Home | Search Engine Optimization | Choosing Keywords
Why SEO Having a visible presence on the internet is important for businesses these days to compete for internet savvy consumers. The key word here is visible. Often businesses naively create a website, launch it online , and just hope that their would-be buyers will discover them. Unfortunately, with millions of web pages in cyber space for search engines like google to sort through, it requires proactive, strategic steps to achieve high search engine positioning these days . SEO is the key word with regards to ranking high for your target keywords in Google or other search engines, like Yahoo and Bing. For those who haven't heard of that term , SEO means search engine optimization. According to Wikipedia, SEO is "the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website... from search engines via 'natural' or un-paid... search results." There are two important prongs of SEO techniques : on-site optimization and off-site optimization. On-site includes techniques you use on the web page itself. Off-site includes strategies that are done online, but not on the web page, like obtaining keyword-rich back links to your site from various online sources. Good SEO does create "unpaid" traffic from the search engine's point of view , but often it does call for a considerable commitment of money and time to put into practice . So what is required to reach the first page of Google search results for your target keyword phrases? Read on. Start with Keyword Research The foundation to high search engine positioning is doing niche market keyword research preferably BEFORE you create your website. Useful resources like Google Insights for Search and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool can lead you to find which keyword phrases are consumers typing to look for your type of products and services on the internet . Build your website structure around related broad keywords (1 to 2 words in length). Create your website content around long tail keywords (2 to 4 words in length), given that the keywords generate enough interest online to satisfy your needs. Make sure you attach very specific geographic terms to your keywords, like "Nashville cleaning service", if you offer a local service or have a local retail location. Be sure to check how competitive your long tail keyword phrases are, i.e. are there many websites targeting your phrase through keyword optimization and anchor-text backlinking? If so, you need to decide that you are committed to the race for the long haul , as keyword phrases that are very competitive will demand a bigger investment of time, both initially and in maintenance from month to month . This is because other businesses are actively doing the SEO work necessary to compete for that phrase. Analyze Your Competition To Plan Your SEO Campaign The next key to high search engine positioning is to analyze the SEO techniques of your online competitors . Just type in your target long tail keyword phrase in Google and see who appears on the first page results. Niche Watch and Keyword Spy are both tools that can be utilized to uncover some of the necessary SEO information from your compeition , namely , how many back links do they have and what is their overall page rank. You can visit your competitor's web page and see if your target keyword is located in their page title and how many times that keyword appears in their page relative to the total number of words on that page. Additionally , on their page, you can view their page source code through your browser to see if they have your target keyword in their meta tags and site description. The last factor I'll mention in competition research is to use Yahoo's Site Explorer to find out how many back links your competition has with your target keyword phrase in the anchor text of the link. If you want to do some serious competition research, you may want to invest in some fancy software, as this information can be difficult for some to gather together and organize. When you assemble the needed information together on your competitors that appear on the first page of search results, you now have an action plan of what you need to do to achieve first page search engine ranking . This is an important point to remember. The key to high search engine positioning is just out ranking your competition in the SEO war . Your job is to convince Google and other search engines that your web page is more relevant and popular than your competitor's web page for your target keyword phrase. It's honestly comparable to a game of chess that takes place over months of time. You are dealing with competitors that are obviously savvy about SEO's importance and investing the time and money into what's needed to keep their high position . It's also a lot of work if you are in a competitive niche, and unless you have a lot of time on your hands, you will need the assistance of expensive software services if you want to do it yourself efficiently. Otherwise, I suggest outsourcing all or part of your SEO work to an SEO firm or consultant, like The Self Promoter. Keep Score of Your Efforts in the SEO Game Before ending , I would like to bring up a necessary component of Search engine optimization that is not really Search engine optimization, specifically , evaluating your initial standing if you have a website already and keeping track of your "score" as you participate in the SEO game. One simple software designed for swiftly checking how you rank in the search results of the main search engines for your target keyword phase is Rank Checker. Check your rank periodically and keep a memo of how you are ranking along with a log of what SEO steps you have done between rank checkings. An additional tool that you should install on your site is some type of visitor statistics tracker, like Google Analytics. It will track and report how many visitors you have received to your site, through what keywords they landed on your site, and how long they spent viewing your site . This information will help you to determine whether your on-site content and structure are working for or against your SEO campaign and whether visitors enjoy your site . The final aspect I'd like to mention in keeping track of your progress is conversion checking. Conversion is the percentage of your website visitors that take action, whether that be a purchase , contacting you by phone or an email . In the end , conversion will tell you whether your whole SEO campaign and on-site sales copy are effective or not. In general , normal online conversion rates are anywhere between 1 and 10% depending on your niche.
Article Source: http://www.seoserviceprovider.com/articles
The Self Promoter website has a helpful resource list of links to the free tools mentioned in this article and offers reasonably priced consulting services for small businesses who strive for high search engine positioning.
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