New Article - SEO Strategy for a Struggling Site on a Limited Budget

[thejenn]

Authored by: Ross Dunn

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/dun.../0731_rd1.html

A Snippet:

Over the years we have answered many a phone call where a prospective client is frustrated with the poor performance of their website(s). Check out this sample conversation of what a business and client might go through in deciding what direction to take a small business SEO project.

[A.N.Onym]

Sorry, Ross, this sounds like an ad.

Is there a SEO strategy for a site to advance in terms of traffic apart from contacting you? Sure, there is a whole list of what you check, but hey, you could have dwelled more on this, since this is an article, not a promo.

It is amazing how such an article sneaks into SEG. Anyone moderating? I'd like to get one like this myself


Just in case someone is reading this, here is what you can do when you are on a budget:
- define the list of your most important keywords (research a thesaurus yourself, talk to your customers, check out competitors)
- go to WordTracker.com or KeywordDiscovery.com and enter those keywords into the search queries.
- get as many 3-5 keyword phrases with your major jeywords as you can (you can do that with the free trial versions, but if you want to do it fast, you can pay around $30-50 a month)
- have the data in separate files
- filter the list for keyword phrases with the same keywords in each file
- find the phrases that are the most relevant to your business, but which are not competitive (high traffic) - the key component here
- find the keyphrases that are found in both files
- write content, aimed to help your visitors, based on the less competitive phrases that can be found in both files
- write content, based on other, less competitive phrases

You may as well adjust your existing website copy to include the less competitive phrases as well - just make sure the text is readable (written for the humans, not the search engines).

The above technique only costs your time and under $50 (optionally) if you are lazy or impatient.

[TheIntroducer]

I'm still a newbie to the world of SEO, but find it full of scoundrels and vagabonds - there's a lot of money being paid for old rope.

I haven't even got a smidgen of God's page rank yet, I'm trying the natural approach to see how far I can get. If I want to write what I believe to be and interesting article then I do - if it hasn't got enough words in to tickle googlegods ear drums - then so be it.

As a matter of interest though - what importance do you put on the content and quality of articles published on the various submission boards that have a link to your site?

Take it steady and have a good day

[A.N.Onym]

Technically, the better your articles are, the more respected magazine publishes them, the better.

Initially, you'll need to do your keyword research, research the article topic to be able to use what your potential customers use and to place a couple of external links in the article as well. Of course, you need to express an objective, informative opinion about your topic as well.

As for places where to place your articles, you'd rather place them in front of your target audience. Usually, it is in the relevant industry online journals. But they apply some article guidelines or already have inhouse experts or consultants for that, so you'll need to either keep working on your article quality or seek more journals. Ideally, you'll be having a column in your industry newspaper or journal. When online, this can be replaced by a blog.

As for placing your articles in directories, here is a good thread about this.

Though some articles can place links to your site (which is good), they may not send you any traffic (which is bad). In fact, most article directories try hard to make it impossible for people to leave their site via author bios (even if they do place active links there). So my take on free article directories is to use them for low quality link building purposes (along with free non-reciprocal directories).