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The idea is really simple: Getting more traffic to your website by placing high on the results of popular search engines to build demand for your goods and services. Known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), this marketing technique is a staple for any growing business. However, small businesses and individuals can be hesitant to tackle the marketing approach when confronted with the technical rigging involved. But by concentrating on the basics, anyone can get started with SEO and see quick results.
The Basics of a Search-Friendly WebsiteFirst and foremost, knowing where you stand in search results will give you an idea of what you need to do to better market online. Use monitoring tools like the Google toolbar or Alexa to see your status and to check if your SEO efforts are working.
Links play an important part in SEO. A basic method for applying links is to permeate your site with internal links. Always remember to place links to your archives in your new content. You can also increase traffic through links by forming relationships with other sites. It is not uncommon to ask another site to place a link to yours, which you can be easily reciprocated by placing one to theirs.
Creating a site map linking and cataloging your pages for your website is a basic way for search engine spiders to easily examine your site. Simple, clear URLs with keywords will also get your pages to stand out.
Creating Basic Search-friendly ContentYour site’s content should consistently be refreshed as frequent updates help draw in traffic. The most basic way to generate new content is with a blog, which can operate as an effective platform for linking.
Be sure to litter your site and your content with keywords that are reflective of terms users will be searching. Primary locations for keywords are the title tag and page header. One caveat is to avoid placing too many in your content as search engines may label your site as spam. Placing them every 100-125 words is sufficient. Additionally, keywords should be included in descriptive captions for your images.

With the death of keyword saturation, many search engine optimizers and webmasters have asked how content can be structured most effectively on their website. After all, it’s not like Google ignores your content. In fact, the reverse is true. Google has evolved in its approach to websites, and now has the capability to understand your page’s information better than ever before. This is largely due to the brain of Google: LSI.

What is LSI?

LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing, is a new search engine robot approach to “reading” the content on a page. Rather than simply looking at how often you repeat specific words, it will determine the subject of the page’s content. It does this by seeing how words interrelate. Beyond merely understanding words, LSI can understand synonyms, see how words connect to one another, and figure out what category the content falls into. As such, rather than just giving searchers results that contain the “right words,” it can give content that is relevant to the topic they’re searching for. This means better and more comprehensive results.

How you can use LSI.

LSI is designed to read your content and figure out what subject you’re writing about without you doing anything extra. This means that the best possible approach is to write high quality content that’s likely to get reader attention and be spread across the web. However, there are a couple things you can do to be sure that you’re helping Google examine your page accurately.

There are two major tools, both provided by Google, that will let you find terms and phrases that are appropriately “on topic.” The Google Keyword Tool, a part of Google Adwords, will allow you to find frequently searched for words and phrases that are connected to the keywords you are already using. Simply typing a few of your current keywords into the tool, then hitting “get keyword ideas” will bring up a list of 100 to 200 results. In addition, Google Sets can provide a full list of terms related, closely or more distantly, to keywords that you’re already targeting.

The entire point of search engine optimization is to drive more traffic to your website. After all, not only does more traffic mean a wider audience, but it increases the likelihood that your visitors will spread the content on your website through sharing the link. As your visitors build links to your site for you, your position in the search engine will improve, and that means more zero effort, zero cost traffic. One of the often overlooked ways of getting that starting traffic is search media optimization – an aspect of SEO that can yield hundreds, even thousands, of visitors each day.

What SMO means

Search media optimization, or SMO, is making any “media” on your site appealing to the search engines. “Media” most commonly refers to images and videos, but can also refer to audio files or any other embedded media objects. When you have optimized these aspects of your site, you gain the potential to generate traffic from “specialized searches.” This includes searches like image searches, video searches, and file searches on the web.

It extends beyond being found in these specialized searches, however. Many of the major search engines, including Google, display several images and videos in their search results. These images and videos are frequently displayed “above the fold,” giving you an immense opportunity for click-throughs.

How to View SMO Traffic

The visitors who find your site through an image aren’t incredibly likely to purchase a product or buy a service. However, the traffic can nonetheless be helpful. Increasing general awareness of your site may lead these visitors to come back when they do want your product or service. Far more importantly, these visitors have just as great of a likelihood as anyone else to link to your content. Links to your web pages, even if it’s just for the sake of the media embedded in them, will help your page rank, and that helps your overall search engine ranking.

Once upon a time, in a magical land known as Stanford, there were two men. Their names were Larry Page and Sergey Brin. These two Stanford geniuses took a look at the virtual world around them, and they decided that it just wasn’t good enough. Search engines relied entirely on keyword presence, showing sites that had manipulated their way into the results by creating bogus content or spamming their keywords. Page and Brin were sure there was another way.

They determined that they would find that other way, and create the (search engine) world that they envisioned. A world where sites were ranked based on how good they were and how much people liked them, not on their ability to contain a paragraph of spam keywords at the bottom. Encouraged by Terry Winograd to pursue the project, Brin and Page applied to the school for resources and school credit for the project. Luckily for Brin and Page, as well as for the rest of the world, their search engine research project was accepted by Stanford.

Their objective was to determine which sites were most popular on the web, and use this as the basis for their search results. They called their search algorithm BackRub, and it looked out across the web in an attempt to decide who the “cool kids” were. This was to be determined by looking at all the links on the internet. The theory was that if a site had more links to it, it meant that more people had gone out of their way to tell others about it. They then took it a step further, making it so that the links from sites that were more “popular” were valued more than links from less popular or newer sites.

While they decided on the name Google in 1997, registering the domain that year, they didn’t official incorporate until 1998, after they had indexed more than 60 million different web pages. Even when in the “beta” stage, technology magazines hailed their approach as the way of the future. Thus, Google, the giant of the technological world, was born.

It is a general fact of the search engine world that what Google wants, Google usually gets. Google has stepped into a great number of territories over the last few years. Their acquisition of YouTube made them an even more fierce giant in the virtual world. Gmail has overtaken many other email services in regards to both function and users. Google Documents, Google Calendar, and many more innovations have made Google the go to resource in a wide variety of areas. It has now been revealed, however, that Google is stepping into the Social Networking arena.

Google added the feature known as “Buzz,” automatically connected to Gmail accounts, which took on some of the general functionality of Twitter. However, Google is not satisfied with the attention and response that this has received, and intends to step up their efforts. While this project, tentatively titled “Google Me,” has been rumored for several years, it was only recently confirmed by project insiders.

The Google Me project is ambitious, even for Google. It will synchronize with the Google account of the user, integrating Blogger, Gmail, Calendar, Buzz, and other services. Beyond synchronizing existing features, Google Me will take on many of the advanced features of Facebook. It has been called a “top priority project” by the members of Google that revealed the information, who prefer to remain anonymous.

Facebook is certainly well established, and users have already established connections with one another, reputations and stockpiles in their browser based games, and far more. Whether or not Google will be able to effectively take ground against the current social networking champion has yet to be seen, but it is certainly true that Google is one of the few groups who has the potential to do battle with them. Users will likely be the ones who stand to gain as the two technological titans up the stakes in order to try to conquer the social networking world.

Webmasters and search engine optimizers are constantly playing a game with the search engines, adding content and developing links in the hope of reaching the top page. Their battle will involve a large number of SEO weapons, and will take months or years to win. Webmasters are often frustrated by seemingly random changes in their rank. Frustrated site owners may scream out that it’s Google changing their algorithm, once again changing the rules of the game. But how often does Google really change its formula?

The answer may leave those frustrated web optimizers a little stunned. Google generally changes its formula five to ten times per week, adopting minor changes in order to fine tune the results for its users. While a webmaster may notice a drop in their site’s rank after one of these changes, most of the alterations to the search formula won’t have a major impact on your rank. So, why are these changes made?

Google pays surprisingly close attention to the behavior of its users. It has teams of programmers who look at information on how frequently users click through to sites for given keywords and categories, and those teams will often look into any searches that aren’t performing well. In addition to looking for glaring errors, Google makes additions and subtractions from their formula in order to get better localized results.

Despite these regular changes, the concept behind search engine optimization will remain largely the same. Developing high quality, relevant, and fresh content will drive more traffic to your site. Getting more links to your site from high quality sources will play a key role in your position. The rest, truly, is detail.

Still, some webmasters may see a massive change, for better or worse, in their sites position. While a change in the algorithm isn’t always to blame for this, major changes will sometimes shake things up in a dramatic way. However, according to Google representatives, major changes to the search engine algorithm are only likely to happen about once per year.

With the death of keyword saturation, many search engine optimizers and webmasters have asked how content can be structured most effectively on their website. After all, it’s not like Google ignores your content. In fact, the reverse is true. Google has evolved in its approach to websites, and now has the capability to understand your page’s information better than ever before. This is largely due to the brain of Google: LSI.

What is LSI?

LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing, is a new search engine robot approach to “reading” the content on a page. Rather than simply looking at how often you repeat specific words, it will determine the subject of the page’s content. It does this by seeing how words interrelate. Beyond merely understanding words, LSI can understand synonyms, see how words connect to one another, and figure out what category the content falls into. As such, rather than just giving searchers results that contain the “right words,” it can give content that is relevant to the topic they’re searching for. This means better and more comprehensive results.

How you can use LSI.

LSI is designed to read your content and figure out what subject you’re writing about without you doing anything extra. This means that the best possible approach is to write high quality content that’s likely to get reader attention and be spread across the web. However, there are a couple things you can do to be sure that you’re helping Google examine your page accurately.

There are two major tools, both provided by Google, that will let you find terms and phrases that are appropriately “on topic.” The Google Keyword Tool, a part of Google Adwords, will allow you to find frequently searched for words and phrases that are connected to the keywords you are already using. Simply typing a few of your current keywords into the tool, then hitting “get keyword ideas” will bring up a list of 100 to 200 results. In addition, Google Sets can provide a full list of terms related, closely or more distantly, to keywords that you’re already targeting.