They're not secret--You should know these SEO facts!

Many webmasters spend a great deal of their time looking for fast and under-the-radar tactics for getting their websites to rank highly. Let me tell you why this strategy so often results in abject failure, and suggest what you can do about it.

Simple SEO Facts

It’s been said to death, but here it is for those who missed it:

1. Google and the gang simply hate gimmicks. If they even think you’re trying to pull the wool over their eyes you’ll get penalized in a heartbeat.
2. A good solid SEO foundation cannot be shaken by a fly-by-night technique that is destined to fail sooner, rather than later.
3. Paid links, no matter what an SEO tells you, will never be equal to an organic link that provides anchor text that his highly relevant to your site (read, uses your keywords here). If users love you and link to you, then the search engines will too.

And now here’s 5 bonus tactics for getting your SEO strategy right first time:

1. Check how long your SEO has been in business. I’m not saying everyone with a new shingle is fly-by-night–they might be legit but simply new to the game. But chances are if they’re brand new they may have found a gimmick that they think will make them a lot of money without any hard work. Simply, they’re gonna fail pretty soon.
2. If your SEO has been in business continually for five years or more, and you can find lots of material written by them on SEO across many SEO or marketing websites, you can be pretty sure they’re the real deal!
3. Take some time to get your keyword research right because nothing pays off quite like keyword research done right.
4. Now take some time to create really outstanding content written around your chosen keywords. Content is still king, and will be for the foreseeable future. Everything revolves around good content. If you do it right, the links willl come and the traffic willl come. Good content is a gift that keeps on giving.
5. Looking for SEO gimmicks? Quite simply, do yourself a favor and forget them. Put in some initial hard work as I’ve just mentioned and you won’t need gimmicks. In the bargain, you will continue to outshine those poor souls who have bought into a gimmick: they will have ultimately wasted their investment of time, money and energy.

Keyword research can be difficult and time consuming

Keyword Research is Key!

I just realized that, while I’ve written articles on keyword research as a guest blogger, I’ve never actually put what I spend so much time doing down in black and white for my own readers. How remiss of me!

Keyword research is the backbone of SEO. Without it, or should I say without doing it correctly, there is no hope of success–well unless you hit an absolutely unbelievable stroke of luck…..

Here’s the honest truth about Keyword Research

The truth is, straightforward keyword research is pretty easy in principle, but in practice it can be a huge pain. Unfortunately some SEOs have managed to erect a veil of confusion and intimidation around the subject of keyword research. In a moment I’ll show you just how easy it is though.

It’s worth taking the time and trouble to do your keyword research properly, because when you do it right–wow what an amazing difference it makes. You can literally replace thousands of dollars worth of pay-per-click. Not overnight mind you; it does take a little time for your work to bear fruit.

Keyword Research How-To

First you need a good tool with which to research your keywords. WordTracker is the all-time favorite if you want a paid alternative.

But in the meantime, here are three really good free alternatives that will allow you to see the important facts about your keywords:

• Google Adwords
• Keyword Discovery
• SEOBook Keyword Tool (you need to sign up for a free account first)

SEOBook Keyword Tool is my choice. I’ve been using it for some time and it’s valuable. Checkout the keyword export features–they are useful for advanced keyword research.

Next you need to pick the terms you think people will use to find your site. You enter those terms into a keyword research tool and you will get a long list of other phrases that you hadn’t thought of. If you have no idea how to pick the right terms, you might start with the analytics program you use (you do use one right?). If it’s a good one it will give you the search terms people use to get to your site.

Start with those terms as a list and expand, but only if they can accurately be used to describe what you’re offering. If there’s a gap between what’s on your site and the search terms people are using then you need to take a very close look at your content. Adapt it so that it uses many varied phrases that apply to your service/product. This is what’s known as optimized content and it’s the most valuable asset your website has. Period.

The Catch

And there’s another catch: you have to know how to implement your keyword research exactly right. Quality optimized content is what will keep visitors engaged in your site long enough to convert.

If all this sounds like too much time and money to you, then think of the consequences of not doing your keyword research right: You will have a website that cost you money, that looks nice, and contains all the informaiton it should, but it’ll never be seen because the search engines ignore it.

In the finall analysis, if you don’t have time to do your keyword research right yourself, you’re probably better off shelling out for someone else to do it: picking the right keywords will pay for itself over and over and in a very short space of time.

It’s common for SEO clients to pick and choose what they want included in their SEO campaign. Many SEO consultants will, often against their better judgment, agree to a scaled-down campaign that suits the client (or rather the client’s budget). If you’re thinking of saving money on SEO, you should be aware that if you leave out certain elements you may not be negating the entire campaign, but you will certainly be limiting your scope for success.

Here’s a list of what absolutely cannot be left out of your SEO campaign:

1. Check domain integrity and canonicalization issues to ensure that, basically, there is only one version of your home page.
2. Elimination of any inadvertent Black Hat elements such as invisible text, cloaking, or keyword stuffing, or any links that could be construed as paid links in any way by Google.
3. Thorough keyword research to ensure that you are optimizing for the phrases that exactly match what your customers will be searching for, and nothing else.
4. Website audit along with competitive analysis to ensure that you are in a position to compete with websites presently at the top of a search for your chosen keywords.
5. Page title tags. These have to be perfect for each page because they are critical to your Google success.
6. SEO content creation. The goal is to fill your pages with content that will impress Google and entice your customers.
7. Link building. Without sufficient quality, incoming links you cannot compete. The emphasis here is on quality: links from poor neighborhoods will actually drag you down in the SERPs. Be careful of purchasing links because Google has ways of sniffing them out and will penalize you decisively.
8. Monitor results of your SEO campaign for all you’re worth. This is key to future SEO work. If you dispense with this step you might as well give up and settle for failure.