How I’ve Enjoyed 4 Years Of Continuous Online Leads Through A Handful of Focused, Strategic Actions
By Christine OKelly | April 26, 2010
There are many effective ways to drive traffic to your business today: social networking, guest blog posting, viral marketing strategies, referrals, affiliate programs, newsletter outreach programs — the internet has truly opened a world of possibilities.
However, one of the absolute essential components that has constantly driven a steady stream of business, often more than we can even take on at one time, is the fact the people find my site in the search engines.
Even when I was so unbelievably buried with building my businesses that I could not seem to find the time to post blogs or get in the amount of social networking I truly wanted, inquires continued to pour in.
Because of the way that I structure my business, one lead can mean thousands of dollars year after year after year. Multiply this by 4 years and you’ve got a nice set up. What started with ‘just me’ as a freelancer has now blossomed into me, a 50/50 business partner, 5 account managers, and a dedicated team of about 20 freelancers. I attribute about 75% of the company’s growth to the fact that the right people find us on search engines precisely when they need us.
SEO isn’t ideal for all businesses — but I think it is for the majority. If you have a product or service that solves a known problem to people, and they are out there searching for a solution, then optimizing your site for search engines can be an extremely profitable move.
Let’s Get This Show On The Road…
The very first mission — the first several in fact — revolve around strategically choosing keywords. I am a keyword evangelist. Starting an SEO campaign without keywords is like starting to build a house with no blueprint. You may get something, but it won’t often be what you wanted and you’ll waste a lot of time, effort, and energy on things that won’t help you achieve the end goal.
By starting with your SEO strategy solid, strategic, keyword research, you will be laying the foundation for highly targeted search engine visibility that can bring you a stream of leads and customers year after year after year.
Are you ready for your first mission?
Your First Mission:
Analyze Your Site Through the “Eyes” of a Search Engine
Est. time to complete: 15-20 minutes
Step One
**The purpose of this step is to help you understand where you are now so that you can get to where you want to be.**
Your challenge today is to identify what your web pages are currently optimized for using the tool provided below. Your mission is to analyze your homepage and any key product or services pages on your site. For example, if you offer financial services, you likely have a page on your site dedicated to “will planning,” another that explains you “estate planning services,” etc.
Enter your URL in the tool below:
(If you cannot view this tool in the post, click here).
What appears after you enter your URL is a keyword cloud. This is a visual representation of the dominant words on your page, i.e. the words and phrases that search engines would assume were the primary focus of the page.
I like the keyword cloud because most of us are visual creatures and we can “get it” right away without having to weed through a bunch of numbers and percentages. The terms that are most relevant to your page, from the eyes of a search engines, are displayed the largest. The most relevant terms on your page should be the largest and ideally, should be in the top left-hand corner of the box. If not, there is work to do — and that is something we will tackle in a future mission.
Take a look at the keyword clouds below. Both of these sites sell office chairs. One is ranking in the #1 position in Google for the terms “office chairs” — the other I found by doing an online yellow pages search and does not show up at least in the first 200 search results for the term “office chairs.” Which do you think is which?
Step Two
Part two of your mission is to document your findings. Follow the link provided below and download the current optimization analysis form and complete the quick exercise for 5 to 10 of the most important revenue-driving pages on your site.
Download your free keyword planning worksheet and complete the quick exercise for 5 to 10 of the most important pages you need to rank for.
This simple exercise can be a serious eye opener for you. In upcoming challenges, the knowledge gained from this challenge will become the foundation for a strategic, actionable, search engine optimization plan….
Now for the Tough Part…
It’s one thing to learn a concept by reading, but it’s another thing to dig in and do the work. I encourage you to accept this challenge — and even if it gets frustrating, seems ‘boring’ or seems like it doesn’t matter — follow through. I promise you that, although somewhat boiled down for ease of understanding, these are the exact same steps that I take when conducting SEO audits and action plans that I charge between $750 and $1000 for.
Most of you who read Self Made Chick are self-starters. You want to dig in and take a first hand approach to your marketing. Many of you are just starting out and don’t have the money to hire a search engine marketing firm — or don’t want to. And you don’t have to. You can do it yourself — if you are willing to invest the time into learning and the effort into doing. None of this is rocket science — but it can be quite complex and there are a lot of moving pieces involved.
Many Self Made Chick readers are overachievers - i.e. busy and juggling many ideas and tasks at once. My goal over the next several weeks is to break out some of the most absolutely critical pieces of the search engine optimization process into manageable, actionable chunks. Each week, I will publish a new mission for you — something that will take anywhere from 15 - 45 minutes to accomplish. Each step is published in a logical, systematic order. All steps will be published on the blog, so you can subscribe to post by RSS or by email to ensure that you don’t miss any essential pieces in the process.
Share Your Questions and Frustrations
There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ marketing plan — but by sharing strategies with you at a fundamental level, I hope to address the needs of every different type of business, website, service, etc. However, there will certainly be questions for certain types of businesses. Please, feel free to ask those questions here in the comments section so that everyone can learn!
If you just have general questions — post them! I’ve been entrenched in SEO for the last 5 years of my life. It is likely that I’ve used some jargon or missed some logical steps between points A and C — ask away! My goal is to help you get a firm grasp on these concepts and dominate your niche on the search engines.
Ok, now get rockin!
Topics: 90 Days to Higher Search Engine Rankings Challenge |
18 Comments »
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Christine, I couldn’t leave your post without offering a word of complete THANKS. I’ve actually just “left” my day job to launch my own LLC … and am in the process of getting my Web site designed this month. This post, and the ones that are to follow, is incredibly useful. I appreciate it! Thanks for lending your expertise.
Hi Gretchen - I checked out your blog and love the way you think! In my opinion, the public relations industry is in a VERY exciting time right now and yet many PR firms aren’t changing fast enough - good for you for going and doing things your way! Keep me posted on your site development!
I have a question about SEO. I am in a market that is flooded with big time players. So the keywords are likely highly competitive. For this reason I have mostly ignored SEO, thinking it would be useless (and instead have been focusing my marketing efforts on blogging and social media). Even though I’m a small fish among big ones from a keywords perspective, what I actually offer is very different from them, but I think the keyword search would be the same. So the business itself is very much needed, but would be hard to find in a search engine. Do you have any advice for this situation?
Hi Amber!
Sorry for the late response - your comment was caught by my spam filter at first, but I saved it. I absolutely understand how overwhelming SEO can be in very competitive fields. However, if you dig a little deeper and go through all of the keyword steps in this series, you may find some holes that your competitors are missing.
In all of the years that I’ve been doing this, I have come across a handful (not too many) of types of sites where investing time in SEO might not produce a return. Usually, these were products that people didn’t yet know they wanted or needed because they don’t solve a known problem that people were looking for.
I did an analysis recently for a company in an industry that was so ridiculously competitive that it made more sense to pour efforts into social media outreach than into SEO. But even a social media outreach plan for this company was going to be time consuming and expensive and somewhat difficult to manage.
I feel like there are quite a few opportunities for your type of business though! I would focus on researching keywords that describe what people want to accomplish in addition to keywords that describe what you do. There will be more ideas coming up in future posts that can help you compete with the big guys in your industry
Excited to walk through this challenge! The optimization analysis form doesn’t seem to download - is it still available?
Hi Kelley - I’m excited to hear your about your progress! I just tried downloading the form and it worked (I use Firefox)… maybe try right clicking the link? If it doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll send it your way
BTW… LOVE the name of your site!
Yeah, the link isn’t working in my FF, but it’s been acting up lately. Fired up IE and got a copy. And a big thanks from one chick to another.
I love this post.
I am a strong believer in taking things step by step. Me and my brother are working on a simple SEO startup wizard for helping people to do just that. I found your blog via Stumbleupon and now it will go into my collection of things to follow.
Keep up the great work.
Thanks!
Hi Robert - I like the way you think! A startup wizard like that sounds like it could be great tool for people. There is just so much information out there about SEO that it can be overwhelming for someone just starting out. If you can boil down the process into precise steps to be done in the correct order, that would be so beneficial to people who want to do SEO themselves. I look forward to seeing how your idea manifests!!
I think people bypass this step because they don’t see the impact of it, not right away at least. Then you end up playing catch up once you realize your not ranking well. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t giving it much consideration either. Thanks for the friendly reminder. =D
You are SO right on Chris. I absolutely agree with you. Doing keyword research isn’t necessarily “fun.” When you’re building or redesigning your site, its not as exciting as planning out the design and the widgets, but it is so critical to ranking!
Christine,
You rock! I am relatively new to your blog, but I now read every single article! Thanks so much for your words and sharing your experiences! I have started to definitely try out your concepts!
That’s awesome Matt - it’s great to meet you! I’m certainly enjoying your blog as well. Freelancers - Matt has a lot of great candid info on his blog, I recommend checking it out!
Christine,
Wonderful series. You’re my new role model.
Thanks Brian! You just made my day
I’ve been checking out your site — you’ve got a ton of great info over there!
Hi Christine, It’s good to see you back again. I’m eagerly looking forward to the up and coming series of blog posts. I’m looking forward to reading more inspiring stuff.
Thanks so much Andy - great to hear from you!
This is a really helpful series. thank you.