Excerpts from a SEO do-it-yourself brainstorming
This week came in with the launching of yet another Joomla web site. Having the site installed, configured and opened to the public is like filling the docks with water around a new ship. It still requires a tonload of details to be implemented and tested, and another pile of processes to get running on top of the floating hefty framework.
Here are some excerpts from an SEO brainstorming with the owner of this site:
About expecting clients -and with this we’re entering the SEO consulting stage- it takes a constant marketing campaign to help out the chance of possible clients into a growing number of probable customers and eventually to establish a clientele capable to cover 365 days a year.
It’s like in any other business, be it offline or online: you have to CALL out to the world, so the ones interested will be able to hear you.
What we have now is a ‘Google friendly’ site. In order to become a ‘Google ready’ site it takes a couple of steps, such as:
1. You should subscribe to Google Adsense, here:
Go read the details, then create an account of yours. I’ll place the necessary Google code on your site. This will bring in google advertising on your site:
And yes, there will definitely be competing ads served by Google on your site. All you have to do is check the sites of the competition, list them in a mail to me and I’ll filter them out from posting ads on your site, or you can do this in the Adsense account. Either way, a list of competing URLs is good to build and keep in the pocket, and of course filter them out.
Giving real estate on your site for Google ads (filtered as we wish) will help the site gain faster exposure in Google search results.
2. Some people opt to subscribe for Google Adwords as well, but I won’t jump the gun so fast. Why? Because with Adsense you RECEIVE pennies from Google, while with Adwords you PAY dollars to Google —notice the distinction. Add to this the ever growing click-fraud cases…
3. Google search and ranking algorithms are not just overly complex and secret, but they change randomly, about every quarter, or every other quarter. One old rule of Google’s is the sandbox. This works like this: any fresh site (domain) is automatically crawled by Googlebots (these are the robots), its data collected on Google servers BUT kept in a sandbox for about 6 to 8 months time. This is to make sure the site/domain MATURES, thus to prevent wiseguys from registering pirate domains, do JavaScript tricks on them in no time, and gain top ranking by delusion. So Google created this sandbox policy/effect, and every new domain, www.apartments-zagreb.com included, is kept in there until it matures (some consider this sandbox effect as human made policy, others as a mathematical growth because of the algorithms, regardless the causes this sandbox exists), read here about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_Effect
I can keep talking about Google policies and algorithms for days and nights, but to sum it up:
What you have to do in the ‘maturing’ period in order to obtain very good positioning when getting out of the sandbox:
- You have to think that content is king, this means you have to blog nicely, frequently and genuinely. Your site is (among other things) a blogging machine… So we begin with publishing content (another word for blogging) which is simple like sending email, but delicate because it lands on your public site, so think like writing to a newspaper… Why do you have to blog? To add content regularly? Because this content is what Googlebots are chasing (harvesting) for. Based on the quality of your written content, and how often you stack more on top of the old, and on how easy the bots can fetch it, based on these factors the Google algorithm will give you a mark, the heaviest mark in making or breaking your position in search results.
- You have to build a linking base. No! Don’t look for linking farms and garbage like that, because these automated tricks are old hat and recently considered black hat by Googlebots. Then how can you build your links? The best way is naturally inserting them into your content, inside your blogs. You’re certainly reading numerous blogs on the web. I dare give you the URL of my personal blog:
Where I rant about (and along) my job and clients’ issues, mostly security related rants. But I keep this blog (eating some chunk of my time as if I’d be getting bored otherwise) not for fun but rather for helping Moonkah.net with a naturally content-written linking base, so raising its Google ranking.
-And BTW, we’re about to brainstorm some about picking up a set of keywords and keyphrases, prioritize them and then making sure you seed them randomly, but meaningfully, throughout your blogging content. Some keywords (obvious): Zagreb, apartments (they are in the URL of your domain, which is a great thing, because the URL feeds the bots like nothing else), Croatia, renting, rental, Dalmatia, vacation, Hrvatska, and so on. Then build up semantic constructions into keyphrases (FYI, Google is the best semantic machine invented, still primitive but growing faster than Yahoo or MSN). An example of writing: “I rented a DVD and while watching it was thinking of renting another one”. Notice the rented and renting which the bot will harvest and mark higher than if finding the word rented twice. From here Google tells us that it makes a semantic distinction amongst keywords. Many other white hat practices come to mind regarding Google, but even if Google is some 70% ‘ahead’ of the others (quite an empire) this doesn’t mean that Yahoo won’t help you get some clients, or MSN, or some social networking sites, or word of mouth — and here we head towards other realms:
- You should list all the emails of your friends (place the tire kickers to the bottom) and we can start a mailing list. Something legal not spamming, I’ll detail this to you when we get to it.
- Take your time and list all your competition, because business intelligence is a hefty weapon.
- Focus on a niche by geography (where are living the people most likely to become your clients), social status (what are the persons most likely to land on your site), age range, etc.
- Use the calendar on the site to post events in Zagreb, relate this to the blogs, in order to offer incentives to your niche, reasons to make them haste to Zagreb. Keep a vivid contact with them but DON’T GET OBSESSIVE!!!
- Do not write like selling something, readers feel this right away, they treat it like advertising and run amok. So the blogging rule is to ENTERTAIN not SALE, even if -in fact- we’d better entertain ourselves rather than blogging - because sometimes we see it as a chore but anytime we must make it look as something funny and desirable to the public…
- Oh yes, translating the blogs in the three languages: English, Spanish, Croatian. You’ll notice in the backend menu at Components>Joomfish there’s a nice comprehensive tool that will make translating less a chore and more a pleasure (well…)
OK, think I’ll stop here with my blahs (for now). Just telling you that once you’re focusing on a niche and regularly pounding that niche with blogs, newsletters and offers, then results will start to show up.
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