Mistake Number Six: "Not Truly Understanding Search Engine Optimization"

Optimizing your website to show well in the Search Engine Results
Pages (SERPs) for specific targeted keywords is what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all
about.

Ranking #1 on Google for your customer's search for "your keyword
phrase" can be one of the best feelings in the world (if you're
an online marketing geek like me) and free traffic from Google is
definitely one of the most profitable ways to bring your products
and/or services to market.

There are a number of basic tips that can be used to attempt to
get good rankings in the SERPs. Entire eBooks have been written
discussing these tips and tricks, and it would be futile to try
and cover them with any effectiveness in this course.

Fortunately, many of those tips have been summarized in two
excellent (FREE) resources I've found. I want to quickly discuss
a couple of concepts first so I'll give you those links in just a
moment.

There are a couple of significant concepts that bear scrutiny.

Let's take a moment to further define the term "Search Engine
Optimization".

I haven't found a better definition than that one offered by
Chris Lee, one of the nice fellows behind Keywords Analyzer.
Chris defines SEO thusly:

"It is the science/art of first choosing the correct keywords for
your site and then designing web pages around those keywords to
rank highly at Search Engines in conjunction with an effective
linking strategy. And it always starts with Keyword Research."

OK, so just exactly how does one go about "choosing the correct
keywords"?

It's one thing to achieve success with Google AdWords. The
important concept here is to employ is generate massive keyword lists,
organize them into related groups and then to let the market tell
you which ones they like.

However, when pursuing SEO, your techniques are different.

To achieve great rankings in the "organic" SERPs, you are still
searching for massive lists of keywords. But it is with the
intent of selecting in advance, those particular keywords (multi-
word keyword phrases, remember?) which are relative to your
market that are searched for in high amounts but have a
relatively few amount of competing websites.

Fortunately for us there are some ways to determine these
parameters. Searching Overture only does part of the work.
Overture will identify those related keywords with high amounts
of searches but it doesn't tell us how many competing websites
we'll have to "do battle with" and this is key information for
our success.

That's where a tool like Keywords Analyzer (or Ad Word Analyzer,
if you prefer) becomes valuable. To find the keyword diamonds
we're searching for with Keyword Analyzer (or AdWord Analyzer),
you type in the broad overall "theme" keyword that describes your
site.

Let's say it's "internet marketing".

You type that phrase into the software and it then goes to work
obtaining the number of searches that have been done for that
particular keyword on Overture (now the Yahoo! network), and then
it queries Google to see how many competing websites show up for
that term. Next it proceeds to find all of the related terms that
Overture returns and it finds the competitors on Google for those
words as well.

The software then automatically returns a "Results divided by
Searches" value (labeled R/S in Keyword Analyzer) which, for our
purposes, is ideal. We're looking to identify which keywords have
gobs of searches with smaller numbers of results. In other words,
we're looking for lower R/S values.

Our task is then simplified into analyzing those results to then
find the keywords with enough search volume to be worthwhile yet
with smaller numbers of (competitors') websites showing up for
those keywords.

Another of the most effective ways to increase your website's rankings is to obtain incoming links to your website. The exact methods used to go about doing this are far more lengthy than can be covered in this short article. But they basically consist of manually finding websites with a similar theme to yours and then contacting the website's owner and asking for an exchange of links to one another's sites.

If you're looking for a more in-depth resource on Search Engine Optimization, there are two options available to you.

1) Purchasing a good eBook on SEO. Your choice should be current to the algorithms that the major search engines are currently using (and theses algorithms change regularly)

2) Purchasing a software application to help you automate some of the time consuming but necessary tasks required in any attempt at SEO.

I can think of no better eBook than one authored by a company that specializes in staying on top of the current search engine algorithms called Planet Ocean. Their eBook "The UnFair Advantage Book on Winning The Search Engine Race" is one of the very best out there. The eBook comes with a one year subscription to a monthly newsletter that shows the most current tips & tricks for optimizing a website. This newsletter will keep you abreast of any changes you need to know about to make your site search engine friendly.

If you'd rather find a software application to automate some of the procedures like reciprocal linking, then you want to look at Brad Callen's SEOElite. This software is a bit pricey ($167 US) but if you're getting to the point where you need to maximize the time you spend in your SEO activities, this software will help you immensely. It'll help you get incoming links to your site in much less time than doing it manually. Well worth the investment.

That's it for today's lesson except for the two free resources I mentioned ...

There's a nice keyword ranking tool for monitoring the results of your SEO efforts available here =>http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

You'll need to register a free account with the website in order to use the keyword ranking tool but there are no strings attached to doing so.

Also, you can download your free copy of "The Keyword Masters Course" here =>http://www.MannMadeSoftware.com/KeywordsMasterCourse.asp