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Search Engine Strategy Basics
For the most part, there are three basic things you’ll need to do in order to accomplish proper and effective search engine optimization.
- publish keyword-rich content
- establish a beneficial link strategy
Naturally, having software that can help you accomplish those four things quickly and efficiently would be a great asset. So, in addition to exploring each of these areas, we’ll include the best software programs for making each task easier to perform.
Keywords
The core of any SEO strategy is built almost entirely around the group of keywords you choose to target.
The first order of business is to decide which groups of keywords you’ll be utilizing. In most instances, those groups will be either directly or indirectly related to the topic or niche that your website is (or will be) associated with.
Once you’ve established the individual groups of keywords you want to target, you can begin to compile a comprehensive list of top-level phrases that have each of the following characteristics:
- are searched for by thousands of viewers each and every month
- have little or no competition associated with it
The more people who search for the term combined with the least amount of competition associated with it, the more valuable the keyword will be with regard to gaining automatic search engine traffic.
Beyond that, you’ll want to compile lists of secondary keywords. These would still be valuable, but not to the extent that the first top-level list would be.
The main advantage of lower level keywords is the fact that you don’t have to work quite as hard to get definitive search engine recognition. And since you’ll automatically get fairly decent results position, you’ll also receive additional targeted viewer traffic.
To make up for the lack of quality in the keyword itself (in most cases that equates to fewer searches being conducted every month and therefore less competition), you need to work with a much larger quantity of lower-level keywords.
Basically, the results will be just as good as what you experience through top-level keywords. It will just take more keywords to achieve those same results.
Of course, the good news is that there are software programs which can significantly cut down the amount of time it takes to gain content - no matter how many keywords you decide to target (see the next segment on Quality Content).
There are several ways in which you can compile keyword lists. One of the quickest and easiest methods is to use the free online suggestion tool that’s provided by Overture at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/.
Although it will give you a clear indication of how many searches have been performed on any given topic during the previous month, it’s somewhat bare-bones. Plus, there’s no way to easily transfer results from their web page to your independently compiled keyword list.
When you copy and paste the Overture results, you also get the number of times each keyword has been searched. While that might be good for research purposes, you’ll have to manually remove that part of the data in order to wind up with a file that only lists keywords.
Wordtracker at http://www.wordtracker.com, on the other hand, does in fact allow you to save your results with nothing but the keywords listed.
You’ll have to pay to use their online service, but it’s well worth the price. It’s highly effective and offers the most in-depth and accurate capability with regard to real searches that people perform.
Although there are numerous ways you can conduct research using Wordtracker, they will all revolve around the ability to compile keyword lists which are based on the groups of keywords you originally established.
Once you know exactly which keywords you’ll be targeting, you can begin to implement content that will be associated with each of those phrases.
Quality Content
There are numerous reasons why “Content Is King”.
From a viewer’s perspective, content not only invites them to visit your website but encourages them to return on a regular basis.
It’s a relatively simple equation…
They’re looking for valuable information. Give it to them.
From a search engine perspective, content is one of the primary factors in determining just how much weight or importance should be given to any web page.
Unfortunately, this one isn’t quite as simple an equation…
Search engine crawlers gather and index content. Figure out how to make them place your content higher on the results ladder than some other website.
Of course, in order to become King, content needs to be of considerable quality. In order to remain King, content needs to be updated on a fairly regular basis.
Not to mention the fact that you also need to add content (new pages) on a regular basis. If not, whatever ground you initially gain will simply fade away. And so will whatever search ...
