Search engine optimization is best left in the mystical land of internet marketing guru, right? Good search engine rankings are hard to come by. Understanding search engine marketing takes years of study and only people with true insider knowledge and secret tools rank well on Google, right? WRONG. Pure shit actually.

Ranking well in search engines is not difficult. In fact, search engine optimization is relatively easy. What stops most people from ranking well in search engines is misinformation. Every week there is another quick fix to ranking well in search engines and people jump from one quick fix to the next hoping to get to the Top 10 position in Google and never quite get there.

There are 6 key areas of search engine optimization that you need to know about. These are the basics. Getting this right will help you achieve the Google rankings you’ve always wanted.

Domain Name – The jury is still out on the relevance of a keyword-rich domain name. What I mean by keyword rich domain name is to say for example your site was going to be about ideas to make money then an idea domain name could be [http://www.moneymakingideas.com] or http://www.money-making-ideas.com. My personal preference is with the hyphenated approach, eg http://www.money-making-ideas.com simply because I think search engines can read it more easily. To register your domain name I would suggest using 000Domains.com or GoDaddy.com

Content – Useful content. No keyword stuffed, spammy pages. Write something useful for your visitors. If you can’t write, you’ll have to learn. Turn Words Into Traffic is a great resource for learning how to write content and is a resource I use personally. Turn Words Into Traffic gives you an A-Z in article writing, from a writers perspective. If you don’t want to learn how to write content, you can always use Create Website Content Fast to help speed up the process.

Keywords – Keywords are the words or phrases you expect people to search for your site/service/content. There are two different factors to consider when choosing keywords for your site.

1. You must target specific keywords. For example, if you have a website about dating, then it will probably be quite difficult for you to rank high in search engines initially with that single term. However, if you were to refine an area of ​​your site to target, say Gay and Lesbian Dating, that’s more specific. You can also regionalize your keywords or key phrases, for example gay and lesbian dating in Toronto. This refining process is often referred to as niche (pronounced neech) marketing.

2. You need to choose the keywords you want people to find your site with. Put yourself in the shoes of your visitors: think about what they might use to find you in search engines. What keywords or key phrases would you type into a search engine to find your site? What keywords or key phrases would your potential visitor use to search for you? Always, always think like a typical Internet user.

If you’re interested in seeing what people are searching for on the web and how profitable it could be for you, I highly recommend checking out Good Keywords. It’s free and does a wonderful job of helping you find good keywords 🙂

I also suggest you try Wordtracker. It’s a brilliant service for tracking specific and popular keywords.

Keyword Density – This is how often your keyword is used on the page itself. For example, if you have 100 words of text on a single page and you mention your keyword 5 times, then you have a keyword density of 5%.

Opinions vary on this, but between 1% and 7% is considered ideal. If this doesn’t make sense to you, then that’s fine. The simple rule is this: less is more. Don’t modify the text of your web pages to include your keyword over and over again because… well… it looks stupid, it won’t instill confidence in your prospect and you could also get penalized or removed from search engines.

Page Title – Your tag is essential for your page to rank well. Stuffing your tag with keywords in the hope of getting high rankings is pointless. Your tag, once constructed correctly, will see you rise rapidly in the search engine rankings. Keep this simple fact in mind when building your websites and it will serve you well.

Links – Having good links pointing to your site and good links within your site (an often overlooked aspect of search engine optimization) is very important when it comes to search engine ranking . Having other sites link to yours shows how important your site is to search engines, ie if the content on your site is so valuable that other site owners want to link to it, then it must be important.

META Tags: Meta tags are dead, baby. Well, not quite dead, but just used as a benchmark for search engines. It’s a shame to see websites that still have their META tags stuffed with keywords. Meaningless. Put your main keywords in the Meta Keyword part of your webpage, but other than that, don’t lose any sleep or waste energy on them.

There is not enough space in this article to explain all of the above in as much detail as I would love to. Also, I’m not a search engine expert, so it’s best to leave some of the explanation to those I learned from (Sean Burns and Jay Stockwell bow please 🙂

Having learned the basics of search engine optimization and submission, I have achieved top 10 rankings for all my websites. It is not difficult to do this. It just takes work, a little patience, and a little common sense.

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