Search Engine Optimization - Simple Tips to Get You Started   by Larry Lim

in Search Engines / SE Optimization    (submitted 2012-02-06)

As the competition for online companies and businesses are growing more complex, so is the brainstorming and efforts exerted by different firms and establishments in order to keep up with the tightening level of competition and to emerge victorious in their respective niche markets. Although different companies have different and unique business models in their e-commerce ventures, they also have aspects wherein they are similar with one another. One of these aspects is SEO or search engine optimization.

SEO is an online marketing technique that improves the exposure or visibility of a website or page throughout different search engines, Google and Yahoo being two of the most common. Unlike paid promotional strategies such as Google Adwords, SEO is done via natural or unpaid search results. Basically, the higher your site or page's ranking is on a particular search engine, the better chances of gaining exposure since your content usually comes up first than any other site or page. This makes it extremely important for sites and pages to rank first or at least be included in the first search engine results page or SERP for a given keyword.

If you're unfamiliar or a newbie to search engine optimization, below are some tips you can use to help you get started with optimizing your website and web pages within various search engines.

First and foremost, find the best keywords possible. The best terms or keywords will vary immensely for each industry or category that you decide to tackle and venture. Moreover, search for updated and trending keywords. It would prove to be a waste of both time and effort to optimize your website with terms and keywords that aren't even being searched for by your targeted audience. Even though you do manage to get the highest rank for a general keyword that is not trending or viewed by web users, search engines like Google will be estimating the number of times that web viewers did not choose your site or page and the number of times that web viewers returned to that particular search keyword to, again, choose a different site or page. Trying to surpass the results of this estimation will prove to be futile and will just be another waste of resources for your business.

Remember this tip, when utilizing any SEO tool to search for viable keywords, begin by keeping your search obscure and creating subcategories to create narrower clusters of keywords. Behavioral targeting and employing long tail keywords are a superior means of getting higher rankings quickly for great quality keywords that have the potential to generate huge amounts of sales and revenues. Long tail keywords tend to be more specific and more attractive to web users who are searching for something specific such as second-hand Amazon tablets or Nike Shoes Kobe Men's Size 10.

Next, find out what your competitors are doing. It is a given fact that search engines assess incoming links to your site or page as a factor of their ranking criteria. Monitoring and keeping track of your competitor's incoming links will entail a great advantage and edge over your competition. However, you should first be able to discover who your competitors are before you'll be able to scrutinize their statistics. Some of the parts you should analyze when it comes to your competitors include their current ranking in the search engine, quantity and quality of incoming links and the keywords they are using in the link page's title.

About the Author

Larry Lim has been providing SEO services in Malaysia and Singapore since 2005 to clients such as Knight Frank and Edelman. He is currently attached to SEO and Google AdWords specialist, SearchGuru.