SEO – What Every Business Owner Should Know About Internet Marketing (Excerpts)

Excerpts from my upcoming book, “250 Things Every Business  Owner & Manager Should Know About Internet Marketing.”

Topic: Search Engine Optimization

[SEO] On-Page SEO Does Double Duty

SEO isn’t just something you do for the search engines – the smart use of keyword phrases within the content of your site is also a great way to help potential customers understand what your business is all about. Using copy that contains strategic keyword phrases means readers can get the gist of your site at a glance. So if you want to improve your search engine ranking and popularity, on-page optimization is a must.

[SEO] The Basics: What Keywords Do

Search engines aren’t automatically aware of your new website – sites get indexed when site creators submit them to search engines and/or when search engines spiders encounter the new site. The keywords contained in a website’s content and code tell the search engine spiders what the site is about, how focused it is, and when and how it should appear in future search results.

[SEO] How Keywords Help Your Site Get Found

Search engines like Google are always sending out spiders to crawl the web and index the sites they find utilizing certain (and secret) algorithms that indicate where to look for keywords. New and old websites are then indexed and ranked according to the relevance and usage density of the keywords found. Without getting too complicated, this is how search engines deliver the results that your potential customers are looking for.

[SEO] What Happens When a Searcher Searches

Using keywords to match up searchers and search results works because search engines are able to take the words and phrases that people are looking for and match them with web pages that contain corresponding keywords. These matches are then ranked using numerous criteria, and search engines display the most relevant results on the first page – which is where everyone, particularly everyone with a business, wants to be.

[SEO] Why You Need the Right Keywords

The effective use of keywords in your content, and where appropriate in your code, gives you a free source of targeted traffic to your website. But huge amounts of targeted traffic will mean nothing if those searchers aren’t looking for your product or service. Having the kinds of words and phrases that people are searching for your product or service are looking for on your site means that anyone who needs or wants what you’re selling will find you.

[SEO] The Perils of Choosing the Wrong Keywords

Choose the wrong keywords to use in your site’s content and code, and you may get found but you won’t get conversions! Why? Because someone who is searching for ‘vintage films’ and ends up on the site you created for your dental practice isn’t going to stick around long enough to learn why you’re the best in your business.

[SEO] What are Keywords, Anyway?

The keywords – terms that make your website indexable by search engines – that appear in your URL, Meta Titles, and your site copy are the words and phrases that give search engines and people insight into what your website is about. When Google and other search engines index your site, it’s these words and phrases that let them know when to show your site in their results.

[SEO] What Do Keywords Have to Do With Optimizing My Site?

When people talk about optimizing a website or search engine optimization, a large part of the discussion will revolve around keywords. Optimizing a website essentially means designing the navigation and content to be as easy to understand as possible for search engine spiders. The keywords you use in your content and elsewhere on your website are one of the elements search engines look at to figure out how to categorize your site.

[SEO] Using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Free resources like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool make choosing good keywords (also known as keyword phrases and search terms) easy. Play around with the options in the left sidebar to get a feel for how the tool works, but know that [Exact] match will give you better look into how many people are searching for specific keywords than either Broad match or “Phrase”.

[SEO] The Basics of Choosing Keywords

When you’re choosing keywords, look for terms with high Global Monthly Searches volume and low-to-medium competition. This means that these terms are being searched for many times over a 12-month period and that other businesses and marketers aren’t targeting these terms in their advertising efforts. High volume/low competition keywords have the best chance of landing you a top spot in the search results.