SEO is the art of optimizing your site for the search engines so that searches by potential clients in the search engines find your site at the top of the returned list. Your position in the search engine results is determined by literally hundreds of factors, of which a primary one is the keyword phrases the searcher uses to access a report of the web pages from the search engines that can resolve the searcher’s needs or problem. Here are some links and tools that can help your choose your keywords for your website postings and pages. How effective a given keyword phrase can be for designing your pages depends on several factors, and not all are objective.

1. Your keyword phrases should be phrases a user would use in searching the engines for a solution to a problem or need. For this you need statistics on how often the phrase is used in searching.
2. Second, you want to know how many people already have pages optimized for that particular keyword phrase. You can get an idea using any Google search. Search on any keyword phrase and, near the top of the returned report, you will see a count of the number of web pages returned ion that keyword phrase. Don’t get too discouraged at the large number. Most aren’t optimized for the keyword phrase.

You may optimize a page for several keyword phrases, but generally there will be one primary keyword phrase that you are using for a given page. The longer a keyword phrase, the less likely it will be used in searching but at the same time those that do come to your site will be more qualified. There are also subjective factors in keyword selection of which you need to be aware. If you are selling used cars, you might choose to use a primary keyword phrase as “pre-owned cars”, only to discover most potential buyers search on “used cars”.

A keyword is a single word that may possibly return millions of pages in a search engine. Even a keyword phrase of several words may return millions of pages. For example, try a search on “Portland real estate”. You need to be on one of the first three pages for your keyword phrase. If you are selling real estate in the Portland area you will have a hard time getting hits with that phrase. You need to niche your market more strategically.

Here are some tools and sites to help you with your SEO:

Google Adwords Keyword Tool - This is a free tool Google provides to help choose the keywords for an Adword campaign. At the same time you can use it for helping to decide your keyword strategy the the organic, or free, search engine listings on Google.

Google Trends is a free tool that shows you how a demand for a particular keyword phrase varies with time. It also shows you keywords vary in popularity with cities and countries.

Website Grader is ree from Hubspot. This tool is a really great way of seeing how you stand with typical SEO and social engagement scoring. Start here. This is also a favorite with Carl.

Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (pdf). You can use this to understand the basics behind the scenes on how search engines like Google see your website or blog.

Google’s SEO Report Card (pdf) – Useful for knowing what Google sees when they look at your site. A lot of what’s covered in here is measured by the Website Grader tool mentioned above.

WordPress SEO. If you’re using WordPress for your website or blog, this is a really useful resource. It’ll take a while to pore through, but you’ll find some value in it, for sure. Yoast also has a WordPress SEO plugin that you might find useful.

Carl uses the Search Engine News and the analyzers provided with it as well as Scribe- a tool from the StudioPress/Genesis people) to help him with his SEO on his site.

Carl has affiliate relationship with Scribe- click below to try it free.

There are other SEO tools that Carl occasionally uses, but they do cost money. Here are three:
http://www.wordtracker.com
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com
http://www.enquisite.com

Need SEO help? Why not contact us?

What do you use?

Getting Professional SEO help is an essential part of getting quality web traffic today. With billions of web pages out there, don’t expect you site to magically draw the traffic you want. Here is an SEO ad someone spammed me with a few days ago:

Rule #1 is simple. If this guy knew how to do SEO, he would not be using spamming email to get his visitor traffic. Spam is at the bottom of the list in terms of effective advertising, and he is simply telling me he can’t do SEO.

A second point here is that NO ONE can guarantee you a top spot, as this company is trying to do, in the search results. To quote Matt Cutts, the Google Hero:

Some SEO firms say they can rank people in first place. Can they guarantee this?

Not on Google. No one can guarantee this, not even Google, since our ranking algorithms are often updated. I’ve seen scams where the “#1 placement” is really buying ads. I’ve seen scams where the “keywords” that they sell are really for people who have scumware hidden in their browser. I’ve seen stuff where the guaranteed keywords are 5-6 word phrases that only have nine results, and no one would ever really type that really long, specific phrase. I’ve seen situations where the guarantee is that they’ll try to get a #1 spot, and if they don’t, then they’ll try again. Cold calling and cold emailing is a bad sign in the first place, frankly. So I’d be skeptical of that in the extreme, and read the fine print carefully.

Also, remember that SEO today is vastly different that a few years ago. Reciprocal links (swapping links to boost your pagerank) is out. Doesn’t help. Also, buying links to your site in most directories is out. That doesn’t help, either. What does work? You’ll find a few clues in this blog. For one thing, blogs and social networking is VERY important. Why not let us help you with your SEO strategy?