Why Optimize Your Site For Search Engines?Written by John Metzler
Sometimes a search engine optimization company will miss that glaring question posed by potential clients and assume benefits of search engine optimization are obvious to everyone. While shelling out a couple thousand on an SEO campaign is common sense to some, others may find it hard to part with cash unless they know it is an investment in their business that is sure to bring a good return.Search engines account for a huge portion of traffic to web sites. Data varies depending on what sources you read, but bottom line is that search engines are used millions of times each day by consumers searching for goods and services. And having your business displayed at top of search results is essential if you want to do any business from major search engines. Nine in every ten users will find what they're looking for in top 10 results and won't go to page 2. It's obvious that people can make a lot of money from online sales, but how you advertise your products has a large bearing on what kind of profit you make. If you buy advertising space on Google AdWords or other services that charge per click, you may only shell out 10 cents for every visitor to your site - But what if it takes 100 clicks to make one sale? If your products only sell for $10 a piece, then there is no profit being made. Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns will also never stop costing you money. Search Engine Optimization, on other hand, can be very affordable over months and years. Many SEO and Internet
| | How I reached #1 in Yahoo! Part 2Written by Michael Rock
How I reached #1 in Yahoo!® Part TwoKEI - Keyword Effectiveness Index. The value of a keyword or keyword phrase that helps a web site reach #1 position in search engines by comparing how often keyword or keyword phrase is used and comparing it to how many web sites are using that keyword or keyword phrase to market their site. In part one of this article I discussed how you can thoroughly research and pick right keywords for your web site. You can read part one of this web design SEO advice here. (http://www.theinternetpresence.com/business-article-26.htm) Part two of this article will show you how to take your list of keywords created from part one and narrow it down to most effective keywords to use. Let's start with KEI rating of keywords. You can find many free KEI tools on internet. I personally use one that was part of a $500 software package, but you can find many tools on internet for free. My advice for this is to try a few of them out and stick with tools that show generally same results and toss ones that don't. Even with software package I bought I still use wordtracker and overture to compare my results. List your keywords in first column of a table. (I use Microsoft Excel, but you can use anything that works.) In second, third or more columns list number of times that keyword was used per day or month. (I use one column for wordtracker, one column for overture, and one column for my software package.) Be suspicious of keywords that don't show same results on all three and consider tossing them out. For example if one column says it searched 300 times per day, but other two do not even show it being searched at all I would toss that keyword out. In next column type in KEI rating of that keyword. And in next column, if you have a tool that allows it, enter how often competition uses that keyword in a 'competition' column. Enter in numbers for this data for all of keywords listed in your table. Now we can start to narrow down list. Look at your keyword KEI ratings and compare them to each other. Toss out keywords that have a low KEI rating. Next look over list of keywords again and think to yourself, "Will someone that types that in want to visit my site?". If not, toss out keywords. Ask yourself, "Will someone who types in that keyword be likely to be profitable for me?". If not, toss out those keywords as well. Look at how often your competition uses a keyword in your 'competition' column. If it has a good KEI rating and over 17,000,000 web sites are using it then it will be hard to get to #1. Consider tossing these keywords out also. For example I concentrated on search term, (web development contractor) which had a great KEI rating and was hardly used by competition. I tweaked my site for this keyword and now if you type in web development contractor into MSN you'll find out that I hold number one position. And have held it for over a month now. In addition if you type in (business presence on web), or (Internet Presence) you'll see me floating around top 5 along with some other search terms. (Perhaps I should rename this article How I reached #1 in MSN) The search term (web design) had a good KEI rating, but competition was over 17,000,000 web sites using that search term. Perhaps I'll feel lucky and try for that one next.
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