Search Engine Optimization: Get the Low-down

Been hearing the words Search Engine Optimization lately? I know I have. But what is it, you wonder? Well, that's what I'm here to talk to you about.

Search Engine Optimization is a type of pull marketing that uses keywords to boost your search engine rank. What's pull marketing? It's what you might call passive, or viral marketing, where instead of aggressively seeking out your customer, you position yourself someplace where they can find you. The most likely place where you might be found is the first place they'll look: the search engine listings. You know: Google, Yahoo, Dogpile... those guys! But how do you jockey for the best placement? Read on for some helpful tips and tricks.

1. Optimize Your Articles

Article marketing is one of the newest and hottest ways to boost your search engine rank. To check out SEO article marketing in action, go to Ezinearticles.com. Sign up as a member, and start writing and submitting articles that other web marketers will "receive" via an RSS article feed, and promote on their own websites. With every article you write, a link to your personal website is included.

Why does this work to boost your search engine rank? Well, if you add keywords to your web article titles and text, people who type those same keywords into search engines will find your articles before they locate those of another person who wrote about the same topic but didn't use popular keywords.

For prime search engine optimization, your article headline should include keywords in the BEGINNING (the first 2-4 words- not at the end.) You can find out which keywords are most often typed into Google and other search engines by entering each keyword into the Overture Keyword Selector Tool. Want to know more? Paste in the link below for a crash-course in Keyword Article Writing.

http://www.ezinearticles.com/?Keyword-Article-Writing:-the-Key-to-Your-Success!&id=21236

2. Optimize Your Website

Not everyone knows about the advantages to making your website keyword-rich. But if YOU know, then that means you're one-up on the next person! So many folks use copy/paste web design programs, paying no mind to title and header creation. As a result, their websites may look pretty, but they're not primed for top of the search index. When designing yours, incorporate the most frequently used keywords into the HTML title tags. If you do this, web crawlers will be able to 'find' you through your keywords and secure you a pretty sweet location in the search engine rankings.

Use the Overture Keyword Selector Tool to research your keywords for popularity and relevance, and then add them to your TITLE, metatags and headers (H1, H2 and so forth). Meta-tags... hmm. What was that again, you wonder? Metatags are keywords used to help identify your web content. These words are listed at the beginning of each page source of your website. A visitor who clicks the page can't see your metatags, but web crawlers can, and that's how you get bumped up on the search engine ladder.

You should be meta-tagging EVERY page of your website, not just the homepage, so you can ensure that every section gets indexed properly. Each of your pages contains unique content, right? Well, chances are somebody out there is hunting for it. Let yourself be found.

More about page titles: web marketers are realizing they can make their websites more easily searchable by standardizing their page titles. Some examples: About Us, Services, Contact, Links. Web researchers and web crawlers both know to look for these words when searching for information on the net. Add these to your pages to make them easy to index.

A final tip on website optimization: the savvy marketer knows not to put a Flash intro on his homepage... because Flash designs aren't keyword-friendly. If you'd like to smarten up your look with one of these, go ahead and use it on another page, but save your homepage for standard, keyword-rich content. It's the best chance of improving SEO rank so don't waste the opportunity!

3. Optimize Your Web Ads

Here's a neat trick: if you advertise your URL on another website that holds a high SEO rank, you can 'get your name out there' by piggybacking on their popularity. This works for print ads and banners just as well as it does for the article marketing I mentioned earlier. Attaching your link to one of the top ranked websites increases hits to your site, resulting in better search engine position for you! The idea, again, is to run ads that are full of those popular keywords, so they'll be picked up by the website indexers.

In short: Search Engine Optimization is really the snowball effect in action... momentum gaining on itself. It's worth learning all the tricks that will bring your website up the ranks and keep the hits coming! If you're still new at web marketing and website design, why not get a brief tutorial from someone who's well-experienced and well-versed in the topic? After that, the only place you can go is up!

Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.

Dina Giolitto is a New-Jersey based Copywriting Consultant with ten years of industry experience. Her current focus is web content and web marketing for a multitude of products and services although the bulk of her experience lies in retail for big-name companies like Toys"R"Us. Visit http://www.wordfeeder.com for rates and samples.

More SEO Articles

New Site and Sandbox: How to Get Rid of It
You have put lot of sweat in making your site. Now you want it to engender revenues and only source of traffic is search engines.

Use Search Engines For A Guaranteed Web Site Promotion
For your web site to succeed, you must use is search engines optimization. Web sites definitely need top rankings in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN.

How MSN and Yahoo Sells Your Traffic
Yes, it really happens. Now you might find it hard to believe but you will understand after I explain.

The Power of Topic Specific Search
What are Topical Search Engines?Simply put, topical search engines are search engines focused on a specific industry, sector or topic.While many marketers are scrambling for links, any links, an area that is often overlooked is topic-specific search engines.

How to Get One Way Backlinks
Don't be fooled into believing that all backlinks are created equal because their not! Why, you may ask? It's no secret that many webmasters trade links left, and right, for the benefit of a higher ranking in the search results, but search engines have caught on to this technique, and are very aware that this is major threat to the relevance of the search results.Search engines such as Google have took steps in an effort to prevent this from becoming major problem by placing more importance on one way backlinks.

What is Google Pagerank?
PageRank is one of the factors that Google uses to evaluate your web site and determine its position in the Google search engine results. PageRank is a number from 0 to 10.

Search Engine Essentials
What are Search Engines?There are numerous different search engines, and all are essentially huge databases containing information about web pages from the internet. A web-based user interface then allows the user to search the contents of this database.

A Real Example of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Success
The term, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), refers to a set of techniques by which web sites and web pages are constructed for maximum recognition and ranking by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search. Using the right techniques can guarantee top listing positions for keywords and keyphrases that are related to a site.

Search Engine Optimization: Who Do You Trust?
Internet search engines exist to organize the seemingly immeasurable amount of information available on the web. They direct people to pages that are relevant to their searches, pages that discuss the exact keywords they are looking for.

Search Engine Ranking - What Works Now
The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you - the time has come to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.