So how does someone find your any site in the first place? Well, they go to one of the popular search engines like Google, Yahoo or now Bing! Then they type in some words that pertain to what they are looking for. These words or phrases are called "Keywords". And understanding them is critical to your success.
Before you can have success, you need to know what your potential visitors would actually search for to find your web page. One mistake that many people make is that they assume that they know what people are looking for and they go after the most popular keywords.
For instance, this article's main keyword is "top search engine placement". Well, those that don't know what they are doing would probably create a page based on "search engine ranking". The problem with that while there is a lot of demand, there is simply too much competition as well.
Special Quote of the Day:
"Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind."
~ Thomas Jefferson
However, while there is not even nearly as many people searching for "top search engine placement", there is also almost no competition! This means that a great web page or article could easily break into the top 10 or even nail the #1 spot. The goal is to have your business listed within the top search results for terms related to your business.
1. Figure out the planned keywords you want to start off with.
2. Conduct the first round keyword research. Get a list of keyword ideas for each page.
3. If desirable, select or change your domain name and the names of the pages of your site according to the found results. Including your site's main keyword phrase in your domain name can help you grab a top search engine placement.
4. With the data obtained at step 2, perform your advanced keyword research and complete the list of keywords you will use for optimization on each of your pages.
5. As a result, every page of your site must have 1-3 exact keywords / key phrases related with it.
6. Strategic key phrases should always consist of at least two words (but it's even better to have 3-5 words, as that's the average length of a search phrase).
7. Start with finding the most general terms that describe your business, then break into more specific ones and optimize each page for the most exact term describing this page.
8. Where possible, make your decision in favor of a product name. It is often easy to grab a top search engine placement for a particular product name. Plus, people that search for a specific product are usually looking to buy!
9. If possible or applicable, optimize one or several pages for localized terms. Like #8, a lot of people like to deal with people physically located near them but even many local businesses don't optimize their sites for their particular area.
10. Your actual competition is the number of pages which are optimized - intentionally or not - for a given key phrase. Your competition is not all of the pages that come up when someone searches for a keyword. For example, if someone searches for "search engine ranking", Google will come back with over 99,000,000 results. But even Google says that only 903 of those results are really relevant. That's less than .001%!
11. From the list of keywords, to achieve a top search engine placement, you should pick out those which show the weakest competition: low page ranks of the top pages, low link popularity of the top pages, low CPC prices, low number of pages and titles with a keyword in them.
12. Alexa traffic rank is a reverse indication: the lower the rank, the higher the traffic this site gets and the tougher they will be to beat.
13. As a result of these step, you should have your final list of the best keywords to grab a top search engine placement for each page of your site.
We'd love it if you would ask any questions that you possibly have or share any useful information and advice about top search engine placement that you might know.