Website Search Engine Optimization for Beginners

Who needs to read this: A small business-owner or self-employed individual who wants to optimize their brand-new website or update a very old website by themselves, but does not know where to begin.

Who doesn’t need to read this: A professional keyword researcher or SEO technician, there’s nothing new here!

When you first move into a house, it’s a mess. There’s boxes and wrapping paper everywhere. You’re sorting through all the stuff in the boxes, purging what you don’t need anymore. Then there’s the long process of unpacking everything, and finding a home for all of your knick-nacks. How will you arrange your furniture? Will the silverware drawer be to the left or right of the sink? You’ll make decisions like, “I want my TV against this wall so I can avoid glare from the windows,” or “I want my dinner plates, salad plates, and bowls all together in that cupboard so they are easy to put away”.  If you have a brand-new home, you’ll be faced with having to decide which big-ticket furniture pieces to buy first. “I want to buy a nice couch for $300 on craigslist because I value comfort, but I’m okay with eating off of a card table until my budget opens up more.” What you’re really doing though, is optimizing your home while balancing a budget. You can apply this same logic to your new or old website.

1. Choose pages for your website

If you don’t already have a website, decide on the pages you need to include. Each page you add to your site will increase your maintenance time and cost, so be sure to only include the pages that are vital to your online marketing strategy. If you already have a website, now might be a good time to review the usefulness and relevance of the pages you currently have. To help, here is a list of the most common pages found on websites (expand “Common Website Pages” to see the list):

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• Home
• About
  • Company History
  • Our Staff
  • Career / Employment
  • Environmental Responsibility
  • Locations
• Product/Service page. You will need one page that lists all of the services, and then have a stand-alone page for each of the services within the list. For example: Stephanie Claussen, a professional harpist, provides five primary services: See Full List. She also has a page for each of those services: e.g. See Harp Lessons.
• Free product demos
• Pricing page
• Process / How it works
• Frequently asked questions
• Blog page
• Portfolio, Case studies, Repertoire, Before & Afters, Photo Galleries. Portfolios time intensive to set up and maintain. Depending on the nature of your business, you may be able to rely on a third-party website that make it very easy to upload hundreds of photos, tag and sort them, and also offer robust iframes or plugins that integrate well within your website.
• Event page
• Workshops / Seminar
• Upcoming Concerts
• Contact

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2. Arranging pages on your website

Once you have a list of pages you would like to include, use a bulleted list to arrange the order and structure of the pages. Now is not the time to get fancy with your page names, or use a unique page order, because that will just confuse people. If a visitor is struggling to comprehend the symbolic meanings of your page titles, they will just leave. In general, most websites have Home & About as the first and second links in their main navigation bar, and Blog & Contact second to last, and last.

Here’s an example of a real site map for you to use as  guide. Stephanie Claussen’s website is extensive, but the rough outline is something like this (expand “Bulleted List / Site Map” to see the example):

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• Home
• About
  • Biography (Same as “About”)
  • Upcoming Concerts
  • Testimonials
• Booking
  • Availability & Rates (Same as “Booking”)
  • See All Services
    • Ceremonies
    • Receptions
    • Lessons
    • Festivals
    • Symphony/Ensemble
  • Press Kit
• Media
  • Albums (Same as “Media”)
  • Videos
  • Free Music
  • Repertoire
• More
  • Full Blog (Same as “More”)
  • Blog Categories, et. al.
• Contact

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3. Quickly describe the content on each page

Now that you have your bulleted list, write one or two sentences after each bullet that describes what the page will be about. We’ll go back to Stephanie’s website for our example (expand “Site Map Outline” to see the example):

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• Home | Stephanie is a professional harpist serving Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Her primary services are live music, wedding ceremonies, and harp lessons. This page also features Stephanie’s most recent content such as video and albums, promotes email newsletter sign-up and displays credibility factors.
• About
  • Biography (Same as “About”) | In-depth biography for Stephanie Claussen, professional harpist. States her musical background including education and past collaborations.
  • Upcoming Concerts | A list of upcoming concerts, performances, recitals, etc.
  • Testimonials | Customer feedback from past gigs.
• Booking
  • Availability & Rates | Is Stephanie available on your date? How much does Stephanie charge? Email Stephanie to reserve your date.
  • See All Services (Same as “Booking”) | Quick summary of all the main services Stephanie provides: Ceremonies, Receptions, Lessons, Festivals, Symphony/Ensemble
    • Ceremonies | Stephanie is a professional harpist & wedding ceremony music consultant.
    • Receptions | Stephanie Claussen is an experienced professional harpist providing live harp music for wedding banquets, rehearsal dinners, cocktail hours, business dinners, afternoon teas and receptions of all kinds throughout Minnesota.
    • Lessons | Stephanie Claussen teaches harp lessons out of her home in St. Paul, Minnesota.
    • Festivals |  Live harp music for festivals or craft shows.
    • Symphony/Ensemble | Stephanie is first and foremost a solo performer, but she loves collaborating with other musicians when she gets a chance. She has played harp as a symphony harpist, and she performed with many small ensembles and chamber groups as well.
  • Press Kit
• Media
  • Albums (Same as “Media”) | A list of all albums Stephanie has produced over the lifetime of her career.
  • Videos | A list of all videos Stephanie has produced over the lifetime of her career.
  • Free Music | An incentive page to entice people to sign up for her email newsletter.
  • Repertoire | A list of the kinds of music Stephanie has played for past gigs.
• More
  • Full Blog (Same as “More”)
  • Blog Categories, et. al.
• Contact | A page with a contact form and phone number.

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4. Pull out key phrases from each of the sentences you wrote in your outline.

Now this is where the real magic begins. From your outline you should be able to isolate a few of the words or generate new words that sum up what your website is about. You will see that I didn’t pick out all of these phrases verbatim. You need to do a little bit of creative thinking to distill whole pages down to just a few words. Number one question to keep in mind: “What terms would I Google to find more information about __________?”  (Expand “List of Key Phrases” to see the example):

[tg_accordion title=”(+/-) List of Key Phrases” icon=”” close=”1″]

• Stephanie Claussen
• professional harpist
• harp player
• harp concerts
• harp recitals
• Minneapolis harpist
• St. Paul harpist
• Twin Cities harpist
• Minnesota harpist
• symphony harpist
• live harp music
• wedding harpist
• wedding ceremony music
• wedding ceremony musician
• reception music
• harp music
• harp lessons
• harp teacher

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5. Open Google Keyword Planner tool

Don’t be afraid of the Google Keyword Planner. For the purpose of this tutorial, we are not going to get very in-depth on using this tool. We’ll start with something easy. After the tutorial, feel free to browse around and manipulate the data however you like. The more you learn, the better it will serve you in the future.

6. Choose a service you want to optimize first

The easiest pages to optimize are the ones that talk about a specific service you provide. In Stephanie’s case, let’s start with “Wedding Harpist”.

• In the Keyword Planner, select “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category”.
• Under “Your product or service” type in “Wedding Harpist”
• Fill in the landing page and category fields if you like—it provides the tool with context and could return better results. I will put in “Wedding” for this search so that it returns keywords that are centered around the wedding industry rather than the music industry.
• You can broaden or narrow the results with other filters, too. If you are only providing a service to a specific geographic region (i.e. Minnesota) you may want to include the state. However, since we’re just starting out, let’s skip the filters for now.
• Click “Get Ideas”.
• ….and Presto! You have a list of 200-800 new phases. Good grief!

7. Sort the results.

Ooooo…Kkkk…. 200-800 Phrases. Nice. What to do with this information overload? These phrases represent REAL potential customers. They are all REAL searches on google! Very powerful information to know, because now you can choose a real search phrase to optimize your new web page with, and have data to back up your choice. Remember, the end goal is for YOUR PAGE to be returned in the results next time a magic key phrase is entered in the Google search bar.

In general, as you look through the phrases, you’re looking for one that:

• Is as broad, yet specific as possible.
• High volume (Lots of people enter this search phrase), yet is low in competition (Not many business owners are “bidding” on this phrase).

(Expand “Sorting the Results” to see instructions and corresponding keyword analysis):

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• Click on the tab for “keyword ideas”
• Click on “Av. Monthly Searches” and sort the list from highest to lowest.
• Starting from the top, look at each word and apply it to yourself. In Stephanie’s case, here’s how I would analyze her results:
  • “wedding” : way too broad
  • “wedding music, ceremony music” : Think about what the user’s intent was when they entered these phrases into the search bar. This person is likely looking for a list of songs to choose their ceremony music, not a live musician.
  • “wedding singer, live band, string quartet wedding, piano music for weddings, cello wedding music” : These are interesting competitor keywords. They’re not a services that Stephanie provides, as she is primarily a solo harpist.
  • “wedding ceremony” : too broad; it could refer to other parts of the ceremony such as decor or officiants.
  • “harpist, classical musicians” : These are good words to keep  in our back pocket, since it implies the search is for a person, presumably to hire them. However, it’s still too broad for this particular page because she’ll be writing about weddings.
  • “bride entrance songs for ceremony” : way too narrow, but it’s a good idea for a blog topic. You will find that doing keyword research generates lots of good ideas for future blog articles. Write down these phrases for later reference.
  • “harp music” : still too broad; could apply to someone looking for a good harp music CD.
  • “wedding musicians” : probably the best keyword this search has returned. Since it’s about weddings, and the user is looking for a person rather than an item.  It’s as broad as we can get without being too specific. It’s a fairly high search volume (210), and it’s medium competition. Let’s use this one!
• The winning keyword for Stephanie’s Wedding page: “wedding musicians”!
• Rinse and repeat this step for each of your primary services.
• Take note of some of the other key phrases you come across that could be used for your other pages. For example, “harp music” is a great key phrase to use for Stephanie’s album or video pages. Also, “harpist” is a good choice for her Biography page.

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8. Optimize individual webpages with your selected keyword.

Here’s a checklist for all the places you should place your selected keyword. For definitions and examples in each of these items, please refer to this infographic: On-Page SEO. If you are using WordPress, install the plugin “WordPress SEO by Yoast” to help you manage your optimization process.

Additionally, are your services only available in a specific area, such as “Minneapolis, MN”? Then you should include a location with your optimization efforts as well.

Use your selected keyphrase in the…

• Page Title. The title should be between 40-70 characters, wrapped in an <H1></H1> tag, Include location.
• URL
• Subheadings. E.g. <H2></H2>
• Image alt tag. Image file size should be no bigger than 100kb to keep pages loading fast.
• Article’s text. Have at least 300 words (longer is better) of unique text on each page, and include the keyword in the first paragraph of text. Consider including the keyword more than once in the entire text and use similar keywords as well. Include location.
• Use video to supplement your content.
• Use an outbound link or two to provide context to your content.
• Use social sharing buttons (more appropriate on blog article pages)

Finally, here’s an example of how Stephanie’s optimized page appears on Google’s search results page:

Well there you have it; a very pared-down how-to on keyword research and optimizing your website for search engines. The more practice it, the better you get. There are over 200 ways to optimize your website for search engines. If you’d like to explore these options, check out my favorite article: Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List.