Search Engine Optimization Basics for Business

I focus on quality content to market my products and services and help small businesses and professionals do their marketing. However, there are times when I do apply some very basic skills that I have learned about Search Engine Optimization or SEO to my own products and to help out my clients. I also know when to call in an expert in SEO marketing when more advanced skills are required.

There are a few basic terms that you should know if your business is doing any marketing on the internet.

First, SEO is basically performing small tasks on your website or blog or sales page so that the search engine spiders can crawl or look over your site. Based on your keywords plus some other stuff they will include your website in their directory. This is known as getting indexed.

A search engine spider is actually a robot that the search engines use to scour and search the internet and examine millions of websites at super speeds. These same spiders then index and sort web pages by relevance which for me is content. That is what makes your web page show up in the search engines when it is appropriate for the keyword you are targeting.

Everything you do in getting website recognition starts with keywords. The simple fact is keywords are important to the success of any blog or website.

Keywords are a major part of the information search engines use when they include your blog or website or program in their search results. For instance, good key words can improve your ranking and bad ones or overuse can cause your site to be banned for spamming.

Interestingly, there is no limit to the number of keywords or keyword phrases you can use on your blog or website or sales page but a good rule of thumb is to target five to 10 words or phrases that have a high search volume and represent your blog content.

The term search volume is the estimated number of times a keyword or phrase is used in Web searches on all search engines for a give period of time. You can usually find the number for an hour, a day or a month such as a month, or for a particular location such as your city.

Search engines use keyword density to determine the relevance of your web page to a keyword search. Keyword density refers to the percentage of times you use keywords within the content of your web page. For instance, if a keyword occurs three times on a Web page with 100 words, then the keyword density is 3 percent.

However, each search engine has its own preferred keyword density. In other words, Explorer is going to look for a different number than Firefox or Yahoo. That is why it makes sense to use enough keywords so that the search engines view that as the main topic for your blog or website. However, you have to be careful not to use the word too much because then what you wrote is treated as spam.

How do you know when enough is enough and not too many is good? I am told it is experience!