The first step of any online campaign is deciding what you want to be known for, particularly when aiming for a stronger presence on the search engines. These terms or search phrases that you wish to be seen for are called ‘keywords’. Researching and implementing these keywords into your website is crucial to the success of your website. It is vital that you look into both the search volume of each keyword and also the competition levels. By conducting a bit of research first you will gain a good understanding of how your market looks online, and also what keywords you could realistically achieve good positions for.

There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.

For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:

1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”

By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.

2. “In title: ‘keyword’”

2nd most important to the URL, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.

3. “In text: ‘keyword”

This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword. The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer.

You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition…this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.
For more information on Keyword Research, please visit www.wise-sites.com.

While there may be much discrepancy, these 17 tips for SEO are something most experts seem to agree on. Following these rules, you can avoid some common mistakes and launch a successful campaign.

1. Perform keyword research. This is a very important step in your SEO campaign, before you even begin. Thoroughly research all keywords you may want to use – this can make a huge difference in your strategy.

2. Don’t use the same Metas for every page. All your Meta and Title Tags should be unique for each page. Also, make sure to use keywords and write an engaging title.

3. Don’t try to deceive the search engines. Don’t overuse keywords, hide text, or create doorway pages. These are unethical forms of SEO. With the current trend of search engines favoring ethical SEO, your best practice is to create a well-thought out web page, that has unique content, and is easy to navigate.

4. Avoid low quality links. Not all links are created equal. Instead of getting links from link farms, research the popularity of websites before getting links from them. Alexa ranks are a good way to check popularity, as well as page rank. However, if your own page rank is rather low, fret not, for this will be explained below.

5. Avoid using links with the same anchor text. Search engines do not like links that use the same anchor text and description that are repeated in short bursts.

6. Don’t overdo reciprocal links. Reciprocal linking can be valuable, but only when done in small doses, and if the links are relevant to your business. Also, make sure to have a diverse set of links, including links to blogs, forums, articles, social media bookmarking, and more.

7. Don’t become obsessed with page rank. Page rank is only a small part of your entire SEO campaign. The way pages are ranked is actually rather complicated, and is based on many factors. It is possible for a lower ranked page to actually be quite successful and get lots of visitors. So if your page rank is low, don’t freak out.

8. Do network with other Website owners. This is a great way to learn, get advice, and exchange links. These relationships can be mutually beneficial.

9. Make site updates regularly. Sometimes, an out-of-date website can be worse than no website at all. Make sure you update regularly with current information, news and events, and fresh content. If you want to catch the eye of the search engine robots, regular updates are a great way.

10. Don’t compete for single keywords. Instead, compete for keyword phrases. This will make it more likely that your site will show up as a relevant search result. For instance, if your company sells jewelry boxes, and you attempt to compete for the term “boxes,” many people who find your site will be looking for cardboard boxes, hat boxes, and other types of boxes, and will likely not stay on your page once they realize you don’t sell what they’re looking for. If you compete for the phrase “jewelry boxes,” it’s more likely that potential customers who are looking strictly for jewelry boxes will find you.

11. Research your competition. It’s always good to know what the competition is up to, including what they are doing on their website, where they are getting links, etc.

12. Design your Website to be SEO friendly. There is definitely an SEO strategy when it comes to website design. Avoid heavy Flash and lots of graphics, since search engine robots crawl the text, not images. Good Meta and Title Tags are a must, as well as fresh and engaging content. If you’re hiring someone to design your website, look for someone who is an expert in organic SEO.

13. Use text links instead of images. If using JavaScript, text links are important since spiders won’t follow JavaScript.

14. Keep localization in mind. There are several benefits to reaching out to the local audience. Aside from gaining local customers, including location-based keyword phrases, like “detroit auto body shop,” will help you because you will have less competition for that keyword.

15. Don’t ignore the power of content. Nothing drives a Website like good content. Make sure your content is engaging, original, and well researched. Use keywords strategically (so they fit in with the natural flow of text).

16. Always proofread. This step should be a given, yet it’s not uncommon to see typos and content mistakes on web pages. Aside from providing incorrect information, mistakes, as well as typos, make a web page and its company look unprofessional.

And most importantly…

17. Don’t Give Up! SEO is not accomplished overnight. It can be a long process and takes lots of work and sometimes trial and error. Keep up your effort and don’t give up!

Wendy Suto, President and CEO of Search Circus, has specialized in search engine optimization and search engine marketing, including SEO campaigns for over 10 years. Certified in SEO, Wendy Suto only follows natural and organic search engine optimization guidelines with proven results.

Internet marketing efforts need to be tracked so you know if you are using your resources wisely. Google analytics is a good, free tool you can use to track traffic sources, conversion rates, etc.

Make sure you have Google analytics or some other type of analytics installed on your website.

Traffic Sources

You want to know where your traffic is coming from and where it is not coming from. This will help you allocate your resources properly. Google Analytics is able to track where your site visitors are coming from, where they go on your site, etc.

A few examples of where your traffic may come from:

- Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc)

- Pay-Per-Click campaigns

- Twitter, Facebook, etc

- Articles and press releases that include links

- Websites that have your links

- Etc.

Having this information can help you have a more effective Internet marketing plan.

Easy Come, Easy Go

It is easy to find out where the traffic comes from and what page they leave from. Both of these pieces of information are valuable. Knowing them can help you identify if your Internet marketing strategy is working.

The page people enter your site on is important. You want to make sure they arrive on your website on a page that has a focused message for what they are looking for (most websites have multiple entry points, each focused on a different search term). Pay careful attention to what page your visitors land on and make sure it is well designed and well written.

The page visitors leave your website on is also important because it may identify a problem with your site. If you find that a certain page is the primary exit point you want to see if there are any technical or other issues with that page that make people leave your site.

Conversion Rates

Though it is important to learn about where your traffic is coming from it is more important to know where your sales are coming from. Conversion rates in Google Analytics are tracked by traffic source. You can see where your actual buyers are coming from so you can put more emphasis on those resources.

Google Analytics is important to add to a website. Learn about your website traffic, conversion rates and more so you can make important tweaks to your Internet marketing strategy. It’s free to use so all you have to do is go for it.

Here are 10 tips to help your mobile website soar in the Search Engines…

1. Top of the list – make sure you create a mobile Site Map. This piece of XML code is directly from Google Webmaster Central, and Google recommends that, for once, you avoid Sitemap Creation tools.

xmlns:mobile=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-mobile/1.0″>

http://mobile.example.com/article100.html<;/loc>

(Whatever you do, don’t omit the tag, or your mobile site won’t be crawled.

2. Each mobile Site Map must have a name that is unique – but “URLs serving multiple markup languages can be listed in a single Site Map.”

3. If you use the Google Sitemap Generator to create your Site Map with, Google cautions that you will “need to create a separate config file for each Mobile Sitemap.”

4. Don’t use huge titles. “21 Tips for Turning your Hamster into a Money-Making Machine While Helping Him Lose Weight” is just not gonna cut it, for a mobile site. Think “short blog post headline” instead. Keep it really, really simple.

5. Don’t forget to submit it to Google webmasters, just as you would with a regular Site Map.

6. When it comes to mobile blogs, if you’ve set them up properly with the right plug-ins, SEO isn’t such a problem. But do remember that if you don’t submit your blogs and websites to mobile directories – you’ll be invisible. All the SEO in the world won’t be able to help you, if you don’t seem to exist!

7. Keep an eye on SEOPrinciple.com, which reports all the latest SEO news from Google (specifically, from Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team). (Also check out the YouTube Google Webmaster Central channel for the latest SEO news.) Cutts is the guy with all the facts and figures: He reports more than 4 billion mobiles world-wide to only 1 billion PC’s. Says Cutts about the planned expansion of Google’s Search features: “…mobile is going to be a big part of it.” (Again – get in on the leading edge!)

8. Drive traffic to your mobile website with a YouTube video – with your mobile site URL and a call to action prominently displayed. If you’ve ever used Google’s mobile web index, it should strike you that most of the results are YouTube pages. This may not be a sure-fire SEO strategy for ever – but it sure seems to be working, right now!

9. Check out the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 page, at www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/#d0e1099. You’ll find out all sorts of helpful data, including “keep your pages under 21k” and tips for SEO.

10. Meet Googlebot-Mobile, a very special bot that looks for “mobile-friendly” sites, and includes them in Google’s mobile web index. So far he hasn’t been doing a very good job – but then again, maybe countless people aren’t bothering with those, all important, Site Maps.

Googlebot-Squarepants, er, I mean “Mobile”, is a lot slower than other search bots, according to www.SEOprinciple.com, taking about 2 weeks to complete a “rotation.”

When all is said and done, mobile SEO is still in its infancy. By all means follow the tips I’ve included here – but first and foremost, you need to concentrate on make your blog useful, interesting – and worth coming back to.

For more info about iPhone Applications and making money with iPhone – visit 3g best applications.
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What is Google Image Search?

Google has a dedicated version of its search engine called Image Search which helps find images. Claiming to be the most comprehensive image search facility on the web, it has billions of images from websites already within its index. When searching for images, you can tailor the search for various sizes and choose a specific type of image you’re looking for, such as a photo, clipart or head shot.

When clicking on a image, the image will load as a preview in one frame, whilst showing the website the image is from in a frame below. This gives you the option of visiting the website or enlarging the image to full size. Google Image Search is popular. It actually gets more traffic than Yahoo, Window Live Search and Ask Jeeves.

Why is Google Image Search Important To Me?

As mentioned, Google Image Search gets more traffic than supposed major search engines in the UK, typically getting more visits than websites such as Amazon and MySpace (Source: Hitwise). This means Google Image Search is a potential source for traffic to your site, and although perhaps not as targeted as conventional search, implies that people are actively searching for what you offer.

The biggest reason to start optimizing for Google Image Search is that it is not as competitive as normal search, despite the great amount of traffic it can provide. Although ranking well in Google Image Search itself does not help your conventional search engine rankings, a byproduct of ranking well in Google Image Search could mean this will happen eventually because of the viral potential.

How Do I Get My Images onto Google Image Search?

You cannot submit images in the same way you can submit your website or sitemap to Google. Results are entirely shown by Google’s algorithm after indexing all websites it finds. Google’s imaging spider is called Google Image Bot. It crawls the web and indexes all of the pages it can find. Being a program, it cannot ‘see’ images, so it has other ways of determining an image’s relevancy. These factors are:

1. Descriptive Image Name

When optimizing a website, we have talked about relevancy in other articles. It sounds obvious, but you have to talk about what you do. Integrating keyword phrases into this content is essential and makes a genuine difference to rankings. In a simplified way, this is no different for images.

Your images should be named after their subject. For example, if you want to come up in Google Image Search for David Beckham you should call it something along the lines of ‘david-beckham.jpg’ as opposed to something generic such as ‘photo1234.jpg.’ Likewise, if you have a folder full of David Beckham images, name the folder descriptively too.

2. Compliant Images

Creating accessibility compliant images works in hand with being descriptive and relevant. There are a number of criteria you have to meet to have an officially compliant image. These criteria are:

• A ‘src’ attribute specifying the URL of the image

• A width and height declaration of the image in pixels

• An ‘alt’ attribute that describes the content of the image

• A ‘title’ attribute that contains a text description when hovering over the image

The ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tag are specifically important for optimization as they are way of building in keyword phrases, e.g. David Beckham. Below is an example of how the code and image should look for the David Beckham image:

3. On Page Optimization

If you’re reading this far, you probably know a fair amount about Search Engine Optimization. In order to get your images ranking well in Google Image Search, you’ll need to have the whole page optimized towards that image. Therefore, try not to be optimizing the page for more than one subject, such as mixing David Beckham with Kevin Pietersen (he’s a cricketer for the Yanks reading this!).

You should concentrate on being descriptive for the Title and Meta tags. One of the more important factors specific to Image Search optimization is not only concentrating on relevant content, but specifically the content in close proximity to the image. Bear this in mind when setting the layout of the page!

4. PageRank and Backlinks

Another factor shared with general Search Engine Optimization is that Google will rank an image higher if it is on an authority page. This means a page that has backlinks and consequently, a relatively good Google PageRank. Try to generate backlinks to the specific page by visiting forums, blogs and other websites related to the subject matter. Also be sure to internal link to the page so it is indexed quickly and gains some PageRank from your established pages. For both inbound and internal links, make sure they have descriptive anchor text.

5. Website Relevancy

Although important, PageRank isn’t as important with Image Search as with ranking on Google’s main search engine. Website relevancy counts for more, so if you had a whole website dedicated to David Beckham, this would be better than having a single page. If this isn’t possible, try to create a ‘theme’ within your website where you create more than one page about the subject matter. You should then inter-link these pages.

Website Relevancy is considered of growing importance within the SEO world and should be factored into your website wide optimization planning.

6. Image Storage

Related to relevancy, Google’s Image Guidelines suggest saving all related images in the same folder. If Google can see you concentrate on this subject, this could potentially boost your ranking within Google Images. Likewise, if you talk a lot about the chosen subject across many pages, you may want keep them under a well titled sub-folder.

Guest Post: Rob Fenn is an SEO specialist, working within the Webtacular department of the website design firm Sixth Sense ESP, which focuses on Internet Marketing for SMEs. Outside of SEO, Rob is also a Google AdWords Qualified Professional.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… there is no more important step in the SEO process than keyword research. One could make a compelling argument for link building or for architecture or for copywriting but at the end of the day – ranking highly for keywords that either don’t convert or which you close up shop waiting to rank for isn’t going to help too terribly much so in my opinion – I’d put keyword research higher in importance. In fact, when I’m building affiliate sites my first step is to look up keywords and competition levels – then I look into products and websites and this method has worked very well indeed. It insures that I choose keywords that will both convert and that I can rank for in a period of time and with an effort level that matches the return.

So – if you’re doing keyword research, where should you begin? Unless you’re an affiliate marketer you already have a product and since you’re the target audience of this article – I’m going to assume that’s the case. For the purpose of this article I’m going to pick a hobby of mine and also an area where I don’t have a client and imagine I’m doing keyword research for the imaginary online downhill mountain biking store, DH Mountain Bikes.

So Where To Begin … The first thing one needs to do is try to think up all the possible phrases that might apply. I call this my seed list… it’s the list of phrases that my research starts with and is generally based on brainstorming. In this case the list would be:

downhill mountain bike
dh mountain bike
mountain bike

The keyword tool I generally use first is Google’s keyword suggestion tool. There are other great tools but I’ve found Google’s tool to be as accurate as any other, the price is definitely right (free), and they’re very good about providing the information required to know just how wrong the data is if you know where to look. So let’s do just that.

Before we begin you’ll need to head over to Google’s keyword tool. In the top left (for now) you’ll see a link to a beta version of the tool. Click on the link and you’ll be at the new version of the tool which will provide you easy access to much more information – as long as you know what to look for. So let’s begin with our three seed phrases.

When you see the list you’ll first have to know what the numbers are. This tool is a tool designed for AdWords and the default number is the Broad match which means it includes every phrase with the term. For example, the term “mountain bike” has a broad match total of 2,740,000 which will include “downhill mountain bike”, “mountain bike parts”, “kona mountain bike”, etc. etc.

What we want to know is how many searches are for “mountain bike”. Down the left-hand side you’ll see a set of check boxes. Deselect “Broad” and select “Exact” and you’ll get the Exact match numbers – the number of searches for the exact phrase. You’ll quickly see that 2,740,000 drop to 450,000. This is how many people searched the GOOGLE SEARCH NETWORK for “mountain bike”. Why is this in caps – because it’s so commonly misunderstood that I definitely want your attention brought to it. This isn’t the number of searches on Google.com – it’s the number of searches on all sites whose search is powered by Google. From YouTube to Beanstalk’s blog search – it’s all in there so the data starts to get skewed from the start. Then let’s add in all the automated queries from rank-checking tools and just manual searches from you and your competitors and the data gets further skewed. This skewing will exist in all data – the thing I like about using Google is that at least we know more about what’s adjusting the data.

OK – so from there we need to organize the data into a more useful set of information. To do this one needs to understand the columns of data. The first column is the keyword, the second you’ll see is a link to the term on Google Insights. We’ll get into this later. The next is Global Monthly Searches – this is the average number of searches/mo. worldwide. This can be helpful in some industries but in ours – I’m only concerned with the US market which is where my imaginary store ships to so I’m more interested in the next column Local Monthly Searches which is the number of searches in the US (or whatever region I’ve specified when entering my keyword phrases). This is the data I’m interested in. The last column is the search trend. This is extremely important but often overlooked. It is a column that wasn’t visible by default in the old/current version.

OK – let’s organize our data by search volume. Click on the “Local Monthly Searches” and you’ll see the keywords order by descending search volume. With this data in front of me I then typically look over to the Trend data to see what I can find there. In our case we’re going to see a jump in search volume in the spring and summer. This make sense of course. Think of your industry and see if the trends reflect what makes sense.

I’m also looking for anomalies. Often I’ll see phrases that jump for a single month. One has to know that unless there was a news story or other event that would spark interest in a single term or brand – a tool or some other such incident is likely falsifying the data. You need to look at these trends and see if they make sense. If not – you need to either test the phrases with PPC or just skip over them and select different phrases. There’s little worse as an SEO than focusing energies on a phrase only to find that the search volume is not what was expected based on the estimates delivered.

So now what?

So what do you do once you’ve filtered your data down to just what you’re interested in looking into competition levels on. Well – the first thing I do is to look to the trends to see if there are any phrases that obviously need to be filtered out. In this case there really aren’t any high in the search volume column. So the only thing left is to look at the competition levels to see what makes sense. For our purposes we’ll be dividing the list and research into two categories:

Major phrases – We need to decide what the long-term goals are going to be and the targets for the main pages. These will be the totally generic phrases such as “mountain bike” and “downhill mountain bike” as well as brand or type specific phrases such as “specialized mountain bike” and “full suspension mountain bike”.

Longtail phrases – We also need to look into the types of longtail phrases we’re going to want to target. In this case I know I’ll want to target specific parts which will require new research. I will spare you the details there, but I’ll end up with specific models of components such as “hayes mx2″. You don’t need to know what that is – you need to know the makes and models in your industry (or other longatil opportunities such as “new york hotel with jacuzzi”, etc.)

I generally would gather together a list of 15 or 20 major phrases and 50 or 60 longtail phrases and would then head into the competition analysis to determine which phrases to move forward with.

And next week I’ll have that article for you…

About The Author
Dave Davies is the CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization, Inc. On top of providing performance-based organic SEO services, consulting, training and link building – Dave enjoys writing and blogging about SEO as well as affiliate marketing, including his upcoming site on downhill mountain bikes www.dhmountainbikes.com and the hills they’re built for.

Following is the list of pointers to get your website on top, reach out to potential customers and ensure brand visibility in 2010.

1. Decrease Webpage Load Time. Google’s Matt Cutts recently hinted that the load time of a website may affect its ranking in the search engines. That is, the faster a website loads, the better its chances to rank well for its niche keywords. Website load time is touted as the next big step towards improved rankings. The pre-requisites to a good webpage load time are; reputable web host and fast internet connection.
2. Get Listed in Google Local Search. Getting listed in Google Local Search ensures brand visibility in front of visitors from the nearby places. It has been proven that the number of visitors to a website increase exponentially when listed in local search results. The reason being, a customer will always prefer to purchase a quality product which is easily available in his or her vicinity rather than order it from another unfamiliar city or state.
3. Get Involved in Social Media. Social Media is the flavor of the season and in 2010 organizations are going to actively engage in conversation and social networking and reach out to their potential customers. Social Media Marketing is a must for every organization as it helps create brand awareness and build relationships with consumers in the highly competitive market. Micro targeting and Personalization will be the keywords in 2010.
4. Optimize Your Website Mobile Users. With and ever increasing number of people tweeting and using Facebook from their mobile devices, a lot of organizations are now finally paying attention to how their websites appear on mobile phones. You can have your website appear on the mobile under the same URL or have a special domain for the same. The most common way is to have the domain name as mobile.websitename.com.
5. Apply Web Analytics to its full potential. There are hundreds of web analytics tools in the market which provide a mountain of data pertaining to the visitor’s usage. Some of the most well known web analytics tools are Omniture, Google Analytics and Yahoo! Web Analytics etc. Web Analytics tools can answer the “how” but not the “why”. That is, you can find out how many visitors checked the product catalogue webpage, but not the answer to, why the visitors didn’t place an order for the product. Organizations need to dissect the data from web analytics tools and successfully apply its learning’s to enhance their visitors experience and in turn increase sales revenues.

In 2010 companies must go beyond organic search engine optimization by integrating social media marketing and optimizing their websites for mobile users.

Guest Author: Debbie A. Everson is the CEO of SearchMar.com, experienced SEO Consultants and Search Engine Optimization Agency to over 2,000 small businesses. Read my SEO Blog for hints and tips. Follow me on Twitter @searchmar. Call 1.866.885.6263 to speak to one of our SEO Consultants and receive your free consultation.

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination—your website—you need to provide them with effective signs that direct them right to your site by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the “Open Sesame!” of the Internet. Find the exactly right words, and presto! Hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or overused, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site—or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do arrive—decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven’t followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It’s hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers’ understanding is significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. By “quality visitors” I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn’t enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword “automobile companies.” However, you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword “automobile body shops” would rank lower on the popularity scale than “automobile companies,” but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase.

Let’s look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between “Seattle job listings” and “Seattle IT recruiters” which do you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties.

You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to your site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work—and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business’ rewards.

How do you know what type of content is really going to attract the right searchers? In this article I wanted to cover a few very basic tips that you can keep in mind when building high-performance strategies. Remember that good search engine marketing is not about trying to manipulate or “fool the search engines.” Good SEO skills are more about creating genuine relevancy for well-written content that deserves to be found because it is truly the most relevant and useful to your audience of readers.  Optimization skills are not nearly as hard as many people make them out to be (even for the most competitive phrases,) once you’ve been trained and understand the full scope of influences that are at work. The biggest advantage that we have had is all about the “accuracy of information.”

1. Write content that your audience is already looking for within the last 90 days.

True keyword research is not about “guessing at keywords” but its all about researching actual data. How are your SEO research skills using Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery? At the SEO Workshops we teach much more than the traditional “keyword research” methods. We help students learn “Keyword Forensics” and how to quickly tap into the hidden niche trends that 99% of most Webmasters never even notice.

2. Does your Web copy speak to the reader or does it speak about yourself?

Remember that your Web site should be focused on your audience first and appeal specifically to a niche interest. When writing your Web copy, you need to dialog in an appropriate tone and format for the right audience. Some of the most interesting content will have more appeal if it speaks to your audience in terms of “you.” You can, you might, you will, yours, your and youâ€^TMre INSTEAD of we, ours, weâ€^TMre, we will, we can, etc.

3. Focus on writing for the human audience first and search engines second.

While search engine optimization is important to your visibility, try writing your content first. Most people donâ€^TMt write their best when trying to optimize and create content at the same time. Focus on creating highly useful content that is extremely focused on one topic per page. Once you have completed your writing so that you are pleased with it, then go in to do a mild re-write for the search engines.

4. Tips for triggering idea generation and giving your strategies a unique twist.

While many people seem to spend time exploring their competitor’s Web sites, we encourage you to lead the way with new ideas. Try not to be obsessed with what the competition is doing, but be creative and start your own new trends. Spend just a little more time working on your projects this week than you did last week. Setting yourself apart from the competition is easier than you might think and gives you a huge advantage over others.

5. Creating your content so that it “speaks” to a specific audience of visitors.

Think of how your Web copy reads and ensure the dialog flows smoothly. Read your work out loud and see if you can improve the tone of your message With natural expression. Keep your specific audience in mind. How you write for senior citizen (in tone and in format) may differ considerably from writing for an audience of for example “new parents.” Always ask yourself “what is important to these readers?” Rely on researching accurate data to eliminate guess work.

6. Remember strong calls to action

Without a firm call to action, donâ€^TMt expect the reader to naturally guess at what you want them to do next. Plain ordinary dialog that asks the reader to take the next action will usually work best. Dialog that is written for voice (similar to the way a broadcaster writes to project their personality.)

7. Build your search engine optimization skills in the beginning with the “stress free” approach.

If you are new to SEO, you may want to focus on the long tailed niche phrases since most searchers are doing fairly descriptive and intelligent searches these days. Ideally You want to attract those who already know what they are looking for and just need to find your pages more easily. With practice and the right training you can go after highly competitive phrases too but youâ€^TMll find that the best conversions nearly always come from the niches. Also remember that it is the basic SEO skills that carry you through and must come before any of the advanced strategies. The result will be stable top rankings that stand the test of time with minimal fuss.

8. Give your readers a non-threatening reason to respond right now.

What is the objective for your page and does your Web copy work effectively at fulfilling that objective? It may not always be about trying to sell a product or a service. It should not be about fulfilling your needs first but it should be about meeting the needs of why that searcher first conducted a search. Meet their needs and deliver up something that satisfies their search first and then give the visitor a non-threatening reason why they might respond to you. Do you want their e-mail address? or do you just want them to pick up the phone and call? Never lose sight of the fact that the Web is a marvelous two way interactive experience, if you want it to be. Make your Web site a vehicle for relationship building and remember that many readers may actually have the desire to interact and participate through Blogs or other “User Generated activity.” Give your visitors something that involves their participation.

9. Remember that your readers always want to feel like they are in control of their Web experience.

People often use the Web for researching topics of interest or doing preliminary price comparisons or for looking up information. While most people explore the Web for their own purposes, the more that you put them in control of their experience the better. If appropriate, you may want to consider adding addition tools or functionality to your Web site in order to enhance its usability for your specific audience.

10. Did you know that if you write your content so that it naturally “reads very well.”

You will naturally gain some bonus for having created content of quality. By this, I mean content…that reads well to a human being. Don’t stuff keywords all over the place. Instead, use moderation in everything you do. One of the things you need to understand is that “theme based” search engines like Google, are actually using a measure of artificial intelligence (AI) to measure how well your article “reads” based on all of the overall context of your body text (other than the keywords) based on data that a search engine has gathered concerning a specific topic. This is great news for writers because if you are making a transition to writing for the web, you’ll find some search engines are literally rewarding pages that are “well written.”

Learn lots more about SEO from John Alexander who has taught live SEO Workshops since 2002 at http://www.SearchEngineWorkshops.com as well as Online Webinars at the SEO Workshop Resource Center at http://www.SEW-WRC.com

Having someone share their top SEO secrets with you can lead you well on the way to success. Here are a few of my SEO secrets

1 – Comment Google loves a blog. Sometimes you will find another blog in one of those coveted page 1 positions. Many of those blogs accept comments. So, leave a comment. You know the rules by now. Don’t over commercialize, be helpful, be useful, good things will follow. Of course, don’t forget to leave a keyword link to your target site by using your keyword as your user name.

2 – Do a search – Search on Google for your target keyword. Visit the top 10 sites with the mindset: “How do I get my link on THIS site?”. The answer probably lies above or beneath you. For example, you may often see an article directory, such as Ezine Articles, occupying one of the top spots. Another good tactic is to use an article submission service. So, if you were to write and submit an article, with your target keyword as part of the headline, who knows what might happen? Especially if you submit the RSS feed of all your articles, as outlined in step 1.

3 – Advertise – If all else fails, don’t forget you can always advertise. Buy a cheap Adwords campaign and if you cant afford the click costs for your target keyword then focus instead on the long tail keywords that are related to your target keyword (they are a lot cheaper).

You can also buy ads on specific sites on a per click or per impression basis. Facebook is also a good, sometimes cheaper, alternative to Adwords. There are other simply amazing advertising opportunities, where it is relatively cheap to advertise on other people’s sites and blogs including a number of other excellent options.

Some independent sites also accept banner and link advertising. Some will if you ask them, so if you see a site in that top position and you want to be part of that, send them an email.

You will often be pleasantly surprised how little the webmaster will want for a decently placed link or banner.

By the way, you will note that I didn’t mention social bookmarking. Now, of course, that’s important and you may want to see which of your pages are doing well first and then social bookmark a few of them in some of the more popular social bookmarking sites.

Start off at socialmarker, Digg and Stumbleupon from there. But in closing, I think social bookmarking alone will not be enough to get you on page 1.

Now, please prove me wrong and then let me know.

I guess that’s the secret really. Don’t think of page 1 as hallowed ground. Rather think of it as YOUR territory and you just want to stake your claim.

You want your piece of it. Like I said at the start, with a properly thought out SEO campaign, you can own page 1, with your own web-sites, but these ‘bullying’ strategies are certainly the next best thing and will give you quicker, but often shorter lived results. So,

THE SEXY SEO SECRET IS:

Your Google page 1 link does not have to be to your site. If you ‘own’ the spot, then that means your competitor does not.

Author:

Allen Jesson has been online for 11 years and is now sharing many SEO secrets. He specializes in getting Web Traffic. He also offers one of the top SEO services in the world.

Wake Up – Your Clients Are Looking for You!

If you’re going to use the power of the Internet to try to find clients, you have to first understand how prospective clients are going to find you. You need to drop your preconceived notions about how you see your business, and start thinking about how potential clients are going to see your business. To do that, you need to try to put yourself in their shoes.

Understanding Web Searches

Let’s suppose, for example, your business is centered around providing consulting to customers who need help with back pain in New York. When you sit down to start designing your web strategy, you might hire a copywriter to create content with the keywords, “back pain consultant,” or “pain coaching.” However, those terms won’t likely bring you much in the way of good, solid traffic from potential clients.

In fact, the only people who are likely to search for “back pain consultant” are people like you whose business is helping people with back pain. People trying to solve a problem don’t typically search for things like “coaching” or “consulting.”

Instead, you need to consider how exactly those prospective customers are going to search. They might search for the rather generic phrase, “back pain,” or they might be a little more specific and search for something along the lines of “back pain help” or “treatment for back pain.” Other potential clients will use more of a question-based approach, such as searching for “how can I reduce back pain?” In the case of many niches, such as our back pain example, it’s likely that potential clients will also use a geographic or regional term. Most assume that they need to see someone in person for treatment. So “back pain help new York” might be a common search phrase.

From Information to Solutions

Something else you need to think about in terms of how potential clients are going to find you on the web, is what stage of searching the potential client is at. Understanding whether or not the potential client is ready to buy is key to your marketing strategy.

There are several stages a person goes through before they’re ready to buy:

Identification

This is the earliest point at which a potential client can identify a felt need. It might be back pain, for example. It could be a desire to make money from the comfort of your home. It might be that the person wants to learn a new skill, take up a new hobby, or just improve their overall well-being. At this stage, the person isn’t usually ready to buy. They’re still feeling their way through the problem, and putting words to it.

Web searches at the identification stage tend to be information-based. The objective isn’t to solve a problem, it’s to understand the problem. At this stage, a person might search for “types of back pain” or “back pain symptoms,” but they aren’t as likely to search for “back pain help.”

Clients at this stage are the least likely to buy. However, if you can hook a potential client at this stage, you may get her to come back later on when she is ready to buy. Some remain in this stage; once they learn about the topic they want to learn about, they simply leave it alone forever. They decide that it’s not a problem they want or need to invest any more time and energy trying to solve.

Information

Once a person has identified a need or a problem, they usually set out to learn about it in-depth. They start seeking the advice of experts. This is a transitional stage, where it is more likely that they’ll buy than at the identification stage, but where most people don’t rush into anything. At this stage, web searches tend to be information-based again. However, these searches tend to focus on the other end of the need or problem: how to fix it. So here a person might search for “back pain solutions” or “back pain treatment options.” This is where real value-added content comes in handy on your website.

Being able to provide usable and reliable information helps to position you as an authority in your niche. Once the customer is ready to buy, they’ll remember your expertise and come back to you.

Purchase-Ready

At this point, the potential client is ready to buy. They understand the problem or need, know what can be done about it, and are ready to pay someone to get their solution. These are your best prospects, and the easiest people to convert into a sale. People who are ready to buy can get very specific in their search terms. They might search “back pain treatment in New York” or even “back pain physiotherapist.” Their search terms indicate that they don’t just want to know about a problem or a need, but that they’re ready to fix it.

Many potential clients don’t search the web at this stage, however. During the first two stages of their web search process, they have probably identified a reliable source of information. At that point, they’re more likely to go back to that reliable source than they are to search randomly for someone else. If that authoritative source doesn’t offer a direct solution, that’s when the potential client will start their search.

Marketing Across the Stages

Effective marketing for your coaching business will at least touch on each of these stages. While the details and specific tactics may vary from one niche to another, most coaches will want to spend their time in the second stage. By providing useful information to potential clients, you build your image as an authority in your field. Not everyone will seek your services, however most will. By adding real value, you create a positive experience for the client and engender a certain degree of trust. When the time comes for a solution, they’re going to come to you rather than randomly searching on Google (or flipping through the Yellow Pages, for that matter).

If you’re struggling to implement a simple, effective internet marketing strategy then Anton Pearce can help. With over 10 years of experience helping professionals to build their online business Anton can show you the changes you need to make to get more leads, more clients and more sales from your website. Visit http://antonpearce.com for more free and paid resources to power-up your marketing.

Reverse search engine optimization…what? Is that even a real thing, or just some sort of search engine marketing they practice on Bizarro World?

Regular SEO means practicing positive online reputation management and making sure your website reaches the top of the search engine rankings. But reverse SEO means doing the opposite, and pushing negative press and negative reviews further down the search results.

Use Reverse SEO when your name or brand has been defamed in the online world, and that negative review is showing up at the top of the Google search results. Reverse SEO pushes the negative pages down in the ranking, but doesn’t necessarily put your page at the top.

We have a friend who once had a very unpleasant experience with his personal bank, and blogged about the experience. For months afterward, if you were to Google the name of that bank — and it was a small one, so it’s not like you were spoiled for choices — his post was the #1 result. Even now, it still appears in the top ten. But if the bank were to practice a little reverse search engine optimization, they could have that problem solved in no time.

What about when customers are Googling your name or products, but your competitor’s name is showing up at the top? While you have to admire the other guy’s online reputation management, it can be aggravating when you’re selling roses, but your competition’s tulips keep popping up instead. While you can hope and pray that the other guy goes out of business soon, you’re better off trying a little reverse search engine optimization instead. It’s cost effective, easier, and doesn’t cost other people their livelihoods.

Search engine marketing experts tell us that most people don’t visit the second or third pages of results. So the goal behind reverse search engine optimization is to push a negative review like that off of the first page, and possibly into the fourth or fifth page.

So what are some reverse search engine optimization techniques? What can you ETHICALLY do to make sure your bad press or your competitor’s results are being pushed farther down the search page?

The biggest weapon in our reverse search engine optimization arsenal: start blogging. Search engines love blogs, because they provide fresh content. And the more fresh content you have, the higher you place in the search engine results. Publish a new blog post at least two or three times a week (10 times a month).

Another reverse search engine optimization technique is to write press releases filled with your search engine marketing terms. If you sell roses in Chicago, write press releases about roses in Chicago. It helps search engines find your content useful, which boosts you up in the rankings, and pushes the other websites down.

Leaving comments on other websites is another effective reverse search engine optimization practice. By leaving comments on other blogs, discussion forums, and social networks with links that point to your blog posts, you tell the search engines your blog is important. If you find a blog about removing thorns from roses, leave useful comments like “I wrote about five ways to safely remove thorns on my own blog,” and then link it to your blog.

Finally, joining social networks is another great reverse search engine optimization method. Believe it or not, search engines will even post results from Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube in their search results. So don’t forget to include valuable content (including keywords) on these other sites, which will then start appearing on the top search pages.

Rostin Reagor Smith is on the cutting edge of Reverse SEO. Protecting the reputation of your brand or company is more important than ever. Combining Social Media Optimization with more traditional SEO and SEM methods, RRS is a consulting firm specializing in enhancing clients’ online presence and managing their public relations online through traditional and Reverse SEO.

As an iconoclastic young developer, with ambitions of beating the “big boys” at their own game, more time than money or the connections to get it, I sought a less capital intensive methodology to achieve the same results. Years of study and rapt attention to the pertinent forums, trying everything that even seemed to make sense (making many mistakes along the way, and learning much from each one), then carefully monitoring the results, has lead to many highly workable tools in our SEO bag of tricks. The outcome of these trial and error methods, (lots of both) lays the foundation of our SEO services and the basis for the ongoing growth of traffic to your website and ours.

The simple fact of the matter is this: Expertise in any other form of writing in no way qualifies one for the type of writing required to optimize a website for the Internet. There are many sites which have less than correct punctuation, grammar, and even spelling which rank #1 in their optimized search phrases. This is not to say that I don’t think these things are important, only that to be found in the search engines, they are not the most important consideration.

The flip side of this argument is equally true. Just because someone knows all the ins and outs of all of the search engines, can write algorithms in their sleep, has lunches with Dr. Eric Schmidt and is on a first name basis with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, does not, in any way, make them a writer. All of the writing on this site was done as a collaborative venture between Susan K. Thompson, a professional writer with strong academic credentials and real world experience, in both business and marketing, and myself. Was there a lot of editing and re-write? Yes. Were there disagreements? You bet! Was it worth it? Look at the record.

Emerald Coast Entrepreneur was launched on May 1, 2005 with most site optimization in place and submission to the directories just beginning. With a total monetary investment of less than $100.00, and a time investment, I’d rather not think about, but which approached 300 hours, the site was given a PR5 ranking by Google on its first update, less than 2 months after our launch.

Studies show that over 90% of all online users use search engines to find what they are looking for, whether products/services, or just plain old information.

The following twelve points will, I hope, summarize a philosophy, approach and methodology to the SEO question which is both sound and effective, along with giving some helpful insight into the industry itself.

1. Content. Content. Content.
Effective, professional, optimized Copywriting is the single, most important factor in any SEO campaign. Search engines index websites based on the content found on each page of the site. With a thorough understanding of the language and grammatical conventions combined with intensive research, to find and exploit the market focus, one can move a website to the upper echelon of the “SERP’s” (Search Engine Results Page) in a methodical as well as ethical manner.

2. Analyze Web Logs.
Measure everything, at least twice, and then check again. While I would be the first to say that many of the procedures that make up website optimization are more art than science, one needs to take a very scientific approach to the results of the effort. This is done by methodically keeping a record of, and making an analysis of the sites web logs. There are a number of specialized software which make the job easier but at the bare minimum, one needs to keep a close eye on the site visitors and their activity while on the site. No matter how well planned the strategy, it is largely theoretical until proven by the results, which can only be measured by the logs, and a thorough analysis of their content.

3. No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, or any other search engine.
Those who promise such feats will either optimize for such vague search term phrases (such as, “green stunted widgets with purple Polka-dots and icing”) that no one will ever likely look for, or they are making a false claim, which they have no intention of keeping, or they have an inside edge at Google, something which they will lose, quickly, when the honest folks at Google find out about it. The other option, that they will take the money and run, is worth mentioning here but I’ll be polite.

4. Some things are just plain silly.
You don’t need to submit your site to 50,000 search engines. Businesses which offer this service are suspect, at best. 85% of the search results on the Internet come from one search engine, which, if you have one link from an established website, or better yet, a directory, will find your site just fine, on its own. Four (4) search engines account for over 90% of the traffic on the web. As for any supposed benefit which may accrue from being listed in an obscure search engine in Botswana which specializes in safaris to the Kalahari Desert and receives 7 hits per day; well, you figure it out.

5. SEO is not Pay-per-Click.
While no one would argue the effectiveness of getting increased traffic and sales, through a well planned, pay-per-click campaign, the fact remains that the conversion rates are generally low and they cease the moment the “pay” stops. With a well planned and executed SEO campaign, while results may take a bit longer, they continue to produce, and in fact grow, long after the work is done and paid for. Quite often we have found that after a thorough optimization of a site, only minor adjustments are needed on an ongoing basis, primarily related to new content and/or new items of sale or service.

6. SEO is not witchcraft, Druidism, shamanism.
Neither does it require any special chants, ceremonial fires, or vestments, though some of us do like to howl at the full moon, on occasion. There are no “Top Secret” practices which a reputable SEO cannot tell a client, a judge, or his mother, for that matter. The very nature of the Internet has always been cooperative and there is nothing about SEO that can’t be learned, with a heavy dose of time and money. A reputable SEO firm will give you an item per item breakdown of just where the money goes. Be wary if you sense a secretive atmosphere or any unwillingness to answer questions. While there are technical points which might take some background to fully understand, if one has a solid overview of the entire situation, a simple explanation should be easy enough to come up with.

7. Do-it-yourself SEO.
Yes, you can execute your own SEO campaign and find a reputable SEO firm to help plan and organize it for you. About one half of my own clientele do some part of the actual work themselves, or have their in-house dedicated personnel do it, after discussion of the goals and aims of the business/website, a thorough website analysis, comprehensive search phrase research, and focused instruction on the ways and means of achieving high SERPs. These preliminaries are followed up with a detailed program of suggestions and methods which the client can then implement themselves or hire others to perform. Average savings; 30-40%.

8. Phased Implementation.
While many companies spend thousands of dollars per month on Search Engine Optimization, an alternative is available which will pay dividends to you in increased sales and leads without the high initial investment. The most important consideration is to have a reputable firm handle the initial evaluation and suggested optimization planning first. The trial and error method will cost much more, in the long run, with or without the desired result. After studying the plan and establishing a workable budget you may implement the plan as finances allow.

9. Remember the old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Never was this more true than in the realm of SEO. While concrete and measurable gains will always come from a well thought out and executed optimization strategy, the Internet is a competitive media and we all want to be number one. Accept that a steady upward movement, over time, will place you worlds ahead of a flash followed by a crash.

10. A thought to ponder.
At stake, in the race for the top, is the very existence of your website, your business, and quite possibly your reputation. Beware of any “shortcuts” or less than ethical schemes that anyone might suggest to further your business goals. When it’s all said and done it is you, the business owner, who bears the responsibility for any company or individual you hire. Insist on knowing exactly what the strategy is and what steps are being performed to implement it. If it seems, in the least, suspicious, ask for and get an explanation. In this case, not only is Ignorance not bliss, it could very well be the beginning of the end for your business.

11. All incoming links are not created equal.
Both the relevance to your line of business and website subject matter and the PR value of the incoming link determine how valuable they are to your own PR ranking. With Google starting the trend, nothing new there, and most of the others following close behind, the days of grabbing all the inbound links, in any way possible, are gone. Not only will low ranked and/or irrelevant inbound links not help, they will, in fact, cause a penalty. Link farms, free-for-all link schemes, automated link accumulation software, or any other fad that doesn’t carefully screen the links and websites they are coming from will, in the long run, do more harm than good.

12. It’s more than just facts and figures.
The relationship between an online business and SEO is, perhaps, one of the closest of business relationships. In order to be effective, a SEO must know not only the facts and figures pertaining to the endeavor, but s/he must know something of the dreams and aspirations of the business principals. Things which don’t normally come out in a prospectus are often invaluable information when searching for the “right fit” into the complex world of the Internet. My own clients sometimes ask, due to the frequency of my calls and email in the early phases, “Am I your only client?” I usually laugh and say something to the effect that until I know your business almost as well as you do, yes, you are the only one that counts.

http://www.youradsenceprofit.com
http://www.100earningtips.com

 These brilliant thoughts from Hans

Deep linking refers to the practice of both getting external links to interior web pages, and internal linking, between web pages on your web site. The internal linking is necessary to create an easy to understand navigation method. There are several very good reasons to have both external and internal link building strategies.  As an example your web site might be about household plumbing. So on your home page you introduce the main subject, and provide links to the many sub categories like bathrooms, kitchens, laundry rooms, patio, and etc. These all involve plumbing but are specific to the sub category.  You could even step down further to toilets, lawn sprinkler systems, sinks, and so on. You might even break out sections under plumping tools, how to pages, common problems, and other related topics within the categories. In fact the better you fill out the subject with information, the more visitors you will attract.  There are two kinds of links we’ll discuss on deep link building. Internal or on page, and external or off page. Both are important and both can increase the value to the search engines and visitors. External website links bring visitors and have a positive impact on search engine ranking. Internal website links are for navigation within a web site and must be easy to follow for both search engine bots (software to review your web site) and visitors.

The easiest way to plan your internal website linking is to do a drawing using a method of drill down links. Similar to the diagramming of sentences you did back in school to figure out proper use of English. It’s the same principle in our deep linking, it should make sense to the visitor and be easy to use. Logic and drill down methods work the best. And you need a basic link on every page to go back one page, go to the home page, get to the check out page if you are selling, and get to a sitemap that lists all pages by content.

Being consistent on the link location and using descriptive text is a must. The whole point of linking is to make sure that whether it’s a human or a search engine bot, they see the relationship between the information on each link. An example using our plumbing subject would be to have a tools link on every project web page that might have unique tools, like Bathroom Plumbing Tools or Lawn Sprinkler Plumbing Tools. And those links would be in the same location on each web page.

And don’t forget the SiteMap. Every web site should have a sitemap that lists every single page by content in an organized manner. If you have a large and diverse subject web site, many visitors will go right to the sitemap to find the specific information they want. The sitemap link should be on every single page in your web site. Visitors who get frustrated will be gone in mere seconds, easy to understand sitemaps will make it simple for them to find exactly what they want.

Now let’s talk about external SEO link building. The same factors apply, links need to be in understandable anchor text, and they should go to specific web pages rather than just the home page. Let’s say you’re making a suggestion or comment on a home repair blog about plumbing bathrooms. Instead of using a link to your home page with the standard www.xxx.com, you would leave a link directly to your web page about plumbing bathrooms. And the link should use text like “Plumbing Bathrooms” (sans quotes).

You can get two benefits from doing external links. One is that if the reader likes your information they may click on your link. The other is that the search engines see that link, with descriptive anchor text, and the web site you’re linking from and your web site you’re linking to have the same subject matter. That is the best possible scenario of external links.

You can find places to leave links by doing a search on your keywords or phrases, then finding the web sites listed that allow for comments. You should make sure that the web site you choose doesn’t have the link nofollow properties. You can do that by viewing the source in your browser and searching for the term nofollow, or use software that will determine that for you.

There are a lot of large popular web sites like Yahoo Answers, Amazon, and About.com that all have the proper linking methods and have lots of subject areas. Just make sure you provide some type of value in your post and not just going for the link. Remember, you want the reader to click on your link if possible so always make your post interesting and meaningful to the subject.

SEO link building works to get you more web site traffic. Both internal and external strategies are easy to implement and can have a huge impact on both the user experience and increase your web site traffic.

Google has raised the collective eyebrows of the SEO industry this week with the release of their free PDF download: the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

The Guide offers a very thorough introduction to SEO, including advice on creating search engine friendly pages and optimized META tags, as well as excellent tips on general web site usability and best-practice design methodology.

As a tutor in SEO, I was very impressed with the level of detail included in the 22 page document and will be recommending it to my students as an additional resource for their studies.

Apart from the more obvious elements of search engine compatibility, the Guide includes coverage of usability topics often overlooked by SEO advocates such as:

• - Best practice for URL structuring
• - Site hierarchy and navigation flow
• - Using a custom 404 error page
• - Best practice for using anchor text
• - Link formatting and styling
• - Correct usage of robots.txt
• - Offline site promotion
• - Usage of web site analytics

The Guide began life as a list of best practices for teams within Google, but staff felt that external webmasters would benefit from the advice, which could improve their sites’ crawlability and indexing.

Google’s Search Quality Team plan on updating the guide at regular intervals to keep the technical advice current.

By Kalena Jordan in Kalena Jordan’s Blog