RealWebMarketing.net: Search Engine Optimization for Small Business
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Search Engine Optimization refers to actions one takes to get his web site to appear at or near the top of the regular search engine results (non-paid) for a specific keyword or group of keywords. When I refer to the "regular" or "organic" search results, I am referring to those results which appear in the wide, left-hand column on Google, Yahoo, MSN.com, etc. Search Engine Optimization is a mysterious field, because search engines keep the algorithms they use to decide the rankings of web pages totally secret. They do this so that webmasters cannot "game" the system so that their sites appear on top of the listings. If it's one thing that Google hates, it is someone being able to manipulate the system. But if you do not do anything proactive at all to push your small business web site up in the rankings, and if your web site not well established, it is relatively certain that your web site will NOT appear anywhere near the top of the rankings for any given keyword. So it is vital to take actions to move your site up in the rankings for the keywords you choose. And in fact a whole industry (search engine optimization - SEO) has grown up to help people improve their rankings in the search engine organic results. I will try to simplify the whole subject of SEO and cover it briefly here in this article. Effective SEO consists of only a few steps: 1.Selecting the keywords that you want to have your site rank well for 2.Optimizing pages on your site so that they have the potential of ranking well on those keywords 3.Building inbound links to your site Selecting Keywords Your site does not simply rank well or poorly on Google or Yahoo. It ranks well or poorly, specifically for a given keyword or for a group of keywords. In other words, let's say that one of the keywords you want your site to rank well for is "gourmet coffee." So you would take actions to make your site rank well for that keyword. You'd optimize a page or several pages on your site for that keyword, then you'd build links coming to your site from other sites. For search engine optimization, the main concept to keep in mind on what one is looking for with keywords, is words or phrases that are getting a lot of searches, i.e. a lot of people are searching for those words. The minimum figures I think with are: the bare minimum you want is over 200 - better to be 3,000 to 5,000 or more. On the other hand, with search engine optimization (and this is not generally true with paid search engine advertising), you don't want to select keywords or phrases with too many monthly searches. The reason is that with search terms with extremely high searches (say 50,000 per month or more) there will be tremendous competition for that keyword. And there will be web sites that have been competing for that keyword for a long time. So the chances that you will be able to compete effectively for that keyword are practically zero. It is better to select keywords that are getting some search traffic and are more specialized, i.e. more of a niche, and compete effectively for them. I have found the keyword selection process is best served by creating a spreadsheet. Column one contains the keywords. Column two contains the monthly searches that people do for those keywords on Yahoo. The Keywords 1. Go to your company web site and see if whoever designed it placed any well though out keywords in the metatags section of the code on the home page. Go to the home page, then select View | Source. A separate window will open up. The line that starts out /www.realwebmarketing.net/article24.html http://www.realwebmarketing.net/article25.html Good luck with your search engine rankings.
John Eberhard is the author of "Making Money with a Web Site, The Basics of Internet Marketing, Part 1." You can find out more about this exciting new eBook at http://www.realwebmarketing.net/ebook1/. John is also President of RealWebMarketing.net (http://www.realwebmarketing.net), an Internet marketing and web design firm in Los Angeles. He has been doing marketing in a wide variety of fields for 18 years.
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