Dive in and Jumpstart SEO With a Quick Start Plan
Experts at Reach Force

You might call me a fast-follower when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I resisted for some time because the prospect of researching and sorting through hundreds of keywords and applying techniques to outwit Google’s ever-changing algorithms seemed so daunting. I can barely spell algorithm, after all. Then a slew of industry surveys showed that anywhere from 80 to 90 percent or more of B2B tech buyers start their research and buying process on Google.

Well, that was a wake-up call. So, I decided to make SEO a higher priority. I shifted the funds from online advertising into SEM and a ReachForce role-based database build. (That way, I could cover both my Inbound and Outbound bases.) I also maintained my investments in PR and some key sponsorships to cover the brand awareness and drive Inbound traffic. Then, I pulled resources and funds that had been spent trying to keep up with endless campaign design and development, and re-focused them on social media and SEO.

It’s truly amazing how quickly you can get results like Page 1 Google rankings when you focus resources on boosting a particular page ranking. Here are a few tips to help you do the same:

• Invest in the right tools: There are literally dozens of free and low-cost SEO tools that you can use to get a lay of the land and assess your best SEO prospects. Of course, Google provides several like Google Suggest and Google Trends. Another one of my favorites is WordTracker. And, a new tool I am using right now is HubSpot.

• Don’t just go for the highly competitive popular terms. Consider niche or long tail keywords terms. There are dozens of keywords with significant search traffic that have little competition. Optimize for all of them and the numbers add up.

• Integrate your PR and SEO efforts to ensure inbound links from press releases support your strategy.

• Make sure your “anchor text” on in-bound links is optimized to provide the greatest SEO value.

• Optimize with a conversion strategy in mind.

• Leverage your “educational” assets for landing pages and social media sites like hubpages.com, scribd.com, flickr.com, and others.

• Information Gathering Session: Just like data cleansing, it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to SEO. Pull together a team to discuss and prioritize objectives and scope your initial project.

• Research: Review your marketing objectives, competition, and your Web site and blog to get a lay of the land and identify low-hanging fruit.

• Produce a plan and guidelines for optimizing your top five Web or blog pages. This should include recommendations for URLs, internal link building, meta tags, page content updates, blog cross-linking, and a conversion strategy for each of those pages.

• Then begin to build your inbound links to those pages by leveraging other sites, partners, blogs, social media sites, portals, and other high-value (not spam) paid link directo¬ries like Yahoo.

• Review and Revamp: After the pages have had sufficient time for Google Indexing, review the project and results, and adjust the components of the program if necessary.