Search Engine Marketing Guide for the Small Business

Search Engine Marketing Guide for the Small Business

By Charles Pascal

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my special thanks to ABCO Technology and Arif Sayed who serves as the school’s director for his help in allowing me to teach classes for 15 years. Arif assisted me in researching this book and providing the encouragement, which is needed to finish this project. In addition I would like to thank Fatima Diaz who provided valuable feedback while researching this book. I would also like to thank 1,000 students who have enrolled in my classes at ABCO Technology over the years and gave me many insights about Internet Search behavior.

I want to also express my appreciation to my close friend, Lolita Smith who contributed her experience as a web developer to this book.

My special thanks to my loving wife, Heidi Pascal who encouraged me and provided the strongest moral support while writing this book.

Preface

In the field of dreams a voice whispered if you build it, they will come. This statement was true for a baseball field however; the rule doesn’t apply to a website. Several studies have concluded that 80% of listed websites are web invisible to search engines. When a website is improperly marked up for the major search engines, valuable customers who are looking for that website will not be able to find it.

The purpose for writing this book is to act as a marketing guide for businesses and organizations large and small to ensure their services are visible to the public. The craft of search engine optimization is continually discussed on countless websites over the Internet. Each website will reveal some strategies to improve website rankings. Unfortunately the list of strategies are scattered and as a result readers leave these discussion sites somewhat confused regarding the steps to take to improve their search engine position. In this book I have listed two complete search engine check lists for small and large websites. Even if you do not read all of the chapters you will have a solid checklist of tasks to perform, which will improve your websites search engine position. This book will instruct you about navigating through search engine algorithms give you a large list of free search engine key word and link building analysis tools and offer tutorials, which will teach you how to obtain the greatest benefit from the use of these tools.

Copyright Charles Pascal 2015

The Search Engine marketing guide took two years to complete. This book puts together all of the material in one place, which will give you a large head start toward improving your website’s search engine position. I look forward to visiting all of your pages on the first page of Google or Bing.

By reading through the chapters in this book the information will help you to optimize your webpages so your customers will find you. The Internet is filled with websites, which are not properly indexed by search engines. After studying these chapters you will be able to join the group of websites who enjoy a solid search engine ranking for the key words of your choice.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

CHAPTER 2: HOW SEARCH ENGINES LEARN THROUGH USER BEHAVIOR

CHAPTER 3: SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION LEARN TO ISSUE COMMANDS TO ROBOTS

CHAPTER 4: THE MYTH ABOUT KEY WORDS & WEBSITE TAGS

CHAPTER 5: DESIGNING YOUR WEBPAGES TO COVER THREE TYPES OF INTERNET SEARCHES

CHAPTER 6: NINE HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE FREE KEY WORD TOOLS

CHAPTER 7: CREATING VIRAL CONTENT

CHAPTER 8: OPTIMIZING YOUR IMAGES FOR SEARCH ENGINES

CHAPTER 9: TEN ADDITIONAL STRATEGIES FOR GENERATING IDEAS FOR CREATING CONTENT

CHAPTER 10: 130 TIME TESTED LINK BUILDING STRATEGIES

CHAPTER 11: DISCUSSION AND TUTORIALS OF LINK BUILDING TOOLS AND RESOURCES

CHAPTER 12: INFLUENCE OF LOCAL SEARCH

CHAPTER 13: EXPLANATION OF GOOGLE’S LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING GUIDELINES

CHAPTER 14: REPUTATION MANAGEMENT, A COMPANION TO LOCAL SEARCH

CHAPTER 15: THE PANDA ALGORITHM EXPLAINED

CHAPTER 16: GOOGLE’S PENGUIN UPDATE ANALYZED

CHAPTER 17: THE HUMMING BIRD UPDATE

CHAPTER 18: GOOGLE PIGEON, THE LOCAL SEARCH ALGORITHM EXPLAINED

CHAPTER 19: GOOGLE’S PIRATE UPDATE - HOW IT WORKS

CHAPTER 20: MOBILEGEDDON, GOOGLE’S UPDATE FOR MOBILE WEBSITES

CHAPTER 21: OPTIMIZING YOUR .PDF FILES

CHAPTER 22: USING GOOGLE PRODUCT FEED FOR YOUR ECOMMERCE WEBSITE

CHAPTER 23: INDEXING YOU’RE BLOG, A KEY CONTENT SOURCE FOR SEARCH ENGINES

CHAPTER 24: OPTIMIZING YOUTUBE VIDEOS

CHAPTER 25: RECOVERING FROM A GOOGLE OR BING SEARCH ENGINE RANKING DROP

CHAPTER 26: WHO ARE THE SEO DATA PROVIDERS?

CHAPTER 27: SEO CHECKLIST FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED WEBSITES

CHAPTER 28: SEO CHECK LIST FOR LARGE WEBSITES

CHAPTER 29: SPECIAL SEARCH ENGINE COMMANDS

CHAPTER 30: GOOGLE CATEGORIES ARE POWERFUL KEY WORDS

CHAPTER 31: SEARCH CONSOLE

CHAPTER 32: INDEX

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

In this chapter we will introduce you to search engine goals, show you how to read your website’s source code, discuss Fetch as Google Bot and discuss verification of ownership for your website.

If you own a small company that has a product, service or cause, which you want to promote online, a search engine, will be your biggest advocate. Most web developers consider search engine promotion to be very expensive or in many cases a small part of your website’s online development. As a result, over 90% of Internet websites listed will be invisible to the customers who may need your services.

This book is designed for the small business owner who wants to use search engines to expose their business directly to the online community who is looking for what they have to offer. If your website is not designed correctly for the major search engines, your company could be web invisible to those people who are looking for what you have to offer. We will show you how search engines function and how you the small business owner will be able to use the vast numbers of free tools to promote your company. After reading this book you will be able to promote your own site or help your web developer promote your product, service or cause. If you have a do it yourself website the strategies in this book will ensure that you will be able to help your potential customers find what you have to offer.

The first step is to think of a search engine as your electronic librarian. Librarians index their books through the Dewey Decimal system. The Dewey Decimal system classified books to conform to a relevance code. Search engines employ their own relevance code using specialized programs to create search results based upon what users are attempting to find. Search engine programs are developed by user behavior, which is constantly changing. In order to index websites and Webpages for their users search engines have created a flexible model, which reacts to changing user trends. The job of a search engine is to find and index Webpages, which will appear relevant to a potential customer who is searching for what you have to offer.

Search engines accomplish this job through the use of programs known as spiders, crawlers or robots. These search engine programs continuously crawl or search the web looking for new websites to index or add to their library of links and webpages. If you know how to communicate directly with these spiders or robots, your website will enjoy a higher ranking.

Google and Bing want you to know how their spiders are indexing your webpages. Each website has a fetching tool, which will show you how the search engine sees your website. Google has Fetch as Google Bot and Bing has Fetch as Bing Bot. These website monitoring tools are found under webmaster tools for each search engine. The Fetch as tools will not allow you to view a competitor’s website. Google and Bing strongly encourage all website owners to use these tools to help them improve your search results. This book will teach you all of the steps, which either you or your web developer can implement to improve your website’s search engine results. The best way to accomplish search engine relevancy is to ensure your website has a consistent message, which is broadcast across all of your pages or domains. Consistency equals relevancy. If your business isn’t considered relevant for a search query, it will not be indexed by a search engine for that particular query. When a website is relevant the website’s key words match the website’s content. Creating a search relevant or key phrase webpage is highly rewarded by obtaining page one ranking for your search terms by the major search engines. The reason is simple; relevancy is the business model search engines use to make money. A business makes money by giving their customers what they want. If users can’t find what they need, they will simply try another search engine. Google understands this user behavior quite well and will design their programs to ensure users get the relevant pages they are looking for. As a small business making your webpages relevant is the key to achieving success on the major search engines. The word relevancy is further defined as giving search engine customers what they want. Spend time studying your website and ask yourself this question. Does my website provide the information my users are looking for? Ask your friends, relatives and customers to answer this question for you. It is important to remember any small business who can give the public what they want will be in business for a long time. The ultimate search engine strategy is to position your Webpages so that someone who doesn’t know about your business will be able to find it.

If you are not a web developer, it is important to understand that all web pages contain two basic levels. The first level of any website is what the general public will see when they click on your business. In this portion of your website you will insert your business name, what it does, the benefits of your product and how your customers can find you. In addition you will tell the public your hours of operation and the methods of payment you will accept. This information should be written using HTML (5) code.

In the private section of your website known as the source code, you will provide instructions for search engine spiders or robots concerning how you want those robots to index your pages. These instructions tell the spiders the key word phrases you want your webpage to be indexed under, the categories your business fits and ensure that all browsers can view clearly what you have to offer. The way your web pages are displayed is accomplished through coding your pages in a website code known as HTML (5). There are other methods of coding webpages, but using HTML (5) will provide you the best foundation for moving ahead with your search engine campaign.

Don’t be afraid of your website’s source code because understanding a small part of this file will change your online business life. If you make a mistake with the source code, it can be reversed with just a couple of key strokes. If you are an average user, the chances of you viewing your web sites source code are very small. Most people think of the source code as a tool reserved for web developers or other professionals in the webmaster field.

It is possible to view the source code of any web page that is online. If you are using Internet Explorer, Firefox or Google Chrome, start by clicking on the home page of either your own site or your competitor’s webpages. Then hold down the control key and hit the letter U at the same time. If you are using an Apple computer, right click on your competition’s webpage and click on view source, which is found in the start menu. The source code will appear over the web page you are viewing in a notepad file. The source code can be saved and copied. The reason for viewing your competitor’s source code is to learn how their pages were coded. This document will provide some excellent ideas, which you can use in the coding of your site. This file will appear to be complex when you first view this file. If you look closely at the title, Meta description and robots tags, which can be found in the head section located at the top of the source code page, you will see the programming instructions are written in plain English. You simply need to understand five lines of this source code to cause it to increase your business exposure.

Near the top of the source code page you will observe a set of tags. The first tag for your business’s success is known as the Title tag. It will look something like this.

Many businesses will make the big Mistake of inserting their company name into this important title tag believing that all search engines view the source code in the same way as the general public. The source code should list what your business does and not the business name so your website can be indexed for the service to the public your business performs. When your new customers are looking for something they want, the chances are very high that they are looking for a particular service. Search engines connect with your service by what your business does if you follow the correct steps. In the public section or HTML(5) portion of the website write your business name as many times as you believe your customers will want to see.

Let’s create a proper source code title tag for a restaurant where I live in the Marina Del Rey.

Look closely at this title tag. It is design to capture the user in or near the Marina Del Rey who is looking for Mexican food. The user looking for Mexican food has never heard of your business. By inserting this information in the title tag of your web page, you created an opportunity for a new customer who wants to eat Mexican food to find your business.

A title tag may contain up to 70 characters and we will cover this topic in future chapters. The important take away is to remember that search engines will index your business by what it does. The function your business performs belongs in the source code under the title and Meta description tags. Your business name belongs on the public portion of your website where your new customers can see it. When placed on the public portion of your website, your users will still view the name of your business.

I was staying in a hotel in the city of San Diego and was in need of a haircut. The first thing I decided to do was to check my smart phone to discover the nearest barber shop near my location. The phone displayed a barber shop located three blocks away from my hotel. I got a great haircut. When I returned to my hotel there was a barber shop right inside where I was staying. The barber shop in the hotel didn’t have his site properly tagged so the search engines could index that business so it would appear on my smart phone. The barber shop in the hotel didn’t understand the strategies involved in local search, which made that business web invisible. Local search will be covered later in this book.

Reader question, have you experienced this type of search result on your smart phone? If so take a moment to think about it and ask yourself if your business may be experiencing this problem.

Last week I attended a local swap meet. After looking at electronic equipment I was hungry and wanted breakfast. SIRI told me of a restaurant located about four blocks away. Again I started toward the restaurant. But while on the way I found another restaurant that was located directly across the street from the swap meet. The nearby restaurant had not indexed their pages so local smart phone customers could find that restaurant.

Before we begin discussing the tools, strategies and optimizing steps let’s ask one important question, which is vital to ensuring the strategies in this book will work for you. Have you verified the ownership of your website with Google? What if you owned a website, which was never verified from the beginning? A website owner can verify their site with any one of three methods approved by Google.

A go to Google and select the recommended website verification method which allows you to verify your site from a drop down list of Internet Service Providers. This is the easiest way if you are a beginner.

B if you have coded your website using HTML you can download an HTML file to your root directory through FTP, which Google will provide. Google will consider this action as a verification of owner ship.

C You can verify your website through Google analytics. Google Analytics has an excellent instructional article, which will walk you through the process.

Once you have completed the required instructions you will receive the heading on your site, which states managed site instead of the former unverified heading. Verification is Google’s way of establishing ownership. Website verification also makes it difficult for a potential hacker to inflict damage on your site. You also get geo targeting that can improve your search engine ranking for a geographical area. Although Google won’t admit Geo targeting can help you increase your search results. Here’s Google’s official statement.

Verification is the process of proving that you own the site or app that you claim to own.We need to confirm ownership because once you are verified for a site or app you have access to its private Google Search data, and can affect how Google Search crawls it.

What is a property?

A property in Search Console represents a site or app that you own. You can request actions on your property such as requesting a recrawl or view Google Search data for your property, such as Google

Search statistics or crawling errors.

Verification associates a specific user with a specific property.Every Search Console property requires at least one verified owner, though it can have more.

Note that you could add any site or app as a property to Search Console, but until you verify ownership of it (or an owner grants you rights on it) you can't use it in Search Console. For example, you could add www.wikipedia.org as a property to your Search Console account, but you couldn't access it until a Wikipedia developer helped you prove ownership (or a Wikipedia Search Console property owner added you as a user to the Search Console property.

Search engine optimization is not rocket science or a craft filled with secrecy. This book will reveal the important steps any website owner can perform to improve their website’s ranking

Chapter 2: How Search Engines Learn Through User Behavior

Search engines haven’t achieved artificial intelligence as of this date. They are getting close to a form of rational thought. Search engines learn in patterns, and this chapter will give you a basic knowledge of how Google, Bing and others process information.

Search engine patterns have a key goal in mind and this goal is relevancy. As we have repeated earlier in this book search engines stay in business by giving their searchers what they want. In order to accomplish this goal search engines must deliver relevant results.

Search engines function in algorithms. Algorithms are patterns. The most common types of patterns are: statistical reasoning and inductive reasoning.

Statistical reasoning simply gathers data and analyzes the probabilities of future occurrences following prior results. If 80% of iPhones are black, then it is probable that 80% of all iPhones will be black. If the size of the pool that measures iPhones is small the accuracy of this reasoning may not be precise. Statistical reasoning requires a large sample in order for this type of analysis to deliver an accurate result. Search engines use statistical reasoning for purposes of categorizing, indexing and to ensure that the general information fits what the user is looking for. When listing your website pay close attention to Google and Bing categories. Think of these listed categories in the following manner. My business fulfills a specific need or performs a particular function. The first place to establish your category is to focus upon the need your business fulfills... For example a category that would fit a vocational school could be under education. That one is very obvious. A subcategory for the same school might be vocational education if the school offers this type of training. Google will allow you to create 4 categories if you use one of theirs. A store selling women’s clothes would go under clothing. If the store offers bathing suits the owner would have a good sub category to promote merchandise. Under the main categories you will find subcategories and your business probably will fit in some of these as well. Numerous websites are poorly indexed because they listed their business in the wrong category. Again pay attention to Google categories and make them work for you. Your business will be indexed by a set of statistical algorithms. You will find that all search engines have slightly different indexing rules for each category. Categories will often double as key words. I will include a list of Google categories later in this book. Read through them and determine if the category that applies to your product or service can be turned into a powerful key word.

Let’s ensure the statistics algorithm works in your favor.

Inductive reasoning is based upon analyzing probabilities, which are geared to either proving or disproving a theory. Inductive reasoning functions by gathering instances of events. For example, startled dogs snap. The random results will not be included until there are a significant percentage of startled dogs snapping that will directly change the finding. This type of reasoning is critical to measuring user behavior.

Search engines are highly sensitive to user behavior. Keeping track of user sentiments for each key phrase is the main barometer a search engine uses to track the popularity of a particular search phrase. If users can’t find what they need with a particular search engine they will simply move to another. Google has 13 major data centers that constantly process sentiment information. When building your website it is your job to ensure your users get the information they need to make a decision about what you have to offer.

Search engines base their algorithms by blending statistical reasoning and inductive reasoning. The search algorithms are designed in this way so they can adapt their results to user behavior. For example, a search engine can’t measure a user’s emotion. They