a tool and stick with it this way youre rankmaniac 2012 always comparing apples with apples. Monitor whos linking to your site Always keep track of rankmaniac 2012 whos linking to your site. Apart from simply being interesting it will give you some idea of rankmaniac 2012 who is interested in your site rankmaniac 2012 and your material you can assess their importance PR and also more accurately target their needs with future link generation tactics. Probably the
easiest way to track whos linking to your site is to set up a Google Monitor at httpwww.google.comalerts. Google alerts notify you when your URL has been published on a web page. Google doesn't pick them all up but it picks up a lot. TIP Whenever you receive an alert you can visit the page to make sure the article in unchanged and the link back to your site is functioning. Monitor your rankmaniac 2012 ranking Obviously you should be monitoring rankmaniac 2012 your ranking to ensure that your hard work is not wasted and to adapt your SEO and link generation strategy as needed. Manually You can check your ranking manually simply by doing a search for your keyword at the appropriate search engine. TIP If you prefer to check manually make sure you bookmark the search results page as youll probably find yourself performing this search fairly frequently. Dont perform it too frequently though as this can impact the perceived desirability of your keywords rankmaniac 2012 and it is argued that Google takes exception to repeated searches of this type. Automatically You can check all the major search engines AOL Google HotBot MSN Netscape YahooFastAltaVista at once using MarketLeaps verification tool httpwww.marketleap.comverifydefault.htm. NOTE This tool returns a page number e.g. it will tell you your site appears on page 2 of Yahoo. There are plenty of rankmaniac 2012 other tools out there that you can rankmaniac 2012 use to monitor your ranking such as CleverStats Free Monitor for Google see httpwww.cleverstat.comgooglemonitor query.htm. Shop around until you find the tool that suits you best. The important thing to SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 38 Step 6 Monitor your progress 38 remember is that you dont have to pay anything for a rank monitoring tool as there are plenty of free ones on offer. Chapter Summary Monitor how many links you have and crossreference that information against improvements in ranking to estimate how much effort your SEO push is going to take. Monitor who is linking to your site to more accurately adapt future link generation tactics. Monitor your ranking and adapt your SEO and link generation strategy as needed. SEO Secrets rankmaniac 2012 V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd rankmaniac 2012 39 Conclusion 39 Conclusion Search Engine Optimization is not a black art its a science. There are defined rules and proven methodologies. And although theres a lot more to it than can be contained rankmaniac 2012 in a book of this size you shouldnt need any more than what youve just read to obtain a high ranking in the search engines. But theres no denying that its hard work and takes a long time. Whatever you do dont rush into it. Make sure you understand the fundamentals then take some time to plan your rankmaniac 2012 approach. In other words SEO strategy must be part of your marketing plan alongside traditional promotional activities such as print radio and TV. Just as importantly
it must be part of your marketing budget. Dont fall into the trap of thinking that the search engines are free advertising. Theyre not Companies like Google and Yahoo may not accept payment for a high ranking but that doesnt mean it comes for free. Someone has to do the work to get you there. Whether you spend the time to do it yourself or you engage an expert to do it for you rankmaniac 2012 SEO requires a serious investment. But the spoils are well worth it. Research suggests that being number 1 rankmaniac 2012 in Google means twice as much traffic as being number 2. Imagine how much difference it would make to your web traffic SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 40 Frequently Asked Questions 40 Frequently Asked Questions Search engine optimization SEO is a foreign field to a lot rankmaniac 2012 of people. Rarely does a day go by when I don't get asked a few questions on the subject. So I've decided to post this FAQ article in the hopes that it will help people understand the basics and make them a little more comfortable with the whole domain. Q Why are search engines important to me A 85 of all website traffic is driven by search engines. The only online activity more popular than search is email. 79.2 of US users rankmaniac 2012 don't go to page 2 of search
results. 42 of users click on the no.1 result. For the under40 agegroup the Internet will become the most used media in the next 23 years. Q How rankmaniac 2012 do search engines decide on their rankings A IMPORTANT You cannot pay a search engine in return for a high ranking in the natural results. You can only get a high ranking if your content is seen as relevant by the search engines. Search engines identify relevant content for their search results by sending out spiders or robots which crawl analyze your site and index record its details. Complex algorithms are then employed to determine whether your rankmaniac 2012 site is useful and should be included in the search engines search results. Q rankmaniac 2012 Can't I just pay for a high ranking A No. The biggest concern for search engine companies like Google and Yahoo is finding content that will bring them more traffic and thus more advertising revenue. In other words their results must be relevant. Relevant results makes for a good search engine irrelevant results makes for a shortlived search engine. Most search engines these days return two types of results whenever you click Search NaturalOrganic The real search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches the search engine displays a long list of links to
sites with content rankmaniac 2012 which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 41 Frequently Asked Questions 41 Paid Pure advertising. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their ad whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their rankmaniac 2012 product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results but are normally labeled Sponsored Links and normally take up a smaller portion of the window. Q How do I get a high ranking A There are four main steps Step 1 Use the right words on your website Step 2 Get lots of relevant sites to link to yours Step 3 Use the right words in those links Step 4 Have lots of content on your site add more regularly Q What is search engine optimization SEO A Search Engine Optimization SEO is the art of creating a website which is search engine friendly. This means using the right words in your copy using the right words in your HTML code structuring your site properly designing your site properly For more information on these 4 elements download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook from httpwww.divinewrite.comseosecrets.htm . Many people rankmaniac 2012 use SEO to also describe the other ingredient in a high ranking 'Link Popularity'. Q What is link popularity A Think of the search engines as a big election. All the websites in the world are candidates. The rankmaniac 2012 links to your website are votes. The more votes links a candidate rankmaniac 2012 website has the more important it is and the higher its ranking. Link popularity is all about how many links you have and how you can get more. Links to your site tell the search engines how important your site is. They assume that if its important enough for a lot of other sites to link to its important enough for them to display at the top of the rankings. Links are the single most important factor in ranking. Generally speaking the more links rankmaniac 2012 you rankmaniac 2012 have to your site from other sites the better your ranking. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 42 Frequently Asked rankmaniac 2012 Questions 42 Q How many links to my site are there A Search Google for www.yourdomain.com. Don't search for linkwww.yourdomain.com as this only returns a subset of the links to your site. Then on the page that displays next select Find web pages that contain the term www.yourdomain.com . When you do it rankmaniac 2012 this way you'll see all the pages that contain your URL. In most cases the URL will be an active link or at least it should be... if it's not you should ask the site owner to make it so. There are also some tools you can use For more information on tools p.43. Q Are some links better than others A Yes The ideal kind of links are those that come from relevant sites sites which use the same keywords come from important sites have a high ranking include your keyword as part of the visible link text include varying link text not the same link text each time and come from a page that links to few other sites. When a search engine rankmaniac 2012 sees a link which satisfies most or all of these conditions it says Hey this site must be credible and important because others in the same industry are pointing to it. Q How do I get lots of links back to my site A There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are dubious like autogeneration software and sites set up by webmasters simply to host links to their other sites and I wont be discussing them here. Others like those discussed below are legitimate. Add your site to DMOZ Yahoo Directories and other free directories Check where your competitors links are coming from Article PR Write and submit articles for Internet publication Swap links Partner websites Pay for li