Search Engine Optimization: Keep It Simpleh

There's no question that search engine optimization is both art and science. As competition to command search rankings has exploded, SEO strategies have become increasingly elegant and complicated. Most marketers and business owners these days end up toiling over complex SEO solutions in pursuit of the-next-best-thing. Progress has its drawbacks, though. Many seasoned business owners actually overlook simple, yet highly effective, SEO strategies that could skyrocket their business in the search rankings.

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One such strategy is to use popular key words that are relevant to your business in your Web site's or landing page's URL. Given that SEO experts and business owners regularly research, then pepper their Web pages with top key words and tinker with their placement, simply using the words in the URL may sound too easy. Don't be fooled by its simplicity, though. This strategy works. It has been incredibly effective for MP: Creative, a recently launched marketing arm of the Portland, OR-based business plan writing firm, MasterPlans.

Simple strategies still require due diligence. With MP: Creative, we started by performing extensive key word research. “Portland,” “Oregon,” “marketing” and “advertising” were among the most active key terms relevant to the business. We then purchased the domains portlandoregonmarketing.com and portlandoregonadvertising.com, and placed landing pages on both sites that were also keyword-rich. The outcome was astonishing. Even though Portland is home to some of the top marketing and advertising firms in the nation, our start-up sky-rocketed to number one on Yahoo! in searches for such businesses within a week.

So why was such a simple strategy so effective? Again, one of the primary reasons is that advanced SEO marketers and business owners regularly overlook like the simplest approach. This is a great opportunity for a smaller business to elbow in on the big guys. Another reason is that this particular strategy's simplicity is actually its edge. By placing top key words in the URL, spiders from sites like Google and Yahoo don't have to crawl through an entire page of content before locating these words. That means that such a Web site will get noticed more quickly by these search engines, which could result in your page moving up in search rankings for those particular terms more quickly.

While there is tremendous allure in developing complex SEO tactics, case studies like these demonstrate that it's important not to forget simple strategies.

This post provided by Bryan Howe, founder & CEO, Masterplans.com