SEO? Why on Earth Do I Need to See O When I Just Want My Page to Rank Higher? - Marketing - Web Marketing

You've probably heard the term SEO or "search engine optimization" mentioned in various places on the web, but what exactly does SEO mean anyway? Well, SEO basically means that your web site is easy for search engines to find. With billions upon billions of web sites online, the way that people find you as opposed to your competition is through the use of SEO techniques so that when search engines create indexes of web sites they'll list you prominently instead of the competition. This happens when people search for certain key terms, called "keywords."

But how do you know which keywords to use? And how do you incorporate them into your writing? While Google and the other search engines refuse to tell people exactly how they rank pages, there are some pretty solid ways to help you rise to the top. Think of common keywords your customers would likely search for and make sure they naturally fit inside your writing. (Randomly sticking keywords in just for the sake of sticking them in will turn away customers and may actually get your page ranked lower on the search results since that is what is called "black hat SEO.")

If you run an exterminator service for example, customers may search for "exterminator" with the name of their city. Or they might use the term "bugs dead" or "mouse problem." Having content on your web site with these search terms will help you to be found first and get their business.

Another way to find keywords is to use Google's adwords tool (adwords.google.com). At the bottom of the page is a link to "get keyword ideas." Here, you can see that if we punch in exterminator, then the top search term is in fact exactly that, with 165,000 hits. However, Google will also suggest other choices, such as pest control which has 1,500,000 hits. Study these and try to find the keywords that best fit your business. It is also not necessarily the best choice to use only the most popular keywords. Instead, look for keywords likely to lead specifically to your business. For example, the term "pest exterminator" has only 4,400 hits. While this may not sound like much, using both less popular and more popular terms together will increase your visibility since more people will find you.