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.

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.

Article Marketing is an effective SEO strategy that has been around for many years. It is still one of the best ways to generate high PR one way links and to drive direct traffic to your website at the same time. Article marketing involves writing keyword focused articles and posting them onto article syndication websites. These website are frequently highly trafficked websites with high Page Rank.

Article marketing accomplishes two things. You are able to promote yourself and your company as a respected expert by providing solutions and insights for problems in your market niche. By producing articles that are highly keyword focused and providing a keyword based link back to your website, you help your website’s link popularity.

Many articles allow reposting and reuse of your articles onto other websites as long as the links in the resource box (at the end of the article) is left intact. These articles then become “link bait” as other websites hungry for content will repost your articles around the Internet.

Getting good quality articles written is the key to effective article marketing.

1. Goals: Before writing, have definite goals for what you want accomplish. Develop a central message around your goals. Think of the image and brand you are building.
2. Outline your article with a clear beginning, middle and ending. What do you want to leave your readers with? If you leave them hungry for more, they will follow your link back to your website.
3. Keywords: Select a single keyword phrase to focus on. Use your phrase in the title of your article, within first paragraph one time and in the link text within your resource box.

Deep links are considered more important than home page links in SEO. Deep links are inbound links that point to a specific page on a site other than the home page. Deep linking is considered the more natural linking method that occurs naturally over time on a website.

A higher number of links (or high quality links) to a specific page will build up the importance of that page. Deep links help your visitors by guiding them to the exact information they are searching for.

If a website has a low percent of deep links, this is a sign to the search engines that a site has used artificial link schemes to try and build up its link popularity.

Deep Link Percentage is the percent of all inbound links that point to pages other than your home page. A normal deep link percentage is considered 30% or higher.

Measuring: You can measure your sites deep link percentage by querying the search engines that have mapped out which other sites have linked back to your website. I prefer to use Yahoo because it reports a high percent of all inbound links. Use the following in a Yahoo search (substitute in your domain into the query).

1. # of Deep Links= linkdomain:YOURDOMAIN.COM-site:YOURDOMAIN.COM-link:http://www.YOURDOMAIN.COM-link:http://YOURDOMAIN.COM
2. # of Total Inbound Links= linkdomain:YOURDOMAIN.COM-site:YOURDOMAIN.COM
3. Calculate % Deep Links = # Deep Links / # Total Inbound Links

Most websites will have a deep link percentage of 30% to 60%. There doesn’t appear to be any downside to too high of a deep linking percentage. Too low though is clearly visible to the search engines and many of your inbound links are likely to be discounted by Google.

Adding a blog to your existing website is the easy and natural way to add keyword rich content to your website. This is a great strategy if your website is small (5-10 pages) or is more graphical and lacks very much text content. Blog marketing is a great visitor interaction strategy.

Blogs are a natural link magnet that attracts inbound links if you write interesting, original and engaging posts. Adding “linkable” content to your site is the natural link building method. Link building is the most important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) today. Experts have long said “content is king.” Blogs add content to your website on a regular basis and then they broadcast your message to the world via RSS.

Blogs attract new readers to your website and then allow them to comment, creating an online discussion. Bloggers will then carry these conversations back to their own blogs and of course they will reference your blog article with a backlink.

How blogs help your SEO results.

1. Attract Links: Adding engaging content to your blog helps attract inbound links regularly to your website.
2. Adds Content: Each posting adds a new page to your website. Larger websites with content filled pages tend to have much better search rankings than smaller websites.
3. Keyword Text: Create a keyword plan for your blogs. Use these phrases in your blog titles and especially in the first paragraph. Use your keywords in the link text and link back to relevant pages within your site.
4. New Visitors: Since blogs broadcast your message across the Internet, your website will attract more new visitors that will be interested in what you have to offer.

Blogs help your website SEO by having a large number of postings focused on a particular subject. The page code is often very clean, text rich HTML. They are usually written in a simple, easy to spider format making them an excellent completely natural SEO tool.

SEO copywriting is much more than just writing keyword rich text for the search engines. It also appeals to your human readers once they arrive. You need to make the most out of every visitor. Effective SEO copywriting attracts targeted visitors and begins the selling process by attracting attention and building interest in what you have to offer.

Gone are the days when writing for the search engines meant a carefully structured page with a high keyword density. Content must be focused on your human visitor and answering the burning question they had when they arrived. More on SEO copywriting.

Website copy: Website visitors come looking for answers to their questions or problems. Merely giving information or logically presenting your products is not enough. You need to engage your reader at an emotional level and encourage them to take action. Effective website copy grabs their attention, builds strong interest and then finishes with a compelling call to action. More on website copywriting.

Business blogs have become the new trade publications. Effective blog marketing is focused around a topic and have at its heart a keyword plan. This focus allows the blogger to build an audience that will keep coming back. This plan must be highly flexible using long tail phrases. But at its core, the plan has a highly focused keyword plan. This plan guides the writer in choosing interesting and original articles that appeal to their audience. More on business blogging.

Press releases are only effective when you have something interesting to say. Press releases should announce new products, company announcements or industry news. Use your keyword phrases particularly in the title and first paragraph and then link to more information within your website using the appropriate anchor text. Links within press releases should be kept to a minimum and never exceed one hyperlink per 100 words of content. More on writing a press release.

If you really want to make sure your website stays obscure and all but invisible on the Internet, than these are the website tips you have been searching for. It seems many people put up a website without any consideration toward attracting prospects from the search engines. If this is you, then you are probably following one or more of these “how not to” tips.

1. No focus: Start by covering as many different diverse topics as possible within your website. You might want to combine a travel website, a landscaping company and a computer repair business all in the same website. This will make insure the search engines are confused about your core topic.
2. Keywords: Create your own keyword phrases using internal “industry-speak” jargon instead of doing research on phrases consumers actually search for. Focus only on 1-2 word phrases which are the most highly competitive and also have the lowest rates of conversion.
3. Page naming: Name the pages in your website using numbers (instead of keywords) or use unfriendly characters such as underscores (instead of hyphens) between words.
4. Graphical home page: Since you home page is the most important page, put your content in images or substitute a welcome page that says enter here (splash page). Search engines may not read text images (pictures of text), but it will allow you to have full control of the fonts you would like to use.
5. Duplicate Content: Copy content from other websites in order to trigger duplicate content penalties. Copying other people’s content is a risky proposition because of copyright laws unless you follow fair use rules or reposting is specifically allowed as in the case of many articles.
6. META Tags: Use terms like “home” in the Title tag which is the most valuable of the META tags because it is considered visible text. Create duplicate META descriptions and META keywords tags so they are the same across all pages. Stuff dozens of keywords into your META keywords tags instead of only the few that apply to that page.
7. Analytics: Don’t apply any conversion tracking software or analytics that might allow you to understand how visitors find your website and through which keywords. Don’t make regular changes based on actual results

If you follow these simple tips, you will make life easier for the rest of us that really want to attract visitors and get business from the web.

What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization is the process of preparing a website 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.

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. Highly focused websites will be easier to optimize than one that covers a range of topics. Use this plan in laying out your website site map.
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. Choose only 1-2 words for each page. Use phrases 3-5 words in length because people today use specific phrases when they are ready to buy. People use 1-2 word phrases when they are beginning their research.
3. 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. In addition, use the keywords once in the page headlines and once in link text. This should link to another relevant page.
4. 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.
5. 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.

Effective organic search engine optimization uses many factors all focused on your keyword phrases. Heading tags are one way of emphasizing your keywords to search engines. Heading tags are used on the headlines on your web page. Heading tags (H1 through to H6) are given much more importance by search engines than regular body text. They should be used to reinforce your page’s overall keyword theme.

Many designers don’t even bother using H1 tags in their designs because they don’t understand their importance.

Keyword Phrase: Use your most important keyword phrase for a page within your H1 tag. H1 tags are given the most importance by Google. You will want to use only one H1 tag on each page. A common mistake made by designers is to waste this valuable SEO tool on non-critical text. Posting dates or “Welcome to Our Site” will not help your search rankings nor does it communicate what you do to an arriving visitor.

Page Title: Use your H1 tag to define your page title. It signals the search engine what topic your web page is about. Choose a keyword phrase that summarizes the content on the page.

Formatting: You can adjust the size and color of the fonts heading tags through CSS. Using CSS, you can still include these important structural tags without sacrificing your page design.

H2,H3 tags: If your page requires multiple headlines, use H2 tags or H3 tags on these. Use keywords in these heading tags as well. Think of heading tags structure as an outline format for your web page with H2 being a section of the page and H3 being a sub-section.

1. H1: One per page and descriptive of the entire web page
   1. H2: multiple topics OK, describe a section
      1. H3: sub-topic of H2; multiple H3 are OK.
   2. H2 Topic. This would be another section of the page.
      1. H3 sub topic.

These are 5 mistakes that can destroy your search rankings. Using any of these techniques will ruin your website’s chance of being listed on any of the major search engines.

1. No text content: Search engines use the text on the page to determine what a web page is about. If there is no text, a website is invisible to the search engines. Some designers will use “pictures of text” using their graphic design programs. These may look pretty, but the search engines can’t read these images.
2. All Flash websites: Flash is indexed poorly by the search engines. Think of Flash much like any other graphic image; there is no text in Flash for the search engines to read. It is the absence of text that will hurt your rankings.
3. Splash Pages: This is a graphic entry page where often the only text present is the word “Enter.” Search engines give more value to the home page than any other page on the website. Splash pages are a complete waste of the most valuable real estate.
4. Website builders: These are websites designed and maintained with a CMS. They have no FTP access and are marketed under names like: Websites Tonight, Websmartz and EZ Generator. This includes many special purpose websites such as Real Estate, mortgage and insurance agent websites.
5. Duplicate Content: Don’t create multiple copies of your web page. These will be quickly discounted or penalized by the search engines. Search engines reward original writings and discount duplicate content. Making multiple copies of your website will not help your rankings.

These are the most important mistakes to avoid.