YO SEO

What is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation?

Why Bother Optimising Your Website for the Search Engines?

Search Engine Optimization is often just called SEO as it easier to say. But SEO itself is a much more complex beast than it’s name suggests.

Website Optimization Is Key To Online Business Success!

If you want your website or blog to rank highly in the search engines then you will have to apply certain criteria to your site or blog and to the links that point to it in order to optimize it so that when search engines find it they think it is the best thing since sliced bread.

If you can do that then you will be rewarded with your site being given a listing which has a high position on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).

The ultimate is Position # 1 on the First Page of Google’s SERPS and that is the holy grail that every aspiring webmaster seeks to achieve for his or her website. Get to that position and you can dominate your market and your competitors.

So what happens if you do not optimize for the search enegines?

Well, the search engines will not know that your site exists and therefore the search engines will not be able to send you any traffic. You will not get any visitors!

Which Search Engines should you Optimise for?

There are only three major search engines that you need to be concerned with and these are listed here in order of importance:

1.      Google

2.      Yahoo

3.      Bing (MSN)

Google is by far the most important and your goal in SEO should be to Get to Position 1 in Google.

Why is Google so Important ?

When it comes to search engine optimization then Google is the one that your should aim to optimize your site for. Why is this? Well Google has many more users than the other 2 major search engines by a big factor and therefore the returns on your effort are going to be greater if you target Google.

It may be easier to rank at Position 1 for both Yahoo and MSN, but Google will bring more visitors (traffic) to your site then these two added together. Also even if you are not actually Position 1 in Google, but close to in position 2 to 5 you may get more traffic than Yahoo and MSN.

The return on your investment is much better if you go for Google search engine optimization. Also note that in pretty much all cases where you see SEO mentioned on the Internet it will always be referring to Google SEO, unless it specifically mentions search engine optimization for MSN or Yahoo.

Google SEO is King!

So whenever we are discussing SEO on this website we will be inherently talking about search engine optimization for Google. Note also that doing SEO for Google will also help optimize your site for the other search engines anyway.

Just one word of caution though before we go on. You should be acutely aware that if you over optimize for Google you might find that Google will penalise your website and drop your listing position down the rankings.

However this over-optimisation will probably have a beneficial effect with the MSN/Yahoo search engines as they are not so far advanced as Google when it comes to detecting over optimized sites and will probably like what you do.

So now you know! Each search engine is different, but Google is the one you need to pay attention to when it comes to SEO.

Make Google Love Your Site

If you get Google to love your site then the benefits can be enormous. It has been estimated that getting that coveted number 1 position will give 10 times more visitor traffic than position 2. And position 2 will have 10 times more traffic than position 3 and so on down through the other positions.

It should be obvious from this that the amount of visitor traffic you will get to your site if you are not listed on the first page of Google is going to be negligible or zero as most surfers who use search engines don’t even look at pages after page 1.

There are normally 10 listings per page in Google, so if you are not in position 10 or above then forget it if you are expecting any visitors form the search engines!

Visitor Traffic is Key to Healthy Online Profits

So to really get any traffic of use you really need to be in the first 3 positions in Google and in some cases position 4 or 5 if traffic levels for your niche are generally quite high.

So when you optimise your site this is what you must aim for. Please note that for popular niches this can take a lot of effort and time to reach. Nothing happens quickly with Google that can be sustained over time, so one of the qualities you will need when being involved with SEO is patience.

However, do your Search Engine Optimisation correctly and Google will love you for it, for a little while at least!

Why You Should Use Google’s Free Keyword Research Tool for SEO

Google has released a new version of the Adwords external Keyword Tool and you should be using it for all your SEO and search engine optimization projects.

This keyword research tool was primarily designed for use by internet marketers who use Google’s Adwords service for their pay-per-click campaigns to make money from click-throughs on their ads in Google’s search engine results pages.

As the name (external) of the tool implies it is available outside of any Adwords account, which means all of us also have access to it. Google’s external Adwords keyword tool is therefore a FREE service that we can all benefit from. And what a great tool it is too!

Where is It?

You can find this keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal or just Google “keyword tool” and it will be the first in the list of sites returned. This is the default keyword tool for the USA.

However if you want a country specific version for different Adwords regions just use your local country version of Google and do the same search, but restrict the pages returned to you country. For instance in the UK use google.co.uk to search for “keyword tool” in UK pages only and you will find it at the top of the results at https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal or you could just change the URL to reflect your local Google version.

What’s New ?

The recent update to Googles external Keyword Tool for Adwords includes an important addition so that now for the first time the tool, when listing keyword results, shows the actual number of times a keyword is searched for.

By displaying Search Volumes for keyword phrases that are actually searched for in their search engines, Google has given us a better estimate of the real scenario of exactly how often a particular keyword phrase or search term is entered by real people using Google for searches.

This is very important news for anyone involved in Keyword Research and SEO on the internet.

Google has the biggest volume of users by far and can generate much more traffic to websites that the other search engines and because of this most search engine optimization is focused on Google SEO.

What’s Changed?

Up until this new releas most internet marketers, webmasters and SEO consultants will have used paid keyword research tools and services such as Keyword Elite, Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and more recently Wordze and to do research and analysis on keywords and keyword phrases.

From the get go these tools and services only ever gathered their information from just a small fraction of the actual searches really performed. In comparison Google obviously has direct access to their own search engines and there can pull in data from a massive number of real searches performed every day.

These other keyword research services extrapolating their data to predict search volumes and at best this is only a vague estimate and the numbers returned could never be considered as particularly.

However these traditional keyword tools were the only way to get any keyword data at all and therefore they were used by most internet marketers as there was no better alternative for search volumes. But now there is!

What’s the Benefit?

The Google Adwords external keyword tool returns keyword search volumes that are not calculated by extrapolating smaller values, but by using realistic numbers from real search volume data available to Google from their own search engine information.

Now if you are doing keyword research you can easily get all the keyword search data you need for you search engine optimization work directly from Google and this is so much more accurate than that which has been provided by all the paid keyword research services.

When doing SEO for a site it is important to know which keywords to rank for to get the traffic you need to your site. Well Google has now given you a free keyword tool that is going to help you out. Initial views are that the search volumes provided are not totally accurate, but that the data you get is going to be of much more value than what has been available in the past.

Another important fact to consider here is that a free version of this keyword tool and therefore the data it provides is also available for each country location, so now keyword search volumes are there for you in whichever country your SEO efforts are focused.

Checkout Google’s new external Adwords Keyword Tool now and have a play with it.

Make it your new SEO keyword tool.