5 Steps to SEO Domination

Want to buy magnesium supplements from Jigsaw Health?  We’ve pieced together an amazing formula…so good in fact, it powers the The Man of Steel! 

Jigsaw Magnesium w/SRT is my company’s top-rated, best-selling product.  Therefore, “magnesium supplement” and “magnesium supplements” are our most important keywords.  Right?

Well, because of some stupid, easily avoidable mistakes I was making, Lord Google wasn’t even putting www.JigsawHealth.com in the top 200 results for either keyword.  Not until I learned and applied Chris Drake’s 5 Steps to SEO Domination.

1. Choose a two-word phrase you want to rank highly on.

We chose “magnesium supplements” because Google AdWords showed this had the highest traffic.

Background: This was ironically both the easiest and hardest thing for me to do.  For the last two years, we’ve been trimming Jigsaw’s product line from 138 SKUs (unwieldy and totally unprofitable) down to the current 28, with the top 5 products accounting for 80% of revenue and 90% of gross profit.  I know that we’re a magnesium supplement company. But it’s hard to draw that line in the sand, at the risk of ignoring all your other kids.

So once you’ve chosen what to focus on, how do you apply it?  I’m glad you asked.

2. Modify your Title Tag

Everyone knows that Title tags are important to Google.  And I’ve always heard, “The more keywords you can shove in there, the better!” So you end up with pages names that are 300 characters long trying to get every long-tail term one can imagine.

Well, Chris Drake’s big on keyword density, which is also important to Google, as every one knows.  BUT…who really practices the discipline of saying, “I will *only* put Magnesium Supplements in my title tag.” to actually achieve keyword density?  There’s beauty in restraint. And it works, as you will see.

Important Caveat: Since your Title Tag is the text that displays in Google SERPs, it’s good to use *some* branding with a generic phrase like “magnesium supplements”.  The title tag we used: “Magnesium Supplements | Jigsaw Health”.

Tight baby…tight like a tiger! 

3. Change the design of the home page.

Our homepage sucked for SEO.  The copy was good and inviting, but it did nothing to help us rank.  There was absolutely NO FOCUS!

So we took a look at the decision we made in #1 and said, “Dammit, our company is about magnesium supplements.  That’s what our homepage is going to reflect.“  Now our “hero” graphic (bottle) and primary call-to-action (“Learn More” button) are related to our core — Jigsaw Magnesium w/SRT.

We also added body copy laced heavily with the magnesium supplement keyword.  This copy is not so much for reading as it is for optimizing and increasing keyword density, though each section is designed to appeal to one of the four buying modalities.  (Bonus points if you can tell which goes to which!)

4. Creative H1 and H2 tags.

Chris Drake really nailed it with this one.  It seems Google has increased the importance of H1 and H2 tags.  Check this technique out:

Here’s what the visitor sees:

But here’s what it looks like to Google (with CSS disabled):

Here’s the source code:

Result of #2, #3, and #4:

In about 4 days, Lord Google bumped us from outer-space to 27th for “magnesium supplements”.  About 10 days later, we were the second listing on page 2 (position 12)!!

But frankly, page 2 is still outer-effin-space. When was the last time you went to the second page of search results?  Hell, when was the last time you scrolled to the bottom of page 1?

And 60 days later — today — we’re still stuck in position 12.

Which leads me to #5…

5. Get relevant inbound links.

The SEO gurus I have read say, “What you say about yourself (ie. title tag, body copy, etc.) accounts for only about 20% of your Google rank.  Meanwhile, what others say about you (ie. inbound links) accounts for 80% of your keyword ranking.”

Sh*t.

Getting links to a cat playing keyboard is one thing.  Getting links to a vitamin company?  BORING!!!

So now you know why I wrote this post.  =)  Sure, the info in steps 1 – 4 are totally effective.  But I’m being a link whore right now!

So how will I go about getting more inbound links? For starters, I sure would appreciate anyone out there with a blog that thought this article was interesting and wants to throw up something like this in the first paragraph of your review:

“I read a wicked cool SEO article about Jigsaw Health, which sells kick arse <a href=”http://www.jigsawhealth.com”>magnesium supplements</a>.“

If you post something, may God shine his love and light upon you.  (And hopefully you’re not doing something lewd or illegal when that happens.)  And come back here and leave a comment linking to your link.  I’ll send you a prize which in all likelihood will be a roll of toilet paper.

(And if you don’t post something, may the fleas of a thousand camels infest your groin.)

At this point, some of you may be asking, “Why did you choose to use your homepage and not the actual product page?”  Simple.  WAAAAAAAY more existing inbound links to our homepage than our product page.  So in a way, we kind of hijacked those links.  And I think the presence of those links had as much to do with us sky-rocketing through the SERPs as #2, #3, or #4.

But no one really knows the inner workings of Lord Google, do they.

6. BONUS!  URLs matter.

Notice how Google bolds the word magnesium?  Yep.  This helps your keyword density.  (I’m gonna be doing quite a few page renames and 301 redirects in the near future.)

7. BONUS!  Cut out the clutter!

Here’s a peek at the new slimmed down design we’ll be launching in a few weeks or months.  Minimize and streamline baby!

Mucho Gracias

For teaching me these 5 Steps to SEO Domination, I show ENORMOUS gratitude to my friend Chris Drake, who founded the unhackable secure web hosting company, FireHost.  Link juice baby!  =)

And much love to Jeffrey & Bryan Eisenberg who have taught me so much about doing business on the web, conversion, persuasion, focus, buying modalities…I am in your debt.  These guys are the real deal and can help you improve your website conversion rate.

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I’m dying to hear what you think.

UPDATE: We’ve moved from #12 to #11.  Keep those inbound links coming peeps!