SEO Post Conrad Saam’s Top SEO Tips for Entrepreneurs
Avvo’s Marketing Director, SEO expert and all-round great guy Conrad Saam stopped in at UW last Wed. night to talk to my MBAs about his favorite subject, and as always he was a huge hit. He clearly loves his work. He’s funny and irreverent. But more important, he’s smart and he knows what he’s talking about. It took a few years of diligent work, but Avvo consistently tops search results for pretty much every term that matters to them despite competing with enormous companies with deep pockets.
Conrad simplifies the subject by focusing on three legs of search engine optimization: content, technology and authority (meaning links).
Content. Conrad recommends focusing on a few key factors like keyword density; indicators such as the title tag, the H1 tag; and the URL, which should be obvious but isn’t.
Authority. Conrad always hits hard on the importance of anchor text. We so often see links of “click here.” “That helps you rank for the word ‘here,” Conrad points out. That’s helpful. Next most used is the company’s name. “If I can’t already rank for Avvo, I’m doing something very, very wrong,” he quips. Anchor texts should be terms for which you want to rank.
Technology. Conrad teaches how to look at a site the way a search engine does. Want to see what a search engine sees? Turn off images, javascript and flash on your browser settings and hit refresh. Surprise!
While a lot of people can make optimizing your website for search engines seem really techy and complicated, Conrad does the opposite. His objective is a little different than most SEO experts: he wants you to be able to do your own SEO. He’s not for hire. Besides favoring my classes once a quarter, he runs Avvo’s Avvocating online marketing training course for law firms.
After class, I asked Conrad for his top 5 tips for entrepreneurs just starting on a site. Here they are:
1. Don’t spend tons of money on a website. WordPress and Blogger both provide SEO optimized publishing platforms that are easy to use and cost about $9 a month for hosting. While these are traditionally thought of as blog platforms, many companies are using them to power a website (and doing so makes it easy to add blogging functionality to your website later).
2. Be (very) wary of consultants. Only hire someone personally recommended by someone who really knows what they are doing.
3. Content is king – write new content regularly. That content should be original to your blog or website and is not simply a cut-and-paste copy of existing content on the web.
4. Links help your site to rank. It is important to find places that will link to your website. Do NOT buy links as this violates webmaster guidelines from the search engines and can end up getting your site banned.
5. Install Google analytics on your site or blog. It’s very easy through both WordPress and Blogger. Google Analytics will provide you with access to an amazing depth of information about the performance of your site, is easy to use and is entirely free!
Thanks, Conrad!
