The first thing to work on in your SEO is locating good keyword phrases for your page. Don't try to write your whole site for one keyword phrase, rather focus on writing pages for specific keywords. You want the phrase you choose to be popular but not too popular. Usually the very popular words are very competitive. It's better for you to choose more specific keywords that can rank higher. Another great tip is to insert your keyword phrase into your domain name. If you can't put it in your domain name at least try for your URLs because search engines generally read the URLs and assign values to the associated text. Keyword density is the ratio of your keywords to the rest of the words in your text. You don't want to overuse your keywords. Average keyword density should be between 3 and 7 percent for your main keywords and just 1-2 % for any secondary key phrases.

In SEO ,content is king. The content of your site is basically what the search engines will rank you according to. Because of this it is extremely important to choose quality content. Many times a website has competitors, therefore it is imperative that besides for inserting quality content, you put in content that is is unique to your site too. You need content that will capture your reader's attention over another site. Besides for this, it is important to constantly add new content because sites that add new content on a regular basis are viewed as reliable sites. In addition the added relevant content will improve your rankings. The more content, the more you have to be indexed and appear in search engines. Following one theme or topic throughout your whole site will give more credibility to each of those pages.

Quality links and links from similar sites to yours are always beneficial. Links from domains like .edu and .gov are wonderful for your SEO because it is quite difficult to get them! So if you somehow find a way to get a link from any such domain, it ranks extremely well for your site!

Last but not least is to live long. Older pages on your site rank higher than newer ones. I guess some correlation to wine.....So try to keep yours live as long as possible.

A keyword is a general term describing any word that appears on a web page. A word or phrase that strikes you the most due to its relation to the site or content is most probably the said "key" word for the page/site.

Traditionally key words have been one of the most prominent determining factor in page relevance. Search engines scout out the keywords to determine a site's relevance when ranking. A while back a search engine would simply tally up the amount of times a word showed on a page to figure its importance. The more times it was mentioned the more important it was determined. This was hardly fool proof because once word of this would get around designers would just repeat the same words over and over again on their site to raise their placement (a practice referred to as keyword stuffing).

Since this wasn't an option search engines had to fins a more sophisticated technique. thus we have the system used today. First a search engine will track the overly repetitive words and count them to the site's detriment, placing them as negative value to the site! This is in order to penalize those trying to fool the system.

Positive value is added for relative importance of words like placement on a page. The words in the title will carry greater weight than the words located way down in a footer. This is just an example of the many algorithms now used to ensure the accuracy of the search engine results. In addition search engines are constantly developing more efficient ways to more properly index. Codes have been introduced to give developers the opportunity to provide more information to secure their proper ranking.

For the website developer, how do we know which words will get us to the top? Relevance is our "key" word here. Try to choose words that have what to do with the information on your site. For example a site marketing baby carriages might use keywords such as baby, baby travel systems, strollers,etc. It is important to focus on where you place your keyword, as mentioned beforehand. A properly placed keyword will produce way more results than a random keyword somewhere on the page. Note though that both placement types are needed to properly maintain your site's ranking. The object is for the search engine spiders to figure out your site's theme during its "crawl".

Keyword density refers to the percentage of times a keyword appears on a web page in ratio to the total number of words on that page. Keyword density is a factor in SEO used to determine if a page is relevant to a said keyword or phrase. To figure out your site's keyword density, simply divide the number of times your chosen keyword shows up , by the total number of words in your content. Multiply this by 100 and you have our keyword density percentage. A safe figure is roughly between 10% -15 % and up to 25%.

It's time for a bit of brainstorming. Pull out a pen and paper and write the most popular words relevant to the theme of your site. Try for words that will most probably be used in finding your site's content. Now use whichever available web designing tools you have emphasize those words in your content. Either bold or underline the said words and work out the keyword density for each word. (obviously only in a case where the content has been successfully written and you are up to implementing good SEO). If no content has been created yet be aware of placement from the start! It is worth researching which sites are located through the most popular keywords. To see why the keywords are bringing up a certain result page and are the visitors to those websites converting at all or just browsing the information. This can help you develop a plan to direct traffic to your site instead. There are some tools available to help you test the strength of a given keyword. For example, Google Keywords Tool can provide relevant keywords to the terms you choose to enter.

Keywords are used to play around with for the benefit of your site. Take advantage of the many avenues available to successfully use and place them in your content. This is one of the essential parts used in determining placement on search result pages.

When creating a website optimized to rank high by search engines there are a couple of things to focus on. Links are very significant when it comes to SEO . There are three kinds of links: links that start from your site and connect to another one or outbound links, and links coming from an external site to yours, or inbound links, also known as backlinks. Cross links are links within a site to a related topic, so visitors can navigate easily through all related information in your site.

Outbound links are not as significant as inbound links, nevertheless they do carry some weight with regard to helping your ranking. Some things to keep in mind when creating outbound links include:

Make sure to keep your links relevant to your topic. Try to link to other sites or pages that focus on the same ideas as you are. Keep on eye on your keywords. The words you use to link (anchor text) will be of help to you and to the site your linking to when the search engines come crawling. In addition, don't link frivolously. Many times sites with too many outbound links are not glorified by the search engines. If you keep these tips in mind you should have no trouble with your outbound linking.

Inbound links (Backlinks) carry a greater importance because they measures the popularity of your site among other website creators. Not all backlinks are created equal. There are some links that are better than others. A good backlink is one that starts from a reputable place, especially a website that has a corresponding theme to yours. Bad backlinks usually come from places that are a bit shady like link farms and it is to your best benefit to avoid them, even to the extent that if someone from a suspicious site links to yours , to ask them to remove it!

One of the most important things in your backlink is known as anchor text. The anchor text is the clickable text located in a hyperlink (usually highlighted). Anchor text is the actual text that the links started from. When looking over your backlinks, look for the anchor text and if there are keywords in them. Having backlinks from good quality sites complete with anchor text to include your keywords is a wonderful way to boost your search engine rankings.

In case its taking you a bit of time to get word about your site out and you're not finding that many inbound links, not to worry, there is a solution. As with most things in this world they can be bought! There definitely are other free alternatives too so it is worthwhile to look into all your options. Be aware though of purchasing links in bulk. Search engines keep track of link farms and chastise those sites involved in this questionable business. Best to steer 100 percent clear of them , no matter how tempting the offer seems.

Bear in mind the ratio of the links in your site, the inbound vs. the outbound. In some cases having many more outbound links than inbound won't be to your credit. Though this does vary from site to site, be aware of the ramifications of too many outbound links. ( Of course if our site operates mainly via outbound links, like a news report site, it is entirely different.) Cross links help keep visitors on your site longer because they don't have to leave to find the information they need somewhere else. Cross linking provides them with the opportunity to find what they are looking for easily and quickly without having to scan through all the pages in your site. The goal of cross linking is to spread visitor traffic throughout the pages of related information in your site.

With cross linking, the more links you have, the better ( as long as the links are not overdone to the point that the topic at hand gets too stretched...) for your SEO. It helps to reinforce that your site has quality, related content.

As with all SEO techniques, once you get the hang of them they can help boost your rankings with the search engines. It is a task that requires constant upkeep and supervision so is is definitely a help to know that there are teams of SEO professionals, trained to help your site get the best ranking possible, available. Good luck and happy linking!

Indexing is the method where a search engine collects information and stores it to simplify and accelerate data retrieval. It is also known as web indexing. If not for an index, each time a search question was keyed in, the search engine would have to scan each document. Scanning each word on 3 thousand documents would take a considerable amount of time, while searching through an index of 3 thousand documents could be accomplished in milliseconds. Indexes do take up room in a computers storage but the benefits of the saved time make it worth it. An index is a list created of each page retrieved in a search that contains a specific word which is then assigned a 'number' for later reference. When Google stores an index it uses multitudes of computers to quicken the search with results, process.

Many times when conducting a search you will notice on the result page next to the retrieved website, the word "cached". Cached refers to Google's own archived version stored on its servers. It gives you the choice to wither be redirected directly to the website or to Google's version. Google's version may have the specific keyed in words highlighted throughout the site. For example: Search the words 'web design new york.' Instead of clicking on the link to www.bitochon.com , try the cached link. You will immediately notice the splash of color. Google will highlight each word requested in a different color which will correspond to the numerous places throughout the site with those words.

Once a site is up and running it would like positive attention from search engines, especially Google. So how do we do this? The simplest way is to acquire a link from another site previously indexed by Google that Google routinely checks up on. There is also the option of submitting your site to Google to be ranked. Once you are indexed by Google the next step is to move up in placement. Good SEO is your best bet at this point. Inbound links from good quality sites will definitely help your rank placement.

There are many other SEO techniques to try to improve your ranking. It may be worthwhile to consult with a team of SEO professionals to discuss what the options available for you are. Because once your site is set up and indexed you don't want to have to wait too long for the traffic to start.

SEO techniques can be divided into two categories, the ethical and the not so ethical, literally white hat and black hat. We're not talking about some cult of rallying people rather its a loose categorization of SEO techniques. A technique that follows search engine guidelines and doesn't involve any deception, including making sure that content that a search engine ranks and that a user views is identical, is considered white hat. White hat will usually be content that was created with the interest of the visitor in mind, not the search engine, but was then made easily accessible for search engine indexing. Its methods are usually approved by the various search engines. White hats will usually produce results that may last a long time.

Black hat SEO, sometimes referred to as spamdexing, tries to increase its ranking in ways that may touch on shadiness . These techniques usually aim to optimize a site by altering the logical view that a search engine will have over the contents of a page. Cloaking is a technique that will show a different page depending on who looked for it, a visitor or a search engine. Sometimes a site may have hidden or camouflaged text that a visitor wont be able to view yet the search engine picked it up and that's why the visitor was redirected to that particular site. in other cases a website may place specific keywords within a page the goal being to raise the keyword count or variety of the page. A web crawler will then view it as a relevant page to the said keywords and it will be ranked accordingly. For example, a scamming credit card company that may want to net as many unsuspecting clients as possible may place hidden text correlating a dream cruise on the Caribbean, on his page. The hope is that he will be listed as a dream getaway site and receive many visits from wealthy people looking for that special break. Older versions of search engines simply tallied up the amount of times a keyword appeared on a page to determine relevance levels. Most modernized search engines wouldn't fall for something like this because they have the capabilities to examine a page to figure out what the sites true goal is.

Black hats don't usually expect their results to be long term as they figure their site may eventually be banned or not listed at all once the search engine catch on to their games.

Then there are gray hats. Neither pure white nor totally black. Usually these techniques can be looked at either way, yet there may be some risks involved. Buying links is a good example. Though Google is against the business of link selling and buying, many people do utilize this method to get links back to their websote. A solution to turn this into a white method might be to just buy out the whole site!

A search engine may penalize a site once they discover its black hat games. They may lower the rankings or completely eliminate the site from their listings all together. If this does happen, all is not completely lost. A site does have the opportunity to fix their pages up and remove the deceptions or whatever it was and be restored to the search engine listings.

However you choose to go about your SEO techniques is up to you. There are many credible SEO teams out there able to help you optimize within the search engine guidelines. If you unfortunately find yourself stuck in the muck, try to get yourself out as soon as you can!

There's a lot of Internet discussion about SEO. It is a word thrown about often and a concept that all website owners are encouraged to look into. But what really does SEO do for your site or your business?

When someone decides to open up a store, he spreads the word, advertises , and hopes for popularity to grow as more and more satisfied customers refer their friends, to increase his business. In the online world of commerce there's a different option.

In a nutshell, SEO is all about directing or improving the quality of traffic to your online store by raising your search engine ranking. Usually the higher a site is listed in the search results for a chosen keyword, the more visitors it receives. So how do we get our site top placement?

When starting out, it is important to make sure your site is optimized for the search engines out there. SEO considers what a search engine looks for ,like a good title, choice keywords and accurate descriptions. Additionally, be sure to include unique and well written content, as content is the ruler when it comes to search engines. It is essential to ensure that your navigation is strongly structured and working properly. Optimizing your website will usually involve editing content and coding to improve a site relevance to its keywords to increase its ranking.

After you have your site set up and running you can begin to focus on building your ranking even more. This may include but is not limited to: Link building, pay per click campaigns, blogs,etc. You can be creative in the ways to increase your content and site traffic.

Many times SEO is a slow process requiring a lot of patience. It may be a waiting game of months. When you don't see immediate results, not to worry, give it up to 3 months before you start removing links, changing titles and altering content. In the meanwhile spend time researching new ideas, additional content information or expanding your linking horizons. Without giving time to figure out what didn't work, you won't be able to properly correct it!

It takes a lot of time and persistent effort to conduct a successful SEO campaign. Many times it may be overwhelming to be sure your site is optimized correctly. Hiring a professional SEO team is a wonderful option. It gives you the assurance that your site is being optimized by people who know the business, which can ultimately lead you to success.

The launching of Microsoft's Bing earlier this year seems to be another attempt to win over search market share from its main competitors, namely Google. Until recently when many people though of SEO they envisioned optimizing for Google. It was pretty much the most important search engine. With the arrival of Bing, that has changed. Research has shown that the Bing algorithms work differently than Google's. Bing brings up different results, in a different order than Google does. Compare the results between Google and Bing when keying in the same word.

Bing has quickly become a popular search engine and its important as a marketer to optimize your site to pave the way for the Bing algorithms. If your website is customized just with Google's search engine in mind it may be time to broaden your horizons to include Bing's too to increase your rank on this new search engine.

It is important to have a good site map. There are indications that Bing's search algorithms might rely more on site maps than Google's do. A site map is a listing of the pages in a website that are accessible to browsers. It helps visitors and the search engine applications locate pages on the site.

There have been many discussions in the SEO world concerning how Bing weighs keywords. It seems that Bing favors sites that have the keyword in the domain or sub-domain. Consider making important pages in your website sub-domains to improve your rank by Bing. Additionally it is possible that sites with poorly composed code are relegated further down on the list in the eyes of Bing. Good code is a biggie to them. If you were contemplating redesigning your site, now is a perfect time!

Competition in this case is beneficial to marketers especially in PPC terms. Earlier on too many advertising dollars were spent as advertisers vied for the Google attention. In addition, price wars were more likely to erupt when everyone was placing their eggs in the same basket. With the addition of Bing we may see an end to this. it is important to stay neutral and benefit from what both Google and Bing have to offer. As a marketer there are advantages from both search engines and why limit yourself and the growth of your business?

So whether or not Bing will be used as a replacement to Google or alongside, it is only beneficial to optimize your site with Bing search algorithms in mind too!

I am often asked why I should spend money on a custom site when I can buy a shopping cart software package. These packages range from a couple to a few hundred dollars and then plan on spending a lot of time trying to configure. I myself am not a fan of these packages because I believe you are boxing yourself into a product in which you have no control. Imagine, for a minute that the company goes out of business or you are told you can't do it because of product limitations. I've had many clients who tried to take that route of using a bought shopping cart only to later give up and doing a customized site. I had recently one client who was so sure about the shopping cart product and he told me he would have it up in a three weeks. So, he went out and spent $1200 dollars on the software. He hired a person to configure it and nothing. It's been almost six months and his site is still not up. His website looks terrible! It looks like a template no design web site that an inexperience person through together. It has no curb appeal. It lacks features he needs and it is problematic for SEO efforts. So, add up that time and you have spent over twenty thousand and he could have had a site built for ten thousand or less dollars. The site would have contained a professional and custom fit look for his business. The code could have been easily manipulated by any programmer. He would have had all the features he needed for his site and he would be up and running. The lesson learned "penny wise pound foolish". A website is a major revenue stream for your business. Do it right and don't cut corners. When you want to build or design a house. Would you rather have a prebuilt model or a custom house designed for the way you live?

If you are considering doing search engine optimization on website you may want to consider your images. Images are very important for your website. A picture after all is worth one thousand words.

One of the things that you want to do for your website is image optimization as part of your over SEO process. Some of the things that you want to consider is setting the proper width and height, utilizing ALT tags within your HTML image code. However, be careful not to stuff or stay within proper ALT limits for your image size.

As an example you can't have 20 words in your ALT tag if your image size is one pixel by one pixel. You also want to think about using keywords within the image name of your graphic file.