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Similar statistics are available from a variety of sources. Search Engines provide the most important means of discovering a web site. Search Engine Optimization is the process that increases the chances of your web site being discovered when people use search engines to perform in excess of 400,000,000 searches each day. The goal of Search Engine Optimization also includes that the potential customer finds your web site before finding your competitors' web sites.

While other methods rely heavily on chance to find qualified customers interested in purchasing your products or services, Search Engine Optimization allows customers actively searching your product or service to find you so they can buy your product or service.

Customers searching on the web are entering the keywords they feel best describe your product or service. And this brings up an important point. Copy written for the web must use the words your customers use to describe your product or service which may not be the words you would use. You write copy for the web the way you pray including subjects your audience wants to hear and using the words they want to hear. In most cases the words someone very familiar with a product or service are not the words people use to describe their product or service. This is where Keyword Analysis comes into play.

Keyword Analysis determines the words people are actually using when they are searching the web for your product or service. Targeted Keywords are selected based upon the volume of searches and upon the competitiveness of the keywords. The targeted keywords are then incorporated into the meaningful content of web pages targeting only one or two keyword phrases using the principals of keyword prominence, keyword density , and keyword proximity.

Meaningful content means just that. Never include content for content's sake. Make the content useful to the web site visitor. There are different goals with regard to the number of words to include on a page depending upon which search engine is being considered. Never pad the content for the sake of including keywords. If the potential customer finds your page but immediately dismisses it a meaningless he will neither buy your product or return to your web site in the future. There may be some sentences in the content that may be slightly awkward for the sake of keyword prominence of keyword density but should never sacrifice the quality of the content to the reader.

Keyword Analysis also provides invaluable insight into new products or services that people are actively searching for. You can gauge competition for providing the product or service. You might recognize opportunities for promotions for your existing products or services. Read the Wordtracker Research Guide to learn all the ways Keyword Analysis can benefit your business.

Search Engine Optimization, done properly, is extremely tedious and time consuming. Because it is tedious and time consuming it can be expensive. Because of the hundreds or variables involved, no one can say what a top position will cost without knowing the specifics of client's situation. No one can guarantee that it is possible to achieve a top position within a given period of time for a meaningful keyword phrase. As soon as you hear those kinds of offers or claims it is time to move on in your search for a search engine optimization expert.

Search Engine Optimization is a Process, Not a Project. Competing web sites will be optimizing their web sites to improve their ranking with the search engines. The algorithms used by the different search engines are constantly changing. Your web site may fall several positions literally overnight. It is therefore to have a reporting mechanism in place to monitor your web position. If it falls you must react. There should also be an ongoing Linking Strategy to encourage high quality backlinks to your web site to increase the Page Value search engines assign to your web site.

Because it is expensive it is important to have at least a general understanding of how search engine optimization works. Even if you have no plans to actually participate in the search engine optimization process it is important that you something about it to properly evaluate the performance of in house or third parties. I have included some Suggested References for Search Engine Optimization. I also suggest that you read Designing Web Usability since web usability is extremely important to both search engine optimization and conversion of visitors to sales.

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