Basic Search Engine Optimization

Recently search engine optimization has been taking up a major proportion of our working hours. Not so much for this website because this is an information site as opposed to a money making site. But as we have mentioned in previous posts we have many websites and most are money making sites servicing niches and sub niches. The challenge has been to take as many of our money making sites to first page listing on Google, Yahoo or Bing ¡V or all three - and that takes a little longer.

As so many of our regular readers contact me seeking internet marketing tips this seems a good subject to list on the blog.

All SEO starts with a keyword or keyword phrase because this is the purpose of search engines. You enter a word like ¡§golf¡¨ in Google and it brings you hundreds of millions of web pages using golf as a keyword. The sad thing is that only the top ten sites, in the eyes of the search engine, can be listed on page one. The remainder of the hundreds of millions of web pages using golf as a keyword will never get any traffic from searchers. Sorry but that is a fact of internet life; about a year ago I read some figures about the search habits of internet searchers and although I don¡¦t claim the following figures to be accurate they are pretty close to it; this is the true reason why you need to understand search engine optimzation to make your internet marketing work for you:

„« 70% of searchers never search beyond the first page of sites.

„« 20% never search beyond page 2.

„« 9% never search beyond page 3.

„« 1% search page 4 and beyond.

Therefore if you have a web page that is attempting to sell something you need page 1 listing in the search engines or you must revert to pay per click advertising.

Back to keywords and how to use them: We¡¦ll imagine that we are attempting to sell junior golf clubs for this example. After checking the Google Keyword Tool I note that many million people per month search the keyword ¡§golf¡¨ and millions also search the keyword phrase ¡§golf clubs¡¨ also is very competitive. ¡§junior golf clubs¡¨ receives over 60,000 searches per month so this will be super competitive too.

The thing you need to do is break this down a little more. Be honest: How many sets do you expect to sell each month? Ten would be pretty good, fifty would be great and you don¡¦t need 60,000 visitors to sell that many sets.

So why not go even deeper and use the keyword phrase ¡§left handed junior golf clubs¡¨. This gets around 1,500 searches per month and you could back it up with other keywords such as: ¡§left handed wedges¡¨ ¡V ¡§left handed putters¡¨ ¡V ¡§left handed irons¡¨ and each of these has around 3,500 searches per month. Keep finding other keywords in this mould and soon you¡¦ll have 10 or 12 that between them will attract 30K to 40K searches per month with little competition. Can you see how much easier your search engine optimization beccomes when you are not competing against the big end of town?

Few people ever go for a five word keyword phrase and if somebody goes to the trouble of searching: left handed junior golf clubs you can be sure that they are probably seeking to buy.

A keyword phrase like this easily dominates in the search engines and will bring you a lot of motivated potential buyers at no cost to you. This is how you can use search engine optimization for your benefit. If you try to compete for the term ¡§golf¡¨ you immediately challenge the big boys of the industry that have multi million dollar advertising budgets and you can¡¦t beat them

More about search engine optimization - The key to free website traffic.