Search Engine Optimization

Someone says search engines can send you a lot of ready-to-buy people; therefore, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important. Often, "someone" is an SEO professional promoting his or her service. But, it is true.

Rules Are Changing
First, you should understand that SEO isn't one-time work; it is an on going project. Search engines regularly change the algorism (the rules of ranking) to improve relevancy. Whenever they apply new rules, your ranking will also be changed. For example, my page was ranked 4th at Google. That rank lasted for a month or so, but, one day, my rank went down to 20-something. You'll never know where you will be ranked tomorrow. To keep staying near the top, you have to re-optimize your site or hire a professional whenever a new algorism is applied.

Be Current
Search engines update the algorism. That means you also need to updated the SEO techniques you use. Using outdated techniques won't do any good on your rankings (i.e., keyword rich alt tag only jeopardize your listing, today). You can learn the latest SEO techniques at following Web sites. That's how I was ranked at 4th (even if it was only for a few months). Maybe, you will get good ranking, too.

www.1stsearchranking.com
www.highrankings.com
searchenginewatch.com


Choosing Keywords
Choosing keywords is one of the very important steps of SEO. You will receive heavy traffic from search engines only if your site is optimized for popular keywords (searched a lot of times). Because everyone tries optimizing for those well-searched keywords, it is often too hard to beat others and get high rankings. Then, someone invented KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) to chose keywords that are popular, yet not too competitive. (For detailed information about KEI, please go to www.1stsearchranking.com/keywords.htm .) KEI is helpful if you do SEO by yourself, but if you are hiring a professional forget about it. Ask the professional to optimize your site for well-searched keywords. You will get more traffic from more popular keywords. In that case, just your SEO professional (not you) has to work harder.