Search Engine Optimization SEO

What is SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the name given to the process of making a website achieve high ranking in search engine queries. The most popular search engine by a long margin (60% of all searches worldwide) is Google, and so most effort is put towards optimizing for that website.

How to implement it

SEO is founded on good web design that consists of accessible and efficient code. Words or phases should be researched using online keyword popularity tools such as Overture and WordTracker to determine which keywords should be used in the text of your website. The ideal scenario is to find a keyword or phrase, or set of keywords or phrases that are frequently searched for, but are not found on many websites. Obviously, very popular searches will have many websites focussed on these keywords.

However, SEO is not only limited to keywords. Perhaps even more important is the PageRank factor. PageRank is a Google-created attribute that reflects a page's importance: the higher the PageRank (out of 10), the greater authority and importance your website has, and normally, this is reflected in your ranking on search engines. How PageRank is determined is a closely guarded secret (by Google), but it an important factor is the number of links from other websites to yours. The greater the number of links from high PageRanked websites, the higher your PageRank will be, and the better you will rank in searches.

The Long Tail

A Long Tail when applied to SEO is a term used to describe niche areas that in total receive greater interest or traffic than mainstream areas. For example, "books" is a very popular search term, whereas "antique art books" is much less popular. However, if you can optimize your website for those search terms, although you will not have as many people searching for the term, you are much more likely to be one of the top results returned. Furthermore, and most importantly, the people that have found your website are much more likely to be interested in your content, than if they were just searching for books. The Long Tail effect enables smaller specialist websites to survive and thrive, and it is important to consider when choosing your keywords.

When should you do SEO?

It is best to start SEO before you write the content of the website. This way you can ensure the keywords you have targeted are well incorporated into your text, in prominent positions, such as page titles, near the top of your page content, in headers, and emphasized in bold or in italics. However, if your website has already been made without considering SEO, you can still go back and make editions to the website content and design if necessary.

What you should not do

With the growing importance of search engines on the Internet as a method of finding information, SEO has become big business. There are now thousands of specialized businesses offering SEO alone, many making bold promises such as a guarantee of a top 10 rank in Google. Approach such offers with care, as you may be paying for a top 10 rank in a search phrase that receives no traffic at all!

You must also be exceptionally careful not to try and trick search engines. There are a huge number of dirty tricks that can be done to try and increase your ranking on searches, such as websites filled with thousands of links linking to yours. It is possible that such schemes may bring you temporary success, but it is almost guaranteed that your trickery will be found out, and then you can expect to be stripped of your rank, and possibly banned for good from the search engines. This is a risk that will not pay off.

Best practice

While SEO is essential to consider when trying to get a top-ranking site, if you have a website filled with quality content, and you are able to promote it so that other websites link to it, this is arguably the most important strategy you can employ. Although assorted SEO strategies and fads come and go, if you are producing good quality text that is useful, you are already giving your website a headstart. "Content is King" is the catchphrase coined to illustrate the importance of this.

Ben Coleman is the CEO and owner of Real Free Websites. He has been designing websites and working on website technologies since 1999. Real Free Websites was created to fill a niche: to offer free or low-cost customized websites and top quality hosting.

You finally have your very own website. Now, the question is, how do you generate a substantial amount of visitors each day? More importantly, how do you get this number to grow on a daily basis? In this article, we will discuss some tactics that will allow you to do just this. First, we need to discuss some do’s and don’ts of building the traffic flow of your website. Read on to find out some crucial concepts every webmaster should know.

The first thing you should know is that you cannot magically generate thousands of visitors overnight. It simply is not possible. It could take weeks or even months to achieve this. This amount of time depends on how efficiently you exercise the methods that you have implemented. Do not give up and lose patience too quickly. Too many people expect results immediately and are then let down when it does not play out as planned. This mentality can be fatal to webmasters.

Nearly every online marketing tactic out there needs time to cultivate. Think of your website as a magnificent tree. Before growing and prospering, the tree needs to be seeded. The seeds need time to strengthen and grow before the tree can sprout. You cannot skip over or rush this process. It needs to take its course. Every step in building your website should be treated with care and attention. Once you grasp this concept, you can then go on to be successful in this industry. Only once you realize, understand and accept the fact that you need time and patience to generate traffic, then you can proceed in determining which techniques you should employ. Keep reading and you will learn some tactics which were specially designed to attract unique visitors.

Article marketing has the power of creating back links to your website, which in turn will transform people into unique visitors for your website. All you need to do is write an informative article and you will be viewed as an expert. They will trust and believe in the information you have provided and value what you tell them. Before long, they will be seeking out what you have to say. This method has huge branding capabilities.

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. PPC advertising is probably the fastest, most effective way of generating high quality traffic to your website. However, you need to have some funds available for spending. The reason for the success of PPC advertising is that with PPC programs, your link can appear anywhere on the results page of every relevant search. This eliminates the need to compete with thousands of other websites. All you need to do is to enroll in a program such as Google AdWords and pay the same amount as an amount of a corresponding bid you would have made. Every time a user clicks on your link, you will be charged.

Viral Marketing is the most effective and powerful way of producing unique visitors at a consistent pace. Viral marketing can be considered the online equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising. This method can easily turn five visitors into five thousand visitors and continue to grow in numbers. There are many viral marketing tools that may be distributed for free, each of them should include a link to your website. Since it is free, users will pass it on without even realizing it and the link to your website will extend to people out of your reach.

Of course, we can go on and on with online marketing tactics but for the purposes of this article, we are concentrating on grabbing the attention of unique visitors. By implementing the tactics you have read in this article, you are sure to be on the road to success with your website. Your tree will grow and prosper.

This article is written by Lo Benedict. Lo shares free tips, articles and downloads about Internet Marketing. You can visit his blog and read his latest posts here: www.instant-turnkey-reseller-package.com/blog