Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

It takes a huge effort to market a site properly and there are many factors involved so there is, unfortunately, no magic bullet. No quick, easy, cheap inexpensive solution to this issue. Every site on the planet would do well if it was easy.

I remember a real estate agent who once proposed a theory that you "either pay or you drive". The same is true to web marketing. You either learn to do everything yourself and make a lot of mistakes along the way (and you are willing and able to suffer through the cost and the time resulting from those mistakes) or you pay someone to help you.

With that said I will state that if the site is relatively clean then I would probably create nice page titles and implement a link building campaign. I am making an assumption here but, given your lack of programming skills I suspect that the site is fairly indexable (IE no javascript, flash, etc) and it is pure html.

Avoid link farms and don't bother with reciprocal linking. There is a lot you can do wrong in link-building so be careful. I prefer not to go into detail.

I would also create a sitemap.

This is the tip of the iceberg but if I had to pick three things at the expense of all others that is the direction I would go in (again, this assumes reasonably clean code).

Regards,

Greg

There is a Search Engines High Archery and you only need to submit your site one time.

I would start at:
https://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/
https://www.alltheweb.com/help/webmaster/submit_site

Since you are using Dreamweaver you should check your links site wide and run all the reports. Check for any problems before submission. Use meta and don't abuse. I have a chart that might help you. You can email me at: ElaineAtWork@wi.rr.com for more info.
Good luck!

Hi Dave,

Greg gave you some good advice.

My two cents as quick and generalized advice:

1. Add sitemap, FAQ section (you can ask and answer your own questions with keywords/phrases), company news. Place all in top right of your page.

2. send many press releases to the wire services with your keywords/phrases in the copy and links back to different sections of your site.

3. use the Google’s free tools, including – google’s site search on your competitors sites to gain quick information and keywords

example: site:www.marketingprofs.com

Hope this helps,

Steve

Dave,

Everyone has great points here. Kudos everyone for great points!

I'd like to add here that if you're a B2B site, you're on the right track optimizing for Google first. However, the number one thing that gets you ranked higher in Google is third party links -- links from other websites that point to yours. Greg mentioned that you should not use reciprocal or paid, and for the most part, that's correct. Only exchange links with specific company partners, and always make sure that when your company partners share links with you that you make sure that your links on their site are text -- not just a logo.

Additionally, make sure that the "anchor text" (typically the underlined text in a link) of your links contain the keyword(s) your are trying to optimize for. This is the "holy grail" of Google. For example, do a search on Google on the term "waffles" and you'll find John Kerry's website is listed #1 in natural results -- above Eggo Waffles! This happens because Kerry's website has more third party links with the word "waffles" in the anchor text that point to his site than does Eggo.

Does this really work? Here's a case study for you. I had a client recently who wanted to rank highly for the term "high tech PR". This client did not implement our content changes yet because they were undergoing a redesign. HOWEVER, by just building links for this term, this client went from not being ranked in the top 100 in Google for this term to being ranked #8 -- in less than 30 DAYS. It's amazing, but true, and we see it every day with our clients.

So give that a try... focus on free, one-way links if you can. There are lots of good places to get links out there -- link directories and such. Good luck and happy optimizing!

It's true the only way to rank your page higher on google is when there are more sites linking to your page.

There are a couple of cheap "tricks" to get your page higher but there it's not easy nor is it fast. Getting it on top takes up time. (It took my site about a month before getting to the top 10 on google)

Suggestions:

1. Here's on site that helped my quite a lot: https://www.webnet77.com/webstuff/tips.html#fav

2. Another thing that really helped my was press releases. There are quite a number of sites offering submission of press releases. Just type "submit free press release" on google and you'll see some pretty nice collection. Just becareful where you submit, some might actually spam your inbox if when you submit your e-mail.

3. People frequent sites that they find most useful. So I suggest target your market very carefully and you'll find them coming back to you. (Which will also help in the ranking)

All the best!

Samuel

Here are some additional links that will might you:
https://websitehelpers.com/seo/
https://www.articleunderground.com/webmaster/keyword-density-tool.html
https://www.alexa.com/
https://webmasters24.com/
https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
https://www.internetmarketingsecrets.com/articles/robots.html
https://www.ianfalcone.com/
https://forums.site-reference.com/
https://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=29711
https://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=29307
And yes, definitely a site map!

Hi Dave,

Yes, pure HTML is a good thing. SEs are text readers. They have a hard time with Javascript, flash, and etc. They are getting better but...

An ideal site (from an SE standpoint - not a user's) is html with CSS. You can eliminate all of the repetive formatting tags with CSS. But don't worry about it. You are already well ahead of the game by having simple code. Validation can be helpful though.

The key is to first have a good user experience. Then worry about the SEs. If the site is interesting to visitors the SEs will follow.

You are looking for inbound text links. Links pointing to your site (without reciprocating).

Here is a simplified format:

My Keyword Term Find hudreds of great "my
keyword term" at https://www.mysite.com

If there is a no-follow the link has no value IE:
My Keyword Term Find hudreds of great "my
keyword term" at https://www.mysite.com

I hope this helps.

-Greg