ch results. Keywords are the first thing you need to think about when you start your SEO journey. Figure out what words your customers are looking for at search engines. These words rankmaniac 2012 are known as keywords. The idea is to frequently use these keywords in the copy of your website SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write rankmaniac 2012 Copywriting Pty Ltd 10 Step 1 Understand what SEO means 10 and in the HTML code behind the page. As a rule of thumb the more frequently you use these keywords the more relevant youll be considered by the search engines and the more likely you are to appear in searches for those words. For more information on choosing keywords see Step 3 Choose your keywords on p.14. on
using keywords on your site see Step 4 Optimize Your Website for Search Engines on p.17. Links to your site 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 rankmaniac 2012 of the rankings. rankmaniac 2012 Links to your site backlinks or inbound links are the single most important factor in ranking. The more links you have to your site from other sites the better your ranking. For more information on generating backlinks see Step 5 rankmaniac 2012 Generate links back to your site on p.27. Chapter Summary If you have a lot of the right keywords used in real sentences distributed realistically throughout your site and a lot of links from other relevant sites you stand a good chance of being ranked highly. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 11 Step 2 Submit your site to Google 11 Step 2 Submit your site to Google As soon as you register your domain name submit it to Google Even if you havent built your site or thought about your content submit your domain name to Google. In fact even if you havent fully articulated your business plan and marketing plan submit your domain name to Google. Dont wait There are two reasons for this. Firstly rankmaniac 2012 getting on the search engines has always taken a long time for a new site. Even assuming you do everything right it takes months before your site is even indexed and more months before it starts rankmaniac 2012 to rank well. As a rule of thumb never expect to rank highly within 6 months of submitting your site to Google. The second reason is a recent phenomenon called Google Sandbox. Many SEO experts believe that Google sandboxes new websites. Whenever it detects a new website it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine credible long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost rankmaniac 2012 the ranking of some other site. By submitting your domain name rankmaniac 2012 to Google as soon as you register it youre establishing a site history even if the site has no content. By the time youve built your site and developed your content and written your business and marketing plans Google will probably see no need to sandbox you. If you wait until launch day to submit your site youll spend a month or two maybe more sitting in the sandbox watching potential customers rankmaniac 2012 spend their money elsewhere. How to submit your site to Google Dont waste money by paying someone else to submit your site to Google. Its easy Simply go to httpwww.google.com.auaddurl.html enter your URL domain name and a few comments or keywords to describe your site. Then click Submit. Thats all there is to it. You only have to do it once and only for your top level page i.e. Home page. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 12 Step 2 Submit your site to Google 12 Googles robots will then crawl your website the next time theyre out and about. rankmaniac 2012 Of course they dont rankmaniac 2012 guarantee that youll be included in their results. IMPORTANT As mentioned above it takes quite a while for your site to appear in the search engines. This is partly because the search engines are big and slow especially when it comes to new sites. It will take a minimum of 68 weeks before your site is indexed. How to submit your site to other search engines There are hundreds of search engines on the Internet. Its a lucrative business after all But dont panic studies suggest that the top 11 search engines account for about 90 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 rankmaniac 2012 rankmaniac 2012 that do are Google described above 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 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 rankmaniac 2012 website httpwww.divinewrite.com reached no.1 worldwide on Google.com for my primary keyword copywriter without a dollar 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 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 rankmaniac 2012 certainly doesnt hurt to submit your site to other search engines especially if 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 tool is free and very easy to use and understand but it only tells you how many searches have rankmaniac 2012 been conducted in the rankmaniac 2012 previous month for your keyword and similar keywords. WordTracker which you can find at httpwww.wordtracker.com. WordTracker is a much more powerful tool but you have to pay to use 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 do and it tells you how many rankmaniac 2012 times that word has been searched for in the last month. It also tells you how many other websites are using that word as a 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 rankmaniac 2012 which rankmaniac 2012 few websites are targeting. WordTracker even suggests and rates alternative related rankmaniac 2012 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
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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 hotly contested but its the only one you can use. If you target it youll just have to work a bit harder on your backlinks in order to rank highly. When theres a rankmaniac 2012 lot of competition for rankmaniac 2012 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 keyword. Go to