Last night I attended the SEMNE event held in Providence, RI. Nick Gerner of SEOmoz was the presenter of “Inside the Black Box: How Search Engines Rank Web Pages“.

Nick is a Search Engineer and co-developer of SEOmoz’s new Linkscape product. (He mentioned the other primary co-developer several times, and it is my bad that I didn’t record his name. Maybe Nick can remind me… And he did - see comments below - Ben Hendrickson and the whole SEOmoz development team!)

Nick was prepared, knew his material, and his enthusiasm was contagious. He shared relevant information, and was at ease answering, and indeed, was excited to answer questions ranging from right-on-target to related-through-several-layers of “what ifs”.

Nick talked about the delicate balance of providing valuable user experiences and attracting search engines at the same time. Topics included Text Classification, Page Rank, Rank Time Techniques, Semantic Links, Sentiment Indexing, Document Structure, Link Analysis and Link Spams, Linkscape and mozRank, and more…

I was impressed with his presentation skills and his knowledge. His slides were a great complement to his message, and made understanding the concepts easy… and thought-provoking.

My goal at any event is to walk away with a nugget or two. Goal accomplished - AND - I have 4 pages of notes to review and think about. …About what the search engines are looking for, how they categorize, the super (have you heard it before?) importance of inbound links, and the importance and relevancy of products like Linkscape.

So Kudos to SEMNE for inviting Nick and Kudos to Nick for a great presentation and re-energizing my thoughts around my approach to SEO. 

So, your SEO expert told you to get your website listed in as many industry-related directories as you can, and you hesitate because it sounds like you will have to spend hours and hours searching.

Not any more! Take a trip to Internet Search Engine Database (ISEdb). Look at the menus on the left: “Free Directories”, “Paid Directories”, “Local and Regional”, “Weblog Directories”, and so on. Yep, ISEdb has done the bulk of the leg work for you!

Action: Take time to understand your choices. Be choosy. Add your website to the directories that are most closely related to your work.

Tip: It is better to be listed in fewer content-related directories than in more “general” directories. Peanutbuttering doesn’t pay with this task.

Site Owners and Maintainers: Getting found on the Internet can be a very challenging and expensive task. You can help your website get found by reinforcing the work your SEO expert has done. Here’s a no-cost way to remind Google that your website is alive and well.

Take advantage of Google News - a service provided by the famous search engine.
Submit your press releases for display as “news” and subsequent indexing. Issue press releases containing current information about new products and events your site is involved with and Google News will likely pick it up.

How? Here’s a link to help you get started: Google News - Help for Publishers

If you are seeking high ranks with Google, it will help to know what Google is thinking.

Here’s an excellent resource on Google’s Algorithm and ranking factors: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#f41. Search Engine Optimization experts talk about their experiences with Google and express their opinions about how they think Google considers (assigns importance to) certain factors related to a website like: Quality and Quantity of Inbound links, Text Surrounding Links, Topical Relationship of Linked-To website, etc.

Keywords are not necessarily individual words, but, “keyword phrases” - groups of words that together form the keyword for which you want your site to be found.

The more specific you can be with regard to the combination of words, the more likely you are to be found by your target audience. So add a geographic location or niche word to your keyword. For example, I would use “website designers Central Mass.” instead of “website designers”, and “PHP programmers” instead of “website programmers”.

Here’s some steps to help you build your keyword list.

1. Brainstorm: Write up a preliminary list of keyword phrases.
    
2. Test those keywords: Go to Google (or the search engine that you are targeting) and enter the phrases on your keyword list. You do this to verify that “like businesses” display on the search engine results pages (SERP). The results will give you an indication of whether the keyword phrase you entered is too general or too specific.

   Remember, you can help yourself get found on the Internet by adding words related to geography (Marlborough MA, Central Mass, MetroWest Massachusetts), price (affordable websites, competitively-priced websites, hi-end websites), class/type (brochure websites, eCommerce websites, blog websites, interactive websites, custom-designed websites), and industry (i.e. b-to-b websites, b-to-c websites, general business websites).
    

3. Review statistics: This is for existing websites. Skip to the next step if you are developing a new website.

   Review the keyword search terms that are bringing visitors to your site. This will tell you what terms visitors are actually using. Typically, you will find that the keywords contain your business name. That means that people who are searching for you are finding you. That is good.

   If your focus is on bringing in new business from people who are not yet familiar with your business, you want to see “generic terms” listed in the statistics. If you do not, your work is to update your Web pages to include the relevant “generic terms” so that the search engines can categorize your website within those terms. For example, it is good that “Adventures Online” is getting found by people who are familiar with the firm. In order for me to bring in new business from people who are unfamiliar with Adventures Online, I would update my Web pages to include generic terms like “website designers Central Mass”.

    

4. Inquire: This is for new websites, although can be helpful for existing site owners who are fine tuning their keywords. Interview your clients or ask them to take a survey to let you know the terms they would use to find your business. Another choice is to conduct a focus group to learn the terms that they would use.
    
5. Research: Now that you have a refined list of keyword terms, use a tool to test the “relevancy” of your terms. Online keyword research tools like Wordtracker and Trellian can help you optimize your list of keyword terms so that your site gets found on the Internet. Use the information that they provide to learn the popularity of your keyword phrases, and, pay attention to the order in which the words are placed. For example, I might learn that it is best to use “Central Mass. website designers” rather than “website designers Central Mass.”, and “website developers” instead of “website designers”. Other online keyword research tools include: 7Search.com’s Keyword Suggestion, and Yahoo! Search Marketing Keyword Inventory Tool.
    
6. The Nth degree: If you really want to take it to the Nth degree, add to your list common mispellings and typos, abbreviations, slang and synonyms.

Going through these steps to develop your keyword list, particularly the Research and Inquiry steps, helps you discover new opportunities (keywords you had not thought of) and correct misperceptions (discard keyword terms that you thought would be good).

Developing a keyword list is the first step. Now create/update your website! The list will only help you if you use your keyword terms throughout your website.

Happy Surfing!