If I was to get into a long elevator ride with you and you asked me for some words of wisdom on SEO, this is what I would say:

1. Do Thorough SEO Keyword Research

The first step in SEO keyword research is to get under the skin and into the minds of your prospects to figure out which search words and phrases they use to find your products and services. If you have Google Analytics monitoring your website you can also determine what search phrases people use to find your website.

When you select your keywords, remember to take into account things like various ways of spelling these keywords. People may also use singular or plural or even use different words for the same product. For instance, you might be missing out on a lot of website traffic because you’ve optimized your website for the search phrase “cellular phone special” and not for “mobile phone special” as well.

2. Create Valuable SEO Content

Users get sucked into websites with great content. In this case we’re talking abut website copy. Let’s examine some of the best ways website copy can be used to support SEO efforts.

Firstly, content must provide value for the user. Let me explain. If you’re looking to buy a new TV and you find a website with expert articles and user-authored reviews that answers all your questions, then chances are you’d view the company as an authority on the subject. You may even return to the website to read up on that specific TV model you so desire. This generates trust and could quite possibly lead to you buying from that company.

Secondly, the keywords and key phrases used in the website copy is healthy for search engine spiders which results in better rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

3. Design An SEO Ready Website

An SEO ready website means that the website structure is built in a way that it easily supports SEO efforts. Now hang on, this might get a little technical for some.

When search engines crawl your website they crawl through the HTML code. Make sure that the spiders can easily crawl the content of your web pages by employing web standards development techniques (ask your web developer about web standards). This ensures that your website is lightweight, loads quicker and is easier to crawl for spiders.

4. Start A Link Building Effort

Link building is any effort you make to increase the amount of links from other websites to your website. Search engines pick this up and regard the amount of links to your website as signals of relevance. Allow me to clarify.

In the eyes of search engines, each link from one site to another counts as a vote of confidence. If a website attracts many links from other websites, search engines deem it as a credible source or as an authority on the particular subject that website is about.

May I remind you about creating valuable SEO content as mentioned in section 2 above? Valuable content will attract links because for some reason people like to share and the nature of the web makes it easy for people to share.

5. Measure Your SEO Efforts

One of the most overused yet most pertinent phrases I hear often is, ‘you can’t manage what you can’t measure.’ This phrase is all the more relevant to SEO.

With web metric tools such as Google Analytics you can measure how many visitors your site attracts, how long they visit, what pages they view, how long was it viewed and so much more. It’s the perfect tool to find out if your SEO efforts are paying off.

So these are the SEO tips I would give to you in a long elevator ride. If you didn’t fall asleep reading this, kudos to you. May you live long and prosper.