So you want to improve the ranking of your website on the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, AskJeeves, etc.) but you're unsure how to proceed...you're in the right place.  The purpose of this series of articles is to help you understand the SEO process and to start implementing SEO techniques to improve your site's ranking in the 'Natural Search Results'.

Let's start by defining our terms:

KEY WORD PHRASE (KEYWORD) - The area in pink below contains the keyword phrase entered by the search engine user when looking for a site to visit.    This is the single most important item to consider when conducting SEO on your site. 

PAID SEARCH (Sponsored Links, PPC) - The areas in yellow below contain the paid advertisements displayed by Google for the given keyword phrase.  Advertisers are paying Google for each click they receive when the advertisment is displayed.  This is the primary tools used by search engines to generate revenue.

NATURAL SEARCH RESULTS (Generic Search, Unpaid Search) - The area in green below contains the natural search results.  When thinking SEO, this is the area you want to show up in.  You don't have to pay Google anything for showing up in this area, but getting there can be quite difficult and even expensive depending on the popularity of the keyword phrase you want to target.

 

 

Your first task (and most important) is to identify the keyword phrases you'd like to target.  For example, let's say you speicalize in selling real estate in Salt Lake City.  Some candidate keyword phrases for you to consider might be 'Salt Lake Real Estate', 'Salt Lake City Homes for Sale', 'Salt Lake Homes', 'Salt Lake Condos', 'Salt Lake Luxury Homes', etc. 

Once you've developed your list of keyword phrases check them out in Google and make note of the number of pages found by Google which may be relevant for the keyword phrase.

For Example:

'Salt Lake City Real Estate' has 6,210,000 pages found.
'Salt Lake City Condos' has 721,000 pages found.
'Salt Lake City Sugarhouse' has 191,000 pages found.

When looking at these results it's obvious that 'Salt Lake City Real Estate' is MUCH more competitive than 'Salt Lake City Conods', and that 'Salt Lake City Condos' is much more competitive than 'Salt Lake City Sugarhouse'.

Just because a keyword phrase is competitive it may or may not be popular.

Google provides a wonderful tool which you can use to determine the popularity of a keyword phrase.  It will also provide alternative keywords.  Click the link below to use the Google Keyword Tool.

Google Adwords: Keyword Tool

Keep in mind that the more competive a keyword phrase is, the harder it will be to break into page one of the natural search results.   Fortunately you can target multiple keyword phrases but expect the process of moving up in the rankings to take quite a bit of time.  This is a marathon race, not a sprint.

Now do your homework, start thinking about the keyword phrases which will work best for your business.  Create a spreadsheet with each phrase, number of links found for the phrase and the popularity (search volume).  You'll need to think like a client when doing this. 

Our next article will begin the process of optimizing your site based upon the keyword phrases you decide to target...stay tuned.