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We all know realtors and their motto: "location, location, location." What we don't know is SEOr's and their motto: "test, test, test." I started a new job about 4 months ago. When I started, the company was nowhere to be found in google for their main competitive term. In most cases, if your site is page 5 or more for your top terms and you feel your site is pretty well optimized, the problem is not your SEO, it is your site.There is something google does not like about your site. I will address this issue first.

Most common issues I have found why google does not like your site: Go into your shopping cart or form page so you reach a secure area of your site, http changes to https.Now click on your home page link and see if the https stays.If it does, you have an entire duplicate site in google.All your secure https pages will be duplicates of your http pages.Example: http://www.yourdomain.com is the same content but different url of https://www.yourdomain.com and then google sill follow your links into your site with the https.Double check by typing site:yourdomain.com.I will bet ya you will see both versions.

Check your site for more than one title or description tags.Check the entire HTML page, sometimes they are at the bottom.

Using tons of 302 redirects instead of 301’s and don’t forget to check you non-www urls.Non-www url should 301 to your www.Why use 301’s instead of a 302?A 302 is a temporary redirect.Not only will google still have this page in their index to hold onto, but google will not carry all the backlinks from your old pages to your new pages with a 302.A 301 redirect is telling google that it is a permanent redirect and to carry all the backlinks and google PR to the new page.

Of course check for hidden text, meta refreshes, all links in javascript with no other way for google to index your interior pages, etc… While you are working with your developers to fix these issues, add to your daily agenda 2 hours of linking.I hate linking, but it must be done.I found it easiest when I set a time everyday in my outlook calendar and just got it over with. Maybe I will write and article on linking strategies, hmmm….Anyway….

Once you have cleaned up the site and you are starting to get backlinks, now start testing.

My theory, start with a major best practices overhaul all at once, then once your have been spydered with the changes, tweak only one thing at a time.

Basic Best Practices:Keyword at least once in title and description tags, about 200 words in the body, use keywords in your link text, keywords in your page names, and linking.I wont go too deep into the basics, there is plenty of information on the internet if you would like more information on SEO basics.

Once you have the basics, search the term you are trying to rank for and look at the top 10 to 15 other sites.Pull out the huge authority sites that you may not be able to compete with right now.Out of the sites that are left, look at their title tags (count, density, prominence), meta tags, keyword text, and body text.Try to use their information to help you optimize your site.Do not copy their information, use this information as a guide.You will see a pattern.Most may have 10 to 12 words in the title, most may have 200 to 300 words of text, most may have the keyword only once in the middle of the description tag, etc…

This statement is going to amaze a lot of people, but here goes: Each keyword ranking algorithm is different and you can NOT use the same information from one keyword and apply that to another keyword for your site.For “blue widgets,” google may like 10 words in the title, a density of 3%, and 100 words in the body.For “online widgets” google may like 6 keywords in the title, a density of 7%, and 500 keywords in the body.You must treat each keyword you are trying to optimize for differently.This is also the reason it is easier to optimize for one keyword per page rather than trying to optimize your home page for 5 different keywords.

For testing, start with your home page, then proceed to your category pages, and product pages.The home page and category pages you will most likely have to do by hand.The product pages, if you have a good developer that will work with you, may be tweaked dynamically.Have them create the page names the name of the products.

Again, once the site is spydred from your initial best practices changes, only test one thing at a time.You want to do it this way so you know what is working and what isn’t. If you are now ranked at #25 and you change your title and add 200 words of copy, you will not know why you went up to position #19 or down to position #30.This will obviously not be an overnight process.

I did the above steps, plus linking strategies.After fixing site issues, we hovered around position 35.I played with the title and description tags (one at a time) and we moved to around 22.I added more copy with related terms and we moved to around 15.The linking started to take more of an effect and we are now in position 5.I will continually be testing and tweaking one thing at a time to get into the top 3.The process to this point took almost 4 months.