So, you want Google to find the search term you think you have the right to be known for.

This is an article about Search Engine Optimization Specifically for a single search term, linking to a certain page.

In an earlier life I had a “mail-order” business, Layline, that had a website with almost 10,000 pages, most were product pages, we enjoyed a volume of 32000 orders per year based on our website traffic.

I had targeted terms I wanted to “own” and here is the method I used to ensure I owned them.

Steps on how to write a good search optimized article that lives on one specific html page.

Write a great “picture book article”, complete with an embedded bibliography that is truly on point and “supports” why you should “own” the search term you think you are smart enough to own.

Here are some tips:

Perspective number 1. Write the article from this perspective: Pretend you will be reading it aloud to a blind professor over the phone. The professor is going to want it done just so.

Perspective number 2. The search engines will detract from a perfect score. You start with a certain number of points and when you do not meet the checklist criteria, you loose points. So, Don’t be lazy.

A check list for writing an effective search article:

1.      Don’t get lazy with your words, use Nouns not Pronouns whenever possible. Be sure to weave your search term into sentences, titles, headlines, links.

2.      Don’t be lazy with your metatags.  Make sure you have a title, and a description.

3.      Name the title of the page what it is. www.smart-state.com/articles/search_engine_optimization.html

4.      Be sure to embed photos and pictures, gifs or jpgs, and be sure to title them with clear descriptive titles and with a long description that supports your search term. Remember the search engine spider is blind, you have to tell them about the green picture shot on the fifth of August with the sun setting in the west of the search engine optimization guru Walt Brown telling you how to do it over a beer in the thatched roof cabana. Get it?

5.      Link words inside you paragraphs to pages inside your website.

6.      Link words and quotes inside your paragraphs to pages outside your website. Check out this article from wired about reverse auctions and their search theory. Make sure the pages are relevant to your page.

7.      DO NOT USE PDFs, the search spiders can not see these.

8.      Do a search on the term and see who comes up, click through and:

a.      Make a list of their links, see where they go. Should you make those links too? Would it make sense to the professor – to his bibliography?

b.      Right click the page and look at the source code look at the meta tags they used. Are those better than the ones you came up with?

Context of where the page is.

                It is best when your page is inside a website with relevant content. Having other pages that talk about your term in general and link to the page is a good practice.

Get the search engines to recognize your page sooner.

            You “wake up” the spider by “buying” or bidding high on the term. This forces the search engine to release it’s search engine Inspector spiders to make sure you have not bid high on a term you do not deserve. Make sure your ducks are in a row before doing this, you really only get one shot.

            If you do not have a Google “adwords” account then set one up. When you have set up the account go in there and bid for your term.  Bid the highest, remember this is a reverse auction environment, you will pay 5 cents more than the next highest  bidder.

Now start typing in your search term.

1.      Be watching for it to come up in the paid boxes.

2.      Be watching for it to come up inside the top 10 pages.

Recruit friends and family to search the term and click your unpaid link.

Once you see your page appearing as an unpaid search result

1.      Make a list of friends and family in the target geography, if there is one. More is better.

2.       Over a 4 week period send spaced emails to these friends and ask them to Google the search term and then click on the UNPAID link, ask them to click around on the page,  to linger around on it, clicking and scrolling, showing activity like you they are reading and enjoying the page.

Watch for your page to creep up the listings.

1.      Go in and reduce your bid to about 10^th place.

2.      Keep watching your listing rank

3.      Go in occasionally and open, change a few words and close your page to keep it fresh. Google likes fresh content.

Imagine, your whole website being made up of solid articles that are search engine worthy. That would be very powerful and you would have earned your rankings.