Search engine optimization may seem a little like voodoo – a mysterious, ever-evolving process that governs whether or not your web pages are returned in relevant search results.  Complicated algorithms take hundreds of factors into consideration each time a search is performed.  Most of these factors are highly-guarded secrets.  With so much left up to chance, you might feel like you need a little mojo of your own to get noticed by the search engines at all. 

It doesn’t take mojo – in fact, black hat SEO is frowned upon by search engines, and could result in your site being dropped completely from the search engine indexes. It takes a solid understanding of what Google values and a good deal of elbow grease to align your site with those values.  But spending the time and effort needed should have a profound impact on both the end-user’s experience (read:  your customers and prospects) and drive more search engine traffic (read:  new customers and prospects) to your site in short order.

So where do you start? 

Set aside an hour or two and browse your site.  Look at it through the lens of a new visitor:

• Do a Google search using a keyword you think a prospect might use to find your site.  See if, and where, your site gets returned in the search results.  
• Read some of the content available on your site.  Tally up the number of times the keywords you used in the step above are actually referenced in that content.
• Choose a specific task, say finding a lspecific product or service, or a list of company contacts, and see if you can successfully complete your task quickly and easily. 
• Ask yourself if your site is easy to navigate. 
• Ask yourself if the content is interesting and relevant to your goods or services.

Then, go to your competitors’ sites and do the same.  Take notes.  Record your observations.  Brainstorm.  Highlight the good stuff – on your site and your competitors’ sites – and identify areas that need improvement.  

Finally, stay tuned for Step 2, which will tackle some of the nitty-gritty.  Sign up for Shoestrings, the monthly newsletter, to receive upcoming how-to reports via email.  And please use the forum to post questions or comments about any of the information you find on the site.