You could spend the rest of your life reading detailed guides to SEO and meticulously cramming keywords into every possible tag on your website. You could also empty your bank account on marketing consultants or a crack marketing team that works day and night to raise your company’s search engine profile. For marketers and companies with limited time and resources, it’s critical to focus on the SEO strategies that bring in the best results.

Whether you’re designing your blog or hiring an expert to handle it for you, here are the key aspects of SEO that you need to focus on in order to get the most for your time and money.

Use the Google All in One SEO for WordPress
There aren’t any magic tricks you can do to make your site rise in the search rankings. Perhaps the closest you can come to magically raising your rankings is using WordPress and its plug ins. If you are using WordPress for your website or blog and you want a simple way to bump up the SEO of your website, a simple plug in is a great place to start. The Google All in One SEO plug in will make your site search-engine friendly and provide a simple interface for plugging in keywords and clear titles.

If you are a DIY marketer, this tool is a great place to start and a real time-saver. Some developers claim that Headspace2 has more features than the All in One plug in, and you can compare them in this chart.

Optimize Your Page Title’s SEO for Readers
Of course every guide to SEO is going to trumpet the importance of nailing the keywords for your page title and description, but there’s one critical angle that you don’t want to overlook. By using Google Instant’s auto fill for searches, you can learn what your potential readers are already searching for and which keywords go together in the most common searches.

In other words, you can use Google to tell you what people are already searching for and then refine your website’s title keywords accordingly. Learn more about how Google Instant works.

Use Long Tail Keywords for SEO on Your Web Page
While it’s critical to include the top keywords for your field, don’t overlook variations and less common keywords—the long tail of keyword traffic so to speak. By using a broader range of keywords you can improve your website’s copy for readers while ensuring that you fill up your h2 and h3 headings throughout your pages with a wide range of relevant terms that will reach the broadest segment of readers.

In fact, too much keyword repetition could hurt your page rankings as Google’s search capabilities have grown wise to keyword stuffing techniques. Don’t spend your time on the increasingly insignificant meta keyword tags for your site. Google and Bing don’t even bother with them. Even ‘alt tags’ for your images are believed to have a minor impact on your search rankings. Nail the title and subtitle keywords and write a diverse keyword article full of information that readers need. If you nail the content, you’ll get inbound links.

Focus on Generating Meaningful Inbound Links for SEO
Another key to the SEO game is making sure you have meaningful inbound links from sites with high authority. It’s far more important to have links from twenty experts and leading trade sites than to enter your information in a hundred no-name directories. The relationships you build with top notch bloggers and the articles shared on top websites will give your SEO a significant boost.

Take Stock of What You Can Do
If you can’t do everything the SEO experts suggest, review this list  that ranks the top SEO practices according to a grading system that indicates their importance. SEO is too important to ignore, but every business operating within the constraints of a budget and time and space—which hopefully includes all of us—will need to prioritize what will work and what produces the best results. In fact, if you aren’t already, make sure you track the effectiveness of your SEO regularly.

Optimizing your website for search engines takes time and planning, but by cultivating several practices you’ll get better at integrating keywords in the places where they matter and producing content that readers are looking for online.

This guest post is written by marketing enthusiast, Lior Levine, who works for a variety of MA In Israel programs, particularly the MA in political science  department at the Tel Aviv University.

I almost didn’t write this post because I didn’t want to sound snarky post-holidays. I finally decided to write it because I think that some small business owners may be receiving some bad advice related to leaving comments to build SEO. Worse yet, some may be paying people to do this for them.

I’ve noticed, both on my blog and some of my customers’ blogs, a rise in the number of comments left on posts that appear to be made solely for the purpose of providing a link back to the commenter’s Web site. Of course, I can only assume the intent, but since these comments tend to be very generic, unrelated to the topic of the post, and do nothing to add to the conversation, I think it’s a pretty good guess.

When talking to folks about what makes sense in social media (I include blogging in social media) I always go back to the idea that what we are talking about is conversations. Conversations that take place online. In this context, I think of the type of comments described above as “look at me” comments. It’s as if you are talking to a group of people at your local chamber event and I walked up and interrupted by yelling “hey, look at me.”  People may remember me from the event, but I wasn’t networking, was I?

It’s not only that this is bad form, it’s worse. If  the only reason you are leaving comments is to get a link back to your site, then you are wasting your time. If you – as a business owner – are spending marketing dollars to do this for your company, go ahead and send me the money, I will see that it is properly shredded.

Here’s why. I don’t know what the market share numbers are, but I think it’s a pretty safe bet to say a majority of today’s blogs are built using either WordPress, TypePad, or Blogger. WordPress and Blogger automatically flag the URL in your comment as “Nofollow”.  Nofollow tells the search engine spider not to follow the link, so it might as well not be there.

TypePad uses javascript to display your comments and thereby hides them from the search engines. If you view the source of a page where you have left a comment on a TypePad blog, you won’t find your comment or your URL in the page html. So again, no Google juice for you.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that people should stop leaving comments on blogs. What I am saying is if you are leaving comments for the sole purpose of creating a link back to your Web site, then you are wasting your time.

Being part of the conversation and contributing in a meaningful way will get you noticed. Think back again to the local chamber event example. Let’s pretend I was a CPA and I walked up on your group while you were discussing a tax issue. If I listened, asked questions, and pointed out issues that you need to be aware of, you would probably think I “knew my stuff” and may seek me out to help you with future needs. The same is true with online conversations. If I see you contributing to the conversation in a meaningful way, I am likely to want to learn more about you.

Bill Brelsford is the owner of Rebar Business Builders. As an Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach, Bill works with professional service firms and independent professionals who want to spend less time chasing business and more time serving profitable customers.
phone: 913.962.9261
email: bill@rebarbusinessbuilders.com
web: http://www.RebarBusinessBuilders.com
blog: http://blog.rebarbusinessbuilders.com

I’ve posted here recently–several times–on how important web search is for startups and growing businesses. Today I found one interesting new site and received a recommendation for another longstanding good site to follow in this area.

Thanks to Josh Cochrane of bplans.com for these tips:

The SEO consultants at SEOmoz have a couple of catchy recurring series of posts on their blogs. One is “Headsmacking Tips,” which covers basic techniques or easy wins that often get overlooked. Sort of a “back-to-fundamentals” message. Here’s an example: Vertical content can earn you links.

The other is “Whiteboard Fridays,” a weekly video post series (similar to your new Bplans.com content) where the company founder explains a topic on video using simple whiteboard. Again, I just like the catchy title. An example: How to get awesome links

Meanwhile, thanks to somebody recommending it on Twitter, I just discovered an almost brand-new blog called Rank and ROI Web Marketing. There are only a handful of posts, but the first two I saw were very good. That would be:

• Small business owner’s guide to Google backlinks and
• Online Local Business Listings for Small Business

I’ve had a couple of posts in the last week or so about the importance of SEO, and particularly Google and rankings on Google. So it seems like a good idea to point out this one on Small Business Trends: SEO–Just Snake Oil?

Blogger Janet Meiners Thaeler does a very good job following up on PC Magazine long-time guru/crank columnist John Dvorak, who posted that snake oil question in a recent column:

Dvorak says changing URLs for SEO is worthless because he tried it on his blog and his web traffic went DOWN. So do website addresses or URL structures matter? Yes–especially when you start out. Rather than having a long URL with no keywords, it’s ideal to have keywords included in the URL. It’s usually best to keep URLs as short as possible.

Janet does a great job tracking Dvorak’s problems and the response from search engine experts who disagree. I really like her conclusion:

Most of all realize that SEO isn’t snake oil, but it’s not a silver bullet either. It takes time–especially if your keywords are competitive or your competitors more entrenched. I’m always worried by clients who sign up and then cancel two months later because they haven’t seen mind-blowing results.

Search engines do not produce instant results. Pay-per-click or sponsored results in a search engine can have an almost immediate effect, but these can be expensive and, depending on the terms you use, very costly. With SEO, you make changes and those changes could take months to be updated in search results. Always remember that while good SEO will give you the best chances, it can’t “guarantee” top rankings, but with a good strategy and diligence it will definitely make a positive difference.

If you’re starting or running a small business, particularly a high-tech small business, web-related, and you don’t know this pretty well, I suggest you click and read The Importance of Google PageRank: A Guide For Small Business Executives on HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog.

This strikes me as a quick and easy summary, going through the fundamentals very well.

Quick recap: Organic search is like free advertising. It’s worth the investment to try and get a high ranking by the major search engines. To rank high you should do two things: First, make sure your site has the right relevant content for the types of searches your potential clients are conducting. Second, try to get the highest PageRank possible. To do this, you need to get as many inbound links from as many high PageRank web pages as possible.

I think it’s important to understand the world of Internet search as defined by Google. In The Elephant in the Room on his blog, Coding Horror, Jeff Atwood lays it out clearly.

Yes, I like Google. Yes, Google works great and has been my homepage for about eight years now. Google nailed search, and they deserve the leadership position they’ve earned. But where’s the healthy competition? Where’s the incentive for Google to improve? All I see is a large and growing monoculture that acts as the start page for the Internet.

I’m a little surprised all the people who were so up in arms about the Microsoft “monopoly” ten years ago aren’t out in the streets today lighting torches and sharpening their pitchforks to go after Google. Does the fact that Google’s products are mostly free and ad-supported somehow exempt it from the same scrutiny? Isn’t anyone else concerned that Google, even with the best of “don’t be evil” intentions, has become more master than servant?

Calling the current state of search engine competition a horse race is an insult to horse races. No, what we have here is a one horse race where all the other horses were shipped off to glue factories years ago. Forget “search conference”, you should be throwing a “Google conference”, because there’s no difference.

By the way, if you’re involved in actual software development, Jeff’s Coding Horror is a great read. Well written, knowledgeable, and, often, fun.

How many questions do you have during the typical day? I get lots of them. Sometimes I get so many in a day I have to hide in one of the conference rooms just to get a little work done. Let me give you a few I got yesterday.

Do you know of a good place to stay in NYC for not too much money?
How do you spell Wachovia? Is it a bank or credit union?
What’s coming to the (local concert venue’s) next month?
Where should we go for lunch, is there anything new in town?
Do you know the address of that insurance company we’re going to?

To each of these questions, I can answer each with two little words. “Google it”.

Google is now (officially?) a verb. To use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Web. Information you, as a business, put there. Rich with SEO keywords, good clean copy writing, easily navigated website. People are using Google at a rate that makes the head boggle. According to ComScore, people used Google search 11,748,000,000 times in the month of August. That’s a lot of people looking for a lot of things.

If you were one of the lucky ones, a few of those search destinations were to your website. If they didn’t… why not?

Today, more than ever, it’s important that you understand what good SEO can do for your search traffic. It’s important to educate yourself in what you can do to bump up your visibility on the internet and search engines.

Don’t know where to start in the big confusing world of SEO information?

Try starting here.  www.websitegrader.com
Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

Here’s hoping a large fraction of the next 11 billion search hits will soon be landing on your virtual doorstep.

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software

Damn. I just got off the phone with a good friend who got taken by a dishonest search engine consultant. He’s trying to sell his own books. He’s getting into the blog thing, and–I wish he’d asked me–ended up spending several thousand dollars for just about nothing.

What’s really tough is that if you’re going to do a do-it-yourself business, one of the 21 million onesey-twosey businesses in the United States, you just can’t get around the need for an Internet presence.

Dealing as I do with startups and more startups, it seems to be pretty much unavoidable these days: You really shouldn’t be seriously looking at starting a business without understanding the basics of search engine placement, buying keywords (Google AdWords and its competitors) and basic analytics.

True, there are still some businesses outside the influence of the Web, but fewer every day. Even the most standard brick-and-mortar businesses, such as dry cleaners, restaurants, plumbers and whatever, depend more every day on Web searches. The Yellow Pages are no longer enough.

Here are a few good buzzwords to know: SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” People buy keywords and keyword searches. Google AdWords and Google Analytics are the giants, but they have competition.

An honest consultant would be a good thing and, of course, there are lots of them. I’ve known a lot more honest ones than dirtballs. Unfortunately, though, it’s hard to tell when you’re on the outside looking in.

I’d recommend starting, at the very least, with doing some homework yourself. I just did a search for Google Analytics Tutorial and got a lot of interesting results. And then I did a search on Google AdWords Tutorial and got some interesting results there as well (looks like you should start with the Google offerings for sure).

Then I went and searched Amazon.com books for “google adwords” and “google analytics” and got some attractive hits.

The point is, this is your business. Spend some time. There’s a lot of help for free on the Web; and a few good books, for $10 to $20 each, is a much better investment than struggling with this.