SEO KEYWORDS

Keyword Research

Before you can start optimizing your site for the search engines, you must first know which terms you want to target. A good start would be to choose 3 or 4 keywords you would like your website to rank well for. With these keywords in your mind you can then set a goal to rank in the top 10 results on Google for each of them (we refer to Google because if you can rank well there, you'll rank well on the other search engines). These keywords can be either broad or specific, but you'll want to study our list of pros and cons of each before choosing.

Broad Keywords

A broad keyword is one that many people search for, because they may only have a vague idea of what they're looking for. Broad keywords tend to be very short and aren't very specific (e.g. "shoes" or "sports"). These keywords are difficult to rank #1 for because so many other websites might have an article or two that mention shoes. However, if you can rank well for a broad keyword, you will be receiving a great deal of traffic.
Summary: Hard to rank for, but worth it in the long run. We recommend that beginners only choose a broad keyword if their industries are not very competitive.

Specific Keywords

A specific keyword is something that contains many adjectives or words that make the search very targeted. The people doing these types of searches know exactly what they want (e.g. "used black high heel shoes"). These keywords are much less competitive and are easier to rank for on search engines. The downside is that they receive a great deal less volume of searches per month. In terms of traffic, you will need to have several #1 rankings for specific keywords to equal one #1 ranking broad keyword.
Summary: Easier to rank for and it's highly targeted traffic. The only downside is that the number of visitors you will receive is relatively low.

Unique or Branded Keywords

These are the words that are specific to only your company. They are one of the most easiest ways to get traffic. However, some companies will release a new product, with a unique name, and then forget to optimize for that keyword on their website. Their SEO savvy competitors can then pick up the slack and take over the top rankings for these terms. If you have a popular brand or product, make sure that you have optimized for these freebie keywords.

Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research tools are 2 parts voodoo magic and 1 part hard statistic. This is partly due to Google not releasing actual numbers and partly due to overeager SEO Tool developers trying to sell their products. Because there is such a sizable uncertainty in all keyword research tools, it is best to use as many different sources as you can,. Even with multiple sources, you should only take the information you gather as a recommendation, rather than a fact.
Yahoo has been releasing their keyword search information for years, and many tools are based off of this specific data. We've collected a wide variety of helpful tools that will give you a general idea of which keywords you should target when making and optimizing your websites.

Picking a Short List

To put the optimizing tactics that we teach to good use, we recommend that you try to target no more than 2 or 3 keyword phrases per page. A common mistake by many SEO beginners is to stuff 500 different keywords on one page and wait for the #1 rankings to roll in. That might have worked 10 years ago, but the algorithms that search engines use these days are much more sophisticated and are not tricked by this. That's why it's best to start small, and be concise with the keywords that you choose. New sites in particular will find it nearly impossible to rank well for many keyword phrases upon first starting out.

SEO Tools

There are a lot of repetitive tasks to be done when optimizing your site for the search engines. To make your life easier, we've compiled a list of the most popular SEO Tools (nearly all 100% free) and categorized them into the following:

• Keyword Discovery - Find popular keywords that your site should be targeting.
• Keyword Volume - Estimate how much search traffic a specific keyword receives each month.
• Keyword Density - Analyze how well a specific webpage is targeting a keyword.
• Backlink Trackers - Keep track of how many sites are linking to you.
• Site Popularity - Determine how popular your site is on the internet.
• Keyword Rankings - Track of your site's rankings for a keyword in the search engines.
• Firefox Addons - Install these addons to turn your browser into an SEO research powerhouse.

Keyword Discovery

Before you can begin to optimize your site for search engines, you must first know which keywords you are going after. Use these tools to find which things people are searching for in your industry!

• Google Adwords - Google's tool is probably the easiest to use and maybe the best if you think about the fact that Google is the most used search engine in the world (meaning they have access to the most data).
• AdCenter Keyword Group Detection - Microsoft's unique tool that will analyze a word or phrase that you give it and determine related phrases.
• Term Extractor - This tool will take a URL that you give it and return the relevant keywords from that page. It might be smart to insert an article about your industry and see what keywords they're using.
• KeyCompete - This program finds out what terms a site is advertising on with their Pay Per Click campaigns. Let them continue to pay for those keywords while you work on ranking #1 in the search engines and getting all your traffic for free!
• Popular Searches - If you have no idea what you want to have your site be about, consider using this tool which keeps track of the most popular search terms overall.

Keyword Volume

Almost as important as knowing what people are searching for is determining how many people are searching for it. Use these tools to get a rough estimate of the number of people searching for a keyword or phrase.

• Google Adwords External Tool - This has become a lot more helpful, as it now displays the actual volume of searches in a month.
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool - This tool uses wordtracker's API to get the estimated number of searches a keyword receives on each search engine (Google, Microsft, Yahoo).

Keyword Density

• Term Target - This tool takes a URL and the keyword you're attempting to target and returns a letter score (A-F) on how well you have done. Fun, but it's hard to determine exactly how accurate it is as the search engines have not released their formulas for dterming how relevant pages are for a given keyword.

Backlink Tracker

• Site Explorer - Yahoo's extensive backlink tracker tool. It has become the first choice of many who like to keep an eye on who's linking to them and how many links they have.
• Keyword Ranking - Digitalpoint's keyword tracking tool also has an option for you to look at how many backlinks your site has. It's a little hard to find, but it's there.
• Google "link:" query prepend - By typing "link:" followed by a domain name like espn.com, you can see a sample of backlinks that Google knows link to that site. It should be noted that this is only a sample, not a complete list.
• Domain Stats - Looks at the top three search engines to see how many backlinks to your site are showing up in for each.
• Backlink Analyzer - Currently in beta, this is something that you have to install on your computer. It is a computer application that does not run through a website and you can feel safer that no one is spying on your data.

Site Popularity

• Alexa - Using toolbars installed on people's browsers, Alexa measures how popular your site is compared to every other site on the web. It tends to be accurate only for sites in the top 100,000.
• Trifecta - Determines how strong your page is based on several factors, such as: age of domain, page rank, backlinks and a few more metrics.

Keyword Rankings

• Rank Checker - Keeps track of your ranks in the search engines without sharing it with anyone but yourself. However, you do have to download it and install it to your computer.
• Keyword Rankings - One of the first popular keyword trackers out there. It will tell you your daily, weekly, and monthly changes for each term that you enter. It also has a nice graph feature so you can see your progress graphically!
• Rank Checker - A very unique name, and it does what it says.

Firefox Addons

• SEO for FireFox - An extension for your browser that changes your Google search results into MIT dissertation. Well maybe not that awesome, but it really does give you a lot of information relevant to why certain sites are showing up in the top 10 results of Google and what kind of competition you'd experience trying to get into those ranks. Also a nice way to find sites that are using the nofollow attribute.
• Greasemonkey - Used by more advanced users who would like to create their own scripts or use other Greasemonkey scripts for SEO purposes.

Other

• Google Analytics - Although this isn't really related to SEO, Google Analytics has a section that displays all the search terms that your visitors used to get to your site.
• Advanced Google Searches - A bunch of advanced Google searches that are done automatically with this nifty little tool.
• Crawl Test - Looks at a given URL to check for any common problems that might prevent your site being crawled properly by a search engine.
• Google Webmaster Tools - A decent collection of tools from Google that also will notify you if your website is being penalized (if you verify yourself as the site owner).
• SEOToolbox - A bunch of random tools from Seomoz.

SEO Link Building with Web Content Secrets

1. It's the timeless question: how do you get other sites to link to you? The most commonly discussed ways are reciprocal linking (swapping links) and buying links. Yet there's another important tool for building links that should be a part of your toolbox: distributing content in exchange for one-way inbound links. Comparison with Other Linking Methods Reciprocal Linking: The big advantage of content distribution over swapping links is that the links built are one-way, and therefore presumably more valuable. Of course, reciprocal links still have value, but relying primarily on them might hamper your SEO efforts. Indirect Reciprocal Links: I link my site A to your site, so you link your site to my site B. The problems are that this can be a lot of work, and also, Google can detect indirect links if you do it more than once with the same group of sites, which might make your linking arrangements look like a link farm. Paid Links: The problem with paid links is  the costs add up;
2.   search engines are getting better and better at discounting paid links. According to Matt Cutts' blog, "I wouldn't be surprised if search engines begin to take stronger action against link buying in the near future...link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext)."

Kinds of Content to Distribute

• Articles. This is the essential kind of content distribution, to the point that many people consider content distribution simple as "article marketing." However, you're missing out on a few other sources of links if you only do articles.

• News blurbs. A lot of news-style sites will only reprint pieces of a couple of paragraphs. The good news is that often enough the whole point of these news blurbs is to include links to other sites, in a sort of "look what we've found" kind of way, a la Slashdot.org

• Press Releases. There are some sites that aggressively reprint press releases. A press release is like an article, only in a very specific press release format, and frankly that's not that enjoyable to read. I don't know why some sites are so head-over-heels over press releases, but, hey, that's their business. The good news is that even if you can't write and don't want to hire a writer, press releases (at least basic ones) are pretty easy to do.

• Tools, games and other webware. Sites with popular tools, software, Flash games and other webware often let other sites use it in exchange for a link. The big potential downside is technical support.

• Images. Images, especially charts and photographs, are important forms of content on the web. If you have great images on your site and people ask you to use them on their sites, require a backlink in exchange. The problem with images is that they are so easily stolen. Stolen words can be uncovered with a web search. You could try to watermark images with a copyright symbol, URL, and the link requirement. But in the process you'd make the image much less desirable.

• Web design templates. These have been freely distributed for a long time. Yet they are even more easily stolen than images. Also, if you embed a link in the footer of a web template, what you'll get back are sitewide links, which are often thought to be filtered out in search engines.

• Maximizing Content Distribution Links' Effectiveness: Anchor Text Anchor text. You need optimized anchor text to rank high for any competitive keyword. That means you need your target keyword in the anchor text, and very importantly, variants of the target keyword (too many links with the exact same anchor text may be filtered). The problem is that some sites by default don't let you choose the anchor text of the link to your site. So you need to:
•   look for sites that do reprint content with optimized anchor text;
• specifically ask for your target anchor text to be used. Also, do keep in mind that a true natural linking structure will require you to have a number of links that are not anchor-text-optimized, typically with the URL as the anchor text.

How to Find Sites Finding sites to submit content is the biggest challenge. You can start by asking around to any other webmasters you already have a relationship with. Next, web-search. The classic method is "submit article" + [keyword]. Most of the sites you find this way won't be good candidates, which is why this can be a bit labor-intensive. I use offshore labor for this step, as well as a program that will sort and store all the search results into a spreadsheet; otherwise it might not be worth it. Then again, the same would be true for finding reciprocal linking partners. Ethical Issues & Best Practices Golden rule: remember that there's a human being who has to approve your article for submission. Read and adhere to all submission guidelines. Avoid automation. There's almost always some detail of submission that requires a human eye: a multitude of html formatting requirements, changing site themes, etc. Don't submit by email unless specifically instructed. Using a contact form prevents possible sp@m accusations. Only approach websites that request content submissions. Don't misrepresent reprint content as original. Don't submit the same content too often. After about two hundred reprints, a lot of people will be seeing the same thing over and over again and possibly complaining. In short, as SEO gets more competitive, having more and more linking methods at your disposal gets more and more important. Don't overlook this important tool.

Just in case you never heard of video marketing - it is a major part of any traffic campaign nowadays. There are literally hundreds of video hosting websites out there (yes, there are a lot more than YouTube :) where you can submit your videos and include links to drive traffic (and targeted customers) to your website. YouTube videos are often rank very well in Googlewith some minimal effort and if you prepare your video submission properly it easily can hit Google's first page. It's a little course called Video Marketer Pro-and it's a killer. No video to market with? No camera? No gorgeous face or voice? Not a problem. This course teaches you how to optimize videos you may already have to funnel traffic from Google, YouTube and other video sharing sites (and it doesn't take long at all). Picture this: video sharing sites across the web filled with videos that all promote your products and landing pages - that work for you 24/7!!! If you have been holding back on trying video marketing, now is the perfect chance to get started and see how you can put this to work for you and your online business. You can't afford to miss this.

how to grow your website

Today we will talk about the right way to grow your website :) When you first launch a website, you naturally want all the content crammed into it that you can lay hands on. But if it's real traffic you're looking for, consider taking a more patient approach.
Anyone involved in SEO can tell you that organic growth of relevant content is the most successful long term strategy for search engine placement. When people read that, however, their brains toss the part they don't understand or want to deal with: "organic." What they see is "successful long term strategy" and "search engine placement." And that's where the trouble starts, because it's the organic growth that does the work.

What do people mean when they talk about organic growth?


Organic growth means slow, steady, continual growth - the way plants and animals grow. When Google ranks your site they look for this pattern of growth to help determine whether your site is "for real." Think of an informational site you visit a lot, a forum perhaps, or a site like Wikipedia. Those sites did not spring into being overnight, chock full of content and with a hundred links pointing to them. They started as miniatures of themselves, and as people posted messages and articles they got bigger and bigger.

How can this be harnessed to help promote a website?
Timing of updates can be more important than size of updates. A lot of webmasters have a hard time updating their site regularly. They have day jobs, families, and other websites to run. This can lead to a tendency to update sites in large infrequent chunks.

To get the maximum benefit from your updates, do this instead: When you get time to update your site, prepare and arrange your new content so that it can be uploaded in small pieces. Get everything ready to go so that the only task remaining is the actual publish. Then upload each small piece separately, allowing a day or two to pass between each upload.


By doing this your website ends up with the same content, but search engines monitoring how frequently you update will see a pattern of steady growth. You can still write or gather all your content in one fell swoop, just dole it out to your webserver slowly instead of as a single publish. You won't see immediate results, but give this a month or two and search engines will take notice, to your benefit.

how to link your websites to other websites

It's the timeless question: how do you get other sites to link to you? The most commonly discussed ways are reciprocal linking (swapping links) and buying links. Yet there's another important tool for building links that should be a part of your toolbox: distributing content in exchange for one-way inbound links.

Comparison with Other Linking Methods
Reciprocal Linking: The big advantage of content distribution over swapping links is that the links built are one-way, and therefore presumably more valuable. Of course, reciprocal links still have value, but relying primarily on them might hamper your SEO efforts.
Indirect Reciprocal Links: I link my site A to your site, so you link your site to my site B. The problems are that this can be a lot of work, and also, Google can detect indirect links if you do it more than once with the same group of sites, which might make your linking arrangements look like a link farm.
Paid Links: The problem with paid links is 1) the costs add up; 2) search engines are getting better and better at discounting paid links. According to Matt Cutts' blog, "I wouldn't be surprised if search engines begin to take stronger action against link buying in the near future...link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext)."

Kinds of Content to Distribute
Articles. This is the essential kind of content distribution, to the point that many people consider content distribution simple as "article marketing." However, you're missing out on a few other sources of links if you only do articles.
News blurbs. A lot of news-style sites will only reprint pieces of a couple of paragraphs. The good news is that often enough the whole point of these news blurbs is to include links to other sites, in a sort of "look what we've found" kind of way, a la Slashdot.org
Press Releases. There are some sites that aggressively reprint press releases. A press release is like an article, only in a very specific press release format, and frankly that's not that enjoyable to read. I don't know why some sites are so head-over-heels over press releases, but, hey, that's their business. The good news is that even if you can't write and don't want to hire a writer, press releases (at least basic ones) are pretty easy to do.
Tools, games and other webware. Sites with popular tools, software, Flash games and other webware often let other sites use it in exchange for a link. The big potential downside is technical support.
Images. Images, especially charts and photographs, are important forms of content on the web. If you have great images on your site and people ask you to use them on their sites, require a backlink in exchange. The problem with images is that they are so easily stolen. Stolen words can be uncovered with a web search. You could try to watermark images with a copyright symbol, URL, and the link requirement. But in the process you'd make the image much less desirable.
Web design templates. These have been freely distributed for a long time. Yet they are even more easily stolen than images. Also, if you embed a link in the footer of a web template, what you'll get back are sitewide links, which are often thought to be filtered out in search engines.

Maximizing Content Distribution Links' Effectiveness: Anchor Text
Anchor text. You need optimized anchor text to rank high for any competitive keyword. That means you need your target keyword in the anchor text, and very importantly, variants of the target keyword (too many links with the exact same anchor text may be filtered). The problem is that some sites by default don't let you choose the anchor text of the link to your site. So you need to: 1) look for sites that do reprint content with optimized anchor text; 2) specifically ask for your target anchor text to be used. Also, do keep in mind that a true natural linking structure will require you to have a number of links that are not anchor-text-optimized, typically with the URL as the anchor text.

How to Find Sites
Finding sites to submit content is the biggest challenge. You can start by asking around to any other webmasters you already have a relationship with. Next, web-search. The classic method is "submit article" + [keyword]. Most of the sites you find this way won't be good candidates, which is why this can be a bit labor-intensive. I use offshore labor for this step, as well as a program that will sort and store all the search results into a spreadsheet; otherwise it might not be worth it. Then again, the same would be true for finding reciprocal linking partners.

Ethical Issues & Best Practices

Golden rule: remember that there's a human being who has to approve your article for submission.
Read and adhere to all submission guidelines.
Avoid automation. There's almost always some detail of submission that requires a human eye: a multitude of html formatting requirements, changing site themes, etc.
Don't submit by email unless specifically instructed. Using a contact form prevents possible sp@m accusations.
Only approach websites that request content submissions.
Don't misrepresent reprint content as original.
Don't submit the same content too often. After about two hundred reprints, a lot of people will be seeing the same thing over and over again and possibly complaining

RAHUL BUSSA