This article will put a damper on web sites that sell information which will supposedly increase your page rank. I may make some enemies here, but this is already common knowledge. In fact, to make sure it worked, I designed a new site just for this purpose. Before you shell out money for an ebook, software, or CD telling you how to do this; read this article. If you achieve great results after following my advice and feel it was worth some money, feel free to write me a check for any amount you choose. I 'll add my own zeros.

Page Rank. We all know what is. We all want to rank higher. Higher rankings mean a lot of things to a lot of people. To web masters it means achievement. They have accomplished a move in right direction. A high page rank to a website owner is money in bank. It is also an impressive accomplishment. To other website owners your page rank may be a source of envy.

To Google your page rank means quality, importance and relevancy. It lets Google know you are a viable resource and a valuable asset. Google takes your Page Rank and combines it with their text-matching techniques. This, combined with a page’s content and content of pages linking to it, determines if your site is a good match. So, a higher Page Rank will certainly help you on Google.

As for surfers. Most of them could care less about your Page Rank. In fact, many of them don't even know what it is. However, those that do use it in a different way. Some use it as a way to unofficially gauge your credibility.

Ok, I am sure you've been wondering when I was going to tell you about how to achieve a ranking like I did. I went from a 0 Page Rank to a 5. Now, mind you, I did not purchase any links from high ranking sites, or any sites for that matter. I did not launch a link exchange program. I did exchange links with about five directories related to my site’s topic, but that was it. Actually, 97% of my links are all one-way links (links pointing to my site).

So what's next step?

It's time to develop your "master keyword list" which you will use to craft your webpages. Theseare words or phrases you would like to get ranked high in search engine's for and get free targeted traffic that this will bring to your website.

It is not enough to simply "pluck" words from air and start writing your web pages. You need to carefully select which words and phrases to target.

Food for thought:

What if there are already 10 billion web pages about your chosen keyword(s)?

Do you think a small business owner can compete with large companies who invest millions of dollars into their SEO strategies for highly competitive, high traffic keywords?

Obviously answer is no but there is a bright side to equation if you are willing to invest time into researching your keyword phrases carefully. You will want to choose "niche" keywords that offer a combination of high traffic and low competition.

This of course is easier said than done but it can be accomplished as long as you use some of help that is available on internet.

Here are a couple of first steps, tips and tools you can use to put together a list of niche keywords for website topic that you have developed.

1. Keyword Brainstorming and Research

Think of throwing out a "wide net" here and try to write down as many keywords and phrases (consisting of 2-4 words) that are related to your Website Concept as you can.

Take each one of these words/phrases and visit:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Type first keyword phrase into "Get suggestions for:" box and hit search button.

This will return you a list of words and phrases that are similiar to your keyword phrase and also provide you with number of searches for each of these results on Yahoo-Overture network for month.

Copy all of keyword phrases that you think best suit your site concept along with search data into a text file or spreadsheet. Save this file as your "master keyword list".

Note: Some of results will be totally unrelated to your site concept you do not need to copy these into your "master keyword list".

Repeat this process for all of keyword phrases that you initially brainstormed. By end of this process you should have a "master keyword list" of several hundred or thousand words and phrases.

Google provides a free keyword research tool as well but does not provide search statistics that Yahoo-Overture does. Augment your keyword list with any results that you find relevant using this tool.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox

2. Refine Your Keyword List Part 1

We need to shorten your keyword list to a tightly targeted and highly profitable subset of your master keyword list. These are going to be words we use when crafting our web pages for search engines.

Start by performing searches for each keyword phrase in your master keyword list at:

http://www.google.com

Google will tell you total number of sites it has indexed for keyword phrase that you are searching for. Copy this number into your master keyword list for each keyword phrase.

You will now have data for number of searches on Yahoo-Overture network for month and number of competing websites for each keyword phrase in your list.

Think of these numbers as supply(websites) and demand(# of searches). Finding supply/demand number for each keyword phrase will help you decide which one's you want to target.