Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

159

Many of your site text edits from Thursday are perfect candidates for inclusion in a

style guide.

Know your time frame.

You can move forward in Your SEO Plan for a few days with-

out having your changes to tags and text in place. If you’re not doing them yourself,

these edits—and the buy-in they require—might take time. Communicate your desired

time frame with your team, and get some realistic expectations from the ones who have

to do the work. If you need to take a little time to get these important changes made,

we won’t rush you. We’ll be here waiting for you when your site is ready to go!

Make yourself available.

You’ve just handed out some serious work for your team,

and they may respond with opposition or genuine curiosity. Let your team know that

you’re available to answer questions, and be prepared to pleasantly spoon-feed your

reasoning and background information should the need arise.

Prioritize.

If your team doesn’t have the time to get all of these edits in place anytime

soon, prioritize them in this order:

Fix robot barriers.

Edit HTML page titles.

Edit page text.

Edit meta tags.

Now that your site has its optimization spit-shine, you’re ready to show it to the

world. Next week, you’ll get serious about building high quality inbound links.

Week 2: Link Building

You learned in Chapters 3 and 4 how important inbound links are for your website.

Last month, you even dipped a toe into the ocean of link building when you used the

search engines to find out how many other sites are linking to your landing pages.

Unless your site is truly wretched, there’s bound to be somebody out there

who is interested in linking to it. (And if you think your site is beyond linking, stay

tuned! You’ll get some content-building and linkability improvement lessons in

Chapter 9, “Month Three: It’s a Way of Life.”) Put on your PR hat—or get your

team’s most talented communicator in the room—and get started on your SEO link-

building campaign:

Monday:

Your Existing Links

Tuesday:

Directory Submittals

Wednesday:

Surf for More Link Opportunities

Thursday:

The Art of Link Letters

Friday:

Send Your Letters

c07. 8:08 159