SEO - Search Engine Optimization Basics

What is SEO? - To make your website cut through the clutter and deliver business is SEO.
What is this clutter all about? - Everyday hundreds of thousands of web-pages are born, each with an expectation to deliver results and be on the top. This is the clutter. Fifty five million pages on Google respond to the words - What is SEO and over 136,000 pages are working precisely to be on the phrase “What is SEO?”. This page, once posted would add yet one more page to this clutter.

How does a website deliver business? - If you know your business, half the job is done. Congratulations! Now for the other half, you need to cut through some jargon’s and face several challenges. SEO is one of the many challenges and definitely not the only challenge. SEO only helps you to get the eyeballs to move to your website, for your website to deliver business, you would have to attend to those eyeballs to convince the rest of the body to do business at your website. You would also need to get the RIGHT EYEBALLS and not yet any eyeballs. Landing Page is the page where your SEOed eyeballs land. SEO job ends and the landing page’s job begins. Many SEOs (the individuals who do the SEO) consider Landing Page as a different subject, however, no SEO strategy can succeed without a functional landing page. Landing Page is a marriage between the two half’s of online business - your business knowledge and your website’s effectiveness, it is the place where the SEO meets business and each order is an offspring of this marriage.

So who should do the landing page? - The landing page should always be done by the business, it should have inputs from sales, marketing, production, dispatch, finance and every-other department which keeps your business running. The business should ask the SEO company or the inhouse SEO professionals - zillions of questions and incorporate SEO essentials to the landing page. An SEO firm doesn’t know your business, so take their inputs, look at the landing pages of your competitors and write down your essentials for the landing page. You may also study specific challenges on Landing Page Optimization. What do we mean when we say Organic Search Results? - Let us step back and understand the origin of this phrase. As per Wikipedia - “Organic farmingis a form of agriculture that relies on crop rotation, green manure, compost, biological pest control, and mechanical cultivation to maintain soil productivity and control pests, excluding or strictly limiting the use of synthetic fertilizers and synthetic pesticides, plant growth regulators, livestock feed additives, and genetically modified organisms”. Now let us check what Wikipedia has to say about Organic Search - “Organic search results refers to those listings in search engine results pages that appear by dint of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being adverts”. I would phrase it very differently: Organic Search Resultsare the snippet listings from those webpages which are most likely to focus on the searched term, the order of organic search results is reflected by the user friendly projection of the relevance of the webpage to the various automated programs (robots/spiders etc) which visit the page periodically, organic search results explicitly exclude cloaking (projecting what you are not to the robots/ spiders), paid link building and Black Hat (Illegitimate means of projecting your page) SEO techniques. So what do we call those results which show up in Organic Search results using Cloaking, Black Hat and Paid Linking - They are fakes.

How important are Keywords to SEO? - To understand SEO Basics well, it is important to understand and underline the difference between Keywords and Key-phrases. Keywords are essentially the words on which you would like your site to come-up on SERPs (Search engine Result Pages), for instance if your business is all about selling birthday favors, your keywords would be, amongst others, birthday and favors. However your key-phrase would be “birthday favors.” Coming on Birthday favors as a phrase should be everything to you, as it is 100% business relevance. All the leads which this key-phrase would get you would be a potential sale. So Keywords are important but in many cases the key rests with the key-phrases. Literally.

What is Keyword Stuffing, and does it hurt? -The act of populating disproportionately your content or meta tags with one particular or few keywords or key-phrases is referred to as Keyword Stuffing. Keyword stuffing is gross, it is bad for your site, bad for your business, bad for your client/ surfer, bad for the search engines and bad for the internet on the whole. It is a malpractice. As it hurts all concerned, it hurts you too, directly and indirectly. Directly it hurts as search engines are becoming smarter to identify keyword spammers, surfers report keyword stuffing more often, Indirectly as the surfer who lands on your website, discovers that you indulge in malpractices may decide not to do business on your website.

Do you SEO a site, or you SEO individual pages? - You SEO individual pages, and if you SEO all pages on your website, your whole site is done. Having said that, you do SEO your website. You define the focus of your website and ensure that every page contributes and reflects that focus. Let us say, you have a hotel website which covers all the 50 states of the United States of America and over 600 cities, it would help you to use your anchor words and phrases on every page when you are optimizing them. If you come on say “Hotels in San Jose”, “Hotels in San Francisco”, “Hotels in Sacramento”, “Hotels in Los Angeles” there is a good opportunity to come on “Hotels in California”. Similarly if your site comes on “Hotels in Texas”, “Hotels in California”, “Hotels in New York”, “Hotels in Washington” and “Hotels in Florida”, it would be easier to make it perform on “Hotels in the US”, “Hotels in the USA”, “Hotels in the United States of America”, and on “Hotels” itself. So, work multi-stage - Stage I: Focus “Hotels in San Jose”- Stage II “Hotels in California” - Stage III “Hotels in the US” - Stage IV “Hotels” - Where Stage I is your web page focus and stage IV is your website focus.

Is SEO genetically modular, or is SEO genetically absolute? - SEO is anything but an absolute exercise, it is totally modular in nature. You can work on Optimizing your site part by part.

How to Choose Keywords for Online Writing

How to Choose Keywords for Online Writing

Article (C) Jacob Malewitz Smiles-Media.com, Ghost Writer For Hire - SEO, Direct Mail, and Blog Writing
Coffee And Heroes, Defining heroes day after day, even business heroes

The beauty of online writing is the fact, if you write something well, it can get noticed within hours, where a magazine piece will take weeks, months, or even years to find a reader. The ugly part of online writing is you can write something well, only to see it read by five people over a week. What is the answer? A writer needs to find some good keywords to make even an average article readable. This is not about writing masterpieces; we are trying to get noticed. This strategy incorporates some of the basic rules of online writing. If you want more readers, look below.

New York Times Most Searched WordsThis should be your first stop as an online writer. Personally, I consult this list regularly, as it can help add bite to your articles. Basically what we have is a short list of the most popular keywords on the internet. As I write this piece, politics is big. The word “Bush,” akin to two presidents, is the winner for most searched, with “Obama” coming in second. This list will help any online writer see what’s hot.http://www.nytimes.com/gst/mostsearched.html

Think of your questionsThe second step would be to apply your own wording to the keywords. You can combine “Bush” and “Obama” in one article easily. But you can also think of your questions, focus in on the topic, and write an article. For example, a big issue in politics is health care. What are President Bush’s views? What are Obama’s? Ask the questions you would like answered. Don’t stray to far away; keep your readers interested.

Only so much of the wordA good article will have 5-7 of the best keyword, with perhaps one or two others coming close to that number. When I wrote an article on careers, I saw that this was a big keyword—everyone wants a good job (most at least). But I approached it in a different way, bringing in other keywords like college and education (this word is high on the NYT list). These were simple, and “careers” was my best word, but it worked well in my mind. Just because you have a keyword and think it will appeal to readers, don’t overdo it. For every hundred words, try to make sure it appears at least once. There is no need for starting every sentence with the word. Make it sound naturally. Sometimes they can have 20 of the same word and sound okay, just be cautious here.

Research popular articlesMost of this information can be found elsewhere. Yes, the internet grows and grows. There is no one way to get a good keyword. One strategy you can use, one that takes some more time, is studying some popular articles on the net. If it’s on the front page of a major site like Associated Content, Helium, or eHow, see why it is so popular. Look to the keywords there, how they worked in the piece, and maybe even why they didn’t.

Last chanceSometimes you will have the same keyword happening again and again in your articles. For example, I love to write about comic books, so that keyword just gets used a lot in my articles. To combat this, I explore other fields as often as possible. This allows me to find new keywords, new readers, and the new readers finds those old comic book articles. Try to explore as many quality keywords as you can. It will pay off in your online writing.
Final Tips:Typically, you get more pay for a high keyword count. You either get the money because of page views or because the buyer likes the keyword. It won’t be huge, but it does add to the bank account.

Final Warning:Just looking at the keyword sites like the NYT isn’t enough. You are not the only one looking at the keyword, and there are already thousands of pieces on each. Make your piece different in some way by using a different keyword.

How to Choose Keywords for Online Writing

How to Choose Keywords for Online Writing
Article (C) Jacob MalewitzSmiles-Media.com, Ghost Writer For Hire - SEO, Direct Mail, and Blog Writing
Coffee And Heroes, Defining heroes day after day, even business heroes
The beauty of online writing is the fact, if you write something well, it can get noticed within hours, where a magazine piece will take weeks, months, or even years to find a reader. The ugly part of online writing is you can write something well, only to see it read by five people over a week. What is the answer? A writer needs to find some good keywords to make even an average article readable. This is not about writing masterpieces; we are trying to get noticed. This strategy incorporates some of the basic rules of online writing. If you want more readers, look below.
New York Times Most Searched WordsThis should be your first stop as an online writer. Personally, I consult this list regularly, as it can help add bite to your articles. Basically what we have is a short list of the most popular keywords on the internet. As I write this piece, politics is big. The word “Bush,” akin to two presidents, is the winner for most searched, with “Obama” coming in second. This list will help any online writer see what’s hot.http://www.nytimes.com/gst/mostsearched.html
Think of your questionsThe second step would be to apply your own wording to the keywords. You can combine “Bush” and “Obama” in one article easily. But you can also think of your questions, focus in on the topic, and write an article. For example, a big issue in politics is health care. What are President Bush’s views? What are Obama’s? Ask the questions you would like answered. Don’t stray to far away; keep your readers interested.
Only so much of the wordA good article will have 5-7 of the best keyword, with perhaps one or two others coming close to that number. When I wrote an article on careers, I saw that this was a big keyword—everyone wants a good job (most at least). But I approached it in a different way, bringing in other keywords like college and education (this word is high on the NYT list). These were simple, and “careers” was my best word, but it worked well in my mind. Just because you have a keyword and think it will appeal to readers, don’t overdo it. For every hundred words, try to make sure it appears at least once. There is no need for starting every sentence with the word. Make it sound naturally. Sometimes they can have 20 of the same word and sound okay, just be cautious here.
Research popular articlesMost of this information can be found elsewhere. Yes, the internet grows and grows. There is no one way to get a good keyword. One strategy you can use, one that takes some more time, is studying some popular articles on the net. If it’s on the front page of a major site like Associated Content, Helium, or eHow, see why it is so popular. Look to the keywords there, how they worked in the piece, and maybe even why they didn’t.
Last chanceSometimes you will have the same keyword happening again and again in your articles. For example, I love to write about comic books, so that keyword just gets used a lot in my articles. To combat this, I explore other fields as often as possible. This allows me to find new keywords, new readers, and the new readers finds those old comic book articles. Try to explore as many quality keywords as you can. It will pay off in your online writing.
Final Tips:Typically, you get more pay for a high keyword count. You either get the money because of page views or because the buyer likes the keyword. It won’t be huge, but it does add to the bank account.
Final Warning:Just looking at the keyword sites like the NYT isn’t enough. You are not the only one looking at the keyword, and there are already thousands of pieces on each. Make your piece different in some way by using a different keyword.

Keyword Research Tips - The Difference Between Word Tracker & Yahoo Keyword Suggestion Tool

In order to find profitable niche markets, use search engine optimization, and set up pay per click advertising campaigns you need to search for popular keywords and find out statistics using keyword research tools.
Because the Yahoo Keyword Suggestion Tool is free most people decide to use it for their keyword research but its not as accurate as Word Tracker.
This is because many rank checkers and bid management tools search Yahoo to find their results and this causes the numbers to be artificially inflated, especially for popular keywords, which can give the impression that some keywords are more popular than they actually are.
It also does not separate plural and singular versions of keywords so you will need to manually add plural versions because they are used separately and give different results when you search for them using most search engines.
If you want accurate results and detailed statistics you should consider using a more advanced keyword research tool called Word Tracker which has many essential features which will save you a lot of time and effort.
The most useful feature will provide you with a list of similar keywords that bear any relation to your search query. These keywords are worth targeting and many will turn out to be very profitable.
There is also a competition search that will help you find keywords with less competition which are easier to achieve high rankings for, allowing you to gain more traffic for less work.
Word Tracker is an invaluable tool for your search engine optimization plan and pay per click advertising campaign and it will make your research a lot easier while giving you an advantage over everyone who uses the Yahoo Keyword Suggestion Tool.
There is actually a free keyword research tool provided by Digital Point that will search both Word Tracker and Yahoo Keyword Suggestion Tool together and show the results side by side so that you can clearly see the difference between the two.

Targeting your search engine marketing

Search engines are not exactly few and far between. Since one can only put a certain amount of effort on search engine marketing, it's important to know which search engines

to focus on - and which ones to forget. After analyzing the logs of a couple of sites I run and keeping an eye on the reports of others, I've come up with a rough estimate on how the search engine traffic to an average site could be divided into sources.
In this estimate, all paid traffic from search engines - for example through Google Adwords - is ignored. Also, in an attempt to reflect the average website, we assume that the content of the site is in English. If your site is in another language, you might in some cases see a significant portion of your search engine traffic coming from local search engines in addition to the ones mentioned here.

PPC search engine advertising

As it is sometimes difficult or almost impossible to achieve a top position in the search engines for certain keywords, one often ends up thinking "isn't
there an easier way to do this?". Well, of course there is, but it isn't free.
If you don't want to hire a professional to optimize your site for you, you can always submit your site to a PPC search engine that sells the top positions instead of selecting them with a complex algorithm. Overture is a good example of a PPC (pay-per-click) engine and it might be the best of the bunch.
Their system is relatively simple: You select a keyword and decide how much you are willing to pay for each visitor that visits your site through the search results. The more money you can cough up, the higher you will rank on the result list. The only limitation is that your site must be at least vaguely relevant to the keyword you want to bid on.

Keep the search engine optimization process in mind!

By now, your list is probably pretty full of very competitive, single-word terms such as "MP3" or "books" or "computers" or whatever. Scratch them. This might sound harsh, but if you're a novice, you have no chance of achieving a top listing under such terms. Even many (dare I say most) professionals tend to avoid them, as they are extremely competitive. There are hundreds of thousands of sites targeting them and even with excellent search engine optimization skills, they are very tough to conquer. What you should do is to narrow it down a little.
Think about different variations of these popular keywords. If you were originally thinking about the keyword "books", how about "buy used books online" or "antique bookstore"? These terms would be, not easy, but easier to rank well under. It is far better to be in the top 10 for a search term with medium usage than to rank 500th for a heavily used term. Select keyphrases that do get searched, but that aren't too competitive.

You might also want to target common misspellings, if some of the keywords related to your site are often spelled wrong . Unfortunately, it is hard to efficiently target misspellings without damaging the authority of your site. Would you buy anything from a person that can't even spell the name of his merchandise? Didn't think so.. So, be careful with those misspellings.
At this point, you should have completed your keyword optimization process and now possess a pretty good list of medium-popularity keyword phrases for each of your pages. I would recommend that you read the search engine optimization article on this site next. It will show you where you should place the keywords you have selected in order to achieve results with the search engines.