Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

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• If the exact page you’re looking for doesn’t show up for the full URL, double-

check to make sure it’s not indexed. Find a unique string of HTML text on

your page—one that is not likely to exist on another site—and search for it in

quotes. Searching for a unique term like “Robert Johnson, King of the Delta

Blues. Rumors and Tales swirl with the name” isn’t likely to bring up anyone’s

site but the one you’re looking for.

• Perform the same check with Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.

My Site Doesn’t Have Typical Landing Pages!

For most SEO campaigns, and especially for the SEO plan that an allows, it makes sense

to focus your efforts on optimizing and tracking a small number of landing pages (no more than

10) on your site.

However, as we discussed in Chapter 2, there may be some of you who do not follow this system.

For example,bloggers should consider every posting to be an equally important landing page.

Large catalog sites may follow a shallow-wide approach, with the expectation that users can enter

the website via hundreds of product pages. And for some businesses,the choice of landing pages

will shift with the season.

When your situation calls for a large or changing number of landing pages, you will have to adjust

accordingly:You may wish to track more pages, or just your home page, or a select group of sample

pages chosen from different areas of your site.You may wish to do separate SEO campaigns in

sequence, or even scale up Your SEO Plan.

Yes, this SEO plan is scalable. Give it 10 hours a day, and you can multiply your number of landing

pages accordingly. Just don’t forget to do the other little things in life, like bathing yourself and

feeding your dog.

Thursday: Inbound Links

As you learned in Chapter 4, “How the Search Engines Work Right Now,” the number

of inbound links (other sites linking to your website, also known as

backlinks

) is an

important part of the search ranking algorithm. Having plenty of inbound links will

actually help your site in two important ways: indirectly, by improving your search

Now:

Go to your Rank Tracking Worksheet and fill in Y or N for each of your landing pages in each of the

four search engines.

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