What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization is a method to get your site higher in rankings with all of the search engines. There are two parts of SEO – there is “on page” which accounts for between 20-30% and then we have “off page” which is the other 70-80%.

What benefits do we derive by increasing the ranking of our site? The higher ranking you achieve allows you to get higher in Google and what we are aiming for is page one in our niche. This gives you organic traffic and the more traffic you receive the more product that you can sell.

Some of the “on page” factors for you to consider:

Do some Keyword research

Chose your Domain name and have your main keyword in the domain name

Page title- include your keywords in your page title

Use H1-H6 Header tags

Use Meta tags

Give a Meta description

Content – any content you put on your site has to be original. Google does allow duplicate content but you can only benefit once from that content. This means if the first time you used it on a site and that site has a higher ranking, Google will not take notice of it on the lower ranking site.

Use a Site Map

Use Anchor text.

As I said remember this is only 20-30%. Increasing your ranking with SEO can be very time consuming if you are doing it for yourself. However, it can also be rewarding. All pages on the internet are created equal, but if you know how to use SEO, you have an advantage of getting noticed and ranked by the search engines. Many people think that Google is the only search engine but there are hundreds of them.

The main objective of “off page “SEO” is to get links pointing to your site. The search engines are unaware that you are creating these links and each link acts as a popularity vote for your site in the eyes of the search engine.

Some elements of “off page” SEO are:

Blogging – there are several free platforms that you can use like Blogger, Hub Pages, Squidoo.

Blog commenting – go and check out other peoples blogs and leave a relevant comment.

Forums – find forums in your niche and sign up and ensure that if you are permitted you add a signature block including your site. Each time when you write a post or thread, people see your site and it is possible they will visit.

Free classified – US free ads and Craigs lists are two well know ones

Articles – write articles and post them to various directories like Ezine. Each article should be unique content

Pinging – each time you add to you site or blog, ping it using pingoat.com or something similar

Press Releases –One of the best ways to increase your traffic

Now you can see that this can be time consuming but all of these methods are free. You could pay for advertising but this can be expensive. If you know how to do SEO and put it into practice, every day just doing a little more, you will be able to get your site up in the rankings.

To YOUR success

Sue McDonald

Keyword research is actually a part of Search Engine Optimization. What you are aiming for is getting the correct keywords or keyword phrases in your niche that a visitor is searching for.

To begin to search for relevant keywords, there are several keyword search tools you can use but I would suggest the free version of Google Keyword Tool or the paid version of Market Samurai or wordtracker. Google keyword tool will give you all the information you need to allow you to make a decision on what keywords , both long and short tailed, you should use. Long tailed keywords usually consist of three or more keyword joined together.

Keyword research can be very time consuming but if done correctly, can help get your site up into the top ten with Google for your domain name or URL.

A good site contains the information that people are searching for. When you go to Google Keyword tool and you type in the keyword you want and the captcha. Google will automatically show you a very large list all related to the keyword you entered. Go through the list and select no more that ten but you may only want to select five.

Always select keywords or phrases that have lower searches per month. This way you will be able to be more successful, because less competition, means that you can get you site up the rankings faster. Many times people type in long phrases when they are searching for information.

Remember when you start to write you site pages always keep in mind the amount of keyword you can use. A density of 3-5 % is what is required. I have seen some site that say up to 10% but I would prefer less. There are free sites that will analyze your URL and let you know the percentage of keyword or keyword phrases you have used. Never use a higher percentage than this because your work could be regarded as spam and blacklisted.

Your main keyword should always appear in your domain name. Therefore always select your domain name carefully. If you have the right keyword combination in your domain, it is likely that people typing in your keywords will arrive at your site.