Photo by gaspi *your guide

This is a continuation of last week’s look at Search Engine Optimization basics.

When people get online with a question or a need to fill, obviously search engines are the most widely-used tool to find the sites that can give them the product or answers they need. Great placement in the search engine results pages (SERPs) helps to generate optimal traffic and spread your organization’s visibility on the web.

Unfortunately though, a majority of search engine users will only look at the first page of search results. Therefore, it’s essential to optimize your site’s search engine placement and potentially grab a spot in the top ten search results. Getting yourself in the first page of search engine results—and better yet, in the top half of the page—will ensure public awareness of your web presence and generate more traffic, which can lead to more business leads and potential income.

Search engine optimization can make you number one in your niche, and at the very least it will help your site start generating income.

Keyword Research

Using the right keywords and phrases is the most important ingredient in your SEO strategy. If you use the right keyword research tools, it will help you find relevant terms, give you insight into what your target market is interested in, and in what relative numbers.

If you haven’t already put thought into what keywords you’re targeting with your web presence, you need to spend considerable time to brainstorm relevant, concise terms that your potential customers are using when they want to find what you offer. Age group, geographic location, slang terms, and other demographics may play a part here, as different people may not use the same word to define a product or information. Create a diverse list of keywords and utilize a tool like the AdWords Keyword Tool to see how much traffic each of your terms gets, how competitive the market is, and to discover related terms. Don’t neglect multiple-word phrases either—a large percentage of searches are so specific that they’re unique.

If you have your site up-and-running, install a tracking tool like Google Analytics to track what words and phrases users are already using to find your site, which will help you analyze the actual language people are using that leads them to your site and help you gauge how to converse with them on your blog or on social media sites. If the terms that bring people to your site are relevant and useful, add them to your list of keywords to optimize for!

On-site Optimization

There are two kinds of search engine optimization—on-site SEO and off-site SEO. On-site optimization is making changes on your own site; it’s the easiest part for you to control. Optimize the site pages themselves for the list of words and phrases you built with your research. You may need to rewrite your site’s content to include the right keyword phrases in your site without making it overly commercial, but help provide information to the people that are looking for it.

You may just need to generally increase the number of keywords and their recurrence on the site as a whole. Optimize the titles you use for your articles, the anchor text you use for links that point to other parts of your own website, and employ the basic tactics I shared in my introduction to SEO—use descriptions, page titles, tags, and emphasize key parts of your site with bold, italics, lists, and subheaders that all include your target keywords.

Off-site Optimization

For best results, and for a more fun social media experience, you’ll also need to collaborate with other sites to increase the number of links there are that reference your site. The more inbound traffic you have coming to your site from other reputable sites, especially within your niche, the better your site will rank in the search engines.

“Backlinks” are simply links from other websites directed back to your site. Your site’s rankings will be heavily influenced by how many quality, relevant links you have directed to your site, ideally from other credible, popular websites.

Building backlinks is the most challenging and time-consuming part of creating a successful web presence, but social media is the perfect tool to start forming relationships with relevant bloggers and communities who will potentially link back to your site! Search for relevant blogs on Google and leave valuable comments on blog posts you find interesting. As long as you don’t leave fluff comments(!), you can include your URL in your comment signature. Sometimes you’ll get a small SEO boost from the link (depending on the site), sometimes not—but at least you might get a few extra clicks.

Search Twitter to find like-minded people, initiate conversations with them, and get to know their blogs. The more you build relationships with these people and show yourself as an active contributor to their community, the more likely you will start to see them come participate on your site and recommend your links to their readers or their Twitter followers, for example.

Conclusion

Keyword research is essentially market research, and once you’re armed with some intelligence about your niche, you can easily begin to improve your site’s rankings in the search engines, but more importantly you have the unique ability to create highly-relevant content that your visitors will find invaluable and that helps build your credibility.

Cody is a nomadic entrepreneur & lifestyle designer who helps social changemakers & other remarkable people spread their message on the web.

Tags: backlinks, Google Analytics, income, keyword research, reach, Search, search engine optimization, seo, SERPs, traffic, Twitter, visibility, web presence