What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization is the process of preparing a website or blog to rank highly in the organic results on Google, Yahoo, or Bing. You can get hung up on the technical details, but it really comes down to doing two things. Having lots of keyword rich content and getting other websites to link to your content.

These are the 10 steps needed to optimize your website the rights way.

1. Create a Plan: Create a master topic plan for your website that is narrowly focused on offering solutions to your market that matched the products or services you offer.
2. Choose Keywords using a keyword research tool such as Google’s keyword tool which is a free tool. Follow your master topic plan in selecting your keyword phrases and choose phrases that have a good traffic volume.
3. Use your keywords in the actual structure of your website. This means using keywords in your domain name, page names, folder names, etc. Use keywords in your navigation links.
4. Use keywords in the Meta tags. Use them in the Title, Description and Keyword tags. Each page should have about 4 keyword phrases that are highly relevant to the content on that page.
5. Write pages: Write your pages using your keywords you selected. Each optimized page should have 400-600 words of test and use each keyword phrase 1-2 times in the body text. These should be used as close to the top of your text as possible. Words used in the beginning of your content are considered more important by the search engines. In addition, use the keywords once in the page headlines and once in link text. This should link to another relevant page.
6. Emphasize keywords: Use the keywords phrase(s) in the Title Tag and where possible, use them in other emphasized text such as bold, italics, ordered lists and numbered lists. This signals the search engines that these phrases are important.
7. Links: Do get links back to your website from highly relevant blogs, authority sites, directories and other websites that are part of your industry.
8. Add a Blog to your website such as worpress.org. Adding a blog and writing original keyword rich content is one of the best ways to increase the size of your website and to attract links from other bloggers. Look here to read more tips about blog marketing.
9. Use Web Analytics to monitor progress. Watch not only your overall visitor count, but which keyword phrases are bringing visitors and from which search engines. Use feedback from your Analytics to make changes and improvements in your optimization.
10. Be patience. Search engine optimization is a long term commitment. The more competitive the phrase, the longer it will take to get top rankings.

SEO blogging requires keyword focused writing. It requires writing interesting and original material to attract links from other bloggers. It then requires linking using keywords as your anchor text (link text) that deep link into your website. Use your keyword plan as a guide every time you prepare to write a blog posting.

Each time you write a blog posting you will go through a three step process of planning.

1. First you will select a topic that interests you and that you think your readers will enjoy. This should be in line with the theme of your blog.
2. Select one primary keyword phrase that you will center your entire posting around. If you don’t have a keyword in your list that fits, then you need to make a decision. Does this posting belong in my blog? Does it fall within the theme of my blog? If the answer is yes, then you may need to add another keyword phrase to your keyword list.Your keyword plan should be seen as a living document that will grow and change over time. The plan will cause you to keep focused on your plan, it won’t control what you can write about.

   Sometimes there will be no keyword phrase to fit what you feel you need to write about. That’s OK. Note every blog posting needs to be a power posting. Remember that your plan is a guide; it does not control what you can and can’t write about.

3. Use your keyword phrase in your blog posting. Use it in the title of the blog posting, use it one time within the first 25 words of your text. These first words are the most important text in your posting. Use your keyword phrase one time within a hyperlink that links to your planned page within your website.

The rise of blogs, social networks, social bookmarking and other social media has created a new source for traffic for websites. A top story on Digg can drive much more traffic than a top search engine ranking. This has created a new process called Social Media Optimization (SMO).

Social media optimization is a form of word of mouth marketing through the use of social networking, social bookmarking, and media sharing (photo, video) websites. The essence of SMO is giving people a reason to visit and link to your site because of great original content.

Use social media to build your brand and your reputation, not to sell products. Brand yourself as a leader. Your brand is what you represent, what you care about and your connection to others. You want to be the unique and persuasive voice in your market. Your goal is to create a cultural following.

Social media optimization is different than search engine optimization. Social media markets directly to your target audience and search engine optimization markets to the search engines. SEO is about building rankings while SMO is about building a community.

Today we live in a world where you can’t hide. The world will become more transparent… not less. There is no more lurking in the shadows. Social media shines a light on everything and everybody.

The online marketing landscape has changed tremendously in just the past 5 years. It is getting increasingly chaotic. The old style of controlling your market is dead. It is about interacting and conversing with your market at a grassroots level.

SEO blogging is the method of blogging used to raise your website rankings. Choosing the correct keywords is the first step .

1. Empirical List: Prepare a list of empirical keywords from your topic that you can use in your posting titles, links and in your content. These are the words or phrases you think people may be using. These phrases should very accurately describe your blog topic and the website you are working to build the search rankings on.
2. Competition: Check out the websites and blogs that you consider your closest competition. Look at the topics and phrases that they are using. Look at what is being used in the page headlines and the blog titles. Add these to your empirical list.
3. Keyword Tool: Use a keyword research tool to check your empirical list. Use one of the keyword research tools to determine the level of interest and competition for your subject. Filter first for relevance and then look for a large number of searches with only a limited competition.
4. Keyword Plan: Once you have a list of the best keyword phrases, you then need to develop a linking plan. Develop specific pages each phrase will link to. It is these keywords used as link text that is especially powerful in building search engine rankings.
5. Using Keywords: Use keywords in your blog titles, in link text, in naming images and videos and in your body text of your postings. Keep your keyword plan handy as you do your blogging and it will help keep your blogging focused on your end goals.

After all, what is in it for me? Blogging for business is different than personal blogging. You need a plan with real purpose in mind… or why bother?

Blog marketing for your business is focused and has a purpose. To do this correctly, you need to develop a blogging plan to use as a guide as you write and blog.

What purpose do you have for your blogging? If you want good results, your blog should reflect your goals. Start by creating a one page plan that includes your audience, topic and keywords you want to focus on. Use your plan to keep your writing focused.

For your business blog marketing, purposes can include any of the following:

1. Reach new customers or markets
2. Promote your products
3. Create visibility and branding
4. Search engine rankings
5. Be recognized as an authority
6. Communications with customers or employees

Your blogging journey begins by choosing a topic that your targeted audience will want to read and that you will enjoy writing about. Start by answering these 3 questions.

Whom are you writing to? This should be your targeted customer. This may only be a part of your overall customer base. Perhaps an area you would especially want to grow. Be specific. An example might be purchasing managers and senior buyers from industrial companies who buy MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operation) parts for plant operations.

What are you interested in? You should write about a topic that you are knowledgeable about and that you are passionate about. It should be a subject that your targeted customer is very interested in. You should focus on an area that is a narrow niche and yet broad enough so you can write for a long time and still not run out of things to say.

Why are you writing? You might want to brand yourself as the authoritative expert, improve the search rankings of the company website, attract new customers or promote products. You will need one primary objective to create a focus on what you write.

Here a blogger keeps track of the truly interesting articles that they find in their daily exploration of blogs and articles. If you read 50-100 articles, you would select perhaps 5 of the best and most insightful ones to include in your blog. You would list the blog titles and either a short excerpt or a summary of what you read along with a link to the original article.

This can provide real value to your blog readers. Here a blogger acts as sort of a reporter and will list out the best articles and blogs that they found. You read and select the articles or news that is important for your niche. This is great for bloggers that spend a great deal of time reading and interacting with their market niche.

Each day you would select one of these articles to expand on with your analysis of how it will impact your market.

This is truly valuable to your readers because you are sifting through a lot of material and selecting only the best material that will have the maximum impact on your market. By providing commentary and analysis on the major news events, you are positioned as the expert and current information source in your market.

You will find you are in a steep learning mode when you do this type of blogging. You are always looking for the next new thing. You develop a following of readers who also want to keep up on the newest trends, but don’t want to expend the effort themselves.

There are a number of good keyword research tools. Some are free and for some you will need to pay a subscription fee.

1. Wordtracker offers both paid and free versions of their keyword research tools. They also offer WordTracker offers a free cool plug-in for FireFox called SEO Blogger (see chapter 8). The paid version of Wordtracker has a powerful Thesaurus for uncovering “hidden gems” and it is easy to use.
2. Keyword Discovery offers both paid and free versions. The paid version is exceptionally powerful and they show things such as seasonality trends which is critical if you are researching Christmas lights in July.
3. WordStream is a keyword research tool with both free and paid versions. They have tools that help in sifting through large keyword lists and segmenting the information.
4. Market Samurai is a remarkable keyword research software that you purchase for a one-time fee and place on your computer. This tool analyzes Google Adwords keyword data along with competition and many other factors. This is much more than just a keyword research tool.
5. Google Keyword Tool: This is a free tool that is powered by Google Adwords data and is great to use keyword research tool. This is the best tool for quick local business or for topics with low search volume. Google reports higher levels of daily searches than WordTracker or Keyword Discovery.

More research tools

1. Google Alerts: This is a free email alert service. Just enter in the search term that you are researching and Google Alerts will send an email daily, weekly or as it happens. Google delivers snippets of web pages or news stories directly to your email box.
2. Google Trends: View popularity of topics over time. Based on Google search data, graphs of search volume are available. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Graphs show the relative popularity of each search term over a specified period of time – (data since 2004).
3. SEODigger: This is a powerful analyzer of your competition and which phrases they are being ranked for. Discover which keywords any website is being ranked for on Google. This is limited to websites with positions in the top 20 results.
4. KeywordSpy is another powerful research tool that uncovers which phrases your competition is using. They claim to have the largest such database of any of the leyword competitor tools.
5. Google Keyword Tool Box: Collection of Google tools all kept in one easy to access location: googlekeywordtool.com
6. Delicious.com: This is a social bookmarking site where the bookmarks are completely searchable by keyword tags. These are all high quality resources that others have thought enough of to bookmark.

This is the page that humanizes your business. The About Us page is a relationship and trust building page to connect with someone who is curious about your business. They are there to learn about what you do. They are searching for signs of trust and credibility. Let customers see the personal side of your company. To many about-us pages are sterile cut and paste bits of company information. Don’t be afraid to write with personality and emotion as you tell your story.

The About Us page is the second most often visited page in the typical website. People want to know who is running your website. Take some time and craft this page so visitors can learn about your company. Use your website content writing skills to help your visitor understand who you are.

Visitors will look to see if you are a real company with an actual address. Tell them a little about your company. Instead of including a long history of your company, simply state when your company was founded and how long you have been serving your industry.
Tip – People enjoy reading the story on how a company got started and what led the founder to launch the business.

Describe how you are different and better than your competition. Share your company philosophies, awards and certifications. If you have important affiliations, this is the page to include them.

The About us page should be concise and easy to read. Its main purpose is to build trust with your visitor. People want to feel safe and secure before they buy from you or even provide you their email address.

You can add a “Meet the Staff” page where you show short profiles on the key body members. Include the key “movers and shakers” and key people that interact with customers.This meet the staff page can include email links or phone numbers to make access to staff members easier.

More about writing your About-Us Page.

Let’s suppose you write a great and compelling original article that you want to share on the Internet. You decide this will work great as part of your article marketing campaign. So you go ahead and submit your masterpiece onto thirty or so different article directories.

You allow re-posting of your article to other sites as long as the links are left intact. Of course you include your link back to your website in the resource box at the bottom of your article.

You see some success, but the search engines will see many of the copies of your article as just duplicate content. This is because you have hundreds of versions of exactly the same article floating around the Internet.

There is a solution. It is called article spinning. This is where authors will create many unique versions of their article by substituting words or phrases so the meaning stays the same, but the words change. “Photo” may be replaced with “image” or “home page” may be changed to “index page”.

This can be done manually or using automatic software that uses a thesaurus to create unique versions of the article. Using article spinning software you can quickly create dozens of versions of your article. You can then submit unique versions of the “spun article” onto the various article directories and greatly magnify the results of your article marketing campaign.

There are a number of article spinners available that you can use. Some are paid and some are free versions. Here are some that are available:

1. ArticleSpinner.org
2. Jetsubmitter 2.0
3. Free Article Spinner
4. Spin Article Pro

WordTracker offers a free cool plug-in for FireFox called SEO Blogger. This SEO blogging software allows you to search for keywords while you are writing your blog. This helps you choose titles, long tail search phrases and keyword phrases that people are actually searching for. You can do all this without leaving your blog post that you are writing.

Just enter the default shortcut of CTRL + SHIFT + W (or reset this to anything you want) and a window pops up allowing you to do a quick keyword search that includes suggested phrases and the number of searches that occur for each phrase.

SEO blogging is the technique of using blogging to optimize your website. Highly focused and highly optimized blogging is a power technique that top SEOs use. SEO blogging can give you the traffic and the increased search rankings you want. The foundation for this process is selecting the correct keyword phrases.

Regular posting to your blog is only part of the equation. Even more important is posting content with relevant keywords that will drive traffic. SEO blogging software like SEO Blogger allows you to instantly compare keywords and find out which ones pack the most SEO punch.

SEO blogging keyword tips

1. Select phrases that are highly relevant to your message and the core topic of your blog.
2. Select relevant phrases that have a high search volume.
3. Select one primary phrase for your posting. You can have more related secondary phrases, but only one primary phrase.
4. Use your primary phrase in your blog title.
5. Use your primary phrase once within the first 25 words of your posting. Prominence is important. Prominence means the words used in the beginning of a blog post are more important than those used at the end of a posting.
6. Use your primary phrase in the link text of your blog and link this to the most relevant web page within your website.
7. Use all your phrases within your post tags.
8. Use your keywords in emphasized text such as bold, italicized, bulleted lists, numbered lists or larger fonts.