More on Search Engine Optimization

My article yesterday spoke about search engine optimization and how there is no getting around it if you want to be successful online. In fact if there is a secret to being successful online I'd say there are two components.

1. Have a product that people want/need.
2. Get that product in front of those people so they know it exists.

People use search engines to find answers to a particular problem. For example, let's say you are marketing a product called "Fuel Magic" which cuts down fuel consumption by 75% when a tablet is added to your fuel tank.

Unless the customer already knows there is such a product available it's unlikely they would ever type "fuel magic" into a search engine. What they might search for are terms such as "how to reduce fuel consumption" or "tips on saving fuel". If Fuel Magic happened to appear in those search results my guess is that people would click on the ad (afterall who wouldn't want to 75% on fuel costs?)

Would they buy the product? That depends on a couple of things.

Firstly, how much is it and will the price stop people from buying it if it works out more expensive than what the fuel would cost? That would depend on why they wanted to cut fuel consumption. If their motivation was to save money, then no they wouldn't. However, if their motivation was to reduce green house gasses they might.

Secondly, if price wasn't the issue for them they would probably want to know whether the tablet would do harm to the engine, whether the car manufacturer would honour any warranty if such an additive was used etc etc.

The above two points would have to be covered in your sales copy. The point is getting people to read your sales copy in the first place.

We already have two ideas for keywords - "how to reduce fuel consumption" and "tips on saving fuel". Now, they both sound reasonable, which one do we target?

This is where keyword research comes in. Keyword research will tell you how many searches there are for each term, the number of other sites out there competing on those keywords, and other terms that people are searching for that you may not have thought about eg "how to save on fuel". The trick is to find terms people are searching, but for which there is little competition.

Keyword research is labourious and time consuming but soooo rewarding when you see your page listed on the first page of google! Trouble is, it can take many months to see results causing many newbies to feel that it is not worth time time and effort to do the research.

With SiteBuildIt, the product I use to build my website, keyword research tools are already there and included in the total yearly cost of having an SBI site. No need to pay extra for a tool such as Wordtracker although I do recommend Wordtracker for those that don't use SBI.

(It's also worth noting that hosting, development tools and autoresponders are also included in the price of SBI.)

Ignoring SEO guarantees online failure! Ignore it at your peril.


Hope this article was of some benefit to you.

hugs
Sharon