Need Some
DIYSEO To Advance Your Business?
DIYSEO
Tips
Not every business needs to hire a professional SEO firm to
provide basic search engine optimization services. In fact,
most businesses who operate a website can complete the
majority of the necessary search services themselves. We call
it DIYSEO (do-it-yourself-search-engine-optimization). Before
you waste thousands on the latest SEO scam, try to implement a
few of the basic, free tips below and watch what happens to your Page
Rank.
While some SEO efforts should be left up to a professional
(like your website company or a qualified and trusted third
party), there are many safe elements you can add yourself (or
ask your website provider to add) that can aid your overall
search engine efforts, and make your site more visible to
search engine spiders and bots. These include:
Fresh
Content
It
appears Google and Yahoo like to rank sites that have updated
information above those that seem a bit stale. This doesn’t
mean you should change the look and feel of your site, though
it does mean should have someone in your organization adding
pages, updating content and keeping up with your specials on a
regular basis.
Inventory
Automotive
dealer websites built in the conceptual model of the web and
with inventory (vehicle data and photos) provided by their
website company (that is, not framed in) can have hundreds of
pages of content indexed by the search engines. Whether you
sell cars or books, it's important to make sure your inventory
pages are readable by the search engines.
Ask your website
provider to show you how these are being counted by search
engines, because the more pages you have, the more chances you
have to tell the search engines all about you (via good
content) and the higher your potential rank on Google.
To
check how many pages your site has indexed by Google do
what’s called a “site colon” search. Simply type
“site:YourWebsite.com” into Google (no spaces and you
don’t need the “www”), and Google will show you all the
pages they count in your favor. (By the way, replace the
“YourWebsite.com” with your actual domain name when
entering this information.)
Well-architected
sites will find they have more pages indexed when conducting a
site colon search.
In
addition to making sure your website company actually hosts
your entire inventory, it’s important to provide robust
comments about each unit on the details pages. This allows you
to properly merchandise your inventory and give the search
engines another reason to find your site. Here’s an example
of a good vehicle description on an automotive dealer
inventory page:
“This
one owner, 2004 Ford
Taurus has low miles and is one of the cleanest pre-owned
cars you’ll find in the
Dallas
area. It comes fully loaded with leather seats, navigation and
power everything. It won’t last long. Whether you’re
looking for new Ford cars, trucks or vans;
or you’re in the market for a great used
car in the Metroplex,
come to XYZ Motors of Plano,
TX to test drive this great 2004
Ford Taurus.”
(The
bolded content will
help your search engine ranking with those specific terms.)
Inbound
links
Links
from other sites to yours are called “inbound” or
“back” links. In general, the more sites you have linking
to your site, the greater your popularity and the higher your
ranking on major search engines.
If
six links are good, then 6,000 must be great, right? Wrong.
Google and Yahoo are pretty smart. Not only do they reward you
when you have good, solid, popular links to your site, but
they also punish you if they find you are participating in
“link farms.”
Link
farms are websites that promise to increase your search engine
ranking if you’ll agree to trade links with them. (They
would like you to link to them and they will link to you, in
exchange.) Not all link farms trade links, some merely want
you to trade a few hundred of your dollars for a few hundred
of their inbound links.
Don’t
be tempted. While it’s not clear that Google or Yahoo will
ban you for participating in link farms, it is clear that
they can simply stop counting your inbound links completely.
(This means that any good links you had won’t help your
popularity or organic ranking.)
Instead
of resorting to short cuts, you can help your SEO efforts by
legitimately building some good inbound links. Be sure you
have links from all of the following (where available):
Hub
pages
Sister
stores
Trade
associations
Chambers
of commerce
Your
OEM or Franchisor (where available)
Website
provider
Vendors
Your
local newspaper or other media
Search
engine friendly text
Content
is king. Saying relevant things about your business is
critical for your site. Be certain that what you say (the
text) contains the words and phrases for which you want to
rank highly on Google and Yahoo.
If
your company has been awarded numerous franchisor quality and
service awards – congratulations – though be careful about
using up all the available real estate on your homepage to
inform the public about this. Consumers don’t search for
“president’s award winner.”
All
text on a well-constructed website can be indexed by search
engine spiders – make certain your content contains the key
search terms your customers are using on Google.
Consumers
do not type “best in class service” into Google when
looking for what you provide. Put this information in a small
area with a link to the award specifics. Additionally, place
this information on your About Us pages and save the bulk of
your pages for search engine friendly text.
Don't
forget to avoid
using industry terms whenever possible. Instead, try to
include words and phrases that consumers are most likely to
use when searching on Google. A few quick examples:
Used
Cars v Pre-Owned Vehicles
New
Hondas (or whatever you sell) v New Inventory
Repair
v Service (where it makes sense)
Honda
Parts (or whatever you sell) v Parts Department
Damage
Estimate v Service Request
Body
Shop v Collision
Center
Homes
For Sale v Real Estate
Lawn
Mowing v Landscape Maintenance
About
Us
Here’s
where you want to brag about that award you won or how long
you’ve been in business. Make certain to include lots of
search engine friendly text when you describe your business.
The bold words
below would probably be considered key search terms:
“XYZ
Motors has been selling new
cars and used cars in
the
Dallas
and
Fort Worth
areas for more
than 30 years. XYZ Motors began selling Chevrolet,
Buick and Cadillac in 1976 at our original location in
Irving
,
Texas
. We quickly grew to be one of the largest Chevy
dealers in the DFW
Metroplex…”
Keywords
you should consider when writing any text on any page on your
site include:
Any
brands (new or used) you sell or repair
Cities,
counties and surrounding areas (if your business is
local instead of virtual)
Special
metropolitan-area names common to your area (e.g., Chicagoland,
Metroplex, DFW,
Quad
Cities
, Inland Empire,
Twin
Cities
, Tri-County, etc.)
Be
certain to include keywords for everything you offer, though
be careful to write these in sentences and not simply lists
(consumers will occasionally read these pages and you don't
want them to get turned off because your words make no sense).
Staff
and department pages
Often
overlooked, but frequently the best sources of search engine
friendly text are the dreaded staff and department pages.
(Dreaded and overlooked because no one has time to mess with
these.) Don’t demean your managers with populating these
pages, give this duty to a clerk.
You
want content-rich staff pages filled with photographs and
first-person biographies. Though just because they’re
biographical, doesn’t mean they have to be boring. Here are
some examples you might consider including on your site (with
possible search terms bolded to show you how easy it is to pepper your site with
keywords):
Sample
Sales Bio:
…I
went to high school in nearby
Allen, TX
and moved to Dallas
after I got married…
…I
joined XYZ Motors in of Richardson,
TX
in 1991 as a Lot
Porter. The job of a Lot Porter, in case you didn’t know, is
to wash and detail all the used cars
inside and out before we move them to the used
car lot….
….
I was promoted to the sales floor in 1995
as a new Ford car
and truck salesman.
Back then we sold a lot of new
Ford Mustangs and Ford
F-150s. Our hottest new car, believe it or not, was the 1995
Ford Taurus. In fact, it was Motor
Trend’s car of the year in 1995
and 1996…
Sample
Service Bio:
…
While I was born in
Fort Worth
, I grew up in
McKinney
and went to high school in
Dallas
. After high school I attended a technical school for 3 years
where I learned everything from basic engineering to auto
repair. I’ve been with XYZ for 5 years and have been
able to use what I learned in school to help redesign our auto
service department and streamline our processes for
everything from basic oil
changes to transmission jobs to major brake
repairs…
…
originally, I just completed tune
ups on Dodge
and Chrysler cars and trucks,
but I’ve now been trained to repair engines for almost all
American makes, including Ford
cars and trucks,
Chevy and other GM cars
and trucks…
Sitemap
Providing
a relevant sitemap on every page of your website that is
loaded with keyword text and links will give the spiders an
easy way to index more of your website. Your website provider
can help you create this.
Specials
pages
Specials
pages, especially those that link from your homepage, give you
a great place to load up on relevant terms, and are an
excellent way to update content on your site as you change the
specials from week to week.
Be
sure that any SKU on your specials pages has links back to the
inventory detail for that inventory unit.
Avoid
dropping an image of your print ad as your special –
remember, search engine spiders cannot read images.
All
specials
should be descriptive and include typical terms consumers use
when searching for specific items online. Additionally, a
sentence that explains the wide assortment of units you offer
will help your search engine visibility for these items.
(e.g., Compare our prices on alternators, carburetors, spark
plugs, motor oil and brake pads – we won’t be beat.)
Alt
tags
Because
search engine spiders cannot read graphics, it’s important that your
website provider place alt tags on every image and graphic on
your site.
An
alt tag is simply that little box of text that appears when
you hover your cursor over an image.
Your
alt tags should be loaded with keywords and search terms you
want to target. For example, if you have an image of a 2007
MINI Cooper on your site, the alt tag should read something
like “2007 MINI Cooper in
Dallas
,
Texas
” – the key search terms that can identify you as someone
selling MINIs in
Dallas
.
Page
titles
As
of this writing, search engines still seem to love page titles
(sometimes called title tags). Page titles are the white text
you see in the blue bar at the top of a web page.
Good
page title: XYZ Motors – Dallas Honda dealer selling new
Honda cars and used cars, Honda service and Honda parts in
Dallas
and
Fort Worth
Bad
page title: WelcomeToXYZMotors
There
are two primary reasons the second title tag is ineffective:
1) it doesn’t say anything the search engines care about;
and 2) there are no spaces between the words that would allow
the search engines to recognize key terms. (Quick hint: Search
engines seem to only care about the first 5-7 words of a page
title, so these are the most important.
SEO
