Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

How to Get Googled

Q&A with Adam Sorensen, Co-Founder of LavaLinx.com

Most small business owners understand the importance of having a strong online presence. But increasingly, simply having a website is not enough; it must be easy to find on the vast World Wide Web through top search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN. That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play. We spoke with Adam Sorensen, an expert from LavaLinx.com about SEO for small business owners. He has shared some of his knowledge.

Q: What is so beneficial about SEO?

A: First off, SEO (search engine optimization) is about optimizing your web pages for specific keyword phrases and helping those pages rank well in the search engines like Google. Websites that can make it to the front page of a search engine (the top ten) get almost all the traffic, so you’ll want to get your web page into the top ten results if possible.

A few of the reasons SEO is beneficial are that:

1. It drives targeted traffic to your website
2. As opposed to PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising like Google Adwords, it has longevity. With PPC when you stop paying, your traffic stops too.
3. Searchers trust organic (or non-advertised) search results more than PPC sites because they know any company can pay their way to the top with PPC.
4. With the right strategy, you can obtain more than one listing in the top ten results.

Q: What does it mean to optimize for certain keywords?

A: It is important to understand that the single most important thing you can do before optimizing is to decide on the keyword phrases that you want to go after. You don’t want to spend a lot of time, effort and money on a keyword phrase that either drives little traffic or won’t produce the desired results.

Having said that, there are two ways to optimize your web page. The first way is to optimize the HTML and the content. You’ll want to include your keywords – in a conservative manner – in the your title, meta and header tags, as well as your file names and site map. It’s also a good idea to use your keyword phrases in the copy of your website.

The second thing you’ll want to do for your web page is actually the most important, which is getting backlinks for your web page. This means that you’ll want to have other websites link to your web page.

Q: Tell me more about backlinks

A: The algorithms of the major search engines put a lot of weight on links, and the search engines are programmed such that what other websites say about your site is more important than what you say about your site. So, you’ll want to have a good strategy for obtaining links. Here are a few ways:

1. Submit your site to respectable directories.
2. Submit articles or blogs to Digg, Reddit or other social sites.
3. Buy links. This is a viable solution, but can be expensive. Major search engines frown upon the practice, so if you do buy links don’t over do it.
4. Trading links with other sites.
5. Write articles and submit them to article submission sites like articledashboard.com
6. Write press releases and submit them to online PR sites.
7. Use an affiliate program that doesn’t use a redirect on the backlink. I would recommend using directtrack.com or fusionquest.com.

Q: Small business owners have limited resources. Is it really worth the time to optimize a site instead of pay for keywords?

A: If you have a website the obvious answer here is yes. Most people think nothing of laying down a few thousand for their website, but put no effort into marketing that site. They somehow believe that if they build it visitors will come. On the Internet, with potentially millions of competitors in your industry, you either market your site or plan on getting little, if any, traffic.

Q: Is there anything your clients should avoid doing?

A: Yes. Here a few things to avoid doing when it comes to SEO

1. Don’t do link trading unless you have a way of checking your backlinks. In my experience about 40% of link traders try and cheat on you in some way.
2. Don’t cheat on link trades.
3. Once your site is optimized for you keyword phrases don’t worry about tweaking and playing around with the content too much. Remember, the most important thing to do in SEO is to get backlinks.
4. Don’t spam your pages with your keywords.
5. Don’t trade links with just any site. You want to avoid porn, hate and questionable sites. It is best to have industry-related trades.
6. Don’t buy links from questionable sources.
7. Don’t try and create backlinks to yourself off of multiple sites on the same IP.

Q: What is the number one SEO myth?

A: There are a slew of SEO myths out there. I think the one that bothers me the most is this: Having content relevant to the chosen keywords on your site is THE most important factor in SEO. In other words, many people think content is king. Well, it isn’t.

If content really were king and you had ten sites that were all on the same subject, well written and optimized, how would the search engines determine which site was most relevant? One of those sites is going to have to be first and one of those sites is going to have to be tenth. Well, Google found an answer for this and that is off-site influences, specifically link popularity or backlinks - sites linking to your site. Each site linking to you is a “vote” for your site saying, “this site is about so and so.”

This off-site influence is so strong that sites can rank extremely well for terms that don’t even exist in the site’s copy. If you search “miserable failure” on Google the #1 site is Biography of President George Bush. But search the copy on the homepage you’ll find that the term “miserable failure” does not even exist on the page. If content is king how can a site rank #1 for a term that doesn’t even exist on the page? Isn’t this telling us that content really isn’t king and that link popularity is really the reigning power?

About the Author
Adam Sorensen is the co-founder of LavaLinx.com and Lavaball.com. He has six years of experience working in the SEM industry. He has worked for many large online companies including About.com. You can contact him at adam@lavalinx.com.

           

Posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Internet, Marketing, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.