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I subscribe to a weekly newsletter from the million dollar coach, Alan Weiss. Every Monday he sends me a little thought-provoking message to start my week. This week's "Focus Point" goes like this:

There is a marketing difference between instigation and investigation. You should use "outreach" alternatives such as blogs and newsletters and speeches to instigate people to think differently, react to your intellectual property, and exhibit your thought leadership. Then they may be prompted to investigate your background, your depth and breadth, and that's what a web site is best at—displaying credibility. You don't want an overly promotional web site or a low key blog.

You can subscribe to Alan Weiss's newsletters at Summit Group Consulting.

If you've been following along in this little SEO mini series. You should now have a huge list of all the key phrases your site should be using and it's now time to actually fix your site.

Complete each of the following steps to improve the content on your Web site so that you rank rank higher in the search engines for your top prospects key phrases while your prospects are at their point of need.

1. Use the mega list of keywords that you created yesterday to update the text on each of the relevant pages on your Web site.
2. Ensure every single one of your Web pages has a unique page title that contains juicy keywords. The title is the bit that is displayed when a person bookmarks a page and the main link that appears in a search engine listing. Be descriptive!
3. Break your page into smaller sections with sub-headings. Add bold and italics to key words and phrases on your site.
4. Monitor your site's stats for search phrases people are using to find your site.

Give it a week or two and then re-test your search engine ranking for the key words and phrases that are important to your top prospects.

With these simple steps any small business can propel their Web site to a higher search engine ranking. You'll be able to get a better match between your "most wanted outcome" and your prospect's "point of need."

Go forth and rank higher!

Every single page of your Web site should have a purpose with an intended audience and a most wanted outcome.

Take a good look at every page on your Web site and write down your answers to the following questions:

• What's the point of this page? Who needs to read it and what should they do after reading it?
• What are the key phrases or keywords for this page?
• What's the Wordle for this page? (Click the link to make a Wordle.)
• Does the Wordle have the key phrases it needs for the right type of visitors to find this page?
• What are key search phrases that visitors are currently using to get to my site? (If you're not using some kind of analytics package, shame on you!)

Find out what keywords your competitor sites are using. You can "view source" of individual pages to look for the meta tag that holds the keywords for that page, or you can have Google scrape out the keywords they think are important using one of their free tools (you may need a Gmail account to access these tools). Not only will you get a list of terms, but they'll also tell you how popular the term is and how heavy the competition is for the keyword. Find terms that are high on search volume, but low on competition.

• Keyword Tool for Google Adwords
• Google Search-based Keyword Tool
• Need even more ideas? Try the suggestions that Wordtracker gives you.

In the next blog post you'll learn what to do with the list of keywords and phrases that you come up with. Don't skimp out! Do the work and ready to make your Web site into a total client magnet.

One of my top-favourite SEO specialists over at RankStudy defines SEO as "the process of enhancing both the content and the reputation of a Web page in order to improve search engine rankings and meet your top prospects at their immediate point of need." Broken out this gives SEO four key areas:

1. content This is the quality of the words and phrases you use on your site--include the semantic value you give that content through the use of HTML markup (the codey stuff that makes up a Web page). Headings are more important that plain text. Page titles are more important than headings.
2. reputation This is the quality of incoming links including the key phrases used in the link text as well as the popularity of the sites who link to you.
3. top prospects Who's got the potential to become a paying customer or a raving fan? You want to create content to attract these people.
4. match visitor needs to site content This is the pairing of your "most wanted outcome" with your visitor's "point of need." If your visitor needs a tutorial to help them with their user group demo and you want them to become a developer there's a mismatch between what you want and what your visitor wants.

In the next blog entry: how to see your site through a search engine's eyes.