Looking for some basic guidelines to start my optmization

[RaulValencia79]

Hello Everyone.

I recently started getting interested in SEO. I'm the owner os a small mens underwear company we limited staff, limited resources, etc. well I'm sure most of you know the drill.

I have read countless articles, guides, starting with the ones here at Moz but when it comes to actually starting to fix the problems I have I have NO IDEA where to start. it is discouraging and to be honest frighting. I know right now my competitors are getting ahead of my while I just stare at my screen thinking where do I start?

Do I fix loading speed?Do I repalce the entire content of my site? mostly category texts, product descriptions, do I add Atl text to all my images?
how do I even start building links when it seem the only strategy is to send an email to a related site to link to us? any way.

Most of you here are SEO experts and small business owners I would greatly appreciate if you point me in teh right direction, like a 1, 2 ,3 ....type of thing. I might be asking to much but after thinking about it I decided to post something here.

[RaulValencia79]

Ok, I started analyzing my site and as almost all of you suggested content needs to be improved if not created from 0.

I have a very specific question, I have a subcategory named briefs, where I display men's Underwear Briefs.

the structure goes something like this mainsite.com/mens-underwear/briefs

I need a Meta Title, Meta description (I know this are relevant for the User not much for Search engines) and then I need a description, However the word Brief is extremely broad. Any suggestions where I can find keyword Ideas for this? or search traffic that is more targeted?

I would appreciate your comments.

Again thank you!

[David-Kley]

Even though you have an online store, I think many of the tips within this article can help you. Its a long read, but you will start to see how these things are interconnected.

For the beginning: Start simple. Don't get overwhelmed. Don't think of the whole pie, think of the pie in slices:

1. On page optimization and Titles: Page titles, meta, on-page content. In any basic optimization, this is where you start. Google and other search engine providers need a clear idea of what your site and pages are about. Make it easy for search engines to see what your site is about.

2. Keep your message clear and consistant. If you have a page about mens underwear, make sure that page talks about mens underwear. If you have additional products or product variations, create pages that are relevant to that products qualities and differences. Additional pages = additional ranking opportunities.

3. Know your market: Look at competitor sites and Google's keyword planner to use the keyword phrases that matter. If a certain keyword has over 10000 searches per month, and another has 1000, go for the bigger phrase if it makes sense to your product and your website. DONT GUESS. Guessing what people are searching for can be the biggest waste of your optimization efforts and time, and reversing bad keyword choices will take additional time and effort to correct.

4. Be technically correct. On your site, look at page load speed, image optimization, and anything that contributes to your site being accessable quickly from a wide variety of devices (Desktop, mobile, tablet). Make it easy on your users to absorb what you display. Quicksprout has a simple tool that can help you see potential load time issues.

5. Let search engines know you exist. When you are finished creating your pages and site, create sitemaps with all your page urls and submit them to Webmaster tools (both Bing and Google). Use Google's fetch feature to make them aware of changes, and speed up the indexing of your site. Do not wait for them to find the updates on their own.

6. Check for errors. Look for duplicate pages, or pages that display across mutiple URLs. If you have pages that behave this way, redirect them so that search engines know only one page exists for any given item or page.

7. Track your progress: Use MOZ or another keyword tracking tool to see the changes in your ranking. After all the hrad work, nothing satisfies like seeing your ranking increase and knowing you are on the right path. Use Google analytics to see where people stay on your site, and where they leave in the bounce rate and exit rate report. Use that data to further increase the usability of your site and keep people engaged and interested.

If you already know of competitors that do well in your segment, I would do a competitive SEO analysis.

[RaulValencia79]

Hi Ken

First of all thank you for the time taken to read and respond, I find the Moz community very helpful and great place to learn.
I will follow your advice along with CGRCREATIVE to start off and hopefully will post my progress here. I'm sure there is a ton of people out there in the same spot. business owners with a ton of things to do on top of SEO.

Thanks
Raul
Malebasics

[RaulValencia79]

Hi, well yeah I see your point but I'm not looking for a hand out, I want to learn the principals of good seo and start from there.

Thanks
Raul
Malebasics

[CGR-Creative]

Moz is a great way to gain great insight on how your performing SEO wise. It would be ideal to give yourself an SEO audit - found on Moz. I started off a couple years ago helping out a local company who had their site up and running. I personally started off using sites like WooRank to see where my website was at - speaking error wise and advice with what needed to be added (meta descriptions, page duplicates, nofollows, etc). I like to first start off with making the site as efficient as possibly for the users.

After you can solve the big issues with your site, I tend to then look at Moz Pro to study competitor backlinks. Onsite explorer is a great way to see where your competitors are getting backlinks - you'll have more insight on where they are and where you need to be. But research is always great so keep up with learning more and more through vehicles such as the Moz community. As a new company, the best way to learn is through mistakes. So here is what I would do if I was in your position:

1. Study more into SEO - I personally love Google Analytics and you can learn about it's ins and outs within a week. Also Adwords is a great tool to find more potential customers. Just know that there are a lot of tools out there that make your life a lot easier with SEO. Also know about Googles algorithms such as Penguin.

2. Use tools such as Moz or Woorank to figure out the main issues with your site. Your site is not going to be perfect - it always helps to see how you can optimize it and Moz has great tools to tell you where you can do better. Remember- site content is key to keeping a great user experience.

3. Study your competitors - What are they doing? What does their site look like? Do they blog? Where do they get their back links? People tend to think competition is bad, but it's actually beneficial and can be use to your advantage. So know what they're doing and think how you can do better!

4. Lastly, I would run a SEO audit to see where you're at completely. I ran one the other day and it's pretty great to see how helpful they can be. Here is a link to a great SEO Audit article: http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit?utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=top10

[CandymanKen]

Hi-

As a small business owner and the in house SEO guy, I wrestle with the same question all the time. My best advice would be do the things that will get the biggest bang quickly first. For example, work on your page titles. they are an easy fix that can have big effects. I would also look at the structure of your pages, for example are you using H1 tags for your product names on the product pages and are all your images tagged.

Once you've done the "easy stuff" I would just start tackling some of the other items you mentioned one at a time. Page speed is probably a good one to go after, if your site really needs it. That has obvious benefits in terms of visitors. Content such as product descriptions are a slow battle. Things like that require time to make the changes so what I do is allocate some time each day to making them. I track my changes in a spreadsheet and check my rankings here at Moz on a regular basis to see what is/isn't working. A good suggestion might be to look for someone who can write well (an intern) and have them help you with that part.

Even though it's really important, I would wait until you finished some of the other things before starting a link building campaign. You want to make sure you are "link worthy". When you think you are ready, I would create some interesting underwear content and see what that turns up.

Hope this helped!

Ken

[TheZenAgency]

Hi

Without knowing your website, your budget or want you want to achieve from SEO it may be hard to give an answer to this.

Regards