Work Yourself Up!

What is Search Engine Optimization?

To be successful online in business or even just for fun, you need to get noticed. No one will read or buy from you if they can't find you right? But, how do you get yourself out there so people CAN find you? That is where search engine optimization, more commonly known as SEO, comes into play.

SEO What?

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is a series of tools, or thought processes and tasks completed on your web pages, that help your website or blog to get noticed by the search engines. Search engines use clever things called bots and spiders to crawl sites for anything that makes them relevant to search parameters entered by Internet visitors.

Most people either don't know what they are looking for or they don't know where to find it on the Internet. They rely on the search engines to do the work for them. The words that visitors use in the search boxes are termed ìkeywordsî by Internet marketers. When you use the same words in various places on your site, search engines will rank your web pages in relation to others using the same keywords. The one's who use research and optimization techniques the best, will end up on top of the list. Why does being at the top of search engines matter? 

Research has found that 60% of all web searchers will click on one of the top 3 sites they are presented with. The majority of those will choose the number 1 ranked spot. Having one of the top three positions, therefore, can results in a much greater amount of traffic. It's not just the amount of traffic that's important to note, though. After the 3rd spot, the response from search engine users diminishes greatly. This means that the visitors that you get from position 4 and below are less likely to become paying customers.

How to Use It

So, how exactly do you get to the top spots in the search engines? There are several tools and resources that can help with creating top notch SEO for your websites. They revolve around keywords and keyword phrases but the problem is what words to use for your particular business niche.

Think like a customer. After all, you own a business but at times you are also a customer. If it were you, what words would you enter to find the information that your potential customers are trying to find? This will be a short list but one that you can start with.

From there, use some online keyword software to get more ideas. There are programs like Overture that can take one keyword and return a hundred more for you to look at using in your content and elsewhere on your website. Many marketers also use WordTracker's Free Keyword Tool to help them determine which keywords are hot. www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com These keyword programs get their results from various search engines so you can be assured that your keywords represent current parameters.

Search engine optimization is useful for content but that is not the only place. Use keywords to get ranked through other places on your site and other sites too. Here are just a few:

- Headlines (for each web page and article)
- Anchor text (for links within articles and elsewhere on the page)
- Picture tags
- Tabs (pulldown menus)

Search engine optimization helps you to create a relevant website for the search engines. After you take the time to set up your website with all the information customers will want to see when they visit, use your keywords. This gives the search engines what they need to rank you well so that those customers can find your products or services when it's most important - when it's time to buy!

How to Avoid the "Google Slap"

Not too long ago, Google placed stringent measures on squeeze pages and one page websites online. Their reason is that these mini websites are not providing much information for its visitors.

The effect is that if you want to advertise in Google, you have to pay a lot more than what content filled website do. So if you were supposed to pay $0.50 per click, you will be expected to pay as much as $5 per click.

This has put a lot of small online business owners out of business. We know that when you sell information products, you only need two page websites or even just a squeeze page to make sales.

So if you’re planning to set up your own mini sites and squeeze pages and you planned advertising using Adwords, you must find a way to beat the Google slap. It’s quite easy to do once you use the tips I’m sharing here.

I’m going to be sharing two (2) techniques here. They are very simple to use and the best part of it is that it doesn’t cost a penny.

1. Create other article pages:

Remember that Google is clamping down on mini sites that don’t have contents. All you need to do is create other pages with contents. Simply paste articles on other pages of your websites that the search engine spiders can crawl.

You don’t need to link the articles to the main page. Google already knows that there are other contents on your website.

Don’t worry if you cannot create articles, just go to major article directories like ezinearticles.com and ideamarketers.com and you will find articles you can use related to your niche. Just remember to include the resource box of the author.

You can also use Private label articles so you can brand them like you created them.

2. Create outbound links:

Creating outbound links connotes that you are giving away other information on your mini sites. You mini site is not just for the details on the main page but links to relevant information as well.

The secret here is to make sure that you don’t allow the links to affect your main message. Add the links only at the bottom of your pages.

Then also make sure that the links are only going through to your own pages because you shouldn’t be losing your visitors to outsiders. Link them to your blogs and to your articles pages.

These are very simple tips but they work well. It only takes about an hour to do and it will save you a lot of money.