Phil Lauterjung

I hesitated to include this subject (SEO – Search Engine Optimization) for a couple of reasons.  One is that this topic that can quickly become complex – after all Search Engine Optimization for Dummies weighs in at 746 pages!  Try summarizing that in a blog post!  Also, I know that there is a wide divergence of opinions on this topic from all different corners of the internet.  So I know I am risking potentially a great deal of criticism.  Oh well, that’s life as a blogger.

I also know, from reviewing a number of web sites, that a large number of these sites don’t even incorporate basic SEO practices.  There are web sites just floating around the internet only being viewed by a few people and the owner’s mom.  Since the majority of leads (70%) come from your web site it becomes imperative that you at least do some minimal steps in SEO.

Consider a few statistics, just in case you have doubts about using your website to garner leads.

• Daily newspaper circulation is 48.4 million and dropping.
• 285 million watch TV monthly.
• There are over 14 billion searches online every month.

This presents a problem and an opportunity.  That’s a whole bunch of searches, but how does your web site get found?  That’s where integrated lead generation, including SEO, can help.  Remember the basic premise – there is no one “silver bullet”.

Here’s a basic SEO checklist to use as a starting point:

1. Your content needs to be reachable by the search engines.
2. You need to add, and update, content frequently.
3. Content needs to be organized logically in themes and categories.
4. Keywords need to be used in the content and within internal links.  That’s what the search engines are looking for – someone types in a search word or phrase and the search engine looks for matching content.
5. You need to have a good number of quality sites linking to your web site.  That’s another factor that the search engines value highly.  Other sites that have a high “authority” ranking with the search engines need to link to your site.
6. Use an analytics program (Google Analytics is free) to monitor your results and make adjustments at least monthly.

A couple of points regarding the above list.  Before you can get quality sites linking back to yours you will need to have quality content with keywords that are relevant to your business and are frequently searched.

One of the best ways to to discover good keywords is to ask some of your good customers what they enter into the search box when they are looking for your type of products or services.  Then compare that list with a keyword tool that gives you data on how often those words or phrases are searched.  A few good tools can be found at SEOBook, Wordtracker and Google Adwords:  Keyword Tool.  All three have a free version, and Wordtracker and SEOBook have more sophisticated paid tools as well.

A word of caution:  this just gives you a 30,000 foot view of SEO.  When you get closer down to earth it gets more involved, but is worth the effort and cost.  I have seen SEO done well that has resulted in some very large ROI numbers, even in the midst of a recession.  But the results don’t come overnight, you need to be willing to give it some time – at least 6 to 9 months.

Coming up next, a few words about how SEO’s cousin, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), can fit into an Integrated Lead Generation program.

Photo Credit:  Keso

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