It is not only important to know that keywords are important to your business, but it is also important to understand what aspects of keywords actually make them important to your business.

There are different variables or characteristics that keywords have to help the determination of whether or not the keywords are worth consideration as part of your Search Engine Optimization strategy, and only if keywords pass the primary selection tests can they be subjected to the prioritization variable tests. Considerations for primary keyword selection are:

• Keyword terms/phrases should have adequate search volumes

• Keyword terms that are chosen should be relevant

• Identified relative competition should be evaluated

If a keyword search term’s volume fails to meet sufficient levels, then it is simply removed from the list, and likewise, if it does not satisfy the relevancy criterion, it should also not be considered.

Finally, you must understand that primary keywords are simply the main keywords from which all variations on the keywords should derive, and your primary keywords should be focused on your particular industry and yet, not be too specific, while at the same time, the primary keywords should always be open ended enough so that secondary keyword phrases can be derived from them, and still include the primary keywords within the phrases.

Once identified, you want to make sure the primary keywords appear four or five times in your article in addition to the first paragraph of your article. The more you use primary keywords within limits, the better ranking the article will receive, but be careful, if you are submitting your article to an article directory, be sure to check their guidelines for their keyword use ratio.

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Search Engines use algorithms that are well protected intellectual proprietary secrets and are continually evolving over time. It is important for you to focus on making your website as accessible as possible to Search Engines, while ensuring you have high quality content. Keep in mind these are well-established principles that are guaranteed to improve the rankings of your website, regardless of how the Search Engine algorithms continue to advance.

Search Engine Optimization practitioners can sometimes try to abuse the Search Engine algorithms in order to give their clients an advantage, and at times they might look to benefit and improvement through loopholes or sometimes shady methods. One simple example is using invisible text (white text on a white background) to “stuff” a page. Of course, this is invisible to the human eye, but Search Engines used to index this content, and if it is taken one-step further by stuffing the page even more with unrelated (but popular) keywords, it then becomes ‘spamming’. That was then, this is now and Search Engines are much smarter today and will definitely notice these sneaky tricks, and will heavily penalize any websites using such tactics and tricks.

Advanced Optimization is not simple and therefore carries risk if badly planned and executed. You should always keep in mind that what might work today is innovative, but runs the risk of heavy penalties in the future once people abuse it to the point where results are skewed, so always be careful of the introduction of any initiatives that fall into this class.

You probably have the question in mind that if you apply Search Engine Optimization management to your website, how long before you see the results? Understand that Google re-indexes websites every single day of the year, and it follows a process to ensure every entry contained in its vast database is re-indexed every 4-6 weeks. Google will also re-index sites like “news” aggregators much quicker, many times daily in order to stay most current. You can be sure that other Search Engines use roughly the same re-indexing timeframes, and therefore expect it to take up to 4-6 weeks before you can observe changes in the rankings.

You are still probably wondering if Search Engine Optimization will improve your ranking. Yes, but will they keep you there? No. Understand the Search Engine algorithms always continue to evolve over time and Search Engine Optimization is a form of marketing, and you therefore must have clearly defined processes of monitoring, interpreting results and tweaking.

Remember, Search Engine Optimization is not the only tool you need when creating and maintaining a profitable web presence, it is only one important component of your Web marketing strategy. Seasoned Web Marketers understand and realize that there is more to the Web than just search engines, as they know obtaining links from reputable websites, mixed with advertising using traditional media and ensuring your customers recommend you to their network of friends enjoy the same level of importance.

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I think I’m safe in saying that anyone who operates a website wonders how to get it into the top 10 search results, and that one thought has created an industry with the tools and knowledge to answer this very question, and the process has come to be known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

Many say that SEO methodology has become more of an art employed to bring improvement to the ranking of a website in Search Engine results given certain targeted “keywords,” and I tend to agree with that consensus. You need to understand that “keywords” are the words or phrases that your target market uses most to limit search results to more specific sites including product or services that you might offer. To illustrate, you might want your website to rank high for “Disc Golf accessories,” but you couldn’t care less if it rates high for “Garden Supplies,” because that is NOT your target market niche.

Most people of course don’t realize that Search Engines are actually very limited software programs, which don’t have the intelligence built into them to understand everything they encounter on the Web. What they use is constantly evolving rules to score and rate a website’s capability to answer a very specific question, and now that we understand this knowledge, we can break down the Search Engine Optimization process into the following three categories:

HTML code: This is the part of Search Engine Optimization for programmers, since an in-depth knowledge and understanding of web coding standards and techniques is required, and typical software packages have historically produced poor results which take a lot of the human touch and intervention to ensure optimum results.

Tailoring the Content: When given a set of keywords, a Search Engine rates pages according to their respective relevancy, so that you have to build your content with those specific keywords always in mind. What is fundamental to determining just which keywords are relevant is a complete understanding of your target market niche, including knowledge of the typical questions they ask when searching for answers. Is important for you to know and understand there are websites (i.e. www.wordtracker.com, www.google.com/insights/search, etc.) dedicated to helping you determine the most commonly used keywords, and you should make extensive use of them.

Keep in the back of your mind throughout the process, that this is not a race of numbers to see how many keywords you can fill the page with, because there is an optimum keyword density. Too dense with too many keywords and it will be considered spamming, and you will most certainly be penalized. Too little, and you are neither ranked nor considered an authoritative source of information. It would be wise of you to dial in on a specific set of keywords, and remember you are trying to optimize for only those asking a specific question.

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Team Altman Awesome Google vs. Facebook Video!

Google vs. Facebook on Location is heating up between Google and Facebook over their ‘Places’ location services, aimed at luring local business advertising dollars to their respective services, as the race begins to really heat up over the local advertising dollars from businesses that want to get the most return for their marketing budgets. The real battle will be waged and escalate over the real-time mobile advertising  market as more and more people turn to smart phones that apps can be written to specifically target niche markets within the mobile community which continues to grow exponentially, and of course the ultimately winner in the competition will be the consumer market. Remember, competition is GOOD!

As always enjoy, and share the Google vs. Facebook on Location!

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