nking in from the left of the page. TIP Alexa can also be used to track your ranking metrics. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty
Ltd 37 Step 6 Monitor your progress 37 TIP Youll notice that each of these rankmaniac 2012 tools return different figures. Dont worry about this. Just pick a tool and stick with it this way youre always comparing apples with apples. Monitor whos linking to your site Always keep track of whos linking to your site. Apart from simply being interesting it will give you some idea of who is interested in your site 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 ranking Obviously you should be monitoring 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 and it is argued that Google takes exception to repeated searches of rankmaniac 2012 this type. Automatically You can check all the major search rankmaniac 2012 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 other tools out there that you can use to monitor your ranking such as CleverStats Free Monitor for Google see httpwww.cleverstat.comgooglemonitor query.htm. Shop around until you find the rankmaniac 2012 tool that suits you best. The rankmaniac 2012 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 V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 39 Conclusion 39 Conclusion Search Engine Optimization is not a rankmaniac 2012 black art its a science. There are defined rules and proven methodologies. And although theres a lot more to it than can be contained 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 approach. In other words SEO strategy must be part of your marketing plan alongside rankmaniac 2012 traditional promotional activities such as print radio and TV. Just as importantly it must be part of rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 SEO requires a serious investment. But the spoils are well worth it. Research suggests that being number 1 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 rankmaniac 2012 Frequently Asked Questions 40 Frequently Asked Questions Search engine optimization SEO is a foreign field to a lot 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 don't go to page 2 of search results. 42 of users click on the no.1 result. For rankmaniac 2012 the under40 agegroup the Internet will become the most used media in the next 23 years. Q How do search engines decide rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 site is useful and should be included in the search engines search results. Q 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 a word which is related to their 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. rankmaniac 2012 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 use SEO to also describe the other ingredient rankmaniac 2012 in a high ranking 'Link Popularity'. Q What is link popularity A Think of the search engines as rankmaniac 2012 a big election. All the websites in the world are candidates. The links to your website are votes. The more votes links a candidate website has the more important it is and the higher rankmaniac 2012 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 you
have to your site from other sites the better your ranking. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 42 Frequently Asked 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 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 rankmaniac 2012 tools p.43. Q Are some links better than others A Yes The ideal kind of links are rankmaniac 2012 those that come from relevant sites sites which use the same keywords come from important rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 from a page that links to few other sites. When a search engine sees a link which satisfies most rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 back rankmaniac 2012 to my site A There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are dubious rankmaniac 2012 like autogeneration software and
sites set up by webmasters simply to host links to their other sites and I wont be