Keys to creating a search engine friendly web site for your coaching practice
There’s a war going on. It’s a bloody fight occurring every day. It’s the fight for top positioning within each search engine for a specific keyword or keyword phrase.
In an attempt to win this battle, some companies will hire SEO specialists, while others will purchase software designed to “cheat” and get a site a top ranking … until the ploy is discovered. Then, the site faces blacklisting by the search engine.
Unless your company’s name is Jenna Jameson, Pamela Anderson or some other frequently searched upon term, search engine users won’t find you. Studies have shown that 75% or more users will be typing in search queries not for a specific business name, but instead for what that business does. If your site’s focus is upon your company’s name instead of what your company DOES, you will miss out, because the search engines will provide the users with sites that focus on what the searcher is looking to find.
Your company name does have a place on your website, most notably in the "About Us" section of your site. The “About Us” page provides a place for the small number of people who actually type in your company’s name into a search query to go.
Now, for the cold hard reality. Your newly created website will take YEARS to get a great “natural” (meaning non-paid) placement. Take a look at Google’s stock price. Now, catch your breath and realize that it’s in Google’s best interest for you to PAY for their service. If you could develop a web site that naturally rose quickly to the top of Google’s results, would you pay for Google Adsense? Do a search on Google and you’ll see that the top natural results are old school. Most of these listings are from the late 20th Century.
So, as you chase the every elusive top ranking with Google on your chosen keywords, realize that it’s a battle you probably can’t win without paying to play.
Now, if you’re targeting a keyword that isn’t providing any revenue for Google, you may find you rise quickly to the top of those rankings without much effort. In any event, there are some basics to creating a search engine friendly site.
1) Skip the Flash Intro.
When the search engine robots index your site, they don’t see what you see. They see the code behind the site. So while your flash intro is saying, “helping realtors achieve success in the information age” what the search engines see is this:
2) Skip the rollovers as well.
Again, rollovers are code so what you see is not what the spiders see. Spiders can’t follow javascript code. If you insist on image rollovers, at least provide straight HTML links somewhere on the page so the spiders can get in and index.
By the way, be sure to use a simple javascript code for your email address. This technique keeps the spambots from harvesting your email and will reduce the spam in your inbox exponentially!
3) Focus on the a set of keywords for each page.
For example, the About Us page should be all about your company. You’ll naturally list your company name often in this page, as well as the full name of each principle.
Other pages need to be named what the page is about. For example, if you’re a nutritional coach who specializes in working with tri-athletes, then the page on your website that is targeting the nutritional needs of the triathlete should be named nutritional_needs_of_the_triathlete.html. That page, of course, should be all about meeting the nutritional needs of the triathlete.
4) Finally, submit your site to the search engines. Remember, it will take weeks if not months for your site to be indexed. If possible, get other sites to link to yours. A great way to do that is to start an affiliate marketing program. Money is a great incentive for linking. Just realize that you’ll need to feature your own URL in the links. (Signing up for a commission junction affiliate program won’t help your seo.)
