Simple SEO Truths

Unfortunately, there are many marketers who simply do not put
enough effort into preparing their web site for the search
engines. The following guidelines will help you to start seeing results
in the search engines. Your first step is simply choosing the
right keywords....

According to the 1998 Georgia Tech GVU User Survey, 85 percent
of respondents found Web pages from search engines. Since then,
other studies have reported 50 to 80 percent of Web site traffic
comes from search engines. Searching is second only to email as
the most popular online activity.

Unfortunately, there are many marketers who simply do not put
enough effort into preparing their web site for the search
engines.

The following guidelines will help you to start seeing results
in the search engines. Your first step is simply choosing the
right keywords.

Choosing the Right Keywords

Often times, people make the mistake of optimizing for very
general keywords like used cars or online marketing. Although
these terms get lots of traffic, it is very unlikely that you
will be able to rank highly for them. Then, even if you do, this
type of traffic produces very low conversion rates because they
are not targeted prospects.

For example, if you are selling hiking backpacks, it would be
much more beneficial for you to target the phrase 'hiking
backpacks' rather than the extremely competitive keyword
'backpacks'. It would be even better to target the phrase
'camelbak commander'. This is a specific type of backpack and
therefore will attract more buyers than searchers.

In fact, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, 28 percent of
searchers will type a product name into a search engine. Nine
percent type in a brand name and 5 percent type in company
names.

The more targeted your keyword phrase, the more likely they are
to buy. A person who types in 'backpacks' may be looking for
school backpacks or snowboard backpacks. This lends to useless,
un-targeted traffic.

However, a person that searches for a specific brand of
backpacks knows exactly what they want and they are much further
along in the buying process.

Once you have determined the best possible keyword phrases to
target, you must now optimize your page for those specific
keywords.