What Is Search Engine Optimization

What Is Search Engine Optimization And How Can You Implement It?

THE CLASSIC DEFINITION
Search Engine Optimization, known with the acronym SEO, is the process
of improving traffic and exposure to a website via search engines to get
the website ranked highly in the resulting search results pages. It helps to
build an online presence that is bigger and better than just slapping a
static website up on the Internet and hoping that some people drop by the
site. It is a strategy whereby how you create the site, what you do to
promote it, and how you analyze the results of those actions that help the
website owner to develop bigger and better online exposure.

GOOGLE STARTED IT ALL
Google is the main search engine that started it all. It was through their
AdWords campaigns that Internet marketers became more savvy about
using the power of the advertising model to help shoot certain pages to
the top of the search results pages. They noticed that the same keywords
that online businesses were buying because their research showed many
people were searching for them could be used to attract those same
people to other sites. Soon, it became a standard SEO strategy to include
keywords in content that was used to get pages ranked highly in Google’s
search engine results pages (SERPs).

IT’S DEVELOPED OVER THE YEARS TO INCLUDE MORE
Since then, a variety of services have popped up to help the online
business owner compete against others for maximum website exposure.
Some of these techniques deal with how the search engine classifies a
page topic and what types of elements in a Web page create or obstruct
high page ranking.
It wouldn’t be fair to neglect mentioning that some SEO tricks are called
“black hat” because they tend to exploit weaknesses in the search engine
model and can lead to a site using “black hat” techniques to be sandboxed
(dropped to the bottom of the SERPs). Marketers trying to game the
system may get away with it for a while, but Google has been known to
severely punish those that are caught, making it unwise to implement
black hat techniques.
Other techniques, known as “white hat” or organic strategies don’t carry
the risk of being sandboxed. They use the guidelines that carry a sense of
integrity and authenticity while gaining wide exposure through providing
value and understanding SEO. These are the techniques that we are going
to discuss in this report. To caution further, always avoid techniques like
keyword stuffing, spamming people by sending unsolicited emails, and
generating false websites with commercial links only and no content (link
farms). These activities are considered black hat techniques.

HOW KEYWORD USAGE HAS CHANGED
In the past, keywords were used in meta description tags to give a search
engine the hint about what the page talked about. Black hat marketers
began to exploit that vulnerability by adding highly searched keywords
into that area and basically making that criteria useless to Google. Thus,
Google decided to downgrade that criterion, and as a result, keywords are
evaluated as a percentage of the actual content on the site for relevancy,
not for just showing up in coding. If you know how the search engines
rate keywords, you can still game the system a bit, but not without
actually creating content that has some value. That’s the entire point.
Here are a few things to know about keywords when you are writing
content for SEO.

STUFFING IS ONLY FOR TURKEYS
Stuffing tastes great at Thanksgiving time, but stuff too many keywords
into your content, and you’ll get a rapid case of indigestion when Google
sandboxes your site. The moral is clear: Stuffing is only for turkeys. This
might have been a great black hat technique in the past, but today,
Google’s analytics are so powerful that they not only look for relevant
keywords on your pages, but they also determine how often and where
you’ve placed them. On average, if you put more than 2% of your content
as a single keyword, it will count against you, not for you. That means
that if your page is a 500-word blog post, at most, any single keyword
should not show up more than 10 times. Between 5 and 10 times is
average and expected; anything else is considered as stuffing.

USE YOUR KEYWORDS CAREFULLY
You can put the keywords anywhere on your page, but they count more
towards relevancy in the search engine analytics when they are placed in
headers near the top of the article and are bolded. These actions indicate
to the analyzer that the topic is important to the writer and will carry
more weight in the search engine.
Matching keywords to powerful keywords that you’ve already researched
as having a high searchability and low competition is also an easy way to
get a higher ranking. It’s not just the amount of times you use the
keywords, but what keywords you use that determine your SEO ranking.
If you use a highly competitive keyword, it doesn’t matter if you follow all
of the guidelines, as other people have mined that attention long ago.
You’ll automatically fall near the bottom of the SERPs. Pay attention to
how to find good keywords in order to attain higher rankings in the search
engines.

HOW TO SELECT YOUR KEYWORDS
When you first start out, you might want to hire a company to develop a
list of keywords for your SEO activities. It’s going to take some time for
you to understand what makes a good keyword selection, and during that
time, you don’t want to put up content that has no keywords. As you use
those, you can start to look at some of the tools and techniques to
develop your own keyword lists that you can give to your staff writers to
include in their online content.

THE GOOGLE KEYWORD TOOL
This tool is available online at:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. It is created to
help online marketers using the AdWords program to create effective
marketing campaigns. By entering a keyword or phrase, the Google
Keyword tool will give actual metrics that have been measured by Google
on various characteristics of that and other similar keywords. For finding
rich keywords that can help you gain maximum exposure, it is a first stop
for any budding Internet marketer.
After entering the keyword or phrase you are researching, the tool pulls
up the advertiser competition and search volume as the default listing.
You can modify this listing by pulling down the list box at the top that
says, ”Choose columns to display.” From that list, you can expand the
elements that are shown for each keyword and derivatives of that
keyword to include CPC (cost-per-click), ad position, volume trends, and
the time when the highest volume occurred. All of this is important
information for figuring out if the market for that keyword has been
saturated and the competition is too stiff to really help you with search
engine placement. Take a look at this tool and see if you can find high
CPC keywords with a high search volume and low advertiser competition.
These are the keywords that will get you noticed quickly.

IT’S NOT GUARANTEED
There is no guarantee that the keywords you pick today will remain
popular tomorrow. That’s why the best websites for SEO are constantly
evolving and updating their content. Fresh content is the best way to
ensure that the search engine spider is constantly checking back and
getting you noticed. Stale, old content is not only a turn-off to your
readers, but tends to drop your site in search engine results pages due to
a loss of relevancy. Even using keywords for just a short period isn’t going
to do the trick. You have to be consistent and build upon the strength of
your website’s SEO over time to be truly successful in implementing these
techniques.

GET THE SEO SCOOP FROM YOUR COMPETITORS
You may be new to this whole SEO thing, but your competitors are
probably not. At any rate, you should always do a little market research
on what your competitors are doing to stay ahead of the game. This
comes to keyword research and SEO strategies too. You may find that you
are selling the exact same products and services, but they’re able to
generate massive Internet exposure and sales while you’re lagging
behind. That’s probably because they know something that you don’t:
How to optimize their pages to get attention. Why not check out what
your competitors are doing and copy the strategies that are working for
them? It can only make you more competitive too.

THE NEAT SPY KIT
Ever watch those spy movies where the secret agent gets a neat spy kit
that is complete with a steel-cutting laser pen and exploding cuff links?
Well, you can get your own kit too to spy on your competitors online! It
just takes some understanding of what services are out there that can
make spying on others online a snap!
WebCeo.com offers a software product that not only helps you develop
keyword lists, but also shows you how the competition stacks up against
your choices. You can get valuable information on how to develop a good
SEO strategy using this program, even if it comes with a small cost
upfront. It is an investment that will pay back dividends.
If you really don’t want to spend money, you can also get onto Google
Alerts and set up alerts when your online competitors update their sites or
send out press releases. You can use online keyword density analyzers
that are free to see what they’re doing and how they’re targeting their
demographics. It may be a bit of a hack, but it’s still doable without
spending money on extra programs.

SECRET AGENT MARKETER
On the sly, you can simply opt into your competitors’ email sales
campaigns using some other name and email address. That way, when
they start to market to their clients, you’ll know exactly what they’re
doing. This is sort of like playing catch-up, and it works after the fact, but
the best way to really develop SEO is to be proactive. Be the first to think
up a killer approach because others will soon follow in your wake. The
best time to profit from SEO is when you’ve taken the lead.

ARE YOU A LEADER OR A FOLLOWER?
Let’s face it; people who are important leaders get more attention than
their followers. The same is true with SEO. Google has a way to assign
rankings to different websites; it’s called PageRank. This PageRank tells
Google and others how important and relevant your site is compared to
others on the Internet. PageRank is not about keywords, but it does
impact the attention you get on the Internet. PageRank is determined by
a variety of factors, but much of it has to do with the quality and the
number of inbound, non-reciprocating links to your content and site.

LOW PAGERANK KEEPS YOU DOWN
Page rank can keep you down when you’re first starting to implement SEO
techniques. If you don’t have any page rank, Google will delay indexing
your pages and adding them to the search engine. Obviously, you can’t
get to the top of the SERPs if you’re not even being indexed. So, it pays to
get your PageRank up. After you have been steadily crawled, it doesn’t
have as much influence on keeping you from getting to the top. Initially,
you want to have a strong page rank of at least a 3 or higher, just to put
you on the map.

QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF INBOUND LINKS
You can raise your page ranking by getting a high number of links, getting
high quality links, or both. They basically represent the neighborhood and
how relevant you are to the niche you are marketing. Some of the best
inbound links are when official segments of the public sector reference
your site as a valuable resource. If you get a .gov or a .edu site to link to
you, you automatically are associated with more credibility, and as a
result, your page rank increases.
However, if you have thousands of backlinks, and the anchor text of those
inbound links use keywords that associate you well with that niche, you
can also gain significant page ranking. Anchor text is what the visitor sees
listed as the description of the link instead of the URL on your site or
others. It’s a situation where one or the other can work to your benefit.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT YOUR BACKLINKS
You can find out who is linking to you or to your competitors by going to
www.backlinkwatch.com. This nice online tool checks who is linking to a
particular URL just by typing the URL into the search box. In some cases,
online directories need a page rank of 3 or more to list them in a
directory, so concentrating on raising your page rank can also help you
gain more exposure on online directories too.

PLAY AND PAY WITH ADWORDS
It stands to reason that if Google is the major search engine that uses
SEO to create search engine placement, then using their programs can
help to boost your visibility. Using AdWords as an Internet marketer can
help you game the system for better search engine placement, but it will
cost you some money to do it.

THE ADWORDS/ADSENSE PROGRAM
AdWords is the program Google uses to let Internet marketers compete
for advertising based on a cost-per-click (CPC) model. A marketer or
online business might want to develop a sales campaign whereby they are
selling tulip bulbs, for instance. They go online and do research on
different keywords that can be used to search or to describe the types of
tulips they have. They find one that is highly searched but without much
competition, and they find out what the average CPC that others are
paying for it. If they want the pages that they build on their site to be at
the top of the Google search engine results pages, they can bid more for
the AdWords keyword. That will make that keyword more attractive to
publishers who are looking for high-paying keywords and are trying to
game the system too. Thus, the pages will automatically attract more
traffic due to showing up more on Google.
AdSense is the publishing part of the AdWords program. There, Internet
marketers can use keywords in their content and install Google ads on the
page. The Google analytic tool will look for specific keywords and serve up
an ad for visitors to click on. If the person who built the page gets it right,
higher CPC offers will be shown, and they will stand to make more from
the advertising. That’s why when a business owner buys AdWords, he/she
also contributes to the popularity of the site by encouraging backlinks
through advertising.

IT SOUNDS SIMPLE, BUT IT’S NOT
This type of SEO is not viewed as an organic approach. It borders on black
hat techniques, but it is acceptable (probably because everyone is getting
paid). It is a way to sponsor more attention to your website, which will
increase its SEO ranking. It’s not as simple as just opening your
pocketbook, however, as other Internet marketers are competing for the
same keywords and attention as you are. It can be fairly easy to commit
to a small advertising budget and not get much extra attention at all.
Commit to too large a budget, and you will have spent yourself into a
corner. It’s a very tricky way to get better search engine rankings and is
best left to those that really understand the system. It’s not a strategy for
beginners.

GET YOURSELF LISTED
It may seem a hard thing to get people to backlink to your site, but it’s
really not. You can start with directories to get yourself listed. There are
numerous online directories that you can add your link to that don’t
require a reciprocating link. It will get you more exposure, increase your
page rank, and add to the relevancy of your site in the SERPs. It is an
organic way to raise your SEO rankings and only takes a bit of time to do
it. Some cost money and others don’t. For the most part, if you get
yourself listed, others may start to pick you up by default as they
constantly add new listings to stay competitive with other directories.

SOME GOOD DIRECTORIES OTHER THAN GOOGLE
You can submit your site manually to Google, but that’s not what we’re
after here. We’re looking to get some major backlinks to your website to
implement better SEO onto your pages. Here are a few directories you can
add your URL to:
 DMOZ
This is the Open Directory Project. It costs nothing to add your URL.
It can take some time to get listed, as it will take at least two
weeks for your site to get reviewed, if not longer. It’s not an
automatic entry, and they do turn away some sites for inclusion.
Human editors review the site, so it’s not just a mechanical
directory. You can get to DMOZ by going to www.dmoz.org.
 ZoomInfo
This is a great directory for online businesses, sales professionals,
and recruiters. Post a profile here and gain great marketing
exposure on a business-to-business level. The site is located at
www.zoominfo.com.
 Yahoo! Directory
This costs money to join, about $300 a year. Yet, it is the next
largest search engine after Google. It can also give you great
exposure and backlinks that add value to your SEO campaign. If
you have the money, it’s well worth the investment to add your
business website to their directory. It is located at
https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/reference/instructions.
Don’t forget any local business directories, like your local Chamber of
Commerce, CitySearch.com, and MerchantCircle.com. All of these
directories are a way to get backlinks and advertising for your business to
increase the exposure you have online. Some will cost you a lot to
implement and others are free for the asking. Determine how each
directory can contribute to your overall SEO strategy and then choose
wisely which you will pay for. It’s always better to do the free ones first
and then see how it goes.

SOCIALIZE ONLINE
Another way to grab attention and get backlinks is to join social
networking sites. These various sites can instantly create an audience for
you if your link goes viral, as it will sweep you onto the front page of
Google for sure. It’s not hard to join these sites, and you are going to do
it to promote your website links, but it’s important to do so in a manner
that is respectful and that is not too commercial. Social networks are a
special breed of site with special rules. Spamming gets you the cold
shoulder and sometimes banned from the site outright. Read the terms of
agreement for the site if you are unsure on whether a link you place there
is going to violate the terms of service.

THE BIG THREE
As far as social networks go for publicity and SEO, there are three that
stand out: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. MySpace is still relevant, but
the future of MySpace is spottier than the others. It also tends to market
to a demographic that is much younger than the other three. If you are a
business that needs to contact a younger demographic, switch from
LinkedIn to MySpace, but do include Facebook and Twitter too.
 Facebook
This social network allows you to connect with others by befriending
them. When you post a news status update on your profile page, it
shows that update to all of your friends. If they like your status
update, they might comment on it, and then that update is shown
to their friends. Thus, even if you only have 20 friends, if one of
those friends has 100s of contacts, you can reach a large network.
This increases your chances of your link posting going viral.
 Twitter
This is called a microblogging site because your status updates are
limited to 140 characters. It’s amazing what you can fit into that
small of a news message. Using link shorteners, you can post links
to all of your promotions, and they won’t get you banned. Twitter
doesn’t care about self-promotion as much as Facebook. It’s also
easier to gain a large following and it has real-time connections
versus static connections, making your update quick and effective.
 LinkedIn
This is for professional networking. You can post a profile here; this
is where you want to add some keywords and your business links.
Remember to use anchor text that is keyword-rich and effective to
give your backlink more weight. It will also help to get you noticed
by people searching for your skills, products, or services online, as
this is basically a business-to-business platform.

GOING VIRAL!
What’s the point of all of this networking and link generation? The
ultimate SEO jackpot is the viral link. In Internet marketing, you really do
want to catch this bug. That’s because if your link gets so popular that it
literally becomes contagious, people will reciprocate your link over and
over to tell their friends, and on and on, and you’ll have instant high page
ranking and the number #1 slot for Google stardom. As you know,
nothing gets you more attention than being famous.

HOW TO INCREASE YOUR ODDS
Some types of online media are far more effective at going viral than
others. For instance, online videos on YouTube are a very effective way to
create interest and exposure for your site. It’s also nice that they have a
place to put a backlink to them back to your site. You don’t even have to
be serious to get attention. You can put up a humorous commercial for
some product or service and ask people to rate, comment on, and share
the video. If enough people like it, it will slowly start to spread across the
Internet.

CONTROVERSY SELLS
Controversy can be a very effective way to gain attention, but only if it is
positive in nature. If you get too much association with a negative and
volatile controversy, people will shun your products and services, even if
they visit your site to send you hate mail. It’s simply not worth it. Pick
your topics for viral videos wisely and try to keep the mood light and
positive.

CAPITALIZE ON BIG NAMES
Fame gets you noticed, but how are you going to grab the limelight when
other people are already standing there? You can team up with big names
to help you promote your content across the Internet. If you get your
backlink on a site that already has a significant reputation, and they
RECOMMEND you too, you will have a backlink that has significant weight.
The same is true of well-known websites. They have a higher page
ranking, and those people they link to are instantly fed a huge stream of
traffic and Google SERP rewards. Try to get yourself noticed by the big
guys, and you will reap fame through association. It’s not black hat, and
actually, it’s quite old school. It’s not what you know, but who you know
that can lead you to the big time.

DON’T BE AFRAID OF EXPOSURE
One of the biggest mistakes that people make is that they associate
exposure with a lack of privacy. In search engine optimization, you want
to be as exposed as possible so that people can find you online. That
means that EVERYTHING you do online should be done with the intention
of capitalizing on it for SEO purposes. Whether you are commenting on a
blog or news story, always consider adding a backlink back to your site.
When you send out emails, do you have a signature line that
automatically adds your website URL to the bottom of the email? When
you update your site, are you promoting your social networks? All of these
tiny actions add up when you do them daily to create a powerful and
highly exposed online presence.

SHARE YOURSELF
When you add a blog post or a news update to your site, how easy is it for
other people to share that information? Do they have to copy and paste
the URL to an email to send it? If so, you haven’t exposed yourself
enough and haven’t made it easy enough to share who you are and what
you do with others. There are plenty of widgets that you can install into a
blog that will allow you to add buttons to the bottom of each post that
people can click to instantly share it with anyone on Facebook, Twitter,
Reddit, Delicious, and so on.
There are so many social networks out there, and they all represent an
opportunity to share yourself. However, you don’t have time to cultivate
all of those networks, so you must rely on others to share your content for
you. Develop a network of people who will share, comment, and rate your
content. This helps you to get noticed and shows that you aren’t just
online talking to yourself. Other people have joined the discussion too. It
gives you credibility.

AUTOMATE YOUR EXPOSURE
At some point in this journey, you will realize that you have profiles on
multiple sites and that you are having trouble keeping them fresh with
content. There’s no reason that you can’t post the same information on
multiple sites, as long as you realize that it’s best to automate that action.
You don’t want to spend tons of time copying and pasting information all
over the Web, and it wouldn’t be appropriate anyways. Use tools like
Friendfeed and Ping.fm to automate the updates you want to send to all of
your networks from one central place. This makes it easier to manage an
SEO campaign and to also provide multiple backlinks in one shot. It really
can’t get easier than that.
Check in regularly to each site and do add some live comments to make
sure that people feel your presence online. However, try to automate your
own posting so that it doesn’t take up too much of your time. Once you
get the hang of this, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you can build an
online presence that not only excites your friends and followers, but also
generates SEO riches from the Google search engine and beyond.

More Articles:

SEO Fundamentals: What It Is and How It Works | Bluehost Resource Center