An integral part of any search engine optimization (SEO) campaign is the researching and choosing of keywords for your website. This is basically the words or terms that you are trying to champion in the search engine. Do you sell PEZ dispensers? Then you may want to use “PEZ”, “dispensers”, “flavored candy” or the more popular items, like “star wars PEZ”. Once you have these keywords chosen, you need to incorporate the keywords into your website’s content and tags so that it is considered relevant to the search engines when ranking your site. This includes all the copy throughout your website, as well as all the page titles, title tags and links. It’s not an easy process, but it is a necessary one for SEO.

When inserting your keywords throughout the on-page content, it is vital to understand the density at which keywords are optimized on a page. “Keyword density” is specifically referring to how often a keyword is used in your on-page copy. The search engines compute the keyword density percentage, and the more often they find a search term in your content, the more it will think that your page is relevant and should be ranked higher. However, there is a fine line between having an optimal keyword density and over-stuffing your content with keywords and terms.

Please Note: Just because you have the right amount of keyword density in your SEO campaign, doesn’t mean that you will automatically be ranked higher. Google’s new algorithm actually favors more related search terms than exclusively keyword density. Focus also on the quality of your content, rather than only focusing on your keyword density. If you do exceed the optimum keyword density, you can face an over-optimization penalty.

There is no “perfect” keyword density percentage in SEO, but Volacci strives to keep our density at or below 5 percent. The percentage of a page is relative to your content length, so it is recommended that you know the formula to calculate each page. The formula for keyword density is pretty simple.

1.) Count how many words you have on your page.
2.) Count how many times you have used your keyword
3.) Apply this formula:

Keyword Density = ([Keyword Count]*100)/(Total Word Count]

For example, let’s say that you have a 500 word article about PEZ dispensers, and you are optimizing for “PEZ”

Total Word Count: 500
PEZ keyword uses: 12
“PEZ” density = (12*100)/500

Keyword density for “PEZ” on the page is 2.4%

In SEO campaigns, having keyword optimization in your on-page content is very important to being relevant to the search engines. However, if you focus too much on keyword density, you can potentially lose focus on other important elements in the dynamic approach to optimizing your site. Use the keyword density formula to ensure that you are applying relevant uses of your keywords into quality content and links so that you are getting the most out of your research. If you abuse your keywords, the Google gods will get you, so don’t stuffers beware.

Gut instinct and superficial analysis just can’t cut it anymore when choosing keywords, a hallmark of search engine optimization (SEO).

The stakes are high for sophisticated marketers who need to give an SEO program the best shot at success in a competitive marketplace. It can take months to secure premium organic rankings for some relevant words that can bring traffic to clients’ sites. If they pick the wrong keywords, they’re going to waste a lot of everyone’s time and cash.

Fathom SEO, facing today’s challenges, developed the Keyword Refinery, a proprietary keyword selection decision support tool. The algorithm weighs 15-plus attributes for each keyword or phrase.

To be as effective as possible, marketers must find ways to find and evaluate huge numbers of keywords. Skilled marketers tear into a business and learn the target markets inside and out.

It’s daunting enough to find keywords given the numerous internal and third party tools that can produce hundreds if not thousands of keywords. Selecting the right ones is essential if a marketer aspires to improve a company’s bottom line.

Amazingly, our industry has struggled to produce a solution that handles massive numbers of keywords at one time. Some solutions have made headway but fallen short, looking only at a handful of variables and providing results for only one keyword at a time.

Much has been discovered, shared and debated about keyword research sources, including Keyword Discovery, the Google Keyword Tool, SpyFu, social networks and competitors.

When you have all of that data in hand, then what? How do you choose?

Paid search is the easier path. You can quickly gather keywords and then carefully test them out against some ads and existing or custom landing pages. With paid search, you have the added advantage of managing keywords and phrases you didn’t even anticipate (given the countless possibilities encouraged by broad and phrase match).

It’s tougher for SEO keyword selection.

You can’t just enter a bid and be No. 1 or No. 2 in a flash. Website age, content, inbound links and other factors come into play. How viable is the website? How do you know whether a keyword will resonate with website’s given its standing among the search engines?

Could Google develop rankings for millions of sites across millions of keywords without the support of their algorithm?  Choosing keywords should be no different.

Subjectivity and anectodotal data don’t paint an honest or complete picture. Is there room for human intervention with a keyword selection tool? You bet. Scoring methods will never be dead on for every possible term, but they’re clearly reliable. We’ve found that it’s usually not the weights and measures that throw off an occasional score. It’s more a matter of how the tool is used, including a judgment on keyword relevancy.

Here’s a closer look at some of the factors – small and large – that we’ve baked into our method:

We examine keyword criteria and group them by popularity, strength and quality. Based on the tool’s scores, we pick keywords with highest potential to yield relevant search traffic over a reasonable time period.

Popularity

Unfortunately, it’s common for marketers to choose keywords based on the estimated search frequency (whether that’s over 30 days or a year). However, search volume should be only one factor.  Keyword selection emphasizing this approach is flawed because it misses other key components and subtle distinctions. For example, 1,000 searches can mean two different things in if you are evaluating a national B2C term vs. a local B2C phrase.

A marketer who understands the dynamics of a client’s marketplace can easily adjust out tool to properly interpret relative popularity of the hundreds of candidates being evaluated.

Let’s pretend you want to rank well for “airline tickets,” which people search for 2.7 million times a month on average across Google and its search network. The website ranking #1 has 168,000 indexed pages and files. Not many websites can compete with that enterprise.

Relevance

Automated tools can’t determine whether a keyword or phrase is relevant. The data sources simply provide actual searches people conducted. Seasoned marketers must make logical choices based on this question: what is the likelihood that the searcher will convert into a lead or a customer after reaching the website? Relevance often is tied to the specificity of a keyword phrase. The more closely a search term is aligned to a client’s business, the higher it will score. For example, if you rank for “sports uniforms” and only sell soccer apparel, you might turn off visitors.

Strength

Strength is the X factor that most marketers in today’s search world don’t consider.  It’s hard enough to make a selection while looking at both Popularity and Relevance. Even then, marketers still make mistakes by going after the most popular and relevant phrases when their client doesn’t have a chance off competing for those terms. In other words, they overshoot and fail to pick search terms that could actually benefit a client’s company within a reasonable timeframe. Strength reflects the degree to which a business can compete for popular and relevant terms relative to their online competitors.

Here are some of the strength factors that come into play:

·    inbound links
·    keywords in a domain name
·    website analytics
·    website age
·    rankings (in view of competitors)
·    indexed pages/files

If a business website is older, has more inbound links, and has more page depth, it may be in a stronger position to compete for highly relevant and popular terms.

Your ability to settle on a sound set of keywords depends on how well you gather and interpret diverse data sets, including paid search market and conversion indicators. Algorithm-based scoring, ensuring that many variables get due attention, makes that job easier.

At the end of the day, you want to select the ideal keywords. As your SEO tactics kick in, you’ll know soon enough whether you’re making keyword ranking headway. If not, you may struggle to correct a bungled keyword selection effort that could have gone better.

Busby SEO Test Basic Google SEO Optimization Tips and Tricks by Alwin Clores

Basic Explaination:

Search Engine Optimization or mostly called SEO is one of the component of Search Engine Marketing,  this is the process of Search Engine Ranking to appear in high position when visitors or users conduct a search in specific keywords.

Here are the simple steps to follow:

On-page Optimization

1. Meta tag assigning like meta title, meta description and meta keywords, these are the most important tags that the Search engine reads all the time.

Meta tag Title or Page Title is refer to the Title at the top of your browsers, this can also seen at the search engine results.

Meta tag Description allows you to influence the description of the page(s).

Meta tag Keywords are the list keywords or phrases that you’ve targeted for that specific page.

What Does This Meta Tag Look Like?

The meta tags is placed between the head tag section <head></head>:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>your TITLE KEYWORDS title goes here</TITLE>
<META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” CONTENT=”Your keyword rich marketing sales meta description goes here”>
<META NAME=”KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”your keywords,separated by a comma,but not a space, like, busby seo test”>
</HEAD>

2. The information on a website is its Content, place relevant keywords to your contents. Take note, your keywords to your contents should be appeared because some search engine penalizing your website. Content is the king for your visitors and for search engines as well. I’ll add Busby SEO Test as a keyword.

Internal Links are very important for search engine optimization, always remove your broken links or missing page and make sure search engine bots/spiders can reach all of your pages.

Anchor Text is the text that you see for links on page or offpage, always include your keywords in the anchor text of your internal links, this is very important to inform search engines for your target keywords.

Hidden Text is a text that match your background color ( same color both  text and background color in your page) and can’t be seen of your normal visitor, NEVER use any hidden text tricks for your keywords, because search engines will penalize or may even remove your site from their index or search results!

Off-page or Off-site Basic SEO Tips

This is an optimization outside of your page or website, the most powerful way to change your position in Search Engine Result Pages or SERPs.

Components are:

External Links is the most powerful SEO factor; search engines like Google said: If there are many good sites linking to yours then you must have a good content. This is the reason why they will give you a higher rank.

PageRank or Google Page Rank – PR is the quality of the pages that points to your site have more power than quantity. For PageRank checker, you can install to your browser like Firefox or Internet Expolorer at http://toolbar.google.com

Anchor Text of the external links to your pages has the greatest effect for your Search Engine position. If more people are linking to your site using variations of your keywords in the anchor text, this will give you a powerful push for those search terms.

Off-page Content: The content of the pages linking to you is very important for your SEO, the more related content they have to your keywords, the more power those links you can get.

Outbound Links are the links that have a big effect on your site. Always make sure you are linking to good sites or related sites.

Those are not the final words for my Basic SEO Tips but I have tried to post again most important points and most Advance SEO Tips.

About the author:
Alwin Clores is a SEO Consultant / SEO Analyst with far superior SEO knowledge and SEO Experience and owned the Pinoy SEO, a Philippine SEO site. Currently joined the SEO World Cup Busby SEO Test Contest 2008 that goes fastest top 10 ranking for a minimum of 10 days period time.