SEO and Marketing is one of the most important ways to effectively deliver a message online.  Just the thought of search engine optimization makes some people squirm in their chairs because it can be a very daunting task for someone who has no experience.  Fortunately however, SEO is a very conquerable beast if you just take it one step at a time.

So what is SEO?  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of practices that enhances your site’s visibility and credibility in regards to search engines.  Search engines are businesses too and they want to deliver their users the best quality content possible so they have developed algorithms over time to determine what constitutes a good site vs. a bad site.  SEO is our way of making sure search engines see our website as a good site and therefore promote it in their listings.

It’s impossible to make money in internet marketing without using some form of SEO.  It may seem hard at first but at it’s core search engine optimization is a simple and common sense practice and once you learn it you will start to do it without even realizing it.

SEO and Marketing

White hat vs. black hat - You may have heard this term before referring to hacking (where I first became familiar with it), essentially white is good and black is bad.  There are many bad ways of doing your SEO that some might consider “cheating” or “bypassing the system,” and for all in tense in purposes, black hat will eventually catch up with you.  If you stick with white hat techniques your sites won’t have the possibility of being deindexed when Google releases an update.  It’s just better to be safe and we’ll only be talking about white hat SEO on this site.

Keyword Research - This is where many internet marketers have told you to spend the most time in order to be successful in building an online business.  The truth is that a lot of keyword research depends on what type of site you are creating but we can apply some broad principles to keyword research as a whole.  When it comes down to it, there are certain search terms that you will want your site to rank for.  If you think about it from a business perspective, you will obviously want to target the most relevant keywords that will make you the most money.

The internet marketers that make the most money do so by targeting buying keywords. Buying keywords are search terms that carry with them an expectation that a web searcher will have an inclination to spend money.  Something like free dog training might not give you as much relevant and profitable traffic compared to a keyword like dog training ebook.

The keyword research that you do now will be applied throughout the rest of your search engine optimization.  The keywords that you are trying to target will help shape your content and links and will certainly be chosen with your end goal in mind.  As you rank for the keywords you choose, you will start to rank for even more keywords that you didn’t even try to rank for, this is inevitable as search engines determine that you provide good quality information on a topic.

On-Page SEO

This is the most directly controllable aspect of your search engine optimization.  On-page SEO is all of the techniques that you employ on your website in order to help target your keywords and help search engines rank you for them.  There are ways that you can set up your website to insure that you are dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s so to speak.

Title tags – This is the text that appears in your browser above the URL address bar when you are on your website.  This is also what search engines will use as the heading for your site in the search results.  You’ll want to use relevant and targeted keywords in your title.  Make sure that you aren’t spamming keywords as search engines will look at this negatively and it will hurt your rankings.

Description meta-tags – Meta-tags are little pieces of code inside of your HTML that contains information to search-engine spiders.  The title tag is one of them but also very important is the description tag.  This tag is also good for using keywords that describe the content on your website.  This will be displayed below the heading on search results.

H1 Tags - Heading tags are snippets throughout your HTML code that will essentially make your text look bigger.  H1 is the biggest and H2 is smaller, H3 even smaller yet, and so forth.  Heading tags can be edited to whatever style you may want but keep in mind that H1 means IMPORTANT!  Including your target keyword into an H1 tag relays the message that the information included there is important and will help you rank for that keyword.  For even better results, try including your keyword in H2 and H3 tags as well!

Keyword density – Keyword density refers to the amount of times your keyword appears on the page in relation to the text.  If you have your keyword say dog training appear one time in your article that is 100 words, your density would be 1%.  There is a debate on what the optimal percentage is but it seems to be between 1%-4%.  In reality you should make your article sound natural and not stuff keywords into your content for the sake of filling out your density.  If you make your content readable along with mentioning your keyword where it makes sense, you will be fine.

LSI keywords - LSI Keywords are related keywords that search engines deem in context with your main topic keyword.  A good way to find these is by typing your main keyword into the Google Keyword Tool and choosing keywords that are listed below your main keyword.  By using these types of search terms, search engines will assume that you are naturally providing good content about the main keyword and boost relevancy of that main search term.  Again if you are providing good content like you should be, this will all be natural.

Internal linking - Internal linking is just as important as external linking (which we will talk about in the next section).  By linking throughout your site, it shows that you are again providing the relevant information to users where applicable and it also bolsters your site structure.  Search engines like to see you link with relevant anchor text (the text which is highlighted by the link) to other pages on your site.

Content is king – This is the most important aspect of SEO, the content you are providing.  Search engines have gotten really good at determining what is good content and what isn’t.  You have to provide value to your visitors in order to have a good trust ranking with the search engines.  If you try to take a short cut by copying content or publishing gibberish, you will be penalized.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page search engine optimization primarily refers to external links pointing towards your site.  External links are important to search engines because they prove that others find your content useful and thus link to your website.  Links only strengthen your credit in the eyes of search engines.  There are different factors that go into the weight carried by your external links, for example a link from the Yahoo.com front page would mean a lot more that a link from your friends blog they just started two weeks ago.  Search engines take all of these things into account when determining what value to assign the links coming into your sites.

Also important with external links is anchor text which again is the text used to highlight the link pointing to your site.  Using your keyword or LSI keywords to link to your site will be much more beneficial to you versus a simple CLICK HERE link.  All of these things help you rank better for the terms that you are targeting.

Search engine optimization is the most important practice of internet marketers.  As search engines constantly update their algorithms it’s important to stay on top of the latest best practices.  Check out the rest of my site and I will post tips and tricks as I discover them.  You can also check out my internet marketing training page if you’d like some more advice on becoming an internet marketer.

IMA (Internet Marketing Advantage) is the best complete package of internet marketing & tools I have seen. Check out my review now if you’re ready to take your business to the next level or if you just need help getting started!