SEO - What is SEO?

SEO is one of the most effective things you can do online, getting your web site optimized in such a way that the search engines will reward you by basically sending traffic your way. SEO is not really that simple, but the bottom line is, if your page is optimized both on page and off, you generally get higher natural search engine rankings, which leads to traffic for you.

If you've spent time online recently, you've probably read the term "SEO," or "Search Engine Optimization. But what does it mean, exactly? "SEO" is a term that is used to describe the process by which traffic to a particular site is increasingly generated by search engines by way of search results. The quality of visitor traffic to a site can be measured by analyzing how often a visitor who uses a specific keyword phrase in a search actually performs what is known as a "conversion action." That is, how often those visitors make a purchase, download materials, request information, or interact with the site in any other way that indicates interest in the product or service the site offers.

Simply put, SEO is marketing through an understanding of how search algorithms work combined with a knowledge of what human users might search for. The end goal is to create a site that contains words for which people will likely search when looking for information such as that contained on your site.

SEO is an extremely powerful tool online - use SEO wisely!

DIY SEO

Part 1. Wordtracker for keywords.

A problem for all new webmasters has always been SEO or search engine optimisation.

The problem starts with the age-old question of how do I design my website so people can find it?

Lets assume that you have an idea for a website that will enable you to make a bit of extra cash, you have a product of your own or you have an affiliation you believe in and you want to make sure that the people searching for your product will find your site over your competitors.
How do you start?

Step 1

KEYWORDS

Finding the right keywords for your product is vital, the right keywords on your site will mean the difference between being found and not being found. How do we find these keywords and how do we use them?

First stop is a visit to wordtracker.com
Using the trial version should be enough.

Let's say that you sell widgets, type widget into the box and you will get this;
1. widget
2. apple
3. Apple
4. widgets
5. synastry
6. Macintosh
7. security

Clicking on the word widget on the top of this list will bring up another list that contains the word widget.

Lets take a look at the top 5 on that list.

Keyword Count Predict Dig
widget 154 132
widgets 120 103
widget the world watcher 26 22
desktop widgets 22 19
definition for a widget 19 16

The table contains the following information:

Count - This shows the number of times a particular keyword has appeared in our database. E.g. Our database currently holds 373 million words. A count of 147 tells us that this particular word has appeared 147 times out of 373 million (this is over a two-month period).

Predicted - This is the maximum total predicted traffic for all of the major search engines/pay per bids and directories. It is based on the current 24-hour period.

Dig - When you perform any kind of search in the keyword universe, you can now dig down to the next level. E.g. search for 'gambling'. Then, when you click on 'online gambling', just the results for 'online gambling' come up, click on 'online gambling in states' and so on. Great for focusing on niches.

Clicking on each word again adds it to your basket.
The next step is to compare these keywords in order to find the best keyword for you,

You are looking for a keyword with a high KEI or Keyword Effectiveness Index, what's this?

In a nutshell: Look for the keywords near the top. The higher the KEI, the more popular your keywords are, and the less competition they have. Which means you have a better chance of getting to the top.

Now you have found your high KEI ranking keywords you have to sprinkle them about your home page and insert them into you meta-tags. The next article in this series will discuss meta-tags, using the title tag, and basic page design that will give your visitors a pleasing site to look at.

SEO Tips For High Rankings

When you're making a website for potential clients, visitors, or buyers, there's a hidden "person" you're trying to impress too: the search engine. Impressing it isn't easy, but you can start by putting your site in a form that it can read. Read up on how to put together a decent site map, and send that site map off to the major search engines so they'll have you in their systems.

If you're looking to make it easy for search engines to crawl your site, refrain from using complex Flash graphics or Javascript coding and effects. These tend to confuse a search browser, and when the algorithm gets confused, it doesn't shoot your site to the top of the rankings.

Search engines have a complicated set of algorithms to determine which sites are worthwhile and which sites nobody wants to see. To broadcast a good reputation for your site, try to get as many backlinks as you can from reputable, quality, well-traveled websites. In addition to maybe getting their visitors, you'll show Google that you're legitimate, and your SEO ranking will go up accordingly.

When you put your content together, search engines want to see that it's relevant to the words people are searching for. The way they do this is to crawl your site for "keywords." Make sure you repeat certain keywords several times throughout each piece of content. Don't have too high a keyword density - 1-3% is usually good for getting a page noticed. Anything more and Google's algorithms will penalize you for it.

All the SEO ranking tips in the world won't help you if your content isn't any good. Aside from writing interesting articles that people will want to read, your site should be large, and it should be frequently updated. If a site has lots of content, is updated every other day, with frequent repeat visitors, search engines will know that it's a winner, and they'll boost you to the top of the search ranking accordingly.

SEO For Firefox Tool is Awesome

I've been playing around with the SEO for Firefox add-on for the past few hours, and I must say that I am blown away. This is by far the coolest add-on that I've ever installed to my Firefox browser. Let me tell you a few things it can do.

The first thing it does is provide a lot of additional information when you perform a Google or Yahoo search. It displays information like the PageRank of each page, the number of backlinks, and the Alexa rating. If you are searching in Google, it will tell you the page's search engine ranking in Yahoo. It also provides a suite of other data, but I have hidden all those options so that I can focus on the data I actually want to see.

One feature it has that I wasn't even aware of when I first downloaded the software is the SEO Xray. This allows you to right-click when you are on any page and immediately view the page's meta-data, such as meta description, meta title, and meta keywords. Previously I have had to open the source code of the HTML file if I was curious about this information, but this tool makes it a snap. You can also quickly see the keyword density of any page you are on to figure out what keywords the page is optimized for.

I am just beginning to learn how to design websites, and I think this will be an invaluable tool for me. I have no association or affiliation with the company, but I would recommend that you check them out. It is available for free at http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html.

SEO For Bing

Bing has slightly different search optimization requirements than Google. To Bing, SEO means creating an informational website that is helpful to people. Therefore, if you want to achieve a top position in Bing search result, you must create quality content that provides useful information for the targeted audience. When writing content for the website, make sure you don't use too many keywords. Generally, repeating the keywords once in the first paragraph, body and last paragraph is sufficient.

In addition, you should apply well architected code in all the pages of your website. The well architected code allows users and the spiders to read the indexed content.

You will also want to find authoritative backlinks for your site. Authoritative links simply means link from relevant site that will provide useful information to your readers. If the authoritative site has page rank, it will also help in your ranking because it denotes that the site is important.

The link building search engine optimization is the same as Google. Besides finding backlinks for your site, you must also link to other relevant site. In this way, the link building campaign will seem more natural to the Bing search engine spider.

To find out more about search engine optimization with Bing, it is recommended that review the indexing guidelines that is published on the Bing site. The guideline published on Bing will provide information on the technical issues which address to the common mistakes that people often make. By addressing these technical issues, you can significantly increase the ranking of your site in the Bing search engine. On top of that, you can visit the Webmaster Center Blog to follow up with the Bing SEO team.

Finally, you should register all your sites with Bing. To register your site with Bing, you can use the Bing Webmaster Center. Bing has created a forum for its users. If you have question on ranking your site in Bing, you can join in the discussion or post a thread on the Bing forum so that other members can help you.