Top 10 Ways to Insure Your Blog or Website is Never Found on the Internet

During my time search engine optimizing my own site and providing professional SEO services, I have seen a lot of good ways to stay undiscovered on the Internet.  Here is my top 10 list:

10. Don’t use social media; its too much trouble (don’t blog either).

9. Don’t tell anybody about your blog posts or website.

8. Don’t use the page description tag.

7. Only put the name of your site in the page title tag.

6. Have lots of pictures without any written content or alt tags.

5. Build your site with Flash.

4. Optimize your site for the name of your business.

3. Optimize your site for words or phrases you think people are using in their searches without doing any research to determine the actual words of phrases people use to find your product or service.

2. Optimize your site for words or phrases for which people are barely searching.   For example, optimize your site for Chicagoland, rather than Chicago;  or deejay, rather than DJ.

1. Spend thousands of dollars on professional web developers who craft an attractive, appealing website, and no dollars on professional search engine optimization.

 

SEO Chicago and Do It Yourself (DIY) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

When I first started Kohli Consulting, I decided I was not going to pay anybody to create my web site.  Nor was I going to pay anybody to optimize it.   I was a proud, self sufficient Do-It-Yourself(er).    And, I got exactly what I paid for.    

The results of my first efforts to search engine optimize my own Kohli Consulting web site were awful.   I did not find my business listed anywhere in the first 500 listings for the terms I thought people would use to find my business services.  But that was not even the worst part.   I had decided to go with a service that provided web site templates and hosting services – which I now refer to as a “web site out-of-a-box.”   The good thing about the this service provider’s web site templates was that they included specific fields in the set up process for “meta tags.”   These meta tags are critical for the search engine optimization process.

So without doing any research at all I optimized the Kohli Consulting web site for key word phrases that I thought people would use in looking for QuickBooks and Bookkeeping services.   I put words in what I later came to know as the Page Title, the Page Description, and Keywords  fields.   These three behind the scene fields or “meta tags” are critical for high search engine results listing.

As I tried to figure out why my site did so poorly, I became completely demoralized.   Not only did my site perform poorly for the keyword phrases I had optimized it for, but nobody – nobody at all – used the keyword phrases I thought they would use to find the services I was selling.    It was at that point that I began to have a glimmer of an idea as to just how important it was to do keyword phrase research and to analyze the various keyword phrases.  The use of appropriate keyword phrases in “on page” content, meta tags, and linking strategies is paramount for achieving top SEO results.

This is the order in which I focused my efforts in re-optimizing my web site

A)  Revised the Tags for Each Page of the Web Site

1. Revising Page Titles for  Each Page of the Web Site
2. Created Individual Page Descriptions for Each Page of the Web Site
3. Unique Keyword List for the Meta Tags for Each Page of the Web site

B) Revised on Page Content to be Consistent with Tags for Web Site

C) Created Off Page Links to the Web Site

Going through steps A and B perhaps half a dozen times,  I was eventually successful at different times in obtaining top ten page listing results for a number of phrases including Bookkeeping Evanston, QuickBooks Evanston, Bookkeeping Chicago, Chicago QuickBooks, and Chicago QuickBooks Consultants.   Later, I decided to offer my Search Engine Optimization services professionally.

 

What is a Search Engine?

If Rip Van Winkle woke from his 100 year nap today, one of the many, many things at which he would marvel,  I  am sure,  would be the Internet.   What possible frame of reference, could he conceivably have for understanding this modern miracle of science and technology?   I cannot imagine.   How could anyone ever explain it to him?

And, if eventually someday he came to some basic, primitive understanding of electricity, and TV, and then the Internet  – then possibly someday he might ask,  “Please, would you please tell me what this search engine thingamajig is?”  And, I would.

A search engine is simply an electronic tool for finding something on the Internet.