ber 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 of your business and the benefits you offer your customers. There are several websites specifically designed to make keyword analysis easier. Two examples are rankmaniac 2012 rankmaniac 2012 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 you can find rankmaniac 2012 at httpwww.wordtracker.com. WordTracker is a much rankmaniac 2012 more powerful tool but you have to pay to use it you can subscribe for a day for around 10. rankmaniac 2012 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 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 your own situation. It may be the case that youre forced to select a rankmaniac 2012 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 wont generate a huge volume of traffic when you get there. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 15 rankmaniac 2012 Step 3 Choose your keywords 15 ii. A rankmaniac 2012 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 have rankmaniac 2012 to work a bit harder on your backlinks in order rankmaniac 2012 to rank highly. When 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 keyword. Go to Google and search for computers and youll see why There are nearly 200 million results and the top rankings are rankmaniac 2012 dominated by the rankmaniac 2012 rankmaniac 2012 multinationals at the time of writing Apple and Dell. Whats more research shows that customers are becoming more searchsavvy theyre rankmaniac 2012 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 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 to figure out how they can use a computer to bath their dog. Develop a keyword strategy Also think about developing a keyword strategy. If you start out targeting a very specific keyword phrase as described above make sure it rankmaniac 2012 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 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 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 rankmaniac 2012 Search Engines 17 Step 4 rankmaniac 2012 Optimize Your Website for Search Engines Once youve rankmaniac 2012 figured out what words your customers are using at the search engines you need to use those words frequently on your site and in the right places both within your copy and within rankmaniac 2012 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. rankmaniac 2012 For more information on generating backlinks see Step 5 Generate links back 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. But how do you define frequently And what are the right rankmaniac 2012 places What if you want to target a few different keywords And 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. You can reach the top of the search engines with a page rankmaniac 2012 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 many times should I rankmaniac 2012 use a keyword You dont want to fill every page up with
every keyword youre targeting. This simply dilutes your sites relevance and reduces readability. Search engines and visitors alike will object the search engines will see your site as spam and visitors to your site will find it hard to read if not meaningless. A good rule of thumb is to aim for a sitewide average rankmaniac 2012 keyword density of around 2 measured using LiveKeywordAnalysis httpwww.livekeywordanalysis.com. Density is a measure of frequency in relation to the total wordcount of the page. So if your page has 200 words and your keyword phrase appears 10 times its density is 5. When you actually try to do this youll see that 2 isnt easy to achieve. The easiest way to do it is to be specific. rankmaniac 2012 As you write every sentence ask yourself Could I be more specific For example dont just say our computers or our products ask yourself if you can get away with saying our cheap second hand computers. Similarly dont say things like with our help instead say with the help of our cheap second hand computers. Once you get the hang of it youll find there are more than enough opportunities to replace a generic term with your keyword phrase. Obviously theres a bit of an art to it. Sometimes it ends up just sounding like yo