SEO is not an online practice that you quickly spend money on and check off your strategic planning checklist. SEO requires investment. The investment is in learning, implementing, measuring, and contributing to SEO best practices.
While there is a time and human resource commitment, know that there are great web tools available that you can use to boost your search optimization efforts.
– Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/
Google Analytics shows what phrases people actually use to find your site and allows you to benchmark success on SEO efforts.
– Google Webmaster Tools: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
Google Webmaster Tools can help make sites more search-engine friendly. It actually tells you when you need to do SEO therapy on your site by showing if you have title tags that are too long, short, or repeated, as well as descriptions. You can also submit an XML site map (a searchfriendly coded map of your site) to help Google’s search engine read your site faster.
– HubSpot’s Website Grader: http://websitegrader.com/
This tool will share a bunch of SEO tips, such as seeing if your meta descriptions have the correct number of characters, if images have alt tags, or if you are maximizing your blog potential (for frequency of content).
