Seo Strategies for success guide to search engine marketing and optimization

What is Search Engine Optimization?

· Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is marketing on the web using the search engines to get top placement for your website.

· Just think of your domain and website as a piece of online real estate where you jockey for the top positions to be seen by millions of internet users. You are competing against thousands of other websites for that position. The higher your website position; the more traffic to your website.

· Simply, your goal for Search Engine Optimization is to increase web visitor traffic to your website by placing high in the results of searches using the optimized keywords describing the content of your website.

Why Optimize for the Search Engines?

· In today’s competitive online global market, search engine optimization is critical to companies who want to expand their reach to targeted customers and increase their overall sales.

· A growing number of prospective customers search for specific products online through the major search engines. Online sales dramatically increased by 26% just last year and are predicted to continue climbing.

· Market Rite Websites offers this free SEO info as an in depth strategy for your online marketing approach through your website. By applying these proven methods, and using the accompanying SEO Web Worksheet, you will increase your site’s visibility while also sending you highly targeted traffic.

· Increasing your online visibility and bringing more qualified prospects to your company’s website will lay the groundwork for better visitor sales conversion and ensure the long-term success of all online marketing efforts.

How do I Successfully Optimize for the Search Engines?

· First and last, top placement is achieved by studying your competition and out ranking them. By searching on your target keywords, you will see the leading websites in the rankings. By using the following methods, you can out rank the competition!

· This workshop gives you access to our online list of free SEO tools and resources used to optimize and improve search engine results with effective methods used by top SEO experts. This workshop was compiled using free online resources and created for the small internet business owners who want to market their own websites. Feel free to link back to our workshop for future reference. Although new SEO methods and techniques are already online, this workshop provides a solid, basic SEO resource for marketing your website right.

· Once you know what keywords and search engine marketing services worked for the competition, you can utilize this information to do even better! Search Engine Optimization requires a lot of time and effort in research to be effective. Knowing and implementing the keywords and services used by your competition can greatly improve your results.

· Then you can begin building website popularity and online business relationships through successful linking strategies.

· Additonal paid advertising and affiliate programs can be utilized to further advertise your website.

· By using a combination of several on-page and off-page optimization strategies you can excel and outrank your online competition to gain valuable market exposure.

Facts on search engines and how they work

Background on the top three search engines: Google, MSN, and Yahoo

Google is the King of search engines with 48% of the internet’s search traffic. Yahoo comes in second with 28% and MSN is third with 11%. These are the search engines we will target in our SEO Marketing Strategy Workshop.

According to an article in Search Engine Watch, “U.S. Internet users conducted 6.9 billion searches in February 2007. The 6.9 billion searches conducted in February account for a 1 percent increase over January 2007 and a 19 percent increase over February 2006. Web surfers used Google for 3.3 billion search queries. Yahoo served 2 billion, MSN garnered 730 million, Ask.com served 348 million, and Time Warner sites, including AOL, served 338 million searches in February.

U.S. Online Searches by Engine, January 2007 and February 2007 (%)
	January 2007 (B)	February 2007 (B)	Change
Total Internet population	100	100	N/A
Google	47.5	48.1	0.6
Yahoo	28.1	28.1	0.0
Microsoft	10.6	10.5	-0.1
Ask.com	5.2	5.0	-0.2
Time Warner	5.0	4.9	-0.1
Source: comScore Networks, 2007

Facts on the King of Search: Google

· Google provides search engine content to: AOL Search, Netscape, Iwon

· Provides paid advertising to: AOL Search, Netscape, Teoma, Ask Jeeves ,Iwon

· Receives content from: Directory: dmoz (Open Directory Project). In our step-by-step guide, we will discuss the quickest way to get into the Google Empire.

· Google uses SPIDER BOTS on the web to maintain its index.

· These are computer robot programs that find the pages for inclusion into their directory by following the links in the pages they already have in their database and have indexed. If the webpage has no links to other websites, Google will not find it. Quick link building strategies will be discussed in the step-by-step SEO Strategies. Most large search engines operate several robots all the time. Even so, the Web is so enormous that it can take six months for spiders to cover it, creating a time lag of dead links and out of date websites in the search engines.

General Info for Google SEO

Pagerank Factors

· Page Rank is Google's way of giving specific value to your website popularity. The ranking system considers the number of links other websites have to your website. Popularity occurs when other websites place links on their website that are pointing to your website. Generally, the more links you have pointing to your website, the higher your Page Rank (PR) will be. Page Rank is one of the many factors that Google takes into account when ranking websites.

· They evaluate the quality of inbound links (people who link to you) and quality of outbound links (people who you link to) by assigning a value to the number of quality (popularity) of your links.

· Also, Google analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the location of each word. In order to determine the relevance of search user results Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages.

The Must Do List For Google

· Optimize for webpage content by including relevant and useful content and information that an internet surfer would want to read and explore! There’s plenty of spam out there and Google doesn’t like it. Duplicate content is frowned on. Make sure each page has unique content.

· Optimize for link relevance, quality and popularity: Several factors that determines your rank on Google are the number of links that point to your site, the quality (popularity) of the sites that link to your site, the text in and around the links that link to your website.

· Optimize with clean code structure and no cheating. Do not use webpage building programs like Frontpage, which is not compatible with Netscape browsers. Make sure your website code can be displayed properly by all the web browsers like Firefox, Netscape, and Internet Explorer.

· Tips from Google: "Basically, Google's position is that we prefer no hidden links, no hidden text, no automatic tools used for positioning, and no cloaking. We prefer that Googlebot get the exact same page that users see. In general, you can assume that we're as conservative as possible. We don't like hidden links/text in divs/layers/iframes/css, or links that are inconspicuous or punctuation, for example. Similarly, we don't like cloaking or sneaky redirects in any form, whether it be user agent/ip-based, or redirects through javascript, meta refreshes, 301/302's, or 100% frames." Google will blacklist websites who use underhanded techniques to get more traffic.

· Optimize with on-page techniques: Google looks for the keywords in the title, metatags, content, and the text links within your site.

· Optimize the right type of website: There are some technical website design elements that make it hard for the search engines to index the content in the webpage, no matter how well you optimize and submit them, because they can’t follow the code. Fortunately, these technical design elements can be combined with SEO friendly HTML to work together before you submit your website. The most common coding that spider bots don’t see or spider: Sites that use Frames. Sites that use Dynamic URLs./ Sites that use Flash/ Sites that use Image Maps for navigation/ Sites that use Javascript for navigation.

General Info for Yahoo SEO

· Yahoo receives search engine content primarily from itself. Yahoo is the leader in amount of traffic, overall advertising, and household and business user reach on a global scale. Over 237 million unique users in 25 countries and 13 languages.

· Yahoo owns the paid advertising program in the Overture Network. This is the second best online advertising program after Google Adwords.

· The main Yahoo Index results are compiled spidering the web or participating in the Yahoo Paid Inclusion Program.

· Directory: Yahoo’s main business directory employs human editors.

· Yahoo has both a human-edited directory and a spider based index.

· The Paid Yahoo! Directory is organized by placing related websites into subject categories. Sites are evaluated by Yahoo! editors, who visit and evaluate user suggestions and decide where the sites belong. To get express inclusion, you should use their Business Express plan. It costs $299 every year, but your site will get reviewed within 7 days. This does not guarantee that your site will get into the Yahoo Directory.

General Info for MSN SEO

· MSN staffs a team of editors that monitors the most current popular searches being performed and they hand-pick sites that are most relevant.

· Some listings compiled by human editors, while most results in index are provided by their own index. They have discontinued the index relationship with Yahoo, but continue their Overture paid listing program.

· Microsoft is the best in local computer search: They control desktop search with their MS operating systems that find documents on a local computer or across a network. This local searching capability is an advantage and may later lead to a larger control of the search market if they continue to add new indexing and search engine capabilities.

The Must Do’s For Yahoo and MSN

· Optimize with clean code: Yahoo and MSN place a strong emphasis on clean code. According to many SEO experts, the MSN Search spider downgrades the ranking of sites that have badly written code. Make sure you have a “clean” web design, or employ a good web developer who knows how to create SEO friendly websites.

· Optimize keyword placement on the webpage: Yahoo and MSN rank websites with on-page optimization higher and consider these factors more than Google does. Although they also consider off-page factors such as link popularity, they give far greater weight to certain on-page factors, such as keyword placement, than does Google. Now that we know what the search engines are looking for, we can start the process of on-page optimization….

Step by Step Proven Methods for Long Term SEO Success

Identify Your Market and Initial Keywords

After understanding how search engines work, and the various factors that influence website ranking in search results, we want to apply this knowledge while researching the competition and keywords for our website. Before you start, it is important to identify your target product and target audience in order to sell your product and convey your message with the right keywords.

Identify your product

· What is your product or service?

· What are your primary selling points? (Built-in characteristics of product itself)

· Primary Benefits? (What buyer gets from using the product or service)

Identify your target market and audience

· Demographics: (Age, sex, education, income, occupation)

· Psychographics: (Lifestyle, attitude, personality traits)

· Specific regional or local market area

· Specific target groups or business organizations

· Specific industry related markets

Create your first list of relevant keywords and phrases

Consider the following when choosing keywords:

· How will your target audience most likely type in a search for your product or service? Quickly list the phrases you would use to search for your product or service.

General & specific terms related to your website: General keywords will drive volume to your site as well as customers that don't have a specific product in mind or that are open to various product offerings. Specific keywords drive highly qualified customers that have a specific product, service or offering in mind.
General & specific terms used by competitor websites.
General & specific terms related to your market and target area: For product keywords, be sure to also include model numbers. For local and regional websites, use the city, county, zip code, and region names, etc.
Specify technical terms and descriptions related to your product and market.
Specify brand names for products and services sold.