First, the jargon.
Back link: this is where a website links to your site; i.e. Site X has a link pointing to your site, so your site has a back link from Site X
One-way link: where only site X links to your site, but your site does NOT link to site X
Reciprocal link: where two sites have swapped links so they both link to each other
Anchor text: the text/description that is associated with your link on the back link site.
Page rank: Google’s proprietary system for assigning a value (from 1-10 where 10 is best) to the combined number and the quality of back links pointing to your site. Often abbreviated to “PR”
Search Engine Results Page (SERP): we use the terms “SERPs” to refer to the search engine results page, and the position of a site on it. So if a website has a SERP of 3, it means for a particular keyword search it appears on page 3 of the results. Note that some people use SERP to refer to the position on the page, so that a SERP of 3 may also mean the site appears at #3 on the first page.

Check you page rank and backlinks now! Quick and easy Page rank checking at http://www.quickpagerank.com/

So, what does it all mean?
In the online marketing world, Page Rank means a lot. Increasing a website’s PR is one of the major foci of online marketing.

The goal is to get as high a PR as possible for your site. PR is measured by a proprietary algorithm belonging to Google. What Google does is measure the quality of the site linking to your site. How does it do this? By measuring, amongst other things, that site’s PR. There is also evidence that the degree of relatedness of content is also important. If you site is an e.g. Real estate website, then a back link from a site dealing in scuba gear may not be worth much to you. But back links from sites that have good PR and are related to you (e.g. by industry or by region/location) are well worth pursuing. By increasing the number and quality of links pointing to your site, over time you will increase your PR.

Note also that many other engines also use back links as part of their SERP algorithm. Some may not be as sophisticated as Google, but many measure the number of back links in their index and use this as part of how they rank your site under a particular search.

You can check your back links and page rank at http://www.quickpagerank.com/

So how do I improve my Page Rank?
Firstly, make sure your site has good quality content. Make other sites and their owners want to link to you. Then get out on the web and start making propositions to other website owners in related fields.

Ideally, you will get links from sites that have a higher Page Rank than yours, but this isn’t always possible. What you should look for are sites that:
Have good content
Are relevant or related to your site
Have some Page Rank already (i.e. not brand new)
Also, older domains may do better than newer domains

Some of the do nots.
Be wary of FFA (Free For All) sites; often these do you no good and can actually do you damage as they tend to be viewed as spam sites by some engines.
Don’t “spam” your anchor text; make it relevant and don’t overload it with keywords or repetitions.
Vary your anchor text. Use different variations or re-writes of anchor text on different sites.
Make sure the page where your link will be placed has been indexed by the search engines. If it has not been indexed (or can’t be for whatever reason) then you won’t get any benefit from it.
Make sure that the pages you place links on have limits to the number of links listed. Single figures are ideal, but not always possible.

Should I really use a META tag? Really?

The new answer is yes, you should use META tags on your site. The keyword META tag is still not used by search engines but when submitting to directories, a valuable use of time by the way, the META keywords are used in many cases to automatically fill in the keywords for your site in that directory.

Even more amazingly, the META description tag has soared in importance. How so you ask? Google has started showing the META description in its search results when certain criteria are met.

The criteria being used appears to be very simple, unlike many of the other things Google does. When the keyword or search terms appear in the META description, the META description is used instead of the snippet of text containing the keyword on your page.

For example, if you do a search in Google for ‘Big Oak Liverpool SEO’ you will see our site in the first listing and the description used is our META description tag. All three words being searched for are also in our META description.

If you do a search for ‘big oak client’ you will see the first listing is pulling a snippet of text from the page itself. Since ‘client’ is not in our META description, it uses a snippet of text from the page where all three words can be found.

Where should you use a META description tag?

Every website should use a META description tag on the home page at the very least. This way you can say exactly what you want and not worry the snippet of text being used is not best choice for your message. What this really means is Google is giving us some measure of control.

And now that we have this knowledge and control, how best to use it? This allows us to take off our search engine optimizer hats and don our search engine marketer hats. Think of what you can say in the brief sentence that will entice a user to click your link rather than the one above or below. You can put your phone number in the META description for starters or how about being really creative and offer a discount or advertise a sale. Tell them your unique selling proposition. It should be a one sentence phrase already in your head. The only caveat to remember is that your META description will only show if the search term is in the META description. While this can be tricky, it can be done with some forethought. You can do this for all of your targeted pages and have dozens of marketing messages.

Use the META description wisely: target your market and entice your customers. Do not abuse this control and put outlandish, untrue or slanderous statements as I am sure Google will be watching; and if this technique is abused the META description may have seen its last search result this time.

Pay Per Click (Sheffield PPC) advertising is the fastest growing segment of online advertising. According to Forbes Magazine, by the year 2008, companies will spend $8 Billion a year on Sheffield PPC advertising.

No wonder, almost every keyword search, especially related to products and services that are for sale in market, yields host of sponsored links in the top, side and bottom column of all the major search engines. This clearly indicates the growth and popularity of Sheffield PPC advertising among online marketers.

The growth paired with success is always threatened by increased competition. Sheffield PPC advertising is no exception. The number of firms offering Sheffield PPC management services has mushroomed in recent times.

According to a survey by Reprise Media, not only is the Sheffield PPC advertising market widening for the past three years, the growing interest in Sheffield PPC advertising has caused a rise in keyword costs of some markets by as much as 25 percent. This means the average cost per click (CPC) rate is also increasing rapidly.

Factors fueling growth of Sheffield PPC Advertising

Sheffield PPC advertising is helping many businesses to grow and thrive. Pay Per Click (Sheffield PPC) advertising offers a new and cost effective way to attract potential customers to your business. Besides others, some exclusive factors propelling to the growth of Sheffield PPC are:

Geo Targeting Customers: Pay Per Click allows you to publish your ads in selected geographical area. This helps you in regulating the flow of your investments in right directions and to reach only the right customers.

Organic advertising on internet does not have that edge of limiting publications geographically. Pay per click in that case becomes a cost effective choice for marketers who want to limit their web advertising to particular region(s) state(s) or even nation(s)

Instant Result: Organic listing of website at top slots of search engine can take months, whereas the Sheffield PPC advertising can place you at top within minutes. This means you get nearly instant traffic.

Pre-Qualified Customers: The best part of this advertising campaign is that you dont have to look out for your customers but your potential customers will find you. Prospects use certain keywords or phrases to search for your products and services on internet. You need to have those keywords in your Sheffield PPC advertising campaign and bid to ensure that your ads get top spot in the sponsored listing of search engines.

Compelling Ad Copies: Small and smart is the mantra here. Creating Sheffield PPC ad copies is a challenge for any copywriter because in the space of a very limited number of characters you need to appropriately position your product/service for your customer.

That tiny ad needs to be compelling enough to attract the customer and encourage him to click. So your professional Sheffield PPC advertising company or in house Sheffield PPC management team must highlight the key benefits of your product/service, place in the keywords, mention special offers if any and put in a call to action, all in the space of those few characters. Its tougher than it sounds!

Plus, strategically designed ad copies can filter unwanted clicks and ensure qualified visitors on your website.

Tracking The Success: Using various analytics tool, you can check how people are responding to your ads in both qualitative and quantitative way. The measurability factor attached with pay per click campaigns makes it a favorite advertising strategy for online marketers.

You can exactly calculate metrics like click through ratio, cost per click and cost per conversion, ensuring almost complete control on your advertising budget.

Flexibility: Sheffield PPC campaigns can accommodate any budget. If your budget is low you can still launch an effective Sheffield PPC advertising campaign by incorporating less popular but still relevant keywords. Less popular keywords are less expensive.

But in case your goal is to maximize visibility in top search engines you can have wider range of keywords from most popular and expensive keywords to least popular and less expensive keywords.

Sheffield PPC advertising campaigns, if designed professionally can propel business growth. It definitely is a complicated task that requires constant professional attention and analysis.
Every click from visitors is costing you money, hence to get optimum results and better ROI, ensure your Sheffield PPC campaign is being handled by professional Sheffield PPC Advertising Company.

KEYWORDS

First and foremost, search engines look for keywords and keyword phases in which to index your webpages. So you must prepare each page for the search engines. Thus, when you are writing copy for your website, keep four or five keywords that you want to emphasize for that webpage — then weave the words into the copy.

However, don’t blatantly use the keywords over and over again — or as they say — use keyword stuffing — or the search engines will penalize you for it. And, needless to say, your readers will click away, if the flow of the copy is so obviously stuffed with your keywords that it jeopardizes the quality of the copy. Quality of copy first, keywords second.

META-TAGS

There are several meta-tags that the search engines look at. The two most important are:

1. Title
2. Description

Both the Title and the Description Tags should have your most relevant keywords. Now, the keywords meta-tags is not used by Google, but the other search engines may utilize them. Are they important? It really depends who you are talking too. Some say, by putting the keywords into your webpage you are giving your competitors the edge. Others, feel that if your competitors want to know what keywords you are using they will find a way. (I’m of the latter’s thinking.)

LINKING

Linking is another important factor in Search Engine Optimization. Without proper linking — or establishing a linking campaign — your great site may not be found by the search engines. You need to find ways in which to allow human visitors, beside yourself, to find you.

INBOUND LINKS

Inbound links — links pointing to your website is very good for search engine rankings, and gives more ways for human visitors to find your website.

How do you get inbound links? Write articles and place them on article directories for ezine publishers, newsletter publishers, or bloggers to pick up.

Blogs is another way in which you can get one-way links to your site. Again, that same article you wrote for the article directories can be put in your blog and then submitted to a Blog Directory. Just do a search on Goggle for “Blog Directory” and you should find enough to keep you busy.

OUTBOUND LINKS

An outbound link is a url that you have on your site that points to another website. An outbound link on your site means that you feel the link has quality content for your readers — and you are redirecting them to it from your site.

So, what does outbound linking offer you? You can see what an outbound link can do for another website, right? Well, by carefully linking to other sites– relevant sites — you can increase your own relevancy.

So be careful who you link too — because outbound links figures into the entire ranking algorithm process — or restated — your page ranking.

To conclude, this overview is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Leeds SEO. It’s not an easy task, and it is time-comsuming. Will you see a quick return moneywise. No, but Leeds SEO will eventually give you the money you seek, as well as, offer you longevity. And isn’t that what you want–longevity? I know I sure do. I would rather be the tortoise, and not the hare — and slowly, but methodically move in the direction of my dream of a home career. If you take the wrong shortcuts, you can lose your dream and your home career. So, is Leeds SEO worth it? I think so. How about you.

To start, the main keyword research tools that are found on the market today are Wordtracker, Overture Keyword Tool and Trellian Keyword Discovery. Now I bet many of you are pulling your hair out over which keywords are going to be suitable for optimisation. What makes it probably even more stressful is the varying results between the three different keyword tools i.e. one keyword tool may show a particular keyword to be very good, while another tool may suggest a whole different result for the same keyword. Well stop stressing right now! The truth is that we dont really know how accurate these keyword tools are and we should only use their search volume figures as an indication as to whether a keyword is popular amongst search engine users.

Lets say a keyword phrase, dog products, has a search volume of 5,000 searches per month on the Overture Keyword Tool. To make an assumption that dog products is a good keyword for optimisation, based ONLY on the Overture figure, would be a very bad assumption. However, it gives us a rough idea of the search volume for that particular keyword. The next step would be to use Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery to see if a similar amount of search volume is present for dog products (remember to convert searches for each tool to a common time frame i.e. monthly or daily). If we have a very low search volume in BOTH Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery, then I would be very skeptical about using dog products for optimisation. The whole idea is to get at least two of the three keyword tools to reflect reasonable / high search volumes before considering that keyword to be suitable for optimisation. If you have all three keyword tools returning reasonable / high search volumes for dog products, then the chances are that this keyword is reasonable / high in search volume and definitely worth considering for optimisation.

Once a good set of keywords have been agreed upon through the use of the keyword tools, you should then focus on the keywords that have a low / reasonable amount of competing web pages. There is no point trying to compete for a keyword that has 1,000,000 web pages in competition for it. If you are good at Leeds SEO then you could achieve high ranks for that keyword, but it would require a lot of time and investment which could be spent on better things. The lower the competition is, then the more chance of achieving higher ranks.

To recap, there is no indication to say that keyword tools are 100% accurate. Whilst the reseller of the tool may suggest otherwise, I highly doubt it. The results should be taken like a grain of salt as they are only useful to give you an idea as to what the search volume might be like for a particular keyword (high, moderate or low). With each tool obtaining its results using different algorithms, in some cases their results will not support each other. Provided you use two of the keyword tools to investigate the search volume for keywords, you should be able to make a good decision as to whether a keyword might be worth optimising for. With that in mind, it would also be wise to use your common sense to determine if a keyword is one that YOU would actually use in a search. Otherwise, what would be the point of optimisation in the first place?

The first step in the process of keyword selection is finding the right keywords. There is a free tool available on overture for keyword selection, the url is:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Overture is the company that handles Yahoos pay-per-click advertising and other programs. This tool will tell you how many times any given keywords were searched for during the period one or two months prior. It can give you a very good idea of what keywords or keyword phrases to optimize your site for by using the free tool above.

You should always try to mix up the popularity of the keywords you choose. The most searched keyword or phrase is important to optimize your website for, but you should choose some lesser searched phrases, as well. This should make it easier for your prospective customers to find you. The lesser searched keywords and phrases are not optimized for as often as the most searched terms and will be much easier for your company to rank well for them.

Once you know what your main keywords are, you need to take one or two keywords and create a page of content based on the keywords you chose. You can do this by writing information on your products. If you offer furniture and hard wood furniture is one of the keyword phrases you have chosen, you should write a page on the quality of the wood you use in your furniture products. By using the term hard wood furniture as often as possible, you will be able to show the search engines why you should be ranked for that term. Feel free to scatter your other main keywords throughout the content you write for your website. This can only help you obtain good rankings for those keywords. You must create a page of content for every one or two keywords you want to rank well for.

Once you have content written for your keywords, it is important to have a solid linking structure for the interior of your website. Search Engines look at exterior and interior links to figure out what is important to your customers and help them find you easier. In English, this means that you will rank better by using the correct words inside the hyperlinks used on your website. These words are given extra weight by search engines by being used inside a link. You should include a link to another content page inside of every content page you write that points to a separate content or product page inside of your website.

The last, and possibly the most important, piece of your search engine optimization puzzle must be the exterior links pointing to your website. Major search engines, especially Google, put a very large focus on the words that are used to link to your website from other web pages. It is also important to obtain links from authority sites. A relevant sites link is worth much more than a site that has nothing to do with what your company does. By following the simple steps above, you will be on your way to better search engine rankings for the most important keywords.

This is because if you do not know the right keywords, you cannot popularize your site as well. For, search engines will never locate the website without the right keywords in their top search results. So maintaining a list of right keywords is a must for you. And the keyword services would enable you to find the right keywords that would also help you maintain a high rank with the major search engines.

The keywords services enable you to improve your website by sending you the most relevant keywords for your niche market. Generally, people spend hours in researching about the keyword, finding and matching with their websites. But by obtaining an online keyword service you can heavily save on your time. And more to your joy, these keywords services are available quite easily today. You can leave every thing related to the keyword research to these service providers. A number of websites offer you to help in your keyword search.

The procedure of obtaining the keyword service is very simple. You have to fill up a form and submit with important details about your website. With in 24 hour of the submission, the keyword service consultant will contact you. The keyword service is aimed at providing you with the best keywords that play a vital role to boost your website ranking. The consultant will discuss every detail about your website.

A team of internet experts will device a strategy to search the keywords for your website. All the brain storming about possibilities of finding the best key words is done by these people. The professionals closely work on your website. The keyword services aim at monitoring the web traffic coming your way. This makes them recognize the fact about what type of traffic you have. Accordingly the keywords are searched.

The keyword service providers monitor the links of your competitors as well. They find the keywords being used for their web page search. Also the meta-tags contain some extremely useful keywords. The services use online tools to search the related keywords. Most widely used online keyword searching tool is a word tracker. This enables anyone to find the keywords and several terms containing that keyword. This is because most searches are not the single keyword searches.

The top keyword searches are conducted by using online keyword tools and programs. They also send you a statistical analysis of the keywords being searched related to your website. You get valuable keyword finding tips as well. You can hire a keyword service comfortably. And the service charge will depend upon the number of keywords you want.

So, the keyword service will take away all the worries from you by giving you the most beneficial keywords.

I have a page of my backpacking site optimized for the term “dirtbagging.” I think I get half the world traffic for that keyword, but that only means ten visitors a month. I was new to online marketing when I put up that page. Obviously you need decent keyword demand to get much traffic, but demand is just one factor.

My Keyword Advice

1. Make sure there is enough total demand for a keyword. This will vary according to the nature of your site. If you are making a few cents per visitor an average, you need more traffic than sites that average a dollar per visitor. I won’t optimize for a keyword that is searched less than a few hundred times per month.

2. Look at keyword demand/supply ratios. Last month there were 289,000 searches for “fishing,” but with 35 million results showing up on a Google search for the term, can you compete? Probably not. A Keyword term like “bass fishing tips,” with 3,700 searches, and 31,000 results is a more likely winner.

3. Consider total supply. Google shows 300 results for “dirtbagging,” 15 times the 20 monthly searches for the term. Still, it is easy to get on the first page of results for the term. A keyword with a demand of a million, and a million search results has a better ratio, but can you really get on the first page of search results? Whatever the ratio, you have to be able to compete against the total supply. Nobody will find you on the tenth page of results.

4. Consider the type of keyword. Good search engine placement is one thing, but what type of visitor are you getting? Who’s more likely to buy something or click on your affiliate links, a searcher for “fishing stories,” or “fishing poles?” You’d probably make more money with the second term, even if it had half the traffic.

5. Look for keyword variations. My site www.IncreaseBrainpower.com was optimized for “brain power.” I later found there was even more traffic for “brainpower.” I have since optimized for both. By the way, both spellings are in the dictionary. Look for odd search phrases too, but be careful about optimizing for misspellings and bad-grammar keywords, if it might hurt the reputation of your site.

5. Consider the value of keyword ads. If you rely partly on pay-per click advertising, like Google’s Adsense program, for revenue, you may want to consider the ads that will be diplayed for a given keyword. Ads for “surveilance cameras,” pay four times as much per click as those for “hidden cameras.”

6. Consider your interest and expertise in the topic represented by the keyword. Do you want to write a page on that topic? Can you deliver what a searcher of that term is looking for? Giving real value while doing something you enjoy – that’s my final keyword advice.

Easy right? However, you need to find the best keywords to invite more traffic in your search engine. How? Easy, you just have to choose the right keyword for every entry in your search engine. Want to know more about keyword advertising? Read on and find out.

Search engine ranking are improved if you put more attention on the keywords that you place over every entry in your search engines. Keywords are very important as it leads the search engines to your website. By choosing the right keywords, you will be inviting more traffic to your website resulting to more income. But how are you going to find the best keyword for your website? There many tools you can use. Continue reading and find out.

Write down every possible keyword to your business. You should carefully analyze each keywords and make sure that what you will choose can relate the product and the company that your are advertising. Ask some people like friends and relatives about the keywords that suites every details of your search engines. Ask them what they would search if they are looking for a particular brand.

Try avoiding words that are common, you need to focus your keyword to be more specific. You will have more costumers if you will be choosing specific words. The costumers will always find its way to your site if specific words are used.

When you finally have your list of possible keywords, find out which among them is the most popular. Focus more on the search engine optimization on the keywords selected. There are heaps of good tolls you can use for your search engine business.

You should also remember that most of the people have the chance to misspell words. You also have to prepare special entry for these. Include misspelled word to take the chance inviting more traffic in your website.

You can be an affiliate to most of the sites available on the net. Make sure that the site you chose will help you gain more fame in this business. Sometimes instead of gaining, you loose because of the chosen affiliate. Make sure to check the background of your affiliated website before you can submit your entries there.

Use a tool that will show the related searches to the term and how many times the term is being used in a month. You can also use free software. Make sure that the chosen free software will provide the following features: keyword suggestion, misspelled terms, web explorer, keyword builder, keyword organizer, and site and link popularity.

These are the tools you can use for your keyword advertising. Make sure that you have read the whole articles carefully. This will not only bring you fame in the business but it will let you gain more money than what you ever expected.

Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a “pretty” website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site…after all, isn’t that what you want.

1. Not using keywords effectively.

This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.

2. Repeating the same keywords.

When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites.

How many times have you heard or read that “this is the Internet and it’s ok” to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don’t do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.

4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.

Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as “sex”, the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn’t have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.

5. Keyword stuffing.

Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the “alt=” HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text.

You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn’t hurt. Wrong…. Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.

7. Relying on tiny text.

This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.

8. Assuming all search engines are the same.

Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Using free web hosting.

Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.

10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.

Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.

This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.

Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.