Keith recently enjoyed a visit from a client who maintains his own site and who we haven’t heard from in several years.   Keith had optimized the site for this fellow and achieved top-10 ranking for his chosen key words.  However, the client had noticed a quick and severe drop in his rank recently so he stopped in to see what could be done, on a tight budget, to rectify the situation.

Since Keith is retired these days, it isn’t often we get to enjoy his sage advice and experience on small projects.  The beachdog.com web team was delighted to find that we’ve learned our lessons well; Keith’s advice was exactly what we would have recommended.  So we decided to steal it and share it with you!  Ha!

Thanks for stopping in today.  A lot has changed in the web since we last worked on your site!  In December, for the first time in more than three years, Google launched an entirely new algorithm for how it ranks sites.  Bing is new and picking up speed quickly.  Microsoft and Yahoo are one search company now, with Yahoo largely running the paid advertising and the two sharing a search database.

What we’re seeing, more than anything, are changes in what the search companies think is important.  For example, your site being easy to read from a smart cell phone, load time, compatibility with social networking — things that weren’t on the search rank radar when your site was last optimized.

6 Recommendations for DIY Search Rank Improvement

1 – Join your local Visitors Bureau, Chamber, Convention Center and other travel/tourism-related organizations and buy a link from their sites to [yours].  Links to your site from other sites talking about the area, and about [your industry], will help your site rank higher.  The more popular the other site is, the better it is for your site.

2  – Complete Google Map info. Local search is increasingly used, by full-size and cell phone surfers.  Make sure Google has as much info as they’ll let you give them.  Go to http://www.google.com/lbc to sign up and claim your business so you can edit it.

2B – Sign up for Google’s Webmaster Tools. This is numbered 2B for a reason; it’s the second half of telling Google about your site.  It also helps promote your site.  http://www.google.com/webmasters/

2C – Read Google’s SEO resources for beginners. If you’re going to optimize your site on your own, this is a must-read.  Why?  Because Google has 73% of the market share of searches in the United States.  If you fail with everyone else and succeed with Google, you’re still ahead of the game.

3 – Add [key word rich] content with a focus on use of geographic keywords. In 2010, content is king.  The more you write about [your subject] and [your town name] and use the words that you think people will search for, the better your rank will be.  Hands down.

4 – YouTube videos – refresh/update photos on your site.  Name and give alt text for them using geographic keywords when possible.  More than ever, people don’t read.  They look at pictures and they watch videos.  They email pictures and videos to their friends.  If you can offer these things and make it easy for them to share, they’ll promote you.  Digital and Video cameras are available for less than $100.  Keep one of each [in your business] and pass them around.  Besides – Google owns YouTube.  When you post to YouTube and then feed it back through your site, you’re telling Google you exist and have new content for them to share for you.

5 – Update your site with WordPress.  Not only will converting your site to WordPress make it super-easy for you to keep it updated yourself and do all the things I’m talking about, above, it will make it easy to make it viewable on a smart phone and make it easy for site visitors to share about you on social networking sites.  A table-built site, like the one [this site owner has] now, is not viewable by cell phones.  Even if it were, Google is now PENALIZING sites that are table-built.  So if you’re not going to upgrade to WordPress, at least have your site rebuilt using CSS instead of tables.

6 – Change update date and copyright info. I can’t say enough about this.  If you aren’t updating the dates on your site, Google (etc) assume your info is old.  They don’t want to give their customers bad info, so your site gets pushed to the bottom of their answer pile.

Keith Schwartz, Fetching Fanatic