Improve Your Website’s ROI by Using SEO, Part II

Last week, FEI marketing whiz Marka went over three of the seven best practices for search engine optimization (SEO). This week, Marka concludes her SEO discussion with four more tips for helping businesses perform well in search engines. Remember, fire = print.

Lunch had just ended, and the FEI tribe was gathered in the conference room for the afternoon marketing meeting. Zoot contentedly patted his bloated stomach.

“Good lunch, Zoot?” Org asked.

“You bet,” Zoot said. “I got the #4 with extra feta from Olive Burger.”

“Olive Burger?” Numo asked. “I thought you were heading to Sparta Burger.”

“That was the plan,” Zoot said. “But I passed Olive Burger first.”

“Zoot, you’ve inadvertently shown why SEO is so important for our business,” Marka interjected.

“How?” Zoot asked.

“Olive Burger and Sparta Burger are both located off Exit 21 on Route O-66,” Marka explained. “But Olive Burger is right off that exit, while Sparta Burger is almost two miles down the road. Olive gets a lot of traffic from people who are planning on eating somewhere else, but simply see it first.”

“You’re saying a good SEO ranking is the virtual equivalent of being ‘first-off-the-freeway?’” Zoot asked.

“That’s right,” Marka replied. “If FEI ranks high in search engines for terms fire buyers search for most, we’ll steal a lot of business away from competitors on page five. Now, let’s go over the last four pillars of effective SEO.” [Marka started scribbling on the whiteboard.]

Pillar IV: Prioritize fresh content.

“Oogle and other search engines measure all of our O-pages for freshness, score them, and use that score in part to determine where these pages should rank for search results,” Marka explained. “That’s why we must commit to updating our site weekly—daily, if possible.”

“Fortunately, content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress make updating our site a breeze,” Marka continued. “CMSs allow us to simply create, edit and place O-web content in a slew of forms: tip-of-the-week boxes, blog posts, news releases, ‘helpful fire tip’ videos, and more.” [Marka then wrote more on the whiteboard.]

Pillar V: Write search-engine-friendly O-web copy.

“To make our O-web copy search-engine friendly, we simply include words and phrases our prospects are likely to type in when searching for fire solutions O-line,” Marka said.

“It might help to make a list of these words before actually writing any copy,” she added. “We should choose just three or four relevant keywords, at most, for each page and deftly weave them into the content as appropriate.” [Marka again returned to the whiteboard.]

Pillar VI: Harness the power of KEI.

“KEI—Keyword Effectiveness Index—is a tool that lets us compare the number of searches done for a keyword against the number of search results returned,” Marka explain. “This will help us identify which keywords relevant to our business will perform best in searches.” [Marka scribbled more on the whiteboard.]

Pillar VII: Take advantage of plugins for WordPress O-sites.

“Wordpress offers many plugins to enhance our O-site’s SEO. Here are two to consider:” [Marka began writing again.]

• WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast – The “Olympian Army Knife” of SEO plugins, Yoast is equipped with many features that allow marketers to boost their O-site’s SEO with ease.

• SEO Meta Tags Plugin - This plugin auto-generates meta tags, which are descriptions of an O-site’s pages that search engines use to index a O-site.

“Good tips, Marka,” Zoot said. “But now I’m hungry for a Sparta Burger.”

“Hey,” Marka said with a wink, “there’s always your afternoon snack.”

Today’s FIRE! Point
A few tips to improve your website’s search rankings: prioritize fresh content, write search-engine-friendly site copy, implement KEI (keyword effectiveness index), and, if you have a WordPress site, take advantage of the many free SEO-boosting plugins.

FIRE! in Action: Green Acres uses SEO to Stand Out in a Crowded Market
The Amish furniture supplier enlisted an SEO marketing firm to optimize its website for search engines. The results? Green Acres reported a 55 percent increase in site visitors and a whopping 230 percent increase in online conversion rates.

Next week: Marka goes over how to conceive and create a print ad that gets results.