Want to know the secret to dominating search engines for your targeted keywords?  You might be surprised to know that the secret isn’t in how much money you pay your SEO firm – the secret is in the QUANTITY of high-quality content on your website, that is optimized around your target keywords.  It’s true!  Instead of spending thousands of dollars and living in constant fear of the next Google upgrade, build search traffic the RIGHT way.  Create content that matters, and make sure that content is targeted to a specific keyword or keyphrase.  We will show you how to optimize your content, whether it is a static page or a blog post, using this simple SEO Checklist.  With these tools, you can have a page optimized in as little as 5 minutes.

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Let’s get started using the SEO Checklist..

Step 1:  Write down your target key phrase.

You have to have a target key phrase.  For this demonstration, we will pretend that your target key phrase is “how to make blueberry muffins”.

Step 2:  Make sure your page’s URL contains the entire key phrase.

Google likes it when URLs (www.whatever.com/some-page.html) contain the keywords or key phrase.  In this case, you would name the post URL something like: www.itdi-recipes.com/how-to-make-blueberry-muffins-the-easy-way.html.    Not only does Google like this type of formatting, but it is easier for the reader to know what your post is about.  Likewise, if your page url was www.itdi-recipes.com/index.aspx?pageid=22 , not only will that be a difficult URL for readers to decipher, Google will give it much less weight than URLs formatted like the first example.

Step 3:  Make sure the page’s title contains the entire key phrase.

No, this is not the same thing as step 2.  Step 2 is basically the file name.  The title is an HTML element.  In a content management system, this will be called a Title or Page Title.  Make sure that your key phrase is in the title, and the further toward the front the better.  Best example:  How to Make Blueberry Muffins in 10 easy steps!

Step 4:  Include your key phrase in your copy.

A good rule of thumb is 2-3 occurrences in an average blog post.  Or once every 200 words or so.  If you include it too many times, Google will assume you are artificially stuffing the keyword in the post and you will be penalized by poor ranking.  Only use the key phrase in a way that makes sense.  Randomly sticking the phrase in there will make your post hard to read and you will lose audience.

Step 5:  Craft a winning page description (including your key phrase, of course).

When you look at Google search results, you see a listing of titles and descriptions.  The title is your attention getter, and the description is the elevator pitch.  Use the key phrase once in your description, and remember – human eyeballs are reading this. We aren’t worried about tricking the search engine, we are wanting to entice a real person to click the link!  An example here would look like this:  Wondering how to make blueberry muffins from scratch?  Find out how using our kitchen tested recipe!“.

Wrapping it all up.

Those 5 steps are all you need to manage the basic search engine optimization of any HTML page, blog post, CMS page, etc.  If your website uses a standard CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or others – you have tools built in to make editing these items very easy.  If you have a static website, or have questions about these particular to-dos, you may need to ask your web designer to give you some assistance.

The secret to long-term traffic growth, and ultimately search engine domination, is to have a little black book of what your most profitable key phrases are.  Key phrases that your potential customers are likely searching on when they are ready to make a purchasing decision.  Using this list, resolve to write frequent blog posts or other types of content that are each optimized to a specific key phrase using this simple SEO Checklist.  Soon, your website will be serving up fresh, optimized content for any search phrase your potential clients might be searching for – and your hard work will pay big dividends in traffic and leads!

For more information about generating traffic and leads from your website, check out our Inbound Marketing strategy.  Utilize SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media & Email Marketing to generate a steady flow of traffic and leads for your business!

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