Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How Using Long Tail Keywords Can Rank You In The Top 3 Spots of Google!

Good keyword research is paramount in landing you on the first page of a Google search. Often times people choose keywords that are far too generic, leaving themselves no chance of being found on the first page of Google Search.

Long tail keywords are keywords that contain more than three or four words that someone would type in a Google search.

These longer tail keywords may not be as common or searched for as often as a single keyword, but long tail keywords will have a lot less competition, attract a more targeted audience, and give you a better chance of ranking on the first page of Google.

Generic keywords such as: Home Based Business and Work At Home are going to produce a larger number of searches each month and at the same time, there will be millions of websites competing for that same keyword.

Work At Home for instance has 1,900,000,000 results, or nearly two billion websites competing for that keyword. Yes, you read that right, billion with a B. Your chances of landing on page 157, let alone the first page are pretty bleak when the competition is that stiff.

Long tail keywords properly chosen should yield search results of 30,000 or less, a much more manageable competitive number to deal with.

Keyword research requires you to dig deep when choosing your keywords. As an example I would like to breakdown the long tail keyword research I used for a previous article about Forwarding and Masking a Domain. Google offers a free keyword tool that will assist you in your keyword research called, Google Keyword Tool.

This tool will breakdown monthly global searches as well as local searches done each month on a particular keyword. It also lists other relevant words and their stats, giving you a choice of keywords that you may not have thought of.

I started my research with Forwarding a domain which produced about 5 million search results. Meaning there are 5 million websites talking about forwarding a domain.

Forwarding and masking a domain produced 250,000 results, still more competition than I care to go up against. In digging a bit deeper I tried, forwarding and masking your domain, which produced 47,000 results. Digging deeper still I tried, How To Set Up Forwarding and Masking Your Domain which produced only 26,300 results. Bingo, I found the long tail keyword to build my article around.

After just a couple of weeks I now have the second and third spot on the first page of Google for the long tail keyword, how to set up forwarding and masking your domain.

To illustrate this process I created a video that is posted on my blog which is listed below.

In closing, long tail keywords will reach a far more targeted audience than generic keywords. You won't generate as much traffic to your site using a them, but you will generate quality people looking for what you have to offer.

* Branding: You are going to be branding yourself whether you like it or not. Your brand (your name that you use on the articles) is going to be seen by large amounts of people. Take the time to think about you brand and how you are perceived by others. This is one step lots of people fail on, they skip there personal brand and forget that you need to build trust with your readers.

* Your Author Stats: Your author stats will determine your online presence. If you take the time to write good and consistent content you will get higher stats, expert author or a similar description will appear on your article profile. Your readers will know who you are, what your about and if your good and have made the right impressions they will come back consistently.

* Traffic to your website:This is an extremely important point that you must make you you cover properly. The more people that vies your sites the more likelihood there is that they will visit your website. In most articles submitting sites there will be a resources box which will allow you to put your link in. In this resource box you can anchor text your main keyword to your website. So in a short sense, if you write an article that appeal to someone they can then click on your link and visit your site gaining access to more of the similar information.

* Backlinks: Everywhere you post your articles will results building backlinks to your site. These backlinks are one way links that are essential for good search engine rankings, in addition to the visitors you will get from the article readers to your website.

* Free Marketing: The final point I want to touch on is free marketing. Article marketing is free! It is a great way to market you product effectively and productively. You can expect to get visitors to your site for months or years, it is a long term strategies that works! If you don't have the time to do it, make time or look in to article submission software. The point I'm trying to make is if you're in a position where you can't afford to do paid advertising then article marketing will work for you. You will be surprised by its results.

I hope this article has given you some kind of rough guidance and stressed the importance and benefits of article marketing.

Article marketing in my opinion in one of the most effective free marketing strategies. You can get your content and interesting topics out to thousands of people. You do need to structure it and take on board the points above, they will help you become more successfully in your article marketing process. If you want to find out more about article marketing or have any questions then visit:

http://sixfigurementorreview.com/introduction/

http://intrepreneurs.thesixfigurementors.com/blog

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Charlie_Lauste

Many business owners spend a small fortune building new websites to replace old ones that don't perform well only to discover that even though they have an awesome product and a spectacular new website; the flow of traffic remains pretty much the same as before the demolition.

WHAT WEB DESIGNERS WON'T TELL YOU is that they are not Search Engine Optimization experts and most wouldn't even be considered novices. Seriously, if you were to hire a building contractor to erect your place of business would you also expect him to advertise and promote your product? That said; let the record state that website designers should NEVER BE CONFUSED with Search Engine Optimization experts or marketing specialists.

This week I'll be writing about noninvasive techniques that will help you jump start a consistent flow of traffic regardless if you are in the process of building a new website or if you already have an existing website.

Website Content

Well it's time to sit down and write the content and while the idea of filling an entire website with content can be overwhelming who knows your business better than you? Without wanting to sound like I have a vendetta against web designers THIS IS NOT THE PERSON you want creating your content.

After all it's you who built your business from the ground up and it's you who've personally nurtured and massaged the relationships that grew the business to its current level.

A hired pen will most likely have to research established companies similar to yours which will not only incur additional cost for you but at the end of the day you will find that they lack your experience and passion which can ultimately translate into the writer completely missing the mark on exactly what it is YOU WANT TO CONVEY TO YOUR AUDIENCE.

Don't get hung up on implementing ideal keywords - at least not just yet. At this point you simply want to write what it is that you want to communicate in a way that adds meaning and value to both prospective and existing customers visiting your website.

Your Value Proposition What is your niche? What makes you superior to competitors? Why should this matter to your visitors? What support can you offer to prove your statements true?

It's best if you can express these points in just a sentence or two. Position your value prop near the beginning of your writing and place it on your home page as well as you're about us page. Make what you do and who you are STAND APART FROM YOUR COMPETITORS IMMEDIATELY because at the end of the day it's your value proposition that will make visitors choose you over your competitors. So be careful not to position this message too far down on your web page or bury it within the layers of your website.

Press Releases

After you've established your value proposition and you are satisfied with your content it will be TIME TO SPREAD THE NEWS. If you already have an existing website you may want write a press release reintroducing your website. You can also publish press releases about your company, staff or upcoming event such as webinars and speaking engagements.

Creating Inbound Links

Inbound linking stated simply is when a link to your website appears on another website. Now let's discuss more specifically how you can achieve this and how you will benefit from this strategy.

Personally I view inbound linking as another form of networking. As an example let's say I am a regular visitor at website XYZ.com and one day I notice that XYZ.com has an interesting article written by you and link leading back to your website.

Chances are pretty good that because:

1. I like website XYZ.com 2. I trust website XYZ.com 3. I'm pretty confident the website XYZ.com knows what I like

I'll probably click on the link to your website to check it out. Writing articles and getting them posted on trusted industry related websites is a good way to setup inbound links back to your website. This particular technique will not only increase the flow of traffic to your website but it can also be used as an instrument to ESTABLISH YOU AS AN AUTHORITY IN YOUR PARTICULAR FIELD.

Blogging

Blogging is a great way to:

1. Add fresh content to your website keeping it fresh and interesting. Nobody wants to revisit a stale website. There's no reason to return if you already know everything that's going to be there.

2. Keep in touch with existing and prospective clients. Businesses are always looking for additional reasons to reach out to prospective and existing clients in ways that don't come across as spam

3. Establish you, your team or company as a leader or expert in your field. Excellent platform to present your value proposition, product, service, knowledge, your team, etc.

4. Keep everyone posted on upcoming events, interesting articles and breaking news. Provides another reason to reach out to prospective and existing clients while establishing you as a good source for current and valuable information

Another great way to make use of blogging is to drop your current headline onto social networking sites with a link pointing back to your website to read the full article. THE RESULT WILL YIELD TRAFFIC COMING BACK TO YOUR WEBSITE.

Sharing Strive to write and distribute valuable and meaningful content and make it easy for your readers to share your articles and blog by adding "share this" buttons. By making it easy for your readers to share your content you allow them to become PROACTIVE PARTICIPANTS IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF YOUR MARKETING MATERIAL.

Capturing Lead Information Now that you've got a consistent flow of traffic coming through your website how do you capture their contact information? This can be done by strategically placing simple "calls to action" throughout your website. Make sure the action buttons are bold enough in color or shape to standout and catch the attention of the reader but take care not to compromise the total appearance and balance of the web page itself.

Your unique product or service will dictate precisely how your call to action buttons will prompt readers. Below I've listed just a few as examples of what the verbiage may look like.

• GET IT NOW

• Sign Up Today!

• Call for plans and pricing today

• Click here for today's website specials! Lastly, a much overlooked vehicle for adding calls to action is in your daily emails। Business owners and employees send a lot of emails throughout the course of a day and by adding a call to action at the bottom of your emails you create yet ANOTHER WAY TO IMPACT THE FLOW OF TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE. It can be something as simple as check out our website changes or a short excerpt from your blog with a click here to read the full article.

SEOKATZ is a Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Consulting firm that uses cutting edge, guerrilla marketing techniques to help small to medium sized businesses increase Internet exposure, drive traffic and capture qualified lead information without the need for a huge marketing expense.

About the company

SEO Katz is a proactive marketing and search engine optimization consulting firm that applies a guerrilla marketing approach to help small and medium sized businesses maximize their presence on the web.

If you have been an online advertiser and you have utilized the many SEO strategies available for you, then there would be denying that you are aware of the term search engine results page or SERP since it plays a vital role in telling you what your status is in terms of optimizing your presence on the internet. The search engine results page or SERP is the link to the web page that shows the list of results whenever you type a keyword and click on search, an act that triggers the search engine exploration process and immediately shows you the links to the sites that correspond to your search.

SEO, as the name implies, is a strategy or a group of strategies (depending on how many you employ) the goal of which is to increase your rankings on a given search engine results page for a specific keyword or keyword phrase with the belief that being placed on top of the said list will precipitate more clicks and eventually more visits and conversions. And your line up of search engine optimization tactics are the do's and don'ts that will help you attain the ranking that you so desire, that is a top position on the search engine results page or SERP.

One very vital approach in the SEO marketing campaign would be the selection of the right keywords you can rank for and this is a bit tricky because if you are unfamiliar with the online marketing trending, you would be lured into choosing the more obvious keywords and you would find your site in the presence of big players who can churn out endless ways of scoring huge with the search engines to rank higher on the search engine results page. In fact if you are lucky, like for instance you chose pop keywords like computer, your link would end up on the third page of the search engine results pages, a place where people who are searching rarely reach when they are searching for an item.

So the trick in choosing the right keywords or keywords phrases especially if you have not fully established your presence online is to opt for those who are on the second level of popularity, the next round of keywords that the searchers would choose if they feel that they are not satisfied with the initial results on the first keyword that they used. On this arena, you will fewer competition and a better chance of ranking higher on the SERPs, you can even choose your keywords in such a way that your target is much more specific and precise to the kind of visitors that you need.

What if you can't get more website traffic? Here's a "secret snowball traffic system" that has generated over 1,175,000 visitors for my tiny websites. Click Here Now to get this free video that will show you how to make it happen for your sites. http://www.jasonnyback.com/ezine

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_Nyback

People searching on the internet for a local business is growing in popularity. I think you'd be very surprised by the number people who are going to their computer searching for local businesses on the Internet. Google has said about 73% of all searches now on the search engine are people looking for a local business. If you think about it, a businesses change quite often. They come and they go. They go out of business. They move to another location. So how does a local person keep up?

In the past, if you're like most people, you would've probably picked up the Yellow Pages. That was really the only way the new businesses were found in any local town. But the Yellow Pages are out of date at least a year. Plus you don't know if the business is really still there. So what you do? There is a rumour that the Yellow Pages will replace the book with a CD that you put in your computer. So what does that mean to you?

Think about it. When you're in a small town, and unless the customer has already been to your place of business, how do they know where you are. They don't know if you've moved. They might know approximately where you are but how do they find you.

When I was in the sign business many years ago, in the training session we went through, the trainers made it clear to make sure we explain to the business owner that their sign must be visible from a least a mile down the road. Why is this? Because if the local customer is driving around town looking and searching for a business like yours the sign needs to be in their line of sight or that customer will pass you by. You lose another customer. Had you ever noticed that when they put up a new McDonald's location the first in the goes up is the big sign. McDonald's knows that there are customers driving around and they want them to be aware that a new McDonald's was coming soon. Even before the buildings put up, the sign is there. Big yellow arches.

And now it's so easy for people who have computers. They don't have to get in their car. They don't have to fight traffic. They don't have to try to find you. Now they just turn to the Internet. Will they find you? What if you don't show up on Google's first page or maybe the second page. People rarely go past the second page. Say you go to Google and search right now and type in a product that you sell or the type of business you are in? Are you there? Probably not. In fact if you look at the number of pages in the top left-hand corner you're probably see hundreds of thousands maybe millions of web pages to choose from. How confusing is that for the customer?

Well things have changed. If you are a business owner you need to be on the front page of Google. Here is an example. Let's go to the Google external keyword tool and do an experiment. This tool is VERY helpful. You can access it by going to Google Search and typing in Google Keyword External. This is the tool that you can use to find out how many people type in a certain keyword or keyword phrase. For this example I am going to use the small city of Peterborough, Ontario. The population there is about 75,000 in the winter to about 100,000 or so in the summer (by comparison, the population of Toronto is around 3 million).

I am going to determine how many people in this area are using their computers to find a local pizza restaurant, so I will enter a search for: "Pizza in Peterborough" You could also put the city first and then the product afterward. For example "Peterborough Pizza". It doesn't really matter because Google will figure it out. The Google keyword tool will provide results based on the last month. According to Google, last month 5,400 searched for "pizza peterborough" on Google. That is almost 180 people a day, and this is a small city! Pretty wild eh?

Are you starting to see the potential here?

Try it out yourself. Go to the Google keyword tool and type in a product or business and add the city name to it. You can also do it for cities that are around your location. And the best part is you could walk into your local pizza restaurant armed with all this information and show them proof that there's local people in the area searching for them. But of course they can't find them if they're not on the first page of Google. Actually get on their computer and show it to them in real time.

Here is a script of what I like to say when approaching businesses:

"Hello Mr. Business Owner. As you probably already know, less and less people are using the phone book to find local businesses. They are turning to the internet to find a local business. People looking for a pizza restaurant are now turning to the Internet to find a local pizza place. If I can have 10 minutes of your time I can show you how Google is actually keeping track of what people search for? I have access to this information and can show you how to do it to. Let me give you an example.

According to Google, just last month 5,400 people used their computers to find a local pizza restaurant in Peterborough, Ontario by typing in "pizza peterborough". That is almost 180 people a day! I wanted to bring this up to you because I noticed that your website is not currently ranking on the first page for this important keyword phrase. You are missing out on all this potential business. Mr. Business Owner, it is like these people are knocking on your door and you aren't there to answer!" Do you have 10 minutes tomorrow at 9AM?"

I have found this approach to be VERY effective. This is a very effective approach to want to get in front of business owners and show them exactly what I've been showing you. Then you can offer them SEO services but better explain it to them in the way of getting more customers in their door or money in their pocket. Most businesses don't know what SEO means.