Fundamentally, SEO is the study of how Search Engines organise sites on their organic search lists. These lists are the main results that are shown when you do a search. They are not to be confused with the Pay per Click entries. The paid listings are typically in a yellow section at the top of the page, and in a column down the right hand side. All the rest have naturally been put into position. The Search Engines look at a site’s relevancy and value when establishing its position in the hierarchy.

Of course, we would like to be as high as possible on page one. If we’re the 7th listing on page 9 then we’re hardly going to get prospects beating our door down! It’s impossible to know about all the SE’s rank determining factors. It isn’t something they publicise to the rest of us!

Because of this, much technical expertise has developed around the subject. On the one side you have SE’s like Google deliberately filing technology patents in many different areas. This makes determining their ratings methods more complex. Then to challenge that on the other hand is a growing SEO (optimisation) sector. Optimisation specialists test, quantify and evaluate a myriad of indicators that affect a site’s ratings.

Search Engine Optimisation deals with both on-page and off-page issues. Geography and demography are also factors that influence page ranking. To understand factors relating to off-page, please see our additional editorial.

SE ‘On Page’ Optimisation

It’s possible to change the pages of your website to make them ‘friendly’ to the Search Engines. It’s not too complex – it just requires setting your website up the right way. For instance: Utilising H1 and H2 Header Tags, Internal Linking, Keywords and Meta Tags.

If all that is complete double-dutch to you, then don’t worry – you’re not alone! It’s very easy to control on-page factors. But to be quite honest, they have the least relevance to your ranking these days. In truth, many argue its relevance has disappeared altogether! In the past it was easy to affect Search Engines with on-page SEO. That hasn’t been possible for a long time though.

If a site has a lot of in-bound back-links though, on-page factors can still be beneficial. If that’s the case, internal linking and a certain amount of on-page fine-tuning can reap rewards.

Suggestions To Take Into Account – Keywords and phrases that bring up massive results should be avoided by anyone new to SEO. Take car insurance for instance. In Britain alone you’d get seventy million sites listed. Far too much competition at the start.

And Yet – The phrase ‘Southampton Car Insurance’ only brings in three hundred thousand. (Presuming that was my market). Though still large, this is a much more manageable figure.

I’ve a much better chance in the rankings having added the word ‘Southampton’. In reality, getting ranked for car insurance would cost a fortune! I’d actually be head to head with the really big boys. So not a great idea – especially, in fact, when there are much better ways to go about it.

We should concentrate on more accurate ‘phrases’ that give us less competition. We call them Long-tail phrases, as they’re made up of a few particularly chosen keywords. If your market’s very competitive, you could be selecting seven word phrases. Typically they will be 3 or 4 words long.

We prefer to begin optimisation strategies with phrases that bring in less than five hundred thousand results. Sometimes we’ll consider higher counts if the top results are not benefitting from optimisation. Over time we’ll gain ground on the larger search terms. This will happen automatically through building back links. We can go for some of those after several months if we’ve SEO’d well. It’s a much more targeted strategy. Frankly, we’re only interested in the customers who are looking specifically for what we offer. There’s much more chance these people will buy!

Back Links should be shared between several web pages on your site and not just restricted to the Homepage. We call this ‘deep-linking’ – and Google in particular likes this. Try back-linking product group pages. They very frequently link up to a range of sub-pages, so driving appropriate terms to them can be very worthwhile. Thus – don’t restrict the back links to just one page. The managing and listing of individual sub-pages is receiving growing attention from the major Search Engines.

Technorati Tags:lckhelpsite.com, technology news, and more advice, computer, education, hobbies, home, Money, self improvement, SEO, shop, software, Technology, web, work

By Michael Small

I got into search engine optimization when Yahoo was king and Google was a gleam in Larry Page’s eye so I’ve had a front row seat to all the big doings. And one thing I can tell you for certain is Microsoft just took off its kid gloves with the release of Bing and is looking for a shot at the reigning champ Google.

This article will show you how to hedge your bet with both contenders and come out a winner while these two Goliaths slug it out.

Round One:

First and foremost make sure you follow the one major rule that will apply to both engines; Content is King!

Although we don’t yet have a clear picture of how Bing will react to all situations we do know that, since it is being touted as the first decision engine, it will focus greatly on quality of content. That said, be ready to make your pages a little longer than you did when optimizing for MSN and be certain the copy reads well.

Round Two:

Great content is not enough. It has to be well written and natural sounding. Anything that sounds like it was written for a search bot will not make it into the top one hundred let alone the top ten.

Round Three:

Still dealing with on page content, you need to carefully consider how many times your keyword is mentioned and where it is found on the page text. Both search engines will not only look for your keywords but also the context in which they are found. It is no longer enough to simply have them sprinkled in the text randomly. Now the keywords need to actually flow in the context of the text as well. This is typically taken care of for you when writing naturally but is definitely worth the extra once over before posting the final page live.

Here is a little formula to help…

•Use one main keyword and up to two supporting keywords per page.
•Do not repeat the main keyword more than three times on a page.
•Do not repeat the supporting keywords more than twice each per page.
•Try to have at least five hundred words per page.
•Try to place your main keyword at the beginning, middle and end of the page text while keeping the writing natural and flowing.
Round Four:

Get as many high quality inbound links as possible. You already know this but it bears repeating. Search engines today are about popularity of the individual page returns. Having inbound links from Google authority sites will be more important than ever because any other search engine trying to trump Google will also be checking these stats as well as adding a few of their own.

That said, getting links from just the Google authority sites is not enough. You also want to get links from MSN’s top picks (which are now Bing’s top picks.)

Round Five:

To really hedge your bet, get an early leg up on your competition by becoming proficient in proven SEO software with a good track record on both Google and MSN (The tool at http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com has proven a good pick over the years for its ability to help develop SEO friendly content and locate the most beneficial link partners but there.)

And finally, look for domains for sale that are already ranked well on MSN. This could be the diamond in the rough opportunity of a lifetime for your online business.

By following these simple tips you can outdo ninety nine percent of your competition trying to share in the rewards offered by Google and Bing going head to head.