Keyword Research
Published October 4, 2010 | 
Many businesses Web designers and operators share one very common mistake when they proceed on the notion that preferred keywords are used by all people to search and find specific types of content.
Take for instance, that an accounting professional may assume that people are using the word “accounting” to determine Web sites similar to his own. On the other hand, his accounting business most likely specializes in one of several areas of accounting expertise. And chances are great that his practice is limited to a similarly small area.
Consequently, it would be wise of the accounting professional to understand how people search the Web for providers of accounting expertise in both his specialty and location. Keyword research is usually performed with the help of specifically developed tools that extract from indexes of data records provided by one or more search engines for recent user queries.
This type of data provides an insightful look into how people search for information on the Web, and as it frequently happens, people who are not very familiar with a particular industry’s terminology use words that highly experienced professionals would never considering using.
You as the search optimizer need to evaluate the most likely benefit of using words that experienced and well-informed searchers would use against the words that inexperienced searchers use.
Ask yourself does the Web site being showcased offer significant value to both types of visitors? Which visitor is more likely to be converted to a transaction-taking user/customer? In the most perfected environments, you as the search optimizer can identify functional keywords that speak to several markets.
Never the less, data search results does not generally imply whether search patterns are recurring (i.e. seasonal or annual etc.), uninterrupted or spike/event-driven. The best keyword research looks closely at past trends in searched data over the time period of 6 to 24 months to establish which keywords are most expected to be used by the most people.
Chronological trend analysis is a too often-overlooked component of keyword research, which should be implemented and conducted at the least a couple of times during the year, if not on a quarterly basis after the initial search engine optimization, is performed.
Once the best possible keywords have been recognized in user inquiry patterns, a best match must be determined with deference to the content that will in fact be uploaded to the Web. 
Exceptions to the “best match” type should be well thought-out for pay-per-click or any other forms of marketing or possibly for less important content to be prepared later.
Finally, matching corresponding performance keywords to planned content ensures that the best possible relevance between the Web copy and search patterns is attainable.
Link Building – Article Marketing
Published September 24, 2010 | 
Now you might ask yourself, how can article marketing be a lesser known technique? Because anyone and everyone that writes has already submitted articles to Ezines at this point in time, so what’s the use, but you should realize the important thing for you to keep in mind is that you must provide quality content, and never forget that quality content is a significant force that drives site traffic. This of course, is advantageous to you because quality and hot content submitted to article directories is more often than not picked up by other websites seeking content.
Understand there’s a good chance in many cases, your particular article may be picked up by a website of a higher page rank, which automatically offers you a link back to your site as a great added bonus. You can also think about taking this one step further, keep alert, and if you see websites using your article in agreement to ezine terms, then you can make contact with those websites with an offer for unique articles with your links in them.
So now you might be wondering just how do you create this quality hot content for the article directories? Instead of writing generically filled boring and uninspired content associated to your niche market, search popular sites like Digg and even Twitter for inspiration related to your keywords. The great is these are sites run by people for the people, 
and you will discover several resources linking to the hottest news articles directly related to your specific keywords.
Finally from there, it should slowly become obvious to you what content the people are really after and you can then write corresponding articles that will be more prone to being picked up by popular websites for reposting. Incredibly, it’s as simple as that.
Understanding Head Terms in SEO
Published September 21, 2010 | So we begin by taking a look at the benefits of head terms? 
To begin with, these more wide-ranging terms allow us to a couple of things including expanding our reach and aiming for a higher volume of people. It’s impossible to think of every way possible for someone to search for a specific topic, so understand by setting a head term in broad match helps us to get in front of an audience that we would have never found and targeted with long-tail keywords.
Another important benefit from using head terms is the detection of the search queries that were corresponding to the broad head tail. After waiting for a couple of days or weeks, we can obtain a search query report and ascertain a respectably strong list of search queries, that e can then mine for valuable keywords for possible use in ad groups.
That said we need to make sure that we use the head tail correctly, since we only want the head to draw search queries that cannot be matched to long-tail keyword phrases. In other words, we don’t want the head to take any traffic from the long tail.
Ranking for highly viable head terms characteristically calls for a more assorted source of links pointing to the correct page that targets the term, and the links will need to use the matching keyword as the anchor text as often as possible.
Understand pages that target less viable mid-to-long tail terms don’t naturally call for as many external links.
As an alternative, sites can rank for these terms by increasing authority through strong, trusted links, quite often to the very front page of the site. Reliable information structural design and good on-page keyword targeting will then present the relevancy signals required to rank for these terms.
Most link building tactics can be used moreover to target specific head terms or simply to build the authority of the site, depending on your particular needs.
It’s frequently helpful to know about the links your si
te may currently have, as this information can facilitate your decisions concerning if you should set sights on more links that will build site authority or to concentrate on deep links with precise anchor text.
Researching your competitors’ links can also be important, mainly in the identification of link opportunities or niches that could also be valuable to your link building campaign.
Page Relevance
Published September 8, 2010 | 
How search engines rank relevance is a closely guarded secret, yet there are some general facts that have been determined including the location of a word or phrase that is a factor that most search engines will consider relevant. Pages that have keywords appearing in the title are typically assumed to be more relevant than others to the topic, as well as pages found to be with keywords appearing near the top the page.
Frequency of keywords is another major factor in the process of how search engines determine a page’s relevancy. What this means is a search engine will analyze how often or frequently keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page, and those with a higher frequency are often weighted or deemed more relevant than other web pages.
Relevance means examination to see if the other sites are specifically trying to rank for the search term(s) in question, and on-page relevancy can be swiftly assessed by looking at the simplest elements including keyword match in the title of a page, keyword match in a site’s navigation internally, and the domain name containing keyword matches.
You should consider both authority and relevancy, which is a relatively simple process to determine opportunities. If a given keyword’s rankings term is dominated by much more powerful sites that are obviously targeting the term with their own on-page factors, then it’s most likely best for you to look for another keyword opportunity. I
f, on the other hand, you determine those same sites are powerful, yet aren’t specifically targeting the terms, then keyword potential does exist.
When you have completed this process, there should be a list of good keywords that have been through the vetting process. At this point, it simply becomes a process of establishing priorities for all your remaining keywords, and while the same primary assessment variables can still be used in determining priorities, you can also consider secondary assessment variables at this time.
Choosing Relevant Keyword Terms and Phrases
Published September 4, 2010 | 
After you have determined all keyword possibilities with sufficient search volumes, you should then filter the keywords for relevancy. Remember that you don’t just want to pull in traffic for traffics sake, so it’s important your goal should be to ensure your traffic is of high quality, simply because quality traffic helps conversion of your visitors into customers at a higher rate.
You should see the data as free or low-cost market research for the proper mindset to proceed to formulate a content strategy that just might have a shot at ranking well, and remember, before Google will like your content, people need to.
Here are some essential things you need to always cover when researching keywords:
Research Tools – According to some, Google’s Keyword Tool is all you need for research, and others use another free option that is Aaron Wall’s SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool, which makes use of Yahoo! Search data as well as other useful metrics. 
Of course, paid tools might be superior choices to those provided by search engines including Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery.
Be Specific – “Keyword” is just the term that gets loosely tossed around, but in most cases what you’re really after are keyword phrases. For example, a real estate attorney in Abilene, Texas would gain little actual benefit from ranking highly for the single word “attorney,” but consider that specific keyword phrases based on geography and specialty (“Abilene real estate lawyer”) would yield much more important highly targeted traffic.
There is Strength in Numbers – Be a little skeptical of the reported number of monthly searches provided by any particular tool, but do pay attention to collective popularity among search terms. You really want to be sure enough people use your selected phrase when thinking of your niche to make it worth the time and effort, especially if this term is a primary search term you have targeted for your site.
At the same time, you should be realistic, and if your goal is to rank in a very competitive sector, aim for a smaller attainable milestone first, or make sure that a certain keyword combination can rank for an easier phrase before attempting the more competitive term.
Highly Relevant – You should make sure that any search terms you are consider using are highly relevant to the eventual goal, and if you are selling specific products or services you provide, keyword relevancy may be easier for you to determine. 
Other goals might require much more careful consideration, such as subscriptions to content publications and contributions to charities, to name a few.
Develop a Resource – Finally, here’s the key element and question. Can a particular keyword phrase support the development of content that is a valuable resource to your readers?