DIY Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing

To get the the most out of this website I suggest you follow the links in the order presented below. This is the order in which the orginal book was written. Do take note that most of the diagrams shown in the book are not shown here. Also note that unless I state otherwise information was pertinent at December 2002. This is particulary relevant in terms of where I use numbers, competition and market size comparisons. The new edition of my book will contain updated screenshot and information.

In December 2002 I published my book on Search Engine Optimization and DIY Internet Marketing which has sold worldwide since then and is now being revised taking into account developments since 2002. The content you read here can be regarded as one of the best search engine optimization primers you'll find anywhere on the internet in terms of the basic things you just have to do to stand any chance of succeeding with search engine optimization. Follow the links below (suggestion) in order provided

Introducing Importance and concept of search engine optimization

1. To me the Internet is useful for ... To me the Internet is useful for learning from others on any subject you like. It is about tracking what is happening in the real world at any instant in time. It is also about preparing to share your own knowledge with others and it is about making money.

2. To me the Internet is useful for ... page 2 The only snag to making lots of money is you need a product which many people would want to buy and of course one that you can deliver when the customer wants it and how the customer wants it.

3. Once the picture and text is available life is easier  The Internet Really Does Work ... Profit from It. Once the picture and text is available it can take as little as 5 minutes (yes it is true) to do the web site. Unfortunately the designers charge you by the hour and give no credit for the effort you made. They also do not indicate how easy their job is in by far (not all of course) the majority of cases.

4. Do Not Be Intimidated By Web Design About 5 years ago I believed that web site design was difficult and best left to experts. Yes, I did feel that my lack of knowledge of HTML and my distinct reluctance to learn it would always hold me back. I cannot recollect when it dawned on me that effective web design did not need any knowledge of HTML whatsoever and that it was NOT difficult. In fact I shortly after this revelation came to the conclusion that most web design was expensive, uneducated, and a waste of time for most website owners.

5. Competition and The Internet One of the facts of Internet selling or web marketing is that you will have competition and probably more than you can imagine. Because of the competition the leaders in any particular field have often (not always) worked out ways of outsmarting the competitors. Be acutely aware of this the beauty, value, convenience of your product may count for nothing if your competitors have found ways of being found before you. Do not HIDE your efforts by accident or otherwise.

6. What really happens when you do a search When you type a search word into Google (and all other search engines) you are told that a certain number of result have been found and normally within a split second. In fact Google has not returned that number of results, it cannot possibly do all the work necessary in such a short time frame to sort hundreds of thousands of web pages in a database exceeding 8 billion (July 2005). This is probably what has happened .

7. Search Engine Factors On Page And Off Page Search Engine Ranking Factors. Keywords count a lot and you need to count them to be successful and they play an important role in almost all aspects of search engine optimization or PPC search engine marketing. I use a checklist to make sure I don't miss out on any of the known and relatively important factors used by most search engines to rank web pages

8. Search Engine Optimization A large part of this website is focused on using what are called on-page factors (keywords, page layout, tags and so on) to ensure that the organisation using these techniques will achieve high ranking search engine page results called SERPs through good search engine optimization techniques. Many web pages will rank very well by careful attention to these on page factors. However at some point, which is impossible to define, it becomes extremely difficult if not impossible to improve a web pages ranking based solely upon these on page factors.

9. Keyword "Technology" and Search Engine Optimization

10. SEO & Search Engine Optimization ... Introducing keywords 1 Imagine you were a search engine called Google. How would you know if a particular web site was relevant to any particular subject? Think about this for a moment ... one way is to look for a certain word or phrase called a keyword or keyword phrase AND then assess the importance of that single keyword relative to any other word on the web page. This is exactly what Google and most other search engines do and apparently in the blink of an eye.

11. Introducing keywords 2 More and more searchers these days use at least 2 and normally more than 2 words in a phrase (called a keyword or keyphrase. They have learned one word keyword phrases deliver junk. If you are going to follow my suggestion and become your own web designer you must place great emphasis upon this. It is not something to be treated lightly nor is it something you can finalise in a couple of hours.

12. Starting the search for keywords Keywords and Keyphrases Used In Search Engine Optimization ... Starting the search for keywords. My project was about water gardening. Obvious single keywords were:

13. Aiming for page 1 SERPs Remember you are aiming to get to position 1 on page 1 for your future web page. You hope (NO! YOU INTEND) to lead the competitors on this keyword. Take a look at this next picture. The searched for keyword (phrase actually) was water fountain pumps. There were 28,500 competitors (SERPs) for the result at the time I wrote this. I know about 28 people every day (10,220 per year) search the Internet using this search term.

14. You Must Know How To Select Keywords Even when you have used the still to be discussed very special keyword assistance software it is important to realize that you can still add a great deal to your list of keywords and their relative importance. However lets just assume for a moment that you cannot afford to buy special keyword software (by the way if you cannot then you should really consider another business since this is one vital ingredient to success). Under these circumstances you will still be able to identify lots of keywords using your own personal capabilities and some free keyword tools available.

15. You Must Know How To Select & Manipulate keywords Lets assume at this stage you have a long list of vertical keywords and you have also combined some lateral and vertical keywords to form what you think will be popular search terms. There are other ways to extend this list. Assume you want to attract people who are looking to buy sheds You can extend the list of keywords (keyword phrases) by adding the following types of words:

16. You Must Know How To Select & Manipulate keywords I used a short while ago the term backyard as an example of such a country specific term. In South Africa the word veld even though it is not an English word is often used by English speaking people. Use local terms a lot if this is your market.

17. Know How To Discover How Big Your Targeted Internet Market Is ... Big markets offer big opportunities. Smaller markets offer less competition. In either case it is important to know as much as possible about the market you intend to operate in. Thus we need to discover how popular all those keywords we have collected are this is the best indication we will get of market size.

18. More on discovering your important keywords ... Discover as many keywords as you like ... the program is split into various parts. The first part allows you to build as long a list of meaningful keywords as you like. The starting point for example would be ponds. I type ponds into the relevant section of . After a few seconds it gives me 300 possible keyword/keyphrase options to consider for this single word. Here are a few examples that I actually used.

19. Compare market size with amount of competition using a concept called Keyword Effectiveness Indicator ... Keyword Effectiveness Indicator is the next magic part of the keyword software under discussion. Not only does the software identify popularity for you but it saves you hours of work by combining the competition for the same keyword in different search engine databases for you at the same time.

20. Introduction to Keywords and Web Page Titles ... It is possible to rank highly on search engine results pages using only the keyword approach to web design. However in highly competitive arenas you have to make sure that your web is made popular to other websites. This approach along with keyword analysis, and web page structuring is what gives you a good chance of page 1 slot 1 success on the search engines. This chapter will also introduce you to important search engine thinking

21. Continued: Keywords and Web Page Titles: Google habits ... When a new web site is recognised by Google for the very first time either by direct submission or because it has found the new site via a link on an existing Google site it examines that site in some detail in a micro second. It also saves a copy of the complete page. It places the information in a database. This page becomes 1 of more than 3 billion in Googles database (and growing daily ... 8 billion 2005 July).

22. Continued: Keywords and Web Page Titles ... Important. Take a look at this picture and tell yourself what you think the title is in the context of the present discussion or at least point to the TITLE. I am embarrassed to admit that it was quite a few weeks before I realised what was meant by Title in the context of web marketing using search engines and this is even after reading Ken Evoys 1,200 pages of MYSS ...

23. Off Page Factors, Links, Anchortext and Google PageRank & Search Engine Optimization

24. Using Your Important Keywords in On Page Links  ... Links should be the measure of importance, and authority carried by your web site. You will learn here the great importance of links to improve your chances of ranking highly on a Google search. Over the last 12 months I have seen more and more focus by SEOs and web marketers in general on links and their importance to achieving highly ranked SERPs. Almost certainly links are playing a larger role in SERPSs.

25. Introducing the concept of links in relation to web marketing ... You link to me and I will link to you so both of us can become more popular. Links on a web page enable the visitor to move around within and without a web site easily. At least it should be easy and logical from your visitors point of view.

26. Take a look at a picture of a link structure 

27. Using your keywords in anchor text What is anchor text. Take a look at this simple demo web page created in Front Page. The underlined blue text above is called anchor text. You see such text links on nearly all web pages. below the image is how the HTML code looks to create the above page I have highlighted the anchor text in red. The link text is highlighted in blue.

28. Google's view of links, and keywords in anchor link text When a visitor arrives at a web site, hopefully yours, the challenge is to keep the visitor there by providing valuable or useful information. This is very difficult. It can be accomplished by web page layout and by providing an easy and meaningful way to get to the next part of the web sites story through a well located, descriptive text link.

29. Link Analysis: Link Popularity and Link Authority ... In their ongoing battle to overcome spamming the search engines are placing more and more emphasis on link analysis because it is a lot more difficult to fool the search engines. Not all links are equal. Search engines place emphasis on good quality, high authority, and topic related links.

30. How many links is enough? ... You can never get enough good links back to your web page. To give you an idea from a recent study by Axandra.com some of the following important quality (based upon Google PageRank) web sites had massive link popularity

31. One of the ongoing challenges of any web marketer is to get more and more quality links to point back to the selected page ... Note I said selected page since it is almost impossible to persuade other web owners to link back to more than 1 or 2 pages. The other important point is to cultivate links back from similar sites as far as possible. Avoid totally dissimilar sites purely to gain link numbers.

32. What makes a good link? ... You have almost certainly at some stage got upset when you clicked a link on a web site expecting to find useful information only to be directed to utter garbage or something different to what the link implied. This is not a good link and if a human reviewer was to take a look at this page then the web page to which it was linked might be penalized.

33. How to possibly make your web site less popular ... Google is not a human. Google cannot look at a web page that contains all sorts of mixed information and make a rational decision as to what the true content of the site is. Google does not know that apples, pears, oranges, lemons are all fruits (by the way in 2005 it does)

34. Getting to be even more popular with Search Engines ... There are web sites offering to guarantee you hundreds, even thousands of links to your web pages. Do NOT use them EVER. They will charge you $ per 100 links. Such link farms as they are called are frowned upon by search engines and normally the links are of little relevant value.

35. Introducing The Google PageRank Algorithm in terms of Search Engine Optimization ... This section below is how Google describes itself. The paragraphs have been extracted from Googles own web page. Google searches more sites more quickly, delivering the most relevant results.

36. Google's PageRank Algorithm ... PageRank and its influence. PageRank is really important. It cannot be ignored. Its calculation, understanding and influence in a real web site is very complex making it possible to only generalize on how individual web pages effect others on the same or different web sites by virtue of the links in place. Despite this enough intuitive understanding has been developed to be able to guide web marketers.

37. Visualising PageRank and its PR Bar graph using the Google Toolbar ... Google does not calculate PageRank for a single web site. It calculates the PageRank for every page on the whole web (or rather its indexed database) in one sitting this is what is happening during what is commonly referred to as the Google Dance. This takes place about monthly.

38. Search Engine Optimization and Important practical principles of PageRank ... Reference must be made to the papers identified earlier for a greater insight into these conclusions presented here.

39. Search Engine Optimization ... One or more keywords per page? Is it better to create a new page for every keyword to get link benefits or is it better to incorporate more than a single keyword onto a page? This question is really posed in relation to those very many keywords for which it is easy to get top SERPs ranking. I do not know the definitive answer and will be experimenting with this approach in future.

40. Do you know what keyword and description meta tags are? ... Meta tags are part of the web page HTML that remains invisible to the casual searcher and was placed in the HTML to be able to be read by search engine spiders. The two most commonly discussed are keywords meta tag and description meta tag.

41. Search Engine Optimization and Strategies To Get Back Links To Your Web Pages ... This is the hard work and monotonous work. You have to earn your links. In this chapter I will describe numerous ways of getting links to your web page or web site. A reminder is that you should identify which page/pages on your web site that you want the links to come back to. Do this very early on. Do not forget that quality links are what you are seeking and you must avoid the link farm and FFA (free for all) link pages.

42. Search Engine Optimization: Create Your Own Link Directory ... You may have been able persuade many people to link to your web site. There are two advantages to this, one of which takes place immediately the link is created back to your site surfers on that page may then visit your page. The second and perhaps greater advantage may never transpire and it is up to you to make this more probable.

43. Writing For Web Pages & Attracting Customers

44. Writing for website traffic, creating trust and making sales using words ... If your information helps people to become free of debt, more attractive to the opposite sex, then say so Michel Fortin Power Positioning Dot Com. There is no doubt that a very difficult part of a commercial web site design is the actual writing of the pages and in particular the sales landing page. After all, the site has probably been designed to sell something. This is where all your work succeeds or fails.

45. WIIFM (pronounced wiffum)? Whats in it for me? Your web site and your copy writing must be full of benefits for your visitor.

46. That Home Page, and That Space Above The Fold ... Your home page will often make or break your web intentions. Above the fold is that part of the web page you see when the browser opens the web.

47. Your Headlines Must Persuade The Attracted To Do Something ... The FREEBIE headline if you have something for nothing then say so above the fold! If you havent then find something that can be downloaded to assist in getting e-mail addresses and to appeal to those basic instincts.

48. Speak the language of the audience you want to attract and later persuade to action ... Everyone knows AIDA or do they? AIDA in a copywriting sense stands for ...

49. The sales landing page ... attraction worked now persuasion is necessary ... So you think you have a great web site. You are getting 100,000 page views a month. You are getting 2,000 click-throughs to your sales landing page. You are selling 20 products per month. For this scenario your click through rate is 2% and your sales conversion rate is 1%. So for every 100,000 visitors who were attracted to your web site you managed to persuade 20 to buy your offering.

50. Web Site Domains and Hosting

51. Search Engine Optimization & Domain Registrations ... You domain is the basis for every bit of activity that will take place in and around your web site. On this basis alone do not normally allow any one party to act as more than the registrar. You cannot have a web site of your own (ie belongs to you) without a domain name being registered. You can share hosting of a domain name and many many web sites operate on this principle without the owner knowing it.

52. Search Engine Optimization: Beware The Host From Hell ... This is the minefield of all Internet minefields as far as I am concerned. This is the world of gobbledygook to most of us. Some time ago when I was looking through the minefield of hosting providers trying desperately to sort the good from the bad in this complex mumbo jumbo world of hostspeak I came across a site that invited comments from users of various host services. I will always remember one of the comments warning future potential users to avoid at all cost The Host From Hell.

53. Search Engine Optimization: IP addresses, & Websites. take special note here ... An example is best used to illustrate my point: Go to http://www.bankes.com/nslookup.htm, as shown in the screenshot (this an nslookup program which I found using Google)

54. Search Engine Optimization: Web Hosting Check List ... This list is not exhaustive at all. These are important points from what I have actually done and learned about myself. Few of these are strictly technical hosting questions but they are designed to assist you get a feeling about the company and its staff.

55. Search Engine Optimization: WebSite Statistics and Logs ... If you know what you are talking about and can express it in numbers then you know something about it .. If you cannot express it in numbers then your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind. These are the words of Lord Kelvin the famous scientist best remembered for his developing the degrees Kelvin (centigrade) temperature measurement system.

56. Search Engine Marketing, Pay Per Click and Google Adwords

57. How To Read Google Adgroup reports average position click campaign effectiveness The success of an Adgroup within a Google Adwords campaign (a campaign is in simple terms a collection of Adgroups) is best judged by looking at 3 things primarily. Number of clicks since this determines an overall degree of effectiveness ... each click is a potential sale or at least an opportunity for an MWR (Most Wanted Response). An MWR could be the collection of an email address or a subscription to a newsletter not necessarily a sale. But for the rest of this exercise I will treat MWR = SALE

58. Wal-Mart Barclaycard & Other Major USA Brands Being Sold In South Africa ... Introducing Affiliate Programs

59. Most readers of this article will be surprised and amazed to learn that such large organizations not associated with South Africa are actually getting sales from sales reps here in South Africa. You dont see Wal Mart or Barclaycard ads or billboards adjacent to major roads so how do I know this? Quite simply the answer is that I sell their products on their behalf to anyone in the USA wishing to buy them. That is the power of the Internet and the power is available to anyone with a computer and Internet access.

60. The Internet ... The Great Marketing Leveller. Get Online Make Profits or Lose Market Share Without Even Knowing It. Arthur Goldstuck published his "Online Retail In South Africa, 2004" report late in June and I bought it for the simple reason I wanted to get a completely independent view of the state of the Internet in South Africa.