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SEO is a huge part of managing a successful web presence. People find web sites by using search engines to find keywords that relate to the content of your site. The better you understand which keywords people will use to find your site, the more you can tailor your site to the search engines. This can take a bit of research and here are some ideas to get you started.

The most common sense approach is to think; what keywords would a person type in to find my site? If your site is about search engine optimization, keywords such as SEO, search engine optimization or web site optimization make sense. People will type in what they are looking for. Those should be your keywords.

On the Internet, keywords are used to help search engines index a web page. They read the keywords from meta tags in the sites HTML code. Keywords are also read from the content of the web page like the one you are reading now. Keywords should be specific to what you are writing about. A good keyword for this article would be Keyword Research, but a better one would be more specific, How to Research Keywords.

There are also various free tools on the Internet to assist in determining the best keywords for your site. The one that comes to mind is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. The URL is https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal . Here you can generate keyword ideas in two ways.

• Descriptive words or phrases
• Website content ex. http://www.yoursite.com

First, I use the descriptive words or phrases. The top five keywords for the phrase Keyword Research are researching keywords, keyword research, keyword research, keyword research tool and keyword research tools.

Next, I use the website content. I enter an SEO site as an example. The top five keywords are search engine rank optimization, improve search engine rankings, search engine rankings, high search engine rankings and search engine rank

So, to research the best keywords for your web site, start by understanding how keywords are used by search engines. Then identify whether the content of your pages contains keywords that best describe your site. Finally, continue to create content on your pages that containing your target keywords.

There are two kinds of links commonly associated with SEO, inbound links and outbound links. In respect to the site, an inbound link is coming in to the site and an outbound link is going out from the site.

Due to the abuse of META tags and keyword spamming as a strategy to achieve high page rank, the search engines use algorithms to more fairly rank a page. Many of the search engines today base their page rank on inbound links. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. Here is a page explaining Google page rank.

You want a link pointing to your page on other peoples highly ranked web pages.

Here are five ways to create inbound links to your site and improve your page rank.

• Link Farms - Link farms are sites that send your link to many web pages automatically. This may be accomplished by a web ring which is many common sites acting together.

• Paid Links - Sites with high page rank will accept your cash for a link. It is like having the only beachfront property in town. Their high rank will bring your site up.

• Reciprocal Links - This is where you communicate with other webmasters and trade or exchange links. It can be a text link or commonly, you will see an image associated with the link. You place their link on your page, and in return, you place your link on their page. The idea here is to choose pages with a higher rank than your own.

• Link Directories - Link directories are we sites in which you can submit your site to them for approval. Once approved, your link is placed on their site. Often times, they will ask that you place a link on your page. This is a way to create reciprocal links.

• Bloggers meetings and word of mouth are an excellent way to meet bloggers and link to them. Fellow blogger links are invaluable.

• Pings and Track Backs - Most commonly associated with blogs, a ping is when you link within the text of an article, like Google Page Rank above, and that site is pinged to let them know you linked to it.

Trackbacks are when you write in your blog about an article on another site and it shows up in their blogs comments. To achieve this, your site is linked to the articles trackback address.

In your quest to improve your SEO and page rank, you will find that inbound links are paramount to your success. As a part of gaining inbound links, it is often necessary to have outbound links as well. Armed with this information, it is up to you now to choose which methods are right for you. Link well and link often.

What is SEO? SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization. It is the collective techniques and strategies used to promote volumes of traffic to your web site from search engines. This traffic comes organically, meaning naturally, as people search for keywords that relate to the subject they are looking for. Whether they use search engines like Google or Yahoo; you want your site to be optimized to help these search engines direct traffic to your site.

What are keywords? When your site is indexed by search engines, the text is read and the words that show up the most in the text of your site should be your keywords. If they aren’t, you need to write more of those keywords in to your pages. When people are searching by keyword, you want to be at the top of the list, and it is a long list. Making keywords for your site show up at the top of the list is the goal of SEO.

How do search engines work? Search engines send out spiders that index web sites and web pages all over the Internet. They collect the data and create a huge directory. Somewhere in there is your site. The idea behind SEO is to make the data easy for the spiders to collect. This can be accomplished in many ways including a robots.txt file or a sitemap. These are necessary SEO steps to take to insure the content you want indexed gets indexed.

Why should I be concerned with SEO? Search engine optimization will bring more traffic to your web site. Simple, if your site is monetized, you make more money. If you want readership or simply want to get your brand out there, you want traffic and lots of it. You also want to amass traffic that is based on your chosen keywords, so you also receive quality traffic based on the content of your site.

How do I learn more? Naturally as SEO relates to the Internet, the best place to learn about it is on the Internet. Many sites have general recommendations for SEO and there are also many niche sites for more advanced SEO. Consultants are also for hire to insure your web site is SEO optimized. Start with the basics and build on a solid foundation. Soon you will be helping the search engines drive volumes of quality traffic to your web site.