Pierpont Communications, Inc.

Here’s a question – do you want potential customers, donors and business partners to find you when they’re looking for a product or service you sell? In the ‘old’ days, if you wanted to find a plumber, electrician or restaurant, you’d just flip through the Yellow Pages. As a kid, I remember putting dog-ear marks on the pages with my favorite businesses and blacking out those companies that left me less than impressed.
 

Today, the Yellow Pages are becoming a thing of the past. Instead, everything is online. And even going to your computer will soon be outdated. If I want to find any kind of service or business, I use Google Maps on my smartphone. I can just type in a search term, and all the area providers pop up on my phone. With one click, I can get directions or call them to set an appointment or reservation. It’s the ultimate convenience, and a looming death knell for organizations that have resisted the new age of communications.
 

So if you want to play ‘seek and find’ in this new territory, what are the first steps? Investing in a legitimate search engine optimization (SEO) consultant can help you tremendously, but there are also some things you can do yourself that will help improve your results. While the gory details of true SEO programs are a constantly changing game of art and science, here are a few basic tips to get you started.
 

Content, content, content – you need to have good content! I can’t emphasize this enough. In the past, metadata was what you needed to invest your time in order to show up on online results. (Metadata is essentially “data about data” that is hidden in the programming of a website – you and I don’t see it. You can learn more about it here.) Today, metadata is less important. Instead, it’s all about having content that is both relevant and recent.
 

Google, Yahoo! and Bing use algorithms to find the websites most pertinent to a specific search term. After all, they all want to make sure that the content they divvy up to a searcher is the content that he or she is looking for. Updated content – especially when it is closely aligned and relevant to the search term being used (see the keyword section below) – shows the algorithms that your website is current and applicable to what the searcher is looking for.
 

To let the search engines know that your website is up to date, you have to include new content regularly. Blog posts are great ways to update your website. And as a bonus, blogs give you an opportunity to talk about recent news within the industry, positioning you and your business as an industry thought leader. White papers, briefs and press releases can also be added to the site; in fact, adding them is an easy way to repurpose content you already have.
 

So the big takeaway? New relevant content = better search engine optimization. Remember this!
 

Updated content is great, but pertinence is necessary!
 

If you haven’t done so already, identify what keywords potential customers could use to find you and your competitors. Check your website analytics programs – what are people searching to find you? We at Pierpont are always monitoring how people find our website. Is it by searching PR or marketing? What about public affairs? Are they looking up our CEO Phil Morabito?

Once you know what people are searching, you want to make sure to include these words in your copy so the search engine algorithms will find them.
 

Also, don’t just focus on single keywords – people are searching more and more with “long tail” search terms, or more specific search phrases. (Case in point: when one of my colleagues was searching for a dry cleaner in Houston, she didn’t type in “dry cleaner Houston.” She typed “dry cleaner that is environmentally safe, 77007” – this is an example of a long tail search).
 

Once you have your list of keywords and phrases, review your copy and try to find ways to include them. (Note however that the content still needs to read well – stuffing a page with keywords will actually hurt your site ranking!) Having trouble coming up with keywords? There are a ton of tools on the Internet that can help you brainstorm and choose keywords. You can check out one here, here and here.
 

There is much debate about how important metadata is for SEO. In the past, search engines ranked websites largely by metadata keywords. This meant that many websites could include keywords completely irrelevant to their site in order to boost rankings. (Example: In December, if meta keywords were still being used to rank sites, an automobile dealer could have taken advantage of the Tiger Woods debacle by including meta keywords like “Tiger Woods,” Elin” and “affair” on his website in an attempt to “trick” search engines to display his site when people looked for more information on Tiger Woods.) Fortunately, this doesn’t happen anymore because meta keywords are no longer being used by Google, and Yahoo! gives them very little weight. That said, you don’t want to dismiss meta data completely, as some of it is still important. Meta descriptions (which summarize what your website is about) and page titles are still used for SEO, so make sure these are accurate, concise and descriptive. Also, give your images and photos ALT tags (image meta descriptions) so the search engines can find them. (Google, Yahoo! and Bing can’t read images….yet!) 
 

And I don’t mean linking up with people. Instead, social media is an easy way to build back links, which increase your page strength and improve your ranking in search engines. What are back links? Back links are links on other sites that point back to your site. So how do you get back links? It isn’t easy and it takes time. Some examples are: Comment on blogs and include your website link in your comment. Create a Wikipedia page for your brand. Make sure your website is on every social media page you use (including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter.) Create a blog with your site address on it. Of course, the best way to get links is to give people something worth linking too – interesting content, cool images, or great deals.
 

Research them! Get referrals! Make sure they are legitimate “white-hat” SEO consultants (in other words, people who play by the rules and are ethical). Avoid any company that guarantees results or is a bit too secretive regarding their strategy. For more information on how to pick a vendor click here.
 

While a true SEO program can dive deep into technology and programming, these general tips will help you survive and conquer this new game of “seek and find”.