Organic SEO Experts

There are to types of Search Engine Results, organic and pay per click (PPC). Pay per click ads are exactly what they sound like, ads you pay for. If you are willing to pay enough, you can get on the first page of Google. It's just that simple. Some "SEO Experts" guarantee you first page results on Google and/or Yahoo!. Beware often times that just means that they setup a PPC ad on Google or Yahoo!. This is not the same as organic results. Organic search results are the listing that appear in the main area of Google or Yahoo. These results are free, returned because Google felt that they are pages that are the best match for your search.

Market Samurai is an amazing little piece of software I use to do all my keyword research. It mines Google for all kinds of great information and returns real-time results. Their site has all the instructional videos and information you will need to begin doing some real keyword research. You, of course could do all this manually with the Google "keywords tool" in adwords for free, but it will take you hundreds of hours. Personally I decided to spend the $150 and save myself the hassle. The guys at Market Samurai let you try the software for free for 30 days, so you really have no reason not to give it a spin.

Pay per Click ads are a great way to get fast, almost guaranteed traffic. If you take a fairly well searched term like "iPad Accessories" you can setup a PPC campaign and get your site listing into the first 3 pages of Google within a week. Now if you want to make it onto the first page of Google's organic listings that's another story completely. It can take months if not years of dedicated work to develop the pagerank, and backlinks to accomplish this. Organic SEO listings are often called "free listing", but in reality, many companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to achieve a first page listing on Google or Yahoo!. Spending this kind of money is not unreasonable if you are trying to rank for a broad and highly searched term such as "Mortgage Refinance", which gets 1,220,000 search a month. Currently advertisers are spending an average of $44 per click in order to have their ads seen by anyone searching for that term. These are probably large mortgage companies that have figured out how the cost of each new customer and whether the $44 is worth paying.

All this may make it seem hopeless for small business owner or regular Joe. The truth is that with the right know-how, tools and willingness to some work, and determination anyone can get good organic SEO results in almost any market. You can become your own SEO expert.

The starting point of any good SEO campaign is keyword research. Finding the keyword combinations that are both well searched, and have low competition. Sometimes these are intuitively obvious, but usually they are not. Fortunately Google provides tons of great information on keywords and search trends. Using Google alone you can conduct very effective keyword research. If you are only concerned with your business or a single market, Google may be all you need. If you conduct a lot of keyword research in order to make money online; you need a good set of research tools. Researching large number of keywords and conducting competition analysis on Google is very time consuming. One exceptional tool for keyword research and competition analysis is Market Samurai. This piece of software has saved me literally thousands of hours of research.

What you are looking for are a set of keywords that have the following attributes.

1. It is relevant to your market and webpage

2. It is well searched

3. There are relatively few competing pages

4. The strength of the competition is low

Once you have list of keywords that meet this criteria, take what you consider to be the 5-10 best choices and focus on only those. You want to target your efforts as much as possible to begin getting results as soon as possible.

What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a set of procedures, standards and actions you can take to increase your rankings on search engines. Each search engine uses different algorithms to determine how sites should be ranked. Google by far is the biggest player in the field. They are so dominate in fact, that when you talk SEO, and discuss Search Engines – think Google. If you can rank high on Google, the rest of your SEO will just fall into place. Google’s exact algorithms are closely guarded and change often, but they do often come out with general guidance and guidelines. Many so-called SEO experts use tricks and loopholes to increase your rankings, very often very effectively. Google works diligently to close up these loopholes and even penalize sites that are found “cheating”. The best SEO practices adhere to Google’s intent to provide quality search results.

Why is SEO so important? As a business you need targeted visitors. That is visitors that are actively searching for what you provide. This alone will make you website a success more than any other factor. Many businesses will spend a large amount of money and time towards creating a website, but then neglect to make a similar investment in SEO. Without targeted traffic you website cannot succeed.

Before you begin your SEO work, you need to have an effective strategy. You need to answer several questions.

Keyword research is probably the most important SEO you can do, and the most overlooked.  By doing your homework and finding the best keyword phrases to focus on, you accomplish the hard lifting.  By choosing a keyword that people are searching, with relatively easy competition, you have your battle almost won.

In relation to the subject / product /service my website promotes, what are the most searched keyword terms?

From these keyword terms, which are the most profitable? Which keywords represent buyers as opposed to researchers?

From these highly searched and profitable keywords, which have the least competition, and what is the strength of the competition? It is easier to rank for keywords in a field with thousands of weak competitors, than in a field with 12 very strong competitors.

On and Off Page SEO. On page SEO refers to action you can take involving the content of your site, and its meta tags to increase its chance to rank high in search engines. Off page SEO involves task and actions you can take that are not directly part of your website. Both are important, but off page SEO is what will really set your site apart and increase your rankings. Google states that they have over 200 factors to determine how a site is ranked and what PageRank they are accorded. The following are just the basic factors

a. Include your keywords in the title, keyword and description tags. Of these the most important is having your keyword in the title tag.

b. Are your keywords part of your domain name? This weighs heavily in your page ranking.

c. Are your keywords part of your domain name?

d. How often do the keywords appear in the content of your site.

a. What is your Google Pagerank?

b. How many sites link back to you? What PageRank are those sites?

c. How old is your domain?

What is Google Pagerank

The name "Google PageRank" is originated from one of Google's founders Larry Page. It was invented to help Google Search become more precise. PageRank is a "rank" for a website and ranges from zero to ten (0 - 10). Highly respected websites have a higher PageRank assigned whereas new websites will have a lower PageRank. PageRank gives a site authority, in other words it make you good Internet Real Estate. If your page has a high PageRank, you can much more easily begin to rank on other keywords related to your site, in fact you may find yourself ranking high for keywords you have not even been working actively pursuing. Normally a website begins with no PageRank at all.

A PageRank of 0-1, is the first step and will normally let you rank somewhere in the first few pages if the competition is not very strong. With a low PageRank, factors such as having your keywords in the domain name and the age of your domain will make a big difference in your positioning.

A PageRank of 2-3, is a good ranking for a small business website, and will allow you to rank well in more targeted keywords and allow for some leniency if your keywords are not in the domain name or title of your page.

A PageRank of 4-6, is very strong. You can begin to rank for broader, more competitive keywords, while dominating smaller narrower keywords. At this point your titles, domain name, and domain age, although still important, are not as crucial.
Popular known websites:

Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com – 9 out of 10 PageRank
MSN http://www.msn.com - 9 out of 10 PageRank
Google http://www.google.com - 10 out of 10 PageRank

Websites that are not as popular as the ones mentioned above will usually have a lower PageRank, something ranging from zero PageRank to 5 PageRank. Google PageRank update's every three to four months but in some cases it can take up to six months before you notice any updates.

According to Google, the PageRank given to a website indicates the website's importance, and is calculated from sites linking to a page. For instance, if PAGE A has a text link to PAGE B then PAGE B will be ranked higher as PAGE A is "voting" for PAGE B. However, although it seems very straightforward, many different factors are considered while calculating the PageRank. The page casting the vote will be inspected by Google also.

How can you improve your page rankings?

You can increase your PageRank and overall traffic by applying a common sense, and honest approach to SEO.

How many sites link back to you? What PageRank are those sites?

Probably the most weighted factor in determining your search engine position.  A site with one-way links from trusted sites with a high page rank will be considered authority sites by Google.  If those linkbacks are anchored using the right keywords, then you will rank well on google as well as every other search engine.  How many links you need to rank on the first page of Google depends on the quality of your links and the strength of your competition.

Let's talk about anchored links for a bit.  Most SEO beginners make the mistake of creating links by hyperlinking the name of their site or worse yet their URL.  Unless someone is doing a search on your URL, creating this type of hyperlink provides no benefit.  Instead hyperlink one of the keyword for which you want to rank.  If you wish to rank for "squirrel hunting" then you need to use those keywords for your hyperlink.