Onsharp

Now that you know the value of a website that's easy to find in search results, there are a few things you can do to prepare for the first meeting with your Search Engine Optimization expert. (Our SEO expert, Tommy Butcher, impresses us! Read more at http://www.onsharp.com/blog/). If you have something like Google Analytics set up, you can complete these suggested tasks quickly and easily. Ready, set, GO! 

Know your top keywords

Reference your website's traffic sources and find the top 10 to 20 keywords that searchers used to find your site. Choose the last year or year-to-date as your time range. Or, if you recently changed your marketing or sales approach, choose a date range with at least three months before and after the change so you can get an average representation of visits to your site. 

List the pages you want to be sure visitors see

Knowing what pages are the most important for your business (and visitors) will help the SEO expert focus on directing searchers to those specific pages. You also can optimize pages for chosen keywords. Maybe your overall traffic and web leads are acceptable but you'd like to boost visits to pages about specific products and services. Search engine optimization can help you accomplish that.

Describe who you want visiting your site

How your SEO campaign is designed will be determined on who you want to attract to your site. For example, if you sell only new books in your bookstore, it won't be productive to target people searching for used books. If you haven't yet defined your target market, don't worry. A description of your products and services will serve as a starting point. 

Determine where you are listed

A site like www.getlisted.org is great for knowing if you have a listing in each of the major directories. This is a good first step as getting your site on directory listings is a quick and easy way to increase traffic and start moving your site higher up in search results. 

Take a social media inventory

Are you on Facebook? What about Twitter? List all the social media sites you use, including Yelp, Flickr, and so on. Then determine how often you post to each platform. Do you blog? If so, how often do you post? Having all this information listed is sure to impress your SEO expert! 

By having this information readily available you and your SEO expert can hit the ground running. It won't be long before you can enjoy watching your page(s) move up in the search rankings! 

Do you have a question for our SEO expert? Submit a comment that includes a question for him, and he'll share his wisdom.