• Case studies about the changing character of WOM
• Ethical boundaries in the world of customer evangelism
• Measurement tactics for successful word-of-mouth marketing
• Opportunities to leverage customer evangelism

Click here to download.

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Are you trying to increase traffic to your website? Do you realize the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but have trouble taking actionable steps to improve it? Whether you are just getting started with SEO, or have been at it for years, this ebook offers useful tips to get found online by more prospective customers.

This free 23-page SEO guide covers all the elements of a successful SEO improvement strategy, including:

• Identifying Keyword Opportunities
• Mastering On-Page SEO
• Link-Building Strategies
• Tips for Ongoing SEO Improvement

Click here to download this Step-By-Step Guide provided by HubSpot.

How to Double Your Agency Sales in 90 Days

For those of you who are struggling to grow your sales, I’d encourage you to watch the recording of the webinar, “How to 2x Your Agency Sales in 90 Days”.

View the recorded Webinar here: http://www.hubspot.com/thank-you-partner-webinar-2x-agency-sales-90days

• Learn about the hidden traps that prospects might already be using to erode your revenues and waste your time.
• What challenges might you face as you incorporate inbound marketing services into your business?
• Easy commitments and changes to your approach that will drive in new business in just 90 days!
• Practical and easy steps to help you learn and implement a winning process with limited pain!
• Why you should use a sales coach and how to leverage your sales coaching for success.

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Find out more about how to legally spy on your competition in a webinar that compete broadcasted on event 24.

Click here to see the “Webinar” in a separate Window.

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Online Marketing Blueprint – A Multimedia Guide to Growing Your Business Online

From establishing a keyword strategy to leveraging social media to promote content online, this eBookconsolidates how-to videos, external resources and written sections to provide a multimedia learningexperience for every business.

Click here to download the 2010 Blueprint in pdf format. (1015KB)

Watch the Blueprint video on Youtube:

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Accelerate Your SEO:

Learn Ways To Rank Higher in Search Like Today’s Top 100 Multi-Channel Marketers.

Thursday, May 20, 2010 by ON24

• Watch the above presentation in a separate Window.
• Click here to Download the above presentation “Accelerate your SEO” in PDF Format.

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From developing your video idea all the way to promoting it, find out how to use online video to reach your marketing goals. When done effectively, online video can help your business generate website traffic, build brand buzz, collect inbound links and extend social media reach.

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Proper Web site design and structure is an integral part of any search-engine optimization campaign. The search-engine ranking algorithms are constantly evolving. More and more Web site owners are losing their spots in the rankings as their competition becomes more technically competent and adept at the technical side of search-engine optimization.

Create a Robots.txt File

Creating a robots.txt file is a way of speaking directly to the search-engine spiders when they arrive at your site. Perhaps you would rather the spiders not visit certain section of your site. Or maybe you want to instruct them to visit every single page. Other times you may want to control the frequency at which the spiders visit your site.

Also you can create a robots.txt file to prevent search-engine spiders from consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth on your server and also to prevent potential copyright infringements.

The file resides in the root directory of your Web server.

Tip: A robots.txt file can also be used to tell the search-engine spiders where a site map is located with this text: Sitemap: http://www.example.com/yoursitemap.html

You can use the robots.txt generator at: www.mcanerin.com/EN/search-engine/robots-txt.asp to simplify the robots.txt creation task.

Using the Nofollow Attribute

Attaching a nofollow attribute to a link is your way of telling the search-engine spiders that they should not follow that link or view that link as anything of significance when determining ranking.

The nofollow attribute can also be used to link to other Web sites that are not directly related to the content of you own Web site. Google has asked that all paid links be tagged with the nofollow attribute to indicate that the links should not affect ranking influence.

Tip: Essentially, adding the nofollow attribute to a link tells the search engines not to use that link as a positive factor in their ranking algorithm.

Structure URL s Correctly

Both search engines and search-engine users appreciate static-looking, descriptive URL s. The search engines also take into consideration the keywords and phrases contained within your URL s and use these to influence your rankings.

Tip: Structuring your URL s correctly provides you with benefits beyond just improving your search-engine optimization efforts. One such example is a paid search, or pay-per-click, advertising campaign. A properly categorized Web site gives you a head start in developing the keyword lists necessary to properly construct a paid search advertising campaign. You may actually see a price decrease in your paid search efforts as well.

Protect Yourself with an .htaccess File

An .htaccess file is the Apache Web server’s configuration file. It is a straightforward yet powerful text file that can accomplish a wide variety of functions.

Although normally left to expert server administrators, an .htaccess file can help you avoid several potential problems.

Rewriting URL s and redirecting Web traffic enables you to use numerous forms of protection ranging from password protecting directories, banning visitors from certain sources, and preventing bandwidth theft from image linkers.

Rules located in an .htaccess file uploaded to your images directory take precedence over the foot file. Also you may want to stop the malicious use of the Linux Wget command that can retrieve your Web site content.

You can use .htaccess to block direct linking to your images, and instead even send a replacement image.

Tip: An excellent tool located at www.htaccesstools.com allows you to generate a variety of different .htaccess code blocks.

The tool automatically generates .htaccess authentication code along with an encrypted .htpasswd file to password protect directories. This is especially important with the advent of new image search engines like Google Images. The tool also creates .htaccess code to block unwanted bots traffic or traffic from certain IP addresses. You should regularly check for excessive traffic from random bots or excessive visits from any particular IP addresses.

Using Mod_Rewrite to Rewrite URLs

The mod_rewrite module of the Apache Web server gives you the power to rewrite poorly formed URL s on the fly as well as manipulate the appearance or any file name you choose. There are tools available to simplify the complex parts.

Use mod_rewrite to easily and noninvasively restructure the URL to look like www.example.com/pets/dogs/fod.

Activate mod_rewrite by adding the text RewriteEngineOn to your Web root directory’s .htacess file. The mod_rewrite module is not present on all server, so be sure to contact your Web hosting administrator to make sure that it is installed or ask if an alternative solution is available.

Tip: Mod_rewrite can be very complex and difficult to use if you are not a skilled Web programmer. And excellent, free tool can be found at www.mod-rewrite-wizard.com. You also have the option to add any relevant keywords as a prefix or suffix.

Redirect Non-WWW Traffic to WWW

You may be amazed to learn that some search engines see the example.com and www.example.com variations of your domain name as two totally separate Web sites. This is called a www/non-www canonical issue because there is confusion as to which version is standard.

It is important to set up your server to redirect all traffic to one variation to prevent any confusion by the search engines.

Fortunately, you can easily address this problem by adding a small amount of code to your Web root directory’s .htaccess file to set up a 301 redirect from example.com to www.example.com or vice versa. A 301 redirect is also known as a permanent redirect.

301 redirects are the preferred method of redirection because Google attempts to pass all the ranking influences to the new destination.

Tip: You should always set up the 301 redirect discussed in this task, and you may be curious to see if you have a large canonical issue with your www/non-www domain entries.

To check, visit www.google.com and type site:newdomain.com into the search bar. Replace newdomain.com with your domain name.

Also take a note of the total number of pages indexed in the upper-right corner of the search results. Next, type site:www.newdomain.com into the search bar. If the results differ dramatically from the results of the previous query, you probably have a canonical issue.

Redirect with 301 Redirects

301 redirects provide you with the means to tell the search engines that not only have you moved your site, but you want all your rankings to move with it. This is a very important and often overlooked issue.

Unfortunately, search engines are not necessarily friendly when you make Web site changes. You can set up a 301 redirect to accomplish this task, and both search-engine spiders and Web browsers automatically redirect to the new location. For search-engine optimization purposes, this also preserves most if not all of your search-engine ranking factors.

If you want to move your entire Web site from one domain to another, a 301 redirect is your best bet to keep your current search-engine rankings.

Do not be alarmed if your redirect is not reflected immediately. Also, keep in mind that any changes you make to your Web site can negatively or positively influence your search-engine rankings.

Tip: Do not expect the search engines to understand your intentions. When you remove pages that are not longer necessary for your site, consider adding a 301 redirect for those pages back to your site’s home page. Otherwise, if you remove the pages and the search-engine spiders continue to crawl the missing pages, they may penalize your entire site despite the deletions being intentional.

If you own the .com, .net, .org, or other extension of your domain name, you can use 301 redirects to automatically force all .net and .org visitors to redirect to the .com extension or whatever extension you choose.  301 redirects can be used to automatically redirect any misspelled traffic to your actual domain name.

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Find Web hosting

If you are designing a mid-level or large-scale Web site and plan to sell products or services from your Web site, you want to carefully evaluate potential Web hosting companies.

Choose one that is up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 99.9% of the time. I know this sound obvious, but believe me it’s not. How many times have I come across clients that were telling me “I signed up with a hosting company one year ago and they don’t exist anymore, please help me find the right one.”

There are hosting review forums out there, one of them is WebHostingTalk and the other one is FindMyHosting.

Establish a Domain Name

Selecting a domain that relates directly to the theme of your Web site increases the likelihood that search engines such as Google and Yahoo will rank your Web site for related keywords. Choose a domain name that contains the keywords and phrases that your Web site is about, or choose a domain name that is brandable.

When choosing a domain name, try to include, if possible, one or two of the major keywords your Web site is trying to rank for.

Tip: Cybersquatting occurs when someone registers a variation of your current domain name.

At the same time you register your primary domain name you should also register that same domain with common domain and country extensions. At least you should register the .com, .net, and .org extensions, as well as .co.uk and any other country with which you may want to eventually conduct direct business.

Securing a good domain name is not easy. Domaining is a business where domain names are purchased, usually in bulk, and monetized.

You may consider purchasing that domain in the domain secondary market from a Web site such as www.sedo.com, which brokers single domain names for as little a s $10 to as much as $10million.

Optimize for Multiple Browsers

Unfortunately, each individual browser does not read HTML code in the same fashion. It is possible to design a Web site a certain way and view it in Internet Explorer only to find out later that it looks much different in Firefox. A simple way is to download a version of each browser and test your Web site in each.

Also, you want to be sure that your Web site is designed with different screen resolutions in mind. Test your Web site with your computer’s resolution set to 800*600 and 1024*768.

Tip: Anybrowser.com offers a variety of tools that help you make sure your site is compatible with multiple browsers.

Design a Sitemap

Although not strictly necessary, consider naming the sitemap either sitemap.html or sitemap.php. Sometimes no matter how well you design your internal linking structure, your visitors may have a hard time finding exactly what they are looking for.

XML-Sitemaps.com helps automate this process. You can generate sitemaps that can be submitted to search engines.

Create a Company Information Page

A company information page helps build trust with your viewers by providing company biographies, history, and even photos to explain who you are and where you come from.

Place a link for your company information section on the home page of your Web site. Label the link as About Us, Company Information, or something similar so that users can easily find it.

If you are selling a product, your consumers want to know who you are, where you come from, and why they should trust your business.

Also statistics have shown that your Web site’s company information or About Us page is likely to be one of the most clicked pages or your entire site by new visitors.

Including an actual address and phone number can help to provide a sense of confidence in your visitor, which is especially important if you run an e-commerce Web site.

Create a Privacy Policy page

You should create a privacy policy to ensure your users are aware of your information collecting policies. Many in the SEO community theorize that having a privacy policy page can help to show the search-engine algorithms that you are in fact a legitimate business.

The purpose of having a privacy policy is to prove to your visitors that you are committed to protecting the privacy of their personal information. Privacy policies are particularly important if you collect e-mail addresses or any other type of demographic information about your visitors.

Tip: The Direct Marketing Association offers a tool for creating privacy policies that is freely available to all Web site owners.

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Creating search-engine-optimized Web pages is the core effort of a successful Internet marketing campaign. Taking care of technical on-site factors such as file names, title tags, meta description tags, meta keyword tags, and meta robots tags is crucial to making sure the search-engine spiders can determine the relevance of your web site.

Optimization of images is important for those Web browsers that do not support images, and because search-engine spiders cannot read the content of an image, optimizing images presents an extra avenue to squeeze in more content.

Choose File Names

Using file names that are relevant to the content of you Web page is important for numerous reasons. The search-engine spiders see your file names before anything else.

Besides your domain name, the first thing search engines discover when spidering through the pages of your Web ste are your file names. Make sure your file names are relevant! Have a specific topic in mind. A good practice is naming each Web page after the main key phrase that the page is about.

Tip: Search engines specialists have stated that hyphens in URLs and Web page file names are viewed as spaced by the search-engine ranking algorithms. But an overuse of hyphens is considered to be a spamming technique and can result in a penalty. So try to limit hyphen usage to no more than three hyphens per file name. The search engines have begun to treat underscores similarly to hyphens, so limit this one as well. Also keep URL lengths as short as possible. A 30-character URL is far easier to remember than a 300-character URL.

Optimize Title Tags

The first thing a visitor sees when finding your page on the search-engine results is your title tag. Title tags should be descriptive of what your Web page is about and compel potential visitors to visit your site.

Also search engines use the text contained within the title tag as primary factor to determine what the content of a certain Web page is about.

Tip: Limit your title tag to 65 characters or less. Write concise statement summarizing the main point of your content. Be unique with each title tag and include keywords you want to rank for. Another hot tip is that the web page file name should relate very closely to the page title tag.

Optimize Meta Description Tags

Some search engine use the meta description tags in their result pages directly underneath the Web page titles.

Because this information is displayed in the search results you can use it as a method to deliver your marketing message and entice search-engine visitors to click on your listing versus clicking on your competition.

Make sure that all you pages have a unique meta description tag.

Whether Google uses meta description tags in its ranking algorithms is not know. I think you should still take advantage of search-engines spiders that do use the mega description tag in their ranking algorithms.

Tip: Try a free meta tag generator from SEOBook.com at http://tools.seobook.com/meta-medic.

Optimize Meta Keyword Tags

Although many search engines ignore this tag, some likely still use it in their ranking algorithms. For that reason I recommend you implement this tag on all your Web pages.

The mega keyword tag contains a list of keywords or phrases, separated by commas that describe the subject matter of a particular Web page.

For each page generate a short list of no more than ten keywords or phrases and include them in the meta keyword tag. Do not repeat keywords or phrases and be sure that each Web page on your site has a unique meta keyword tag.

Tip: Widexl.com offers an invaluable tool to help analyze meta tags. Keep your title, description, and keywords meta tags within the length requirements. The tool can also be used to analyze your competitors’ meta tags if you are curious to see what they have done differently.

Create a Meta Robots Tag

There are situations where the privacy of a particular Web page or Web site is of utmost concern. This is especially useful if certain sections of your Web site require payment to access. The last think you want is search engines sending visitors directly to those locations.

You can use the meta robots tag to tell a search-engine spider whether or not the Web page it visits should be indexed or if links on that page should be followed. These search-engine “robots” often need to be controlled.

Depending on your web hosting, you may or may not have the ability to create and add a robots.txt file.

Benefit with Header Tags

Emphasize your main topics and ideas. A well structured Web page has a logical hierarchal flow with headings and subheadings fortified with content.

You can use HTML header tags to apply significance to keywords or phrases within a web page. Header tags are arranged in preset levels of importance ranging from <h1>, the most important, to <h6>, the least important.

Header tags can be used anywhere within the <body> tag of an HTML document.

Using Text Modifiers

Emphasize appropriate keywords and phrases within your content. Your Web page content should speak to visitors, emphasizing words and phrases to express urgency or significance. You can emphasize certain blocks by bolding, italicizing, or underlining.

Optimize Images

Spiders still cannot read any images present on your pages. Using ALT Image tags to describe your images gives the search engines a readable text description of those images and also aids in compatibility with non-graphical Web browsers.

Do not repeat the same words over and over again, and never repeat the same Alt Image tag more than once unless the image itself is repeated.

Create Links

The structure of your links tells the search engines what the linked Web page is about. Your internal linking structure is taken into consideration by ranking algorithms that determine where your Web pages rank for target keywords and phrases.

Link creation may be a basic task, but if done correctly, it can be tremendously influential to your overall search-engine rankings.

Generally speaking, the higher a link appears on the page, the more it assists the rankings of the Web page it links to. Also, links embedded within blocks of content hold more value than isolated links. If possible, avoid using images to link to other pages or your Web site.

Validate HTML

Writing valid HTML is just as important as speaking proper English. Search engines read Web sites line by line, and errors in your HTML syntax can trigger a penalty if the invalid code prevents the search-engine spider from reading the content.

Optimize your Web pages by not having excess markup code surrounding your main page content. Although it has not been proven to increase search-engine rankings, writing valid HTML is another weapon in an arsenal of best-practice techniques that are likely to have a cumulative effect on overall search-engine approval.

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