Basic SEO

The basic steps of search engine optimization can and should be carried out by all webmasters as a matter of course. In less competitive markets doing this alone is often all that is required to achieve top search engine rankings.

However, it should be borne in mind that these basic SEO techniques alone won’t be sufficient if you are attempting rank highly for very competitive search terms (keywords) like “SEO” or “internet marketing.”

To rank well in very competitive searches, detailed analysis of the search engine algorithms and competitor pages is required. There are more variables to consider, pages usually need to be tailored for specific SE’s, and it’s generally too complex for the SEO newbie to tackle successfully. It’s far wiser to target the some of the billions of easier keywords.

That said, let’s look at the aspects of SEO that anyone can do:

Keyword Analysis: Identifying The Keywords Your Pages Will Target

You simply MUST get this bit right. Target the wrong words and everything you do from here on out is a complete waste of time.

The first step is to ascertain what key words people interested in your topic are typing into the search engines. From the different keyword phrases that could apply to your page you want to choose 2 or three to target: The main keyword phrase, and 1 or 2 closely related secondary keyword phrases.

In deciding which particular phrases to target, you want to compare the number of searches carried out for that keyword, with the number of competing pages listed in Google or Yahoo search results.

How To Do Keyword Research

If you have not yet created the page and want to use free tools, visit the Google keyword tool first. Type in a few 2 or 3 word phrases that you feel relate to your topic. Tick the box to include synonyms, and then click the “Get More Keywords” button.

By default, results are targeted to English, United States. If you want another region, say English, UK, click the “edit” link, make your selection and run the search again.

Two lists will be returned, one for the keywords you input, and one for synonyms that Google thinks is related to them, under “Additional keywords to consider.”

If you are happy with your lists, click on the “Search Volume” column to sort them into most searched keywords first, and then scroll to the bottom of each set of results and click on the links to download the keyword lists to your PC.

Note: You may find your initial ideas are a bit off base and don’t return the kind of phrases you expected. If that’s the case, simply change some or all of your phrases and get more keyword suggestions.

At this point you may also want to take some of the keyword synonyms and feed them back into the keyword research tool for more ideas.

When you’ve finished, go through your lists deleting irrelevant phrases and selecting the keywords you think are most appropriate that have anywhere between a low and medium to high search volume. We’ll call these your “root keywords.”

Google’s keyword generator doesn’t tell us exactly how many searches are performed for each keyword, so now we need to plug these root keywords into a tool that will.

For this you’ll want a keyword research tool like Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, or WebCEO.

Note: These SEO tools all have free options, if using a paid version you can skip the Google keyword tool and the checking of SERPs mentioned below. I’ve omitted the Yahoo / Overture keyword suggestion tool and others that use its data because although it’s the keyword tool most commonly referred to, it can be very misleading due to the way it groups plurals and some synonyms — in short, it gives inaccurate results in many instances.

I can’t go into great detail on the next part, because it depends on which keyword analyzer you’re using, but basically you want to run a keyword search on each of your root keywords, which will give you a list of longer keyword phrases that incorporate your root words, together with the number of searches performed.

Comparatively speaking, the more words in a keyword phrase, the easier it will be to rank highly for it. Thus, “free internet marketing articles to download” will be vastly easier to rank for than “internet marketing” or even “internet marketing articles.”

However, there’s no point in having high search engine rankings for keywords that are seldom searched.

You can decide for yourself the minimum number of searches a keyword can have to be considered, and in reality it will also depend on your goals. For instance, your plan might be to make lots of pages targeting very easy keywords with few searches (known as “long tail keywords”), looking at the overall amount of traffic you’ll get. Nevertheless, bear in mind that conversion rates on most sales pages are only in the order of 1-2 percent, meaning 100 visitors is only likely to result in a single sale, if that.

Your goal is to find keywords that offer the best compromise between high search volume and low competition.