Keyword research, SEO, and backlinks, the list just seems to go on forever when it comes to making sure that you get the right people to the right site, your site, of course, and it just looks like it's going to get even harder to do in the future.
I'm sure you know by now that getting traffic to your site isn't as easy as it once was, or, if you're still new to all of this, getting traffic to your site is nowhere near as easy as it once was. There used to be a time when you could throw up a site based on virtually any topic you want, put some really cheap adverts on Google Adwords, and you'd have a constant stream of buyers; ah, the good old days.
If you want to get traffic now, you really need to know the three steps to a top ranking. What are these three things, and how can they help you?
Keyword Research: This is, above all else, the one thing that you really need to get right if you want to start getting new people to your site, after all, if they type a phrase in the search engines, and your site doesn't come up, they aren't going to be able to find you; which isn't going to help when you have to pay the mortgage at the end of the month. The best way to do your keyword research, so you'll optimise your site for the right phrases, is to think about what a potential buyer might type into the search engine to find the sort of product you're promoting i.e. if you're promoting treadmills, which of these do you think is going to work best for you: exercise equipment, or Gold's Gym Pro Form treadmill? Correct, the Gold's Gym Pro Form treadmill.
Why is it the best option?
Just think about it for a moment. People planning on buying a product are far more likely to search for a specific make and model. If you do your keyword research you'll find that trying to rank well for 'exercise equipment' is going to give you sleepless nights, a much reduced bank account, and possibly no more home. Targeting broad phrases really isn't the smart choice.
SEO (search engine optimization): This is the next step in your rise to internet domination, or at least a steady income. Back in the good old days, mentioned earlier, the site that you put up didn't have to be all that 'attractive' to the search engines for you to rank well. Later people discovered that the search engines were getting interested in how relevant your site was to the keywords that people were searching on; no problem, people stuffed as many of those keywords as they could into their site, and the good times were rolling again.
Now, however, you have to be really careful about how relevant your site is to the keywords. You have to make sure you don't over use those words, and, you really have to keep up to date with changes the search engines make to their search algorithms. At the moment, for the purposes of good SEO, your keyword phrase should be anything up to 1 percent of your article, but that can all change, and has done in the past.
To help with your SEO you should have your keywords in the title of the article, the first paragraph, the last paragraph, and scattered throughout the rest of the article. You may also want to take into account a thing called LSI (latent semantic Indexing). This was another of the interesting criteria that the search engine companies incorporated a number of years ago, and it works like this:
When you're writing about a topic on your website the search engines will 'expect' to find other related terms in the article i.e. a treadmill site would be expected, by the search engines, to also use words like 'gym', 'weight loss', 'work out' etc. If they don't find related words they're going to get suspicious of your site, and you may drop from the ranks; which doesn't help, does it?
Backlinks: There's still some debate about just how important having backlinks to your site really is, but, let's just say that the sites ranking on the first couple of pages for your niche are going to have quite a few backlinks going to them. So, what are backlinks, and how do they help you rank?
Do you remember back to high school? How a lot of it was no more than a popularity contest? Well guess what, the search engines may as well be high school cheerleaders, or jocks. The search engines associate backlinks with popularity, and, popularity equals authority. If you get enough backlinks to your site from credible sites in your niche, the search engines are going to rank you higher because you'll provide quality content for their search engine 'customers'; seeing as you're an authority in your particular niche, that is.
So, there you have it, the three things you need to do, and do right, if you want to rank well in the search engines. Make sure you've done your keyword research properly, and know how people are going to find you; get the right balance between keywords and LSI, to keep the SEO side of things humming; and get as many backlinks as you can from sites in your niche.
If you can do all of that, it shouldn't matter how often the search engines change things, because keyword research, SEO, and backlinks are still going to help you to rank well.
To Your Success
Craig Waters
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If you're ready to take your business to the next level and start making money in the next couple of months then you need to Go Here Now . This article is a small sample of what Craig can help you with. The three steps to SEO Mastery is one of the keys to your success. Work With Craig