Tips and Suggestions for those braving SEO and Paid Search on their own.

Your website should be continually evolving and changing, adjusting its approach and updating campaigns in order to improve results and generate more sales or establish the brand to wider audience. Dig and research your competitors’ approaches and tactics by using one of the many free online competitive analysis tools.
Build sites in html, html5 or other simple language the search engine crawlers can read, keep in mind that Google, Bing and Yahoo tend to pay little if any attention to sites they can’t read or view as cluttered or with low usability.

Adding a page of content to your website each day (or every week) to keep the website strong in the eyes of the search engines is a definite must these days, Google search responds quite well to the constant addition of new content, blogs and comments. You will always see the rewards of adding fresh content and interaction with your site’s visitors.
Make and submit your “site map” to any search engines you plan on advertising on, your “site map” will show search engines the links the most important pages on your site. Search engines will look for the ”site map” listing on pages they hit and follow the links to read and index words and phrases on every page of your site.

Name the main pages of your site with specific keyword phrases and use those same phrases as navigational links around your site. Usability, ease of access and functionality are key to search engines crawling your site and placing it accordingly. Your H1 tags create a headline on your website’s page; this headline informs Google that those words are important. H1 tags should be three to six words long, include main keywords and correctly display the title of your page. H2 tags are subheadings on your page and act as section headers; they are typically 6 to 12 words long and should include secondary phrases.

Every image and hyperlink on your site offers an opportunity to introduce keywords to a specific page. Add image names and alt-text to your site, keep focused on your product or brand and make it relevant and captivating. Search engines typically don’t read images on sites unless they are tagged with text. Naming images on your site and using “alt tags” will help search engines to read the names of pictures, links and the alt-tags.

You want to keep keyword density targeted at about 5%, density should reflect the ratio number of occurrences of a keyword or phrase to the number of total words per page.
Remember to break up keyword phrases, being repetitive will confuse search engines long enough for temporary gratification but may prove costly when the next algorithm update takes place. Using SEO services Chicago as an example, you would separate the words with a period, as in: I just moved and don’t know where to find the best SEO services. Chicago might have some great companies to help me with my site.

Tips for creating landing pages that will convert can include:

• Developing custom landing pages - Don't drive visitors to your home page; while it may be nice looking, home pages typically display too much information for our landing page purposes. Having targeted landing pages not only helps increase the chance of converting a visitor into a customer, it makes reporting easier, as less code will need to be placed on the site in order to track a conversion.

• Keeping content simple - Since most users scan through a website in a few seconds, you have little time to make a good first impression. Keep content simple and above the fold so the user will not have to scroll down or read through an excessive amount of copy. Devote time to creating content that is brief and gets to the point using bullet points and attractive headlines.

• Issuing a “Call to Action” – Get straight to the point making sure to mention the offer stated on your ads. Make sure your call to action is in bold and repeated throughout the page.

• Be trustworthy- Customers need to know your site is trustworthy, products are top notch, and that your services have generated results. To accomplish this include product reviews, client testimonials, SSL certificates and guarantee seals. Include contact information on your landing page in case your customer needs more information to make a decision and decides to call or email.

• Use the KISS principle with forms– Best practices dictate that it’s best to place your headline at the top of the page and sign up form on the right hand side. Make sure to put symbols next to required fields to explain how fields should be entered in the form (02/13/13 vs. 2/13/2013 for example). Try not to have too many required fields. Only collect information that is absolutely essential to completing the sale and converting the visitor.