An important part of SEO is getting good inbound links to your website. You want these links to be both relevant, and also of quality. One of the best places you can get such a link is in Wikipedia - which is probably held in higher regard than any other source by the search engines like Google and Yahoo.

I can personally attest to the value of Wikipedia and have successfully made entries for some of my clients. Alternatively I’ve also heard from people how they have tried making a Wiki entry for themselves, and then seen it be unceremoniously deleted by one of the Wikipedia editors – who at times can seem like Nazis! So here are some guidelines you can follow to increase your success rate:

1. First and foremost, you need to get rid of any thoughts of “marketing” your website. Sure I know, that is why you are taking the trouble to do it in the first place, but you need to create a wikipedia page that isn’t marketing oriented. You are not there to sell anything other than the name of the company or person you are entering – not the products. The whole point is just to get the page entry – an inbound link to your website from Wikipedia.
2. Not every website or company is fit to be in Wikipedia. It is a hard truth to accept sometimes, but there it is.  If you are trying to put lipstick on a pig – you need to be aware of it and press harder with the lipstick (smile). But still Wikipedia may just delete your work anyways.
3. Put on your best journalist hat and try to write something that gives the Who, What, When, Where, and How for the subject matter. Write it like it would look in a encyclopedia even. Write it up in your favorite word editor first. You will also need to have links in your page that will validate it – so hopefully your subject matter is written about somewhere else so it can be shown to be “worthy” of the wiki entry.
4. Now go to the Wikipedia website and sign up for an account – you have to login to edit any pages.
5. Take a look around at similar pages to those you want to create. Maybe you want to make a page on a song writer, so take a look at other song writer pages.  Find one you like the looks of.
6. Now click the Edit button at the top of the page, as if you were going to change something on it. Don’t change anything – just copy all the code that is there – paste it into Notebook.
7. Do a search for the term you wish to use – for instance if I was making a wiki page for website-help-blog.com – I would type that in and search for it.  You should get a page that says the term is not in the Wiki – and this is what you want to see. There is a link there that you click to create a page with that name – click it.
8. Now take the code from the page you liked in step 6, and paste it into the new page. Then edit the code using the text you wrote in step 3. The wiki uses special code, and there is a tutorial there you can check if you get stuck doing something. Good luck with that though – I’ve always found it much easier to just find something on another page and copy it from there.
9. Preview the results of what you have done before you save it. Make sure it is what you want – so you don’t get deleted needlessly.
10. Now go into Wikipedia to some other pages and link to your page – for instance maybe there is an existing list of song writers you can add your page to. Find as many of these as you can, and link back to your newly created wiki page.

A fair amount of my time is spent dealing with SEO issues, so I thought it would be a good idea to give some details on what you can do to quickly “SEO” your website – to make it search engine friendly.  Listed below are what I consider to be the most important aspect of your on-site SEO efforts. (not to confuse with the off-site tasks needing done) I’ve listed them in order of importance – and yes, they are all important.  I’m assuming you already know what your most important keywords are.

1. Title meta tag – this is in the source code for your web page, also visible at the very top of your browser window. Each page should have a unique title tag, and it should clearly state what the page is about.  If your web page is about the instructions for using a doohickey, then it should say something like “Doohickey Instructions”.
2. H1 tag – this is the main tag (or should be) on your website, that usually displays at the top of the page. It should reinforce the main Keyword for the page, maybe even introduce some secondary ones. Like “How to Use and Operate Your Doohickey”
3. Description meta tag – also in the source code, this is what the search engine is likely to display, if you are lucky enough to get listed in their search results. Keep it short, clear and concise so that people looking at the search results page know to click on your link or not. “Instructions for using a Doohickey – everything you ever might need to know.”
4. Navigation text – this is the clickable text you use to navigate between the pages of your website. All other pages of your site should have link text saying something like “Doohickey Instructions”.  You don’t want the link to be “click here”.
5. Link text – similar to the navigation text, this is just all the other links on your site that navigate people around.
6. Text content – lastly you want the content of your website to be “keyword rich” in that it reinforces the main keywords of the page. Don’t just repeat the same main keyword over and over – you want to create a keyword ‘theme’. Like this; Doohickey instructions, how to use a doohickey, operation of a doohickey, doohickey dos and donts, hints on using a doohickey, etc, etc.

If you do each of the above – you’ve just tackled maybe 90% of what is needed done on a new website.

(Want to see the “source code” for your web page?  Just right click on the page, click ‘View Source’ or ‘View Page Source’)

Keyword research is one of those things that few people pursue, even though it will pay big dividends later. How come?  Because the point is to find out what people are searching for on the internet.  Why is that important? Because you want some of that search traffic to come to your website. If everyone on the internet is searching for “widgets”, but you are optimizing your website for “doohickeys” then maybe no one ever visits your website.

Basic Steps:

• Make an initial list of keywords for your website.
• Go to Keyword Map and get some more ideas. The Keyword Map is a good place to ’spitball’ ideas, since it shows relationships between keywords that you might not think of.
• Then go to Google and find out which ones are being actively searched, which ones are not. Google is responsible for up to 75% of all search traffic on the web – and they are the “go to” source. 
  • Google Keyword Tool (made for PPC campaigns) – will give you a large list of keywords and how much competition there is for it.
  • Google Insights for Search - shows you what words are being searched most, as well as other ones that are ‘up and coming’.
  • Google Search-based Keyword Tool - this is a tool that will recommend search keywords after evaluating your website.
  • Google Trends – this tool will show you the history of any particular keyword – its trend over time. It will show you yearly cycles, which is helpful, or you can search a keyword like ‘twitter’ and watch how that keyword took off and when – or others that have petered out.
• Now take these keywords and sprinkle them liberally all over your website. If possible, include the biggest one in your URL.

So you have yourself a website, and you now need to market the site, right?  I mean, just because you built it does not mean anyone will know it is there.  One basic method to get started is to get your website listed with the different website directories out there because basically you want to leave some bread crumbs for the spiders to follow into your website.  To accomplish this you don’t have to use directories, you can also get well known websites to link to you, but for some this is hard to make happen – so instead use the directories.

Directories are used by the search engines as starting points to begin indexing. And by indexing, I mean when the search engine spiders crawl the web following links and categorizing them – so they begin in these directories as they are natural starting points. But there are literally thousands of directories out there to choose from – which ones should you use? Basically you want to list in what I’ll call an “authoratative” directory – one that the search engines respect.  There are tons of directories out there trying to make a buck, but most of these have been seriously downgraded by Google, and frankly are not worth the effort.

And so, here is a list of directories I recommend. They start with the big four, and are followed with a few other important niche ones.

• Wikipedia - this is maybe the most important place you can have your website listed, although you may very well not be able to. Google places a very high value on getting listed here and if you can lie, cheat, or steal your way into it, do so.
• DMOZ - this is the grand-daddy directory that Google uses as its base directory.  It is free, but may I speak frankly?  It is a pain in the butt to work with.  You can easily request your website be listed in DMOZ, and maybe it gets entered within a year.  And God forbid it gets placed in the wrong category – they don’t care and will not fix it for you.  You maybe can tell I have had some poor experiences dealing with them – but even so I highly recommend it. 
• Yahoo Directory - this is the base directory for Yahoo. It costs some cash to get listed ($299) but if you have a marketing budget I also recommend you make the investment.  While Yahoo is not as big as Google, it is still worthwhile to list with them.
• Business.com - this is what I think is the premier business directory on the web. It also costs some cash ($299) but I think it shows the search engines you are serious and to be reckoned with.
• BOTW, Directory Journal, GoGuides, JoeAnt, and lots of others too.  What I do is create a spreadsheet and I list them as I find them, then I sort them by Google Page Rank – then starting at the top of the list I add my site(s) as my budget allows.  I think my spreadsheet has like 1,700 directories in it now (and I ignore most of them).  If there are any niche directories that apply to my website, I place a priority on getting listed with them.

Search engine optimization is an important aspect for every website to consider and implement because, lets face it, for most websites search engine traffic is where the traffic comes from. And what is not to like? SEO traffic is free, it is plentiful, and it can be easy to get sometimes. But if you are responsible for a website’s performance, SEO needs to be understood in the context of how it impacts the sites performance. Amateurs usually think high performance can be determined simply by looking at a websites traffic volume – but that is a huge mistake. That is exactly the mistake all those dot com companies made back when the tech bubble burst, and they all went bankrupt. When I refer to performance, it means how well the site helps the organization accomplish its goals (to make the company money, to produce sales leads, etc.)

And so I’m going to say something that might strike some as being heretical;

SEO is not all it is cracked up to be.

How come? One of the biggest reasons is that of all the referral sources coming into your website, SEO traffic is the worst when it comes to conversion rates. The best thing about SEO traffic – the traffic coming from search engines – is that it is free traffic.  You sit back and just watch the people flock into your website.  Excellent!  If you are one of the lucky ones, the web traffic to your site grows exponentially and you – the guy responsible for setting it up is hailed as a hero. This is when you need to ask for a raise in your pay and benefits, for sure. I say it is time to ask for a raise because at some point in the future, things will change – Google will alter their search algorithm and traffic that was taken for granted will drop to a trickle. Management then looks at you – the guy responsible for the earlier success – and will expect you to pull a rabbit out of your hat. And hey – maybe you do manage to do it, but then maybe not. 

The point I’m making here is that just looking to SEO can be a mistake, because a high performance website does not always correlate with high SEO traffic. Consider these facts:

• High “performance” of a website is not tied to the level of traffic to the site – another heretical statement for sure – it refers instead to how high your conversion rate is. What percent of your visitors convert into a sale, or a lead, etc.
• Bookmark Traffic is the best, of course, since they are the people who know you and have marked your website to be able to return. The previously made a purchase and are coming back for more.
• Next best is Referral Traffic which comes in a close second. This is the traffic coming from other websites, because the person trusts the referral website and that trust transfers over to your site. They may still be researching different products, but they are serious about it.
• Paid traffic is in third place, which is somewhat surprising. Before seeing the statistics I would have thought it would be a close second to Bookmark traffic, but it isn’t even close to Refferal Traffic in regards to conversions. Paid traffic is an important source of web traffic for many companies – but it is important to know that the conversion rate from that source is not very high.
• And in last place for referral source traffic is SEO traffic – the traffic coming from the search engines.  Wow, who would have thought that?  Doesn’t Google tell us that the people clicking on your ads are targeted and motivated buyers?  Yes they do – but then they are trying to sell you the ads, remember?