August 2005

SEO: Team Tactics for Success

The best SEO strategies involve everyone in your office.

By Lisa Landrud Lynham

Read part 2 of the series.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, has become the latest buzzword tossed around by marketing executives, CEOs, and webmasters alike. Everyone wants it, but getting it is another story—too often, that perfect state of "optimization" seems just out of reach.

Why? Sure, SEO requires time, money, and mind share that feel about as strategic as a game of roulette. But the real trick to optimization has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with skill; a successful SEO campaign requires cooperation and collaboration—and often, compromise—by all members of the team. SEO happens in the sweet spot where business objectives, marketing strategy, editorial integrity, design aesthetic, and smart Web programming meet. While your SEO consultant can make tactical recommendations that generate impressive initial results, continued maintenance and growth require an internal team effort.

We've come up with five steps to get your SEO done right. This week we're showcasing three of those steps. Check back in a few weeks for part two of our SEO series.

1. Choose Keywords as a Team

Selecting the right keywords involves marrying your business objectives with how the real world behaves. The term "Aqualogic" may be important to your business, but that doesn't mean anyone is going to type it into a search engine. Try these tactics to select keywords and encourage team ownership of them:

• Hold brainstorming sessions with stakeholders from all departments to come up with a list of potential keywords. Get specific—the more specific your keywords, the more targeted your audience.
• Check your weblog (ask your webmaster) for the top referring "search strings" to your website. These are the words that users are already using to get to your site.
• Compare your compiled list to real-world searches (try Overture's keyword selector tool). If users aren't searching for them, don't use them.

Once you have a solid list of keywords, make sure the appropriate team members develop a plan to use them strategically. Your writers should place keywords in Web copy (especially headlines) and your programmers should place keywords in the metatags, titles, and file names of your site. Doing one without the other doesn't do any good.

2. Launch a "Backlink" Campaign

Links from external websites back to your site are just as important as your on-site keyword usage. (Backlinks are currently more important than on-site factors to Google.) And remember, there's no such thing as a free link, so get assertive:

• Develop link partners by approaching other sites with content relevant to yours. Agree to exchange links, and voila, you've got a quality backlink. (Read 131 Link Building Strategies.")
• Write and submit press releases to sites such as prweb.com and prnewswire.com for posting. (Tip: Link your keywords back to your site from your press releases to retain "link reputation.")
• Consider launching a blog or a newsletter, or offer an RSS feed, to provide more opportunities for backlinks.

When it comes to backlinks, quality is just as important as quantity. Beware of free "link farms," which can generate plenty of links to your site—search engines are on to them and won't count them in your overall score.

3. Experiment with Search Engine Advertising

Advertising with search engines gives you (and anyone else willing to pay) the opportunity to appear at the top of the search results page in the "sponsored results" column. You can spend as little or as much as you'd like, depending on where you want to be in the results. Some tips on search engine advertising:

• The words are important. Your company wordsmiths should use the same keyword in the ad title and the first line of the ad.
• The web page your ad links to should be "optimized" for the keyword—the same keyword that appears in the ad should appear in the page headline and text.
• Don't bid too high if you don't need to. "Impulse buys," such as a pair of shoes, do better with higher bids that place ads at the top of the list. Products with longer buying cycles, such as a car, might do just as well on page two of the rankings (at a fraction of the cost) because users will be likely to search deeper.
• Dedicate someone to the task of keeping track of your keywords, results, and costs. If your ad isn't converting sales or tangibly increasing your site's exposure, create a keep/discontinue process.



About the author:

Tendo production manager Lisa Landrud is tracking all the clicks to this article.