SEO News

Here are some terms you must know to talk about search engine placement:
SEO = Search Engine Optimization is the science and art of getting a web page to rank well in the SERPs for a particular Keyword.

SERP = Search Engine Results Pages are the pages that a search engine returns when someone searches for something. You want your web page to be at the top of the results vs. on the 100th page, if not, no one will ever find you. Keyword = the words or phrase that you want your site to rank well for when people search for something. For example, if you're selling brick zippers, then your keyword phrase would probably be brick zippers.

Maybe you read my first paragraph and wondered how can that happen? Everyone usually assumes that a web page on the first page of results gets massive amounts of traffic. But that's not always the case.

Below I've listed some of the reasons you may not receive the traffic you counted on:

1) Your web page title and/or description are not readable and appealing to a real person. If you put some words together to rank well in the search engines, they may not read well to a human and therefore does not cause a person to click on the link to your site. Remember, a real person reading your web page is the end result you're aiming for. Make sure your web page titles and descriptions are engaging so that you will motivate people to click, click, and click.

2) Even though your site is listed on the first page or results, it shows up at the bottom. The closer your site is to the top of the first page the more traffic you'll get, lots more.

3) You made a poor selection of keyword(s). It's too easy to think you know what people are searching for and start editing your web pages and building links from other sites, when you might be wrong on what the best terms are for your site. It's easy to edit your web pages at anytime; but changing the inbound links to your web site can be hard to impossible. Why do you care about the inbound links to your web site? Search engines, put a very high value on the anchor text and/or title tags in the links to your site. What does this mean? You've spent months getting links to your site using the term "brick covers" because when you searched for "brick covers" on Google, it showed 644,000 results. Later, when you're not getting the results you expect, you finally go to WordTracker and check how many people actually search for "brick covers" and you find that nothing shows up for that phrase. Solution: you need to find a better keyword phrase that people ARE searching on, and THEN you have to start building links to your site with your new keyword phrase.

Here's a real example. I helped a blog owner with some SEO for one of his sites. In this example, I've left out the site name and keyword terms. For this example, I did the analysis using the free version of WordTracker which only gives data from MSN, the paid version gives much more data.

He is trying to target 3 keyword phrases for his web site:

Keyword Phrase 1

WordTracker showed 0 entries in its database, 0 predictions for 24 hours
Google returned 2,490,000 sites
This site is on the 3rd page of results on Google (near the top of the 3rd page) for this keyword.

Keyword Phrase 2
WordTracker showed 23 entries in its database, 4 predictions for 24 hours
Google returned 77,100,000 sites
This site is on the 3rd page of results on Google (near the top of the 3rd page) for this keyword.

Keyword Phrase 3
WordTracker showed 21 entries in its database, 3 predictions for 24 hours
Google returned 67,100,000 sites
This site is on the 5th page of results on Google (near the bottom of the 5th page) for this keyword.

Based on this quickly assembled data, I suggested that he had selected the wrong keywords. I played around with WordTracker and found a different mix of phrases that work much better.

My suggested Keywords for him to use:

Keyword 1:
WordTracker: 590 entries in its database, and 94 predictions for 24 hours
Google: 397,000,000 sites

Keyword 2:
WordTracker: 12 entries in its database, and 3 predictions for 24 hours
Google: 2,470,000 sites

Keyword 3:
WordTracker: 0 entries in its database, 0 predictions for 24 hours
Google: 2,490,000 sites

The first two keyword phrases I suggested for him are new, he wasn't using them before, and my suggested third keyword phrase is actually his old first phrase. Even though my suggested third phrase shows no results I kept it in the mix because it's exactly what his site is about and the first two will bring in traffic.

Remember, I used the free version of WordTracker which only gives data for MSN; the paid version gives figures for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. The number of predicted searches will be higher with Google vs. MSN because more people use Google.

The Accuracy of the keywords to the content of the web site is very important. I would rather get a handful of very interested visitors to a site than a hundred visitors who arrived looking for something else. Uninterested visitors will not stick around, and they probably will not buy anything either.

In addition to keyword changes I outlined above, I also suggested changes to the HTML code for his web pages. It will take a week or two, sometimes three to see the changes in search engine rankings.

Summary:
Always pick keywords that are really being used. Your page needs to rank near the top of the first page of results to get massive traffic. Your web page topic must to be related to the keywords(s) being used.

Suggestions:
Use a good keyword research tool such as WordTracker. Using a service such as 3WayLinks.Net seems to work. (That's how he was ranking on the 3rd page of results without any optimization to his pages.)

About the Author: Fred Black is an experienced programmer, web site developer, Internet business operator, systems integrator, father, husband, musician, and songwriter. Visit his Internet Business web site, http://www.pqInternet.com regularly for Information and Tools to help build a successful Internet Business and Work from Home.