A Basic Understanding Of Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO as it’s usually called, is a very hot topic for online marketers. It is the technique they use to optimize their websites hopefully so they can climb up the ranks in Google and possibly get to the first page of results as searchers type in their search words.

This process can be such a critical technique that a great many online marketers will make SEO a primary concern of their marketing campaigns. There are many resources you will find explaining Search Engine Optimization including ebooks, forums and other advice, some more useful than others.

One of the first things you need to consider are keywords and keyword phrases. Make sure those keywords or phrases are about the contents of your website. You will be able to use this to your advantage when you learn what terms your potential customers are using with the search engines to find the content on your site.

As someone is doing a Google search with keywords, what they will see is a listing of webpages that match their keyword inquiry. Those sites that they find that match the keyword or keyword phrase are known as SERPs, which stands for Search Engine Results Page.

You can begin by picking out several keywords or phrases that you feel that your potential customers would use to find webpages similar to yours. As an example, let’s say your niche is crafts, but let’s drill down to some terms that are not so broad. You want to think of keywords to reflect what your website is all about, like candle making, macrame instructions, or scrapbooking for kids.

It is usually a good idea to find out how many people are searching for your specific keywords as they search, you can use a keyword tool, like any of the three listed below.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

There are others, some paid sites which are good. One I like is Market Samurai. It is nice and easy, has good support and great training videos.

You can also get a better idea of the amount of traffic your keywords are generating by using Google’s Traffic Estimator. You can put the keywords in the box, one phrase per line, select the language of your site and choose your currency. This will get you the search volume, estimated average CPC (Cost Per Click), estimated ad position, estimated clicks per day and the estimated cost per day, based on your cost per click.

FYI: Cost Per Click (CPC) is the amount of money you will have to pay search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on your ads that sends a visitor to your website. This is another one of the tools for Google’s Adwords service.

Here is the link for Google’s Traffic Estimator:

https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

As you are reading any ebook or report by an experienced marketer, they should be advising you to test your keyword results in search engines. You will find that the best place to be in the SERPs is in the first five positions, above the fold. As you see a larger number of webpages returned from your search term, it will be harder for you to get that optimum ranking in Google’s SERPS. If you can pick longer keyword phrases of 3-4 words, rather than 1-2 word phrases, the chances of your competition could be lowered.

One thing to keep in mind: As you search Google and the box in the top right corner says, for instance: Results 1-10 of about 149,000,000, that long number with all the commas is your competition. Try changing your keywords to longer ones, which are also called longtail keywords. You could find far less competition if you choose the right keywords and you have a much better chance of getting ranked on the first page of the SERPs.

As you are designing your website, be sure to change your keywords in each page title, trying to make sure your choice of page titles that have your keywords will reflect the content on each specific page. You might also consider doing the same with the Meta tags.

The information presented here are just a few basic SEO techniques you need to understand and use on your webpages and in other marketing processes. Once you get familiar with Search Engine Optimization, Google’s Adwords and SERPs, you will be ready to move on to some of the more advanced techniques. Also remember that SEO can and will change as Google decides to change it’s parameters.

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