By Anita Campbell

Every business wants to be found. Figuring out how to get your business to show up in the rankings when a potential customer uses a search engine is an art form.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is fast becoming a must-have body of knowledge for business owners. Nearly 91 percent of all Internet users resort to a search engine to find information, according to a recent survey by the non-profit Pew Internet and American Life Project. The question is: how easily can they find your business?

You already could be making costly mistakes, such as a home page that is almost all images and little text, causing your site to have unnecessarily low rankings and little traffic. Or worse, you could be using hidden text and winding up with an every more onerous problem because some search engines ban sites that use tricks to improve rankings.

Whether you are a do-it-yourselfer or you use an outside SEO firm, the more you know the more effective and successful your business can be online. I’ve assembled the five best categories of resources for business owners to learn about SEO and search marketing. To help with this article, I interviewed Jennifer Laycock, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Guide, a website designed specifically for business owners and entrepreneurs.

Conferences and seminars

Attending search engine conferences is the fastest way to learn because it immerses you in the subject. When you are starting out, choose events designed to give well-rounded instruction in basic principles, such as Jill Whalen’s High Rankings seminars.

Don’t go to advanced events intended for industry experts until you first learn the basics — trust me, you will just feel frustrated. However, there is one good reason for a newbie to attend events targeting industry professionals, such as Search Engine Strategies conferences. That’s to find and interview SEO vendors. At no other venue will you find so many search professionals in one place at one time.

Books

There are a few excellent eBooks — downloadable PDF documents — suitable for beginners. The best eBooks typically come with a package of extras, such as lifetime updates, private forums, sometimes even money-back guarantees.

Aaron Wall’s SEO Book
is widely acknowledged as one of the best.

Laycock’s own
Small Business
Guide to Search Engine Marketing is another I would recommend, because it focuses on SEO from the perspective of a business owner who is not a search expert.

Printed books, another possibility, are less expensive ($15 -$30 for printed books versus $75 – $100 for eBooks). The disadvantage is that printed books can get out of date quickly because search constantly changes.

Tactics accepted several years ago, such as doorway pages, today may get your site dropped by search engines. If you opt for a printed book, make sure it is reasonably recent.

Newsletters and blogs

One of the great things about the Web today is that we are lucky to have so many excellent free newsletters and blogs on search. Among newsletters, Jill Whalen’s High Rankings is notable, because she answers real-life questions from readers.

Among blogs designed for business owners, a particularly helpful one is Small Business SEM.
Carston Cumbrowski also has a helpful page of resources for SEO beginners.

Search Engine Land
featuring search guru Danny Sullivan, is a good one to add to your reading list later on as your knowledge builds. It is industry focused, but has the advantage of experts who write on specific topics such as link-building and contextual advertising — not to mention its excellent blogroll of search sites to explore.

Discussion forums

As you begin to learn some of the basics of SEO, you will have questions. Head to discussion forums to get answers. Discussion forums are excellent sounding boards to bounce ideas off of others. Try Webmaster World and Digital Point Forums.

When you first approach a new discussion forum, read and observe for a while before jumping in to participate. Every forum has a “personality” all its own — make sure you feel comfortable. Observing also helps you learn which participants’ advice to trust. Some participants are more knowledgeable than others.

Interactive tools

No article on search for newbies would be complete without mentioning some of the excellent free or low-cost tools available. I have learned a great deal simply through using tools such as:

• WordTracker keyword tool –
  Using relevant keywords in your site content and when purchasing search ads can make all the difference in attracting visitors who actually buy.
  You may already know the obvious keywords, but WordTracker helps you broaden your choices to identify non-obvious terms. A free trial or a single day’s subscription costs around $8.
• Analytics programs — These help you understand which parts of your site visitors use most, such as which navigation links they click on most. Armed with that knowledge, you can make changes to your site to emphasize the most important elements to increase sales and newsletter signups.
  Google Analytics is a robust free analytics tool. For those who run Google AdWords campaigns and do not
  like the idea of giving sensitive site data to the same company you purchase ads from, ClickTracks is an alternative. ClickTracks offers a free version called ClickTracksAppetizer.
• SEO Moz page strength tool
  – This interactive tool gives you a quick snapshot of some of the factors search engines consider when determining site rankings. Don’t take it as the complete word on ranking factors, but do have fun with it.

Anita Campbell is a writer, speaker and radio talk show
host who closely follows trends in the small business market at her site, Small BusinessTrends.

Related posts:

1. How to Learn Search Engine Optimization
2. What is Search Engine Optimization (seo)?
3. How to optimize my Web Site

By Anita Campbell

Every business wants to be found. Figuring out how to get your business to show up in the rankings when a potential customer uses a search engine is an art form.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is fast becoming a must-have body of knowledge for business owners. Nearly 91 percent of all Internet users resort to a search engine to find information, according to a recent survey by the non-profit Pew Internet and American Life Project. The question is: how easily can they find your business?

You already could be making costly mistakes, such as a home page that is almost all images and little text, causing your site to have unnecessarily low rankings and little traffic. Or worse, you could be using hidden text and winding up with an every more onerous problem because some search engines ban sites that use tricks to improve rankings.

Whether you are a do-it-yourselfer or you use an outside SEO firm, the more you know the more effective and successful your business can be online. I’ve assembled the five best categories of resources for business owners to learn about SEO and search marketing. To help with this article, I interviewed Jennifer Laycock, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Guide, a website designed specifically for business owners and entrepreneurs.

Conferences and seminars

Attending search engine conferences is the fastest way to learn because it immerses you in the subject. When you are starting out, choose events designed to give well-rounded instruction in basic principles, such as Jill Whalen’s High Rankings seminars.

Don’t go to advanced events intended for industry experts until you first learn the basics — trust me, you will just feel frustrated.  However, there is one good reason for a newbie to attend events targeting industry professionals, such as Search Engine Strategies conferences.  That’s to find and interview SEO vendors.  At no other venue will you find so many search professionals in one place at one time.

Books

There are a few excellent eBooks — downloadable PDF documents — suitable for beginners.  The best eBooks typically come with a package of extras, such as lifetime updates, private forums, sometimes even money-back guarantees.

Aaron Wall’s SEO Book
is widely acknowledged as one of the best.

Laycock’s own
Small Business
Guide to Search Engine Marketing is another I would recommend, because it focuses on SEO from the perspective of a business owner who is not a search expert.

Printed books, another possibility, are less expensive ($15 -$30 for printed books versus $75 – $100 for eBooks). The disadvantage is that printed books can get out of date quickly because search constantly changes.

Tactics accepted several years ago, such as doorway pages, today may get your site dropped by search engines. If you opt for a printed book, make sure it is reasonably recent.

Newsletters and blogs

One of the great things about the Web today is that we are lucky to have so many excellent free newsletters and blogs on search.  Among newsletters, Jill Whalen’s High Rankings is notable, because she answers real-life questions from readers.

Among blogs designed for business owners, a particularly helpful one is Small Business SEM.
Carston Cumbrowski also has a helpful page of resources for SEO beginners.

Search Engine Land
featuring search guru Danny Sullivan, is a good one to add to your reading list later on as your knowledge builds. It is industry focused, but has the advantage of experts who write on specific topics such as link-building and contextual advertising — not to mention its excellent blogroll of search sites to explore.

Discussion forums

As you begin to learn some of the basics of SEO, you will have questions.  Head to discussion forums to get answers.  Discussion forums are excellent sounding boards to bounce ideas off of others. Try Webmaster World and Digital Point Forums.

When you first approach a new discussion forum, read and observe for a while before jumping in to participate.  Every forum has a “personality” all its own — make sure you feel comfortable.  Observing also helps you learn which participants’ advice to trust. Some participants are more knowledgeable than others.

Interactive tools

No article on search for newbies would be complete without mentioning some of the excellent free or low-cost tools available.  I have learned a great deal simply through using tools such as:

• WordTracker keyword tool –
  Using relevant keywords in your site content and when purchasing search ads can make all the difference in attracting visitors who actually buy.
  You may already know the obvious keywords, but WordTracker helps you broaden your choices to identify non-obvious terms. A free trial or a single day’s subscription costs around $8.
• Analytics programs — These help you understand which parts of your site visitors use most, such as which navigation links they click on most. Armed with that knowledge, you can make changes to your site to emphasize the most important elements to increase sales and newsletter signups.
  Google Analytics is a robust free analytics tool.  For those who run Google AdWords campaigns and do not
  like the idea of giving sensitive site data to the same company you purchase ads from, ClickTracks is an alternative.  ClickTracks offers a free version called ClickTracksAppetizer.
• SEO Moz page strength tool
  – This interactive tool gives you a quick snapshot of some of the factors search engines consider when determining site rankings.  Don’t take it as the complete word on ranking factors, but do have fun with it.

Anita Campbell is a writer, speaker and radio talk show
host who closely follows trends in the small business market at her site, Small BusinessTrends.

Related posts:

1. How to Learn SEO – Search Engine Optimization
2. What is Search Engine Optimization (seo)?
3. How to optimize my Web Site

A specialized process that involves analyzing your website’s underlying code, architecture and visible content and making enhancements so that the site is returned more prominently in the natural search results of spider-based search engines such as Google and Yahoo!

The traffic that can be generated by the correct keyword phrases, submitting to appropriate human-edited directories, generating a sufficient amount of inbound links and making sure your web site structure is search friendly can make the difference between success and failure.

Source From Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity

What is an SEO campaign?
A search engine optimization campaign will identify, research and target the actual phrases that are being used in a search engine to find your business or service, and work towards making your site the most relevant for the most appropriate phrases for each major search engine.

What is the SEO Process?
First we analyze your website and your business.

We help you to choose the key phrases that target the right audience that is likely to use your products or services, and the level of competition for each of these selected phrases in the search engine results pages.

We optimize the structural technical requirements of your site to be compatible with search engine crawlers and website visitors.

Off page factors such as link building and directory submissions are then implemented over an agreed upon time frame. The extent of your ‘off-page’ campaigns will depend heavily on the level of competition for the selected phrases.

Your web site is then carefully monitored by analyzing your Web site Traffic. The analysis will provide us feedback on what phrases are generating traffic, and whether the traffic is resulting in the desired outcome [sales, leads, e-mail subscriptions etc.]. All of this will be reported either daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

Our services are geared towards generating highly targeted traffic for your business, with an emphasis on converting this traffic into sales. Potential customers are searching for your business at this very moment – let us help you place your web site right under their nose.

Does SEM include organic?
Yes, search engine marketing can help you target customers searching for your products and services through paid search listings.

Related posts:

1. How to Learn Search Engine Optimization
2. How to Learn SEO – Search Engine Optimization
3. About Us