of web traffic. In other words if you have the top 11 covered theres no need to submit to the rest. Whats more at the time of writing most of the top 11 dont actually accept submissions. The only ones that do are Google described above rankmaniac 2012 Yahoo and MSN. Heres a list of the available submit pages. Yahoo httpsearch.yahoo.cominfosubmit.html offers free submission MSN httpsearch.msn.comdocssubmit.aspxFORMWSDD2 offers free submission Alta Vista covered by Yahoo submission Netscape covered by Google submission Fast All the Web covered by Yahoo submission Ask Jeeves Teoma at date of writing was not accepting new submissions Hotbot at date of writing was not accepting new submissions Lycos at date of rankmaniac 2012 writing was not accepting new submissions AOL at date of writing was not accepting new submissions Looksmart at date of writing was not accepting new submissions TIP My website httpwww.divinewrite.com reached no.1 worldwide on Google.com for my primary keyword copywriter without a dollar rankmaniac 2012 being spent on search engine submission. I only ever submitted my site to the engines that offer free submission. Do I need to submit my site to other search engines As rankmaniac 2012 a rule no. With an estimated 8.8 billion pages indexed approximately 76 of the Internet Google is number 1 when it comes to search engines. Its argued that once Google has indexed your SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 13 Step 2 Submit your site to Google 13 site the other search engines will follow. Theoretically you dont actually need to submit your site to Google either because its always on the lookout for new content and will eventually find your site of its own accord. Google actually states Given the large number of sites submitting URLs it's likely your pages will be found in an automatic crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form. Google Information for Webmasters httpwww.google.com.auwebmasters1.htmlA1 Personally I wouldnt like to take the risk. Having said that it certainly doesnt hurt to submit your site to other search engines especially if rankmaniac 2012 rankmaniac 2012 you havent developed any content for it yet. Chapter Summary Submit your domain name to Google as soon as you register it even if you havent built your site yet or done anything else. Although you dont actually need to submit your site to the other search engines you may as well submit it to Yahoo and MSN as they offer free and simple submissions. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 14 Step 3 Choose your keywords 14 Step 3 Choose your keywords The first thing you need to do when you begin chasing a good search engine ranking is decide which words you want to rank well for. This is called performing a keyword analysis. Keyword analysis involves a bit of research and a good knowledge of your business and the benefits you offer your customers. There are several websites specifically designed to make keyword analysis easier. Two examples are Overtures inventory tool which you can find at httpinventory.overture.comdsearchinventorysuggestion. This tool is free and very easy to use and understand but it only tells you how many searches have been conducted in the previous month for your keyword and similar keywords. WordTracker which rankmaniac 2012 you can find at httpwww.wordtracker.com. WordTracker is a much more powerful tool but you have to rankmaniac 2012 pay to use rankmaniac 2012 it you can subscribe for a day for around 10. WordTracker helps you find the most appropriate keyword for your site by telling you what people are really searching for. Heres how it works You type
in a word which summarizes what you rankmaniac 2012 do and it tells you how many times that word rankmaniac 2012 has been searched for in the
last month. It also tells you how many other websites are using that word as a rankmaniac 2012 keyword i.e. targeting the same customers you are. Based on this information it rates the word. The best keywords are the ones that a lot of people are searching for but which few websites are targeting. WordTracker even suggests and rates alternative related words. TIP When youre using WordTracker bear in mind that its just talking about numbers and numbers dont always tell the whole story. So dont just jump in and use the best rated keywords you need to consider your own situation. It may be the case that youre forced to select a keyword phrase which is not rated particularly highly. There are two situations in which rankmaniac 2012 this might happen i. Youre in a niche market with relatively few customers searching for the keyword. In this situation youll probably find it relatively easy to reach the top of the rankings but you wont generate a huge volume of traffic when you get there. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 15 Step 3 Choose your keywords 15 ii. A lot of your competitors are targeting your keyword its hotly contested but its the only one you can use. If you target it
youll just rankmaniac 2012 have to work a bit harder on your rankmaniac 2012 backlinks in order to rank rankmaniac 2012 highly. When rankmaniac 2012 theres a lot of competition for a keyword its likely that the traffic payoff is good once you reach top. Single Keyword v Keyword Phrases Generally speaking youre better off targeting phrases not single words. For most businesses theres simply too much competition for single keywords. For instance if youre in computer sales your normally wouldnt choose computers as your rankmaniac 2012 keyword. Go to Google and search for computers and youll see why There are nearly 200 million results and the top rankings are dominated by the multinationals at the time of writing Apple and Dell. Whats more research shows that customers are becoming more searchsavvy theyre searching for more and more specific strings. Theyre learning that by being more specific they find what theyre looking for much faster. So instead of targeting computers try to think of a more specific keyword phrase. Ask yourself whats unique about your business Perhaps you sell cheap second hand computers Then why not use cheap second hand computers as your keyword phrase This way youll not only stand a chance in the rankings youll also display in much more targeted searches. In other words a higher percentage of your sites visitors will rankmaniac 2012 be people looking to buy cheap second hand computers as opposed to people after brand new computers people researching the history of the computer and people trying rankmaniac 2012 to rankmaniac 2012 figure out how they can use a computer to bath their dog. Develop a keyword strategy Also rankmaniac 2012 think about developing a keyword strategy. If you start out targeting a very specific keyword phrase as described above make sure it includes the more generic hotly contested single keyword. For example youll notice that the keyword phrase above cheap second hand computers includes the single keyword computers. This way youre really targeting both at once. As your sites importance or PageRank and search engine presence increases youll start to rank for the single word as well. In time youll start ranking well for computers even though youre rankmaniac 2012 only actively targeting cheap second hand computers. TIP Google PageRank PR is how Google scores a websites importance. It gives all sites a mark out of 10. By downloading the Google
Toolbar from httptoolbar.google.com you can view the PR of any site you visit. Chapter Summary Find out what words your customers are searching for and make them your keywords. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 16 Step 3 Choose your keywords 16 Use keyword phrases instead of single keywords but develop a long term rankmaniac 2012 keyword strategy which will increase your ranking for hotly contested single keywords even as you target your specific keyword phrase. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 17 Step 4 Optimize Your Website for Search Engines 17 Step 4 Optimize Your Website for Search Engines Once youve figured out what words your customers are using at the search engines you need to use those words frequently on your site and rankmaniac 2012 in the right places both within your copy and within your HTML code HTML meta tags. This is a big part of what is known as optimizing your website for search engines. There are also some site structure or information architecture and web design considerations discussed below. TIP When you optimize your website for a particular word youre essentially telling the search engines to include you in the results when people search for that word. How high up the rankings you appear depends largely on the number of links back to your site there are. For more information on generating backlinks see Step 5 Generate links back rankmaniac 2012 to your site on p.27. Optimizing your web copy The trick to optimizing your copy is using the most important keywords frequently and in the right places without compromising the readability of your copy. rankmaniac 2012 But how do you define frequently And what are the right places What if you want to target a few different keywords And rankmaniac 2012 for that matter what should the wordcount of my pages be Below are a few tips which will help you out. What should the wordcount of my pages be Youll hear a lot about the importance of a lot of content. While I definitely agree that content is king there is no need to write volumes. rankmaniac 2012 You can reach the top of rankmaniac 2012 the search engines with a page wordcount of between 1001000. Below 100 is probably too little for the search engines. Above 1000 is definitely too much for your visitors. Certainly dont be intimidated into writing pages and pages of copy for your home page or any other page where short succinct copy is required. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 18 Step 4 Optimize Your Website for Search Engines 18 How man