Lets examine an example: a local moving company decided to optimize its website. It knows (or assumes that it does) that the most popular keywords for their type of business are movers and moving. At a first glance, looks like everythings fine: the keywords seem to be relevant, and should produce good results. However, there are two mistakes made here.

The first one is keyword relevancy. Whats the use for our local moving company of people that are looking for movers or moving in Denver, CO, Boston, MA or New York, NY, if they are located and offering services in and around San Francisco only?

Another mistake is keyword effectiveness. Itll take much more time and effort to get top rankings for such popular and competitive general keywords as moving and movers than to get same results for something more specific and relevant, such as movers San Francisco or moving San Francisco. Not only are these keywords more likely to convert visitors to buyers, but also its a much easier and less time-consuming task.

If the world we live in consists of atoms, the smallest and most important particles in search engine optimization world are keywords. In fact, theres nothing complicated about them, if one remembers three things about keywords: relevancy, effectiveness and Wordtracker.

Wordtracker.com is an UK based company that offers an irreplaceable search engine marketing service tool: keyword research and analysis. It helps to find and pick keywords that are both relevant and competitive. Relevant mean that the keywords are related to your website, and that these are the words people are typing in Google, Yahoo or MSN in order to find your kind of business. Another important factor in determining a good keyword is its effectiveness. Lets say we have a keyword movers which has a record of appearing in Google search list for 1009 times; there are 15400000 different web pages competing for this keyword. This means that this keywords effectiveness index is 1009/15400000=0.066. This index shows that the keyword is far too competitive and youll probably end up somewhere in the middle of Googles search results if you try to optimize your webpage for this particular keyword. A rule of thumb is to find keywords that are quite popular and at the same time have fewer webpages competing for them. A good keyword is considered to have an effectiveness index of over 100, although anything in between 10 and 100 can be targeted as well.

Needless to say, without having the right keywords that are both relevant and competitive its impossible to succeed in any search engine optimization campaign. Without knowing your niche words, youll probably end up competing against web sites with thousands of inbound links optimized by search engine optimization gurus and will be lost in millions of search results no one will even ever find out you exist. On the other hand, all it takes to get your web traffic from 0 to couple hundreds a day might be something as simple and cost-effective as Wordtracker.

What IS the goal of search engine optimization?

The goal of search engine optimization is to bring new customers to your web site. Liverpool SEO is about being found by the right people. It’s about matching a prospect with the right offer. It is as simple as that.

What is NOT the goal of search engine optimization?

Liverpool SEO is NOT about getting listed for every possible keyword. This is the biggest mistake that is made by webmasters and web designers. Most people try to get as many high search engine rankings as possible, AND for as many keywords as possible. That is not only a lot of work, it is also a complete waste of time.

It is not important that your web site is listed for a lot of keywords. It is important that your web site is listed for the right keywords, and that your web site then turns visitors into buyers. Without achieving this you will not be successful.

How can YOU improve your search engine optimization results?

1.Create convincing web pages

That really is a very important step. If you do not have web pages that appeal to your target group, then do not bother with trying to get visitors.

Your web pages must be designed so that your visitors become buyers.

2.You must also first create trust, and convince your visitors by making your web pages easy to use.

3.Find the right keywords

You must find the keywords that work best for you, and for your website. Build a keyword lists that is related to your business. There are many Free Keyword Generators that can help you with finding the right keywords for you.

Yahoo offer one here:

http://inventory.overture.com

4.You can then use the keywords that you find in a pay per click (PPC) campaign on say Google’s Adwords, or with Yahoo’s Overture. What this will do is give you a quick way of testing your new keywords. It is also important that you then track these keywords with a conversion tracking tool, which will tell you which keywords lead to sales, and which keywords are just a waste of both time and money.

5.Optimize your web pages for these keywords

Once you know the keywords that lead to conversions, (sales) you should then set about optimizing your web pages for these keywords. While PPC allows you to quickly test keywords, and you can see the results within only a few days, optimizing your web pages allows you to get targeted visitors, WITHOUT you having to pay for them.

Search engine optimization can lead to great results if you concentrate on the right goals. Search engine optimization is about improving your business. It is not about getting as much traffic as possible. Focus on your target group, and on keywords that work best for you. You will save a lot of work while at the same time increasing your profits.

There have been many innovations presented since then as a way of simplifying the submission process and eliminate most of the drudgery that has been associated with this task. With the development Google Sitemaps, the process has indeed been a big help to many webmasters and business owners. In fact, many people contend that Google Sitemaps is probably the most important development on the internet since the RSS, blogs and ping.

RSS, blog and ping had actually been used by webmasters as tools in informing search engines about new additions to their websites even though this function was not the primary purpose of the aforementioned innovations. Of course, Google Sitemaps is so much faster and easier to use compared to the said systems and this is the reason why it has risen in popularity and is now acknowledged as the most effective way of updating a website to search engines. In fact, this new innovation of using sitemaps for the search engine submission process has become a very vital part of operating a website and a webmaster can ignore it at his own risk.

There may still be some sceptics who may still not believe that a sitemap method of submitting new web pages or new content to a website is very effective. One reason why using the sitemap method like Google Sitemaps is that the technology was developed from the ground up with solely one primary goal, which is to alert and direct the Google search engine spiders to the web pages that you have specified. All the other methods are considered as indirect and submissions to search engines are not their primary purpose either.

Clearly, using Google sitemaps provides a win-win situation for webmasters and online business owners.

First, Google sitemaps limits the huge waste of the resources needed to crawl web site that have not changed. The technology allows webmasters to inform Google which pages have changed or if there are new content added to a website and then direct Googles spiders directly to those pertinent pages.

Google Sitemaps also radically speeds up the process of discovery and addition of pages to Googles web site index. This can only be achieved if you use the technology and nothing else.

Google Sitemaps offers a level of usability that is different from conventional sitemaps because it offers a directory of all the web pages in the web site that the webmaster or online business owner wants the search engine to visit.

Without the assistance of sitemaps like Googles, it may become hard for a web page to be found by the search engine crawlers. There is even a chance that the page may not be found at all.

Here are some of the most important factors that the search engines use in determining your rankings:

1. Web Site Content

Content on your site is one of the most important factors for successful search engine optimization. Your web site should provide valuable information on specific subjects relevant to your web site. Furthermore, your content should be updated regularly. It’s not enough to just put up a few content pages full of information on your site and then never add to it. This is a continuous process that will help your search engine rankings if done correctly.

It’s also important that you don’t try to trick the search engines by flooding them with multiple versions of the same page, repeating the same content over and over. Doing that will not help your rankings and will eventually lead to your site getting banned from the search engines.

2. Link Popularity

Inbound links are very important for achieving high search engine rankings. Most of the search engines today regard link popularity as one of the most significant determinants of your website’s rankings.

Here are some of the best ways to get inbound links:

* Articles – Writing and submitting articles to website’s and article directories is a very good way to get inbound links.

* Content – Not only will adding quality content help in your rankings by itself, it will also help you with your link popularity. Other webmaster’s will want to link to your site because it is valuable to them and their own visitors.

* Directories – Submitting your site to online directories will help you gain inbound links.

* Blogs – Start a blog that you update frequently with information related to your website’s niche. Then, link to your site from the blog. You can also submit your blog to various blog directories to get even more inbound links.

* Link Exchanges – Simply find other quality sites related to yours and ask them to link to you in exchange for a link back to them. This is not as effective as it used to be but it is still a pretty good way to get inbound links.

When trying to increase your link popularity remember that the more inbound links you get the better, but quality is always better than quantity. Stay away from low quality sites, FFA’s, and sites unrelated to yours.

The next things that should be considered when doing Birmingham SEO for your web site are the on-site and the off-site elements. Some of the on-site elements are the title tag, Meta tags, heading tags, ALT tags and highlighting of the text using the bold tag. The Link text is an important off-site element.

On-Site Elements:

3. Title Tag and Meta Tags

Meta tags help describe the page where they are placed. Though today the Meta tags are not nearly as important as they once were and are definitely not the only things the search engines look for when indexing your site, they are still somewhat important in deciding the relevancy of the page for a keyword search.

Search engines focus on three primary tags to help them determine the relevance of a website for a particular search phrase. The Title Tag, Meta Keywords and the Meta Description…

Ideally the title tags should contain less than 64 characters with your most important keywords in them and should definitely be relevant to the content on the page. Do not stuff keywords in to the title tag!

The Meta description tag is a summary of the page and its contents. This Meta tag should be 200 characters or less and should contain keywords and phrases you hope to be found for, but it should also read like an introductory lead-in for the page and be appealing to the reader. The description you provide for your page has to convince the visitor that they have found exactly what they were looking for.

Probably the least important Meta tag to search engines is the keyword tag. However, it shouldn’t be ignored. Keyword tags should be less than 1000 characters. This tag should include important keywords and phrases consistent with the body text, title, and content of the page. Be specific and accurate with the keywords and key phrases in this tag. Again, do not stuff keywords here… they should only be those that are actually on the page and do not repeat any word more than 3 times.

4. Heading Tags

The heading tags are given more weight than the ordinary text. The higher the H tag the more weight it carries. You should make use of the heading tags to highlight the important keywords and headings of your page as well as the paragraph headers.

5. Bold Text

Bold text is given a little more weight than ordinary text but not as much as heading tags. Make sure to enclose some of your keywords in bold tags when they appear on the page.

6. Alt Text

The alt tag provides alternative text when images cannot be displayed… This might happen if the users have set the browsers only to download the text and not the graphics, or if the images are too heavy to download for the users internet connection. Only include important keywords relevant to your site and the image and do not stuff keywords in them.

Off-site elements:

7. Link Text

This is a very important factor in search engine optimization to gain higher rankings. The link text can be on pages within your site or what other web sites use to link to you. Either way, it is important. If possible the target page’s main search term should be included in the link text instead of just the URL. Do not use identical link text for every link, but do include the target page’s main keywords in the link text. Links carry more weight when the text around them is relevant to the target page’s keywords and phrases.

Following the above Birmingham SEO information will help tremendously in your search engine rankings. Remember that the search engines are advancing all the time. Don’t try to trick them because they will eventually catch on and that could mean the end of your web site. Stick to the basic techniques above and you will increase your search engine rankings without fear of being banned or dropped.

In order to get maximum exposure on the internet your site must be promoted and advertised in the online environment. Nine of ten users who visit your web site through search engine make up your target audience. These are the people who want to find as much information on products and services that you provide as possible, who would like to obtain a detailed description of your company and find out uniqueness and distinctiveness of your business. There is no need to explain that sites that are located on the top of the search list are capable to get more visitors than those who are in the end. The rating of the site in the search system might affect the business development of your company as well. So we have to find the answer to a one very important question: How can one get the attention of such famous search engines as Yahoo Google and MSN?! Here where Search Engine Optimization comes.

The content has to be clear both for customers understanding and should be visible by major search engines. Optimizing your site you should take into account the relevance of the text and ratings of your web site. For that you must analyze the market you operate in, exchange topical links and register in meaningful for the search engine catalogues. Every search system estimates the value and use of your document in relation to inquiry made by web visitors. Search Engine Optimization is a non interrupting process. Sometimes clear results can be received in several weeks or even months. As a rule people use the first words occurring to them. So, Manchester SEO optimizers have to concentrate on these words or phrases.

As a web site designer I work with clients, but I also talk with online business newbies, and on a regular basis I see that people don’t have a clue about what they should have as a web site. They know what they want but they don’t realize the need for pre-planning the structure and content of a web site in today’s market place, The Internet.

That led me to write this article. I trust it will help new online business owners preplan before they jump right into creating an online business web site that just sits there.

There are step-by-step solutions to online business web site success.

Step #1 – Target Group, finding your best prospects can be the difference between earning pennies and dollars.

Researching your ideal target group is so important that it should be step 1, 2 and 3. New online business owners don’t seem to focus their attention on their target audience, instead they seem to think that if they build it people will come, and spend all their hard earned money on your site.

Well I guess it would be silly to make your target group focus as step 1-3, but when you think about it, your target group is all important in online business success and for that reason it should be part of all pre-planning steps. Without a target group you are just wasting your time and cluttering the Internet with more pages that will never be seen or read.

Okay so the first step is to know your target group. Learn all you can about them, because the more you know the more likely you will be to find more ways to sell to them. Plus you will be able to find complimentary products that your target audience would like.

Knowledge is POWER, but only if you apply the knowledge you gain to your Internet marketing and offline marketing.

Just a note about target groups. If you have a hobby that you spend lots of money on you should be setting up an online business to promote what you know best.

Step #2 – Keywords and Phrases your best prospect uses to find what you sell.

Your new online business web site will need to be keyword and content focused for best results. Spend plenty of time learning the keywords and phrases that your best prospect would type into a search engine text box to find exactly what they want.

Learn how to contact your target group and ask them some questions through surveys. The time you spend on learning your target audience will be time well spent and remember that your time is worth money. Everything comes down to your ROI – Return On Investment.

Your time is part of that investment, so make the best of it.

The more you learn the more you can earn, it is as simple as that.

Step #3 – Competition can be a online business destroyer if you are not prepared for it, but learning what they do can actually put you ahead of them in the major search engines.

If you take the time now to learn who you are competing with you will spend far less time changing your web site content later and again time is money. The more time you spend wasting your time the less income you will be earning and the more frustrated you will become. Eventually that leads to either total meltdown and quitting or it forces the Internet marketing newbie to spend the time learning and fixing web site problems.

So you see the time you spend at the beginning in pre planning your online business web site will be a much better ROI than trial and error strategies.

Find your competitor’s web sites and learn all you can about their use of keywords and phrases they use to attract their target group. You will also want to view their source code to discover what keywords they use in their title, description and keyword tags.

Step #4 – Find sites that compliment your site and products.

Again your competitors can help you succeed. You can learn about web sites with products and services that would compliment your products and services and that means more income for you.

If you are selling cars you might just want links on your site that would show your prospects how they could improve the appearance or performance of their car.

Always try to make it a win-win situation. You provide the best products and services you can and in turn your target group will come back to your site and buy from you. Plus they will follow the links you have to more products and services.

So like I said from the start…

1. Know your target group
2. Learn the keywords your target group uses to find what you provide.
3. Study your competitors and do what they do for success and then go one step further.
4. Find sites that compliment yours and link with them so you provide better service to your target group.

Once you have done all your research you are ready to build.

Every company offering Birmingham SEO related services promises results but few deliver on that promise. To be the exception when it comes to delivering on that promise a Birmingham SEO partner must take an approach that ensures quality results that meet YOUR business objectives.

There are lots of ‘unethical’ approaches to Birmingham SEO that can actually get you banned from search engines. Unfortunately, some Birmingham SEO companies still use these as a ‘quick-fix.’ Unfortunately, you get left holding the bag. Make sure the Birmingham SEO company can explain their approach in terms you can explain and if they can’t you should keep searching.

Here’s what to look for:

First, they should demonstrate that they understand your business need.

Just giving you a questionnaire is not enough. At the beginning of any engagement, they should take the time to understand your business objectives. Your business is unique and a one-size-fits-all approach rarely actually fits every business. By taking the time to understand your business they should be able to tailor their services to best meet your business objectives as well as your budget.

Second, they should use a proven model of optimization that offers ‘realistic’ expectations.

Ignore marketing hype like “Rank #1 in Google in 24 hours” Search engines do not make public the process or rules they use to crawl, rank pages or index website pages. Further the processes and rules change often as the search engines attempt to increase the value of search results. Of course if your keyword phrase is “one of a kind white unicorns hand made by a grandmother in Peoria” then you actually have a good shot of # 1 ranking if anyone actually ever searched for that. Otherwise, it takes time and lots of work to get high rankings.

To compensate for this lack of public information, an Birmingham SEO partner should rely on a proven model to uncover the rules.

1. Analyze Determine where your pages rank today. From this you can learn what may be right about these higher ranking that can be applied to other pages.

2. Target Every web site is unique. Rather than a set of canned optimization recommendations they should determine the right optimization options for your website. To accomplish this they should use a range of methods:
Expert Review. While many Birmingham SEO partners have great in-house experience they should also turn to other experts who study search engines to determine the most likely rules used to determine how pages are indexed and ranked.
Best Practices. They should look at the top ranking competitors in your space to determine how they optimized their pages, particularly those aspects that could influence page rankings.
Learn as they Optimize. They should consider implementing changes to larger sites in stages. Start by optimizing your highest value pages first, then, based on the results modify the optimization approach if needed before continuing.
Its More than Google. While organic search results are a key portion of any optimization effort, they should know that it takes much more to get quality traffic to your website. They should be able to help you go beyond the search engines to find your new traffic.

3. Optimize They should be able to provide the detailed information you need to understand what needs to be done to your website. They should also be willing to let you make the changes rather than forcing you to allow them to make the changes at substantial per hour fees.

4. Analyze – Birmingham SEO is not a one-time effort. Your business changes, your competitors change, your prospects and customers change and the search engines refine rules. This means you will need to periodically review your ranking and re-optimize your site. You should expect your Birmingham SEO partner to provide ‘follow-ups’ to ensure that you got results.

Third, their approach should be comprehensive and include all the aspects that bring traffic to your website, not just search engines. Make sure they will provide

Detailed Site Analysis – You need to understand from where your site is starting.
Keyword Analysis – All keywords are not created equal. They should help you understand which ones to use, and as importantly, which ones not to use.
Page Structure Recommendations – Content, headers, keyword placement, it all matters.
Engine Submissions – Each engine is unique. ‘Submit a link’ programs are not effective.
Paid Search – The internet is like any business, sometimes ‘free’ isn’t worth even that.
Reciprocal Links – As with keywords, all links are not created equally.

Finally, the right Birmingham SEO partner should work hand in hand with you to make sure the changes recommended for your website are the best fit for you. They should share their approach to making the changes to your website and should be flexible to make changes in a way that best supports your business needs.

Selecting a Birmingham SEO partner can be intimidating. With all the marketing hype, it is easy to get fooled. In the end Birmingham SEO is like any other business service you use. You should be able to understand the benefits, and limitations, it offers and make an informed decision about how to invest your money.

By the way, if you find the hand-made unicorns please pass me the URL. I’m in the market :>)

Aubrey Jones is President and founder of Riverbank Consulting, Inc. Through Webs 4 Small Business he is able to bring Birmingham SEO and other internet services to Small Business owners. He has been in the technology and internet industry for over 10 years building and managing large commercial internet services.

* The Absence Of Risk often, paid advertising is subject to click-fraud risks and competitors unfair techniques ( examples of these techniques would be the usage of software that will click your ads for hundreds of times without any noticeable profit to your site; however, you will pay for each and every single click to ). Pay-for-performance programs like Google AdWords have advanced protection against this harmful behavior but the risk will never be eliminated. However, Liverpool SEO is free of any potential risk unless you make obvious mistakes like spamming.

* Reliability paid search engine placement or banner ads work right until the moment when the marketing budget depletes. After that moment the site disappears from the listings and the returning customers will not find you again ( nor will the new visitors ). Liverpool SEO services will help buffer this process so you can gradually minimize the advertising budget as you will be increasing your results that are obtained from the organic search engine listings. Another advantage of this would be the fact that consumers prefer purchasing from a site that is ranked high in the search engine results rather than purchasing from an evidently placed advertisement.

* Brand Awareness a website that has a high rank among search engine listings means that more people will see the companys name and become more and more familiar with the products as well as the company although they still havent made one single purchase. A recent survey clearly shows that consumers are twice as likely to recognize businesses that are ranked high ( top three ) in the search engine listings in comparison to those that are appearing in the regular banner ads.

* Targeted Traffic the Liverpool SEO services will bring paying customers right to your door step. These customers that we are talking about have entered your websites keywords or phrases into the search engines and the results showed your business. The Liverpool SEO services will help you transform regular visitors into real buyers by analyzing their behavior once they locate your site. By utilizing the content of your website you will learn how to transform these visitors into buyers in the most effective and efficient manner possible.
* Affordability comparing banner ads with Liverpool SEO services in terms of costs, the money that you will pay for these services wont reach staggering sums like $15,000 that people pay for banner ads.
Now we are going to offer you a small list of techniques that should be avoided at all costs:

* Keyword stuffing

* Automatically generated doorway pages

* Misspelling of well-known websites

* Hidden text or hidden links

* Cloaking and false redirects

* Duplicated content on multiple pages

* Other methods that try to trick search engines

All in all, Liverpool SEO is highly recommended if you want to make your business popular because popularity over the Internet is crucial as you will attract more visitors and if you play your cards the right way, these visitors will be transformed into first time buyers and with a bit of luck, customers.

Know what words your customers will use when searching.
You might know what your customers search for. If not, find out. Is it a description of “pants” or “jeans?” One may be searched more often than the other, but why not target both? How about “executive gifts?” Maybe “desk accessories” will broaden your web site marketing strategy.

Ask all kinds of people. Get advice from people in all walks of life including management, employees, customers, vendors, friends and family on how they would search for effective search engine positioning keywords. Ask them how they would search for different products and services. It’s really not about what you think they would search for, its about what they think. Believe me, they can many times be two totally different things.

Once you have successfully harvested a meaningful keyword list, remove any keywords that are too targeted or not to specific. Also remember that keyword placement is important. Try to put as many keywords as possible in the beginning paragraphs, and of course the title line.

The higher the value of the keyword the more competition you will have. Every Manchester SEO utilizes tools similar to the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool and also know the value of a keyword. The lower the value of the keyword the less competition we will have.

We don’t want to aim to low but we also don’t want to aim to high. We need to find a middle ground. For you that may be a keyword with a value of no less than 1000 and no more than 10,000. It will be up to you to determine what you deem reasonable.

Also, the keywords should appear regularly throughout the opening Web page. It is especially important that they appear frequently in the opening paragraphs.
However, resist the temptation to overuse keywords. The search engines can spot it and will reduce your page rankings. Tools are available to help with optimal keyword density. However, avoid software that writes the site’s pages. Search engines can sniff these out, too.

A good rule of thumb is: Never sacrifice quality of content for keyword placement. This will affect your page ranking. Most importantly, your site won’t appeal to visitors. For a FREE EBOOK detailing the fastest way to the top of the search engine, visit:
http://www.1StepSystemSuccessSecrets.com/affh/tooleey or http://www.ride-to-the-top.com and

http://www.1stepsystem-premier.com

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s address why optimization is important. For starters, who doesn’t want more business, right? I mean business is money and almost everyone I know enjoys making more money.
So, with that being said, Manchester SEO is an essential part of the online community when it comes to actually making money.

The reason I’m saying this is because the web is a vast place.
Whatever your company sells or offers as a service is more than likely offered by many others. Some of your competitors have probably already had their site optimized. My point being is that there are probably 100′s if not 1000′s of sites ahead of you in the search engines.

A professional Manchester SEO can rank your site and bring EFFECTIVE traffic your way. Let’s use an example. Let’s say you’re selling candles and you want your site to come up in Google when some one types in “candles”.

Now there is definitely some competition going on to rank for that key term, but not a whole lot. You’re competing with roughly 7 million other sites using that term. Now you’re probably saying to yourself 7 million! That’s a lot! It may sound like a lot, but it’s not that bad.

The term “candles” was searched a total of 2,580 times over the last 110 days. This is according to a very accurate tool we use to find key terms to use. Let’s say you rank #1 for that term and you get everyone who searched for that term to click on your site. Now, assuming you get 10% of the total traffic to complete a sale, that is 258 sales.

Assuming a candle is 5 dollars and each person only purchased ONE candle. 5×258 = $1290 Not bad right? The hard part is done. That’s getting people to your site. Now all you have to do is sit back, relax, and watch sales increase. The possibilities are endless!