I was in a meeting today where I was asked to give my SEO opinions of a site on the fly. After looking through their website and their analytics account, something dawned on me. They were targeting a set of keywords that were giving them quite a bit of traffic, but the true goal of the site (making a sale) was not being met. Those keywords had the lowest conversion rate. In fact, a keyword that received significantly less traffic generated the same amount of income.

After thinking about it for a while, I realized the conversion rate was so low because there wasn’t a single thing on their page that called to the users who clicked through via those keywords. My suggestion: build out a section that specifically addressed those keywords.

How can this help you?

If you blog, use social media, write content or sell products online, you have users that visit your medium with a preconceived idea of what they’ll find there. For example, if you were to go to someone’s Twitter or Facebook page that had the keywords “working from home” somewhere, you’d expect tips and content related to working from home. However, I frequently visit sites that, in essence, falsely advertise what you’ll find there in order to get a click. Getting a nontargeted click to your website isn’t going to earn you any significant income. This is where you need to use smart marketing tactics and make sure what you’re targeting is actually what you’re giving.

If you’re selling widgets, make sure your keywords reflect the widgets you’re actually selling. Then go a step further and ensure that when they visit your site, it’s clear where they can find these widgets straight away. Otherwise, you’re going to lose their attention and a possible sale.

The final word…

If you’re getting traffic, but not sales, it may be time to rethink your strategy. Which leads to the question of the hour – what are your keywords saying about your site? Can you revise your strategy to increase conversions and participation within you website?

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I’ve been doing search engine optimization for thirteen years. The one thing I have found to always be true is that search engine optimization should be tailored specifically to the project and client. What works for some websites, won’t work as well for others. SEO is also more than just picking out keywords and putting them on your page. It involves doing some real research and understanding the ultimate overall goal you wish to achieve with your website.

Now, I’ve definitely had my share of success creating SEO campaigns, but when it comes down to what you do, there are a few actions that are pretty much standard. To make things easier for myself, I’ve created an SEO Ready Checklist that I follow. Since this site is about sharing my secrets, I’ve included it for you to use as well. If you have any questions about terms or best practices, be sure to let me know. I’d be happy to help steer you in the right direction.

So without further ado, here’s my basic quick start “checklist” of things I do to get a site ready for a full search engine marketing program.

1. Check if there is any current analytical data being tracked for keywords and referring sites.
   • If there is, make a note of the most successful keywords and referring sites.
   • If not, install an analytical program such as Google Analytics.
2. Check if there is any data for the site being recorded at Alexa and Quantcast. I do this to create a demographic profile for the site. While keyword reports alone are a great tool to start from, knowing who your actual audience is helps determine which keywords and content ideas are going to resonate most with your target audience. This is where you marry SEO with providing content for people, not search engines.
3. Run the site through Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool. I do this in two ways. First, I have it scan the website and come up with recommended keywords and phrases. Then I use some of the more popular keywords and phrases from this report and enter those words in directly. I will also enter current keywords the site is using and the keywords that came up from the analytics reports.
4. From the Keyword Tool, and taking into account the demographic profile of the target audience, I determine the top three keywords I should target for the website. I then make a list of about 20 sub-keywords and phrases to use as a guideline for content ideas and future marketing efforts. Some of these sub-keywords usually find themselves in my meta description.
5. From my selected keywords, I create optimized page titles and descriptions for each page on the site. If the site I’m working with uses WordPress, I install All In One SEO Pack to do this. Most other content management programs allow you to customize each page title and description within the program.
6. Next, I log into Google Webmaster Tools and add the site. From there I set the geolocation and upload the sitemap. Yahoo! and Bing also offer similar webmaster tools.
7. I make a list of articles that I feel will resonate with the users of a particular website (based on the demographic information researched previously). I create an editorial calendar that optimizes when a piece of content should be published and then make sure it’s as SEO compliant as possible. Not every article is going to be “ultimately” formatted, but at the very least it should be topical to your main marketing goals.
8. Now, I will run the site through a ranking program so I can gauge progress. I use SEO Tools plugin for Firefox. I run reports about every two weeks for a three month period and make adjustments and tweaks as needed.
9. From this point forward, I work on other SEO strategies based on the client’s requests. This can range from creating link building to social media and reputation management strategies, but that’s information for another blog post.

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