Here are some terms you must know to talk about search engine placement:

SEO = Search Engine Optimization is the science and art of getting a web page to rank well in the SERPs for a particular Keyword.



SERP = Search Engine Results Pages are the pages that a search engine returns when someone searches for something. You want your web page to be at the top of the results vs. on the 100th page. If not, no one will ever find you.

Keyword = the words or phrase that you want your site to rank well for when people search for something. For example, if you're selling brick zippers, then your keyword phrase would probably be brick zippers.

Maybe you read my first paragraph and wondered how can that happen? Everyone usually assumes that a web page on the first page of results gets massive amounts of traffíc. But that's not always the case.

Below I've listed some of the reasons you may not receive the traffíc you counted on:

1) Your web page title and/or description are not humanly readable and appealing. Perhaps you strung some words together just to rank well with the search engines, but to a human it just does not read well and therefore does not cause them to click on the link to your site. Remember that a person reading your web page is the end result you're wanting. Make your web page titles and descriptions a call to action so that you will motivate people to click, click, and click.

2) Your site is listed at or near the bottom of the first page of search results vs. the top of the first page of search results. The first site on the first page receives an order of magnitude more clicks than the last site on the first page. The closer your page is to the top, the more traffíc you'll get.

3) You picked keywords that are not being searched on. You must always research your keywords. It's too easy to think you know what people are searching for when you could be wrong on what the best terms are for your site. If you find this out months into using those keywords, it's bad news. It's easy to edit your web pages; but changing the inbound links to your web site can be impossible. Why do you care about inbound links? Search engines put a very high value on the anchor text in the links to your site. Let's say you've spent months getting links to your site using the term "Red Left-Handed Widgets" because when you searched for "Red Left-Handed Widgets" on Google, it showed 944,000 results. Later, you finally use WordTracker and see how many people search for "Red Left-Handed Widgets" and you find that nothing shows up. Now, you need to find a better keyword phrase that people ARE using when they search for products or information like yours.

Here's a real example. I helped a blog owner with some SEO for one of his sites. In this example, I've left out the site name and keyword terms. For this example, I did the analysis using the free version of WordTracker which only gives data from MSN, the paid version gives much more data.

He is targeting 3 keyword phrases:

Keyword Phrase 1
Wordtracker showed 0 entries in its database, 0 predictions for 24 hours
Google returned 2,490,000 sites
This site is on the 3rd page of results on Google (near the top of the 3rd page) for this keyword.

Keyword Phrase 2
Wordtracker showed 23 entries in its database, 4 predictions for 24 hours
Google returned 77,100,000 sites
This site is on the 3rd page of results on Google (near the top of the 3rd page) for this keyword.

Keyword Phrase 3
Wordtracker showed 21 entries in its database, 3 predictions for 24 hours
Google returned 67,100,000 sites
This site is on the 5th page of results on Google (near the bottom of the 5th page) for this keyword.

Based on this quickly assembled data, I suggested that he had selected the wrong keywords. I played around with WordTracker and found a different mix of phrases that work much better.

The Keywords I suggested for him to use have these numbers:

Keyword #1
Wordtracker has 590 entries in its database and 94 predictions for 24 hours
Google lists 397,000,000 sites

Keyword #2
Wordtracker has 12 entries in its database and 3 predictions for 24 hours
Google lists 2,470,000 sites

Keyword #3
Wordtracker has 0 entries in its database, 0 predictions for 24 hours
Google lists 2,490,000 sites

The first two phrases were new to him. He wasn't using them before, and my suggested third phrase is actually his old number one phrase. Even though this last phrase shows 0 results I want to keep it in the mix because it's exactly what his site is about. The first two phrases will bring in lots of traffíc.

Note: I used the free version of WordTracker which only gives data for MSN; the paid versions give figures for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. The number of predicted searches will be higher with Google vs. MSN.

The Accuracy of the keywords you select is important. I'd rather get a handful of interested site visitors than a thousand uninterested visitors. Had I suggested keywords that were not relevant to his site, visitors arriving at his site would not stay long, and they would not purchase much of anything either.

In addition to my keyword changes, I suggested several things that needed changing in the HTML for his web pages. It will take a week or two, to see the resulting changes in the search engine rankings. It'll take much longer to get links built using the new keywords.

Summary:
Always pick keywords that are really being used. Your page needs to rank near the top of the first page of results to get massive traffíc. Your web page topic must to be related to the keywords(s) being used.

Suggestions:
Use a good keyword research tool such as WordTracker. Using a service such as 3WayLinks.Net seems to work. (That's how he was ranking on the 3rd page of results without any optimization to his pages.)

About The Author
Written by Fred Black. Fred Black is an experienced programmer, web site developer, Internet business operator, and systems integrator. Visit his Internet Business web site, http://www.pqInternet.com for Information to help you build a successful Internet Business.