There is no controversy about it; keywords are the basis of any search engine optimization campaign. They will either make or mar it.

If you choose keywords that are highly competitive, getting result will take an extended period of time, and that too, with much struggle. And if you opt for very generic phrases, just be sure of poor conversions. This is just what it is all about. Now, it is clear to you that extensive keyword research and choice of good keywords are very essential.

How can you carry out thorough keyword research?

Check the tips given below.

• Begin with a thought-provoking session that will lead you into identifying and listing all the likely keywords and terms that web visitors are likely to enter to search for your offering.
• Also in this brainstorming segment, it is important that you bring yourself to think just as what the potential customer would do.
• Carry out further research to keep on building the keyword list.
• It is also sensible to have idea of the keywords or terms that your competitors are using; so you need to research on your competitors.
• Thoroughly examine your web stats and logs; this can offer you a valuable source of keyphrases and terms that visitors are already entering to look for you on the search tools of the search engines. Get those keywords and improve your rankings on them so that your chances for better traffic can be increased.
• Another place to look within your website is the search tool/feature (if you have one). The logs on this feature will reveal to you what visitors are looking for when they come to your site. This will also give you an idea of what words and phrases to include in your keyword list.
• Next, carry out an analysis on the keyword list you’ve built to find out the degree of traffic they can generate, and their rate of competition as well.
• Now, it’s time to segment your keyword list. Bring out the longer-phrases keywords (low hanging fruit) that are less traffic prone.
  These keywords can serve as your starting point since they can rank easily, and reasonably swifter.

Then, bring forth the words or terms that are relatively competitive, more traffic-prone and will rank for a fairly longer time – this will be your second segment list. The segmentation process is worth it; while you await the relatively more competitive keywords to start yielding result, the low hanging fruit list must have started generating traffic for you already.

Remember, too generic and less-targeted keywords will take considerably prolonged period of time to rank; also, conversion of traffic is most likely not to happen. Using very specific key phrases would not generate you substantial traffic as well. So what do you do?

Employ a three-level technique;

• Broad Based:
  It consists of single keywords and relatively short phrases, lots of traffic, generic to the industry, and relatively low conversions.
• Focused Keywords:
  Here you will find phrases that are fairly shorter. The phrases are centred on your offering. Higher traffic numbers is also a feature of the ‘focused’ level.
• The Long Tail Keywords – Laser Focused:
  This consists of more targeted and longer key phrases, higher conversion rates, and smaller traffic numbers.

Inbound links have always been a very important when it comes to
Search Engine Optimization. Ascertaining the worth of these links
can also be very essential. This is particularly the case when any
kind of investment is being made in deriving these links.

Here’s how to identify valuable inbound links:

• The Webpage Source Should be Indexed By Google
  Before settling for a link from any webpage, verify if such web page is indexed by Google. It is easy to tell that a page not indexed by Google would not be recognized when it links to your page; so it is as good as not having any link.
• The Relevance of the Link to Your Business Model
  How relevant is the link to your business theme. As an instance, if you offer debt relief services, it will make sense to link to web pages that contain information about debt management services.
• Page Rank – PR
  Although not the ultimate, Google Page Rank 5 is definitely prioritized than a PR 1. And of course, a PR 7 or something higher offers something real juicy. The bottom line is this; it is better to have a mix of links from various page ranks to make it appear really natural.
• Detecting Paid Links
  Any link that is identified directly as paid link should be avoided. To spot such web pages, look out for terms such as ‘advertisements’, ‘sponsored’, ‘partners’ etc. Major search engines such as Google dislike paid links and would easily identify them with the words specified;
  when this happens, such links will attract no value.If you must link to a ‘paid’ web page, employ techniques such as the use of image instead of text. Then, avoid anything that may indicate the status of the site in the image’s alt attribute. This is very essential if you really want such link to count, otherwise Google will ignore the link outright.
• Inbound Links
  Does the page link to other web pages? And what is the nature of the sites that link back to it? Better still, what is the anchor text of those sites indicating?
• Outbound Links
  Ensure that the page is linking to less than or exactly ten other sites including your own. More outbound links depreciates the link value passed to each webpage.
• Link Placement
  Google in particular, and other search engines have put so much effort in the recent past years in making attempts to spot none ‘editorial’ link in terms of context. To this end, it is sensible to stay away from links placed in blog rolls, footers, and similar link placements that indicate ‘non editorial’. Links placed within the content is to be considered. Good link placement can attract great worth, as well as pass link juice.
• Avoid ‘NoFollow’ Link
  Do not look at links that feature ‘nofollow’ attribute since they have minute offer when it comes to passing link popularity or juice to your webpage.
  However, you can sometimes consider them because they can offer a natural look to your link building, to the search engines, and also bring you traffic – e.g. is Twitter.
• How Long has the Domain Been Around
  Domains that have existed for a substantial period of time tend to attract search engines. The reason is that such domain must have garnered some good links itself during these periods it has existed.
• Site’s Alexa Rank
  This can serve as a clue to the extent of popularity of a website.

If you are into internet marketing and have an online business, then you are well aware that unless you have
good traffic to your site, it will be a futile effort.The more number of people visit your site,
the more business you can achieve.

There are few methods which can bring relevant visitors to your website.
To improve the search engine rankings of your site, you need to concentrate on three principles-
1-Relevancy, 2-Popularity  3-Originality.

Relevancy or appropriateness:
Relevancy is one of the key elements for the site to be search engine friendly.

• The content and links to the site should be relevant to the service you are providing or the object you are trying to sell. For example, if your site is about furniture, then make sure you have contents that directly talk about furniture and related terms like their up-keep or repair. No need to talk about the construction of a drawing or living room. Most of the search engines scrutinize the sites for their relevance before ranking them.
• The use of appropriate keywords also plays an important role to bring traffic. Make the keyword unique and relevant to your topic. Also use the keyword effectively.
• The inbound and outbound links to your site are also important for the page ranking therefore they should also be relevant.

Reputation or popularity:
The site should not only have the relevant content but it should also be popular. The reputation or popularity of a site depends upon its links.

• The numbers of links that are pointing to your site i.e. the inbound links are the best way to gauge the popularity of a site.
• The links should be from reputed and relevant sites.
• The more popular the link site is, the more traffic will land on your site.
• Never buy links or get links from link mills. Get genuine links from the sites that exchange links. This will increase the popularity of your site.

Originality or uniqueness:
The uniqueness and originality of the site are important principles to increase its traffic.

• Spinning is a key element to keep your content unique and original. Change the keywords and title to get it noticed in the search engine as a new article.
• Make many versions of the content based on your keyword and host it on different servers. Put back links to the original article. This will improve the ranking of your page.

These few simple steps will increase your traffic manifold and you can see your business growing.

Google has in a recent statement, made it public that they have commenced using website upload speed as part of the 200 signals that determines the placement of a website in Google’s search result page.

Since the speed of a page upload shows the response time of a website in replying to a web request, Google has decided to consider site speed in their search rankings. In order to ascertain the speed of a website in comparison with other websites, they will employ a wide range of sources.

Effect of the decision on your website ranking
Math Cutts from Google affirms that the new development will affect only certain websites and that less than 1% of search queries will be altered as a result of including website speed in their ranking factor. This implies that only fewer search results will be affected. This is because, the average search request returns about 10 search results on each page.

Although 1% seems insignificant, it may pose an issue if your website is among the webpages that will drop in their ranking.
Presently, this is only applicable to web visitors who are searching on Google in English.

Techniques for Keeping your Web Pages Listed on top Google Search Results

Take a tour of these simple techniques and enhance the speed of your web pages.

• Go for a fast and dependable web host that has excellent connection to the internet. You can encounter problems by settling for a “cheap” web host.
• Merge external JavaScript code files into a single file. When the server has fewer files to request, your web pages will load faster.
• In order to make the JavaScript smaller, you need to compress your JavaScript code.
• Merge external CSS files to a single file, and then compress the CSS files.
• Enable gZip compression; but this is only if it is supported by your web server. This is what a web host can help you achieve.
• The images in your website should be as fewer as possible, and ensure that the images are compressed. A good number of graphic tools will give you the option to select a compression rate when an image is being saved for the web.
• At the end of your web pages, include tracking codes as well as JavaScript snippets.

Those who search the web are usually desirous of immediate result, and as such are not willing to wait even a moment longer. When your web pages load faster, there is an increased chance of visitors getting to see your website contents.

Web page speed is not the top ranking signal used by Google. This is confirmed by a statement made towards the end of Google’s page speed announcement; “Although site speed is a latest signal factor, the relevance of the page is weightier than its speed when accomplishing ranking”.

However, it is essential that you optimize the speed of your web pages; you also need to have other features of your web pages optimized in order to be listed on Google’s first result page.

Webmasters would do their best to get listed on Google’s first result page. However, a vast majority of them do not embark on the right techniques necessary for achieving this end.

A single strategy will definitely not get you listed among the first 10 rankings on Google’s result page. You need to work on all possible elements of your website in order to increase the chances of being listed.

Explore the top 5 factors listed below that influence your website’s ranking on Google’s search results:

1. Accessibility of the Website
It is senseless to embark on optimization of your web pages when your web pages are not accessible by search engines.

• The accessibility of the search engines to your website should be made possible by your robots.
  Txt file. If this file has errors in it, then a lot of search engines will not access your site, or even list it.
• Also, the underlying HTML codes of your web pages must be free of errors, the correct response code should be returned by your web server.
  Your web page contents should be such that the search engine spiders can read them.

Prior to your web pages optimization, verify if the contents of your web pages are readable to the search engines. This can be achieved with a spider simulator.

2. Site Architecture
Google is only interested in displaying relevant sites in the search result page. Ensuring that there is relationship between the pages of your website is a good way to be ranked among the top 10 positions in Google search results. Therefore, don’t structure your website in a way that makes it look more like a collection of random web pages.

The arrangement of your web pages should indicate to Google that your site is related to a central topic. It is necessary that the pages of your website be linked. A web visitor should be able to access your site with few clicks.

The categorization of your website contents should be made easier for search engine by the way you structure your links and directory.

3. Keywords
Among the top secrets of earning a higher ranking on Google, is the right choice of keywords.
A wrong selection of keywords means total failure of your campaign.

• Different pages of your website should be optimized for different keyphrases.
  It is better to have more pages of your website optimized.
• Begin with highly targeted keyphrases that have different keywords -
  e.g. “get a cheap web designer in Chicago”
• When you have attained good ranking for your targeted keyphrases, move on to the ones that are more general -
  e.g. “web designers in Chicago”.

Generally, the conversion rate for targeted keywords is much higher when compared to general keywords.

Again, consider the nature of visitors that will be attracted with the keyphrase based on whether they want to make an actual purchase or just need some information.

4. Uniqueness of Website Content
If your website contents are a mere duplication of articles and links from other websites, then don’t even hope to earn high rankings.

Distinguish your site from the crowd by creating high quality and unique content; also ensure that the articles are centred on your general topic.
Your website should contain useful resources.

5. Other Websites that Link to Your Website
One of the top factors for ranking high in Google is the links from other websites. But ensure that such links are from relevant and quality websites.

Link building is one of the best ways of self promotion on the web. Both the inbound and outbound links play an important role in a website’s ranking process and in the resultant traffic generation. Having good indirect links on your website will improve your business and sale. The sister or related sites also help a website in gaining an increased customer flow by sending their own clients to that website through links. Link building is to be taken as an opportunity to put-forth the best things you can provide them. Link building also helps you to build a reputation in your niche market.

Some of the best ways to get good links to your website

There are very crucial features that need be addressed while building links to your website.

• Your website should be your brand ambassador. You have to constantly maintain the high quality, which in turn will invite quality links to your site.
• Advertise your website as much as you can through press releases, product reviews, blogs, etc. This will make your website visible to maximum people. You can also participate in the live chats at appropriate forums. Once your website is recognized by people, they will link their site to yours.
• The social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook can contribute a lot in connecting to the prospective buyers. Therefore, it is important to link your websites with social networking sites. Another good way is to have links of your website in your social networking profile.
• A blog or forum on your website can increase your visibility and recognition in the relevant section. You can also publish your expert views and suggestions about your niche market and industry which will increase your links.

What is to be avoided

• The first and foremost thing is that your website should not try and cheat the search engines. Don’t allow any suspicious data or information on your website.
• Never go to automated link providers or link farms to get links to your website. Your website may get penalized for link manipulation.
• Never get unrelated links or blog to your website. The unnecessary and unrelated blog comments and links will not help you in ay way. It will instead, lower your website ranking.
• If you get too many links in a short span of time, your website will come under the search engine filters. Paid links or links from the spammers are to be avoided at any cost. Don’t let any spammer link to your site and do not ever put your link on any spammer’s website.

Paying attention to these few tips will get quality links to your website and will assist in climbing up the rungs of search engine rankings. Reciprocal link building may be the best option where you and your rival or competitor web-owners can exchange your links for more traffic.