We’ve discussed the importance of targeting your site text to specific keywords and keyphrases – so it’s only natural to assume that you’ll get the best rankings by packing your content full of the same phrase over and over again. But it’s not. While it’s never a good idea to stuff your site full of repetitive keywords, recent Google algorithm changes provide further incentive to use natural-sounding language by taking into account the value of semantically-related words.

If that sounds overly complicated, don’t worry. The term “semantically-related words” is really just a fancy way of saying “synonyms”. In the context of search engine optimization, accounting for semantically-related words means that the search engine robots evaluate the page as a whole, taking related keywords into account when determining what the page is about. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is one specific algorithm that the search engines use to evaluate site content through related keywords.

So what does this mean for you as a site owner? Well, suppose you’ve built up a page that revolves around the keyphrase “how to get six-pack abs”. In order to score high on the search engine rankings, you’ve used this exact phrase repeatedly throughout your text, without using any related phrases, like “how to get a flat tummy” or “how to tone your mid-section”. If a search engine robot using an LSI algorithm visits your site, it won’t be able to get a good feel for what your site is about since you’ve focused on only one keyphrase.

Whether you’re updating old content or working on new text for your sites, it’s important to vary the keywords you use to create more natural-sounding copy. If you’re having trouble thinking up keyword or keyphrase variations, you can use Microsoft Word’s synonym feature (simply right-click on a word and scroll down to “synonyms” to see more options) or consult an online or offline thesaurus. For example, a keyphrase like “SEO tools” could also be written as “SEO products”, “SEO courses” or “Search engine optimization ebooks”, depending on what your content is about.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that no one knows exactly what the search engine algorithms are, and we are dealing with software, not humans, so it’s still a good idea to include several repetitions of your target keyword or keyphrase. I still recommend including your target keyphrase enough times to reach a keyword density of 2-5% (which means you can pretty much write naturally). This will ensure that your site gets ranked for the specific phrase you’re targeting while still compensating for the new changes in semantically-related word algorithms.

Since the search engines will reward you for writing naturally and not forcing keywords and phrases, I suggest you just write naturally. Make sure the keywords and phrases you’re targeting are in your content, but don’t go overboard.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

As you explore the world of internet marketing, you’ll probably come across the phrases “keyword” or “keyword research” on more than one occasion. But what are keywords and why should you care about them?

Think about what happens when you go to a search engine like Google or Yahoo. If you’re looking for information on cruise deals for your next vacation, you might enter the word “cruises” into the search bar to find websites related to vacation deals. That word you entered is what’s referred to as a keyword. If you entered a string of words, say “best cruise deals”, you’ve entered a keyphrase into the search engine.

Searchers use keywords to find information on the internet.

The keyword or keyphrase tells the search engine what kind of results to bring back for you. Search engines scour the internet, recording the information they find on various sites around the web. When you enter the keyphrase “best cruise deals”, the search engines comb their databanks to find sites related to “best cruise deals”.

When you’re building a website, choosing the keywords and phrases to focus on is extremely important. You want to target the keywords people are actively searching for. But as you can imagine, some keywords are more competitive than others. An example of a general keyphrase is “lose weight”. It’s much more competitive than the keyphrase “lose weight with the lemon juice diet”.

If you build a new site around the phrase “lose weight”, you’ll be competing with well established websites and likely find your site buried on page 89 of Google’s search results for the term.

Where your site falls on the search results pages is measured as its ranking. For the general keyphrase “lose weight”, you’ll likely be low in the rankings, so your site won’t receive much traffic or exposure.

On the other hand, if you focus on less competitive keywords, you can expect to rank much higher in the search engine results – you may even be able to land the much-coveted first page ranking.

This is why good keyword research is vital to the success of your online business. Focus on less competitive keywords and you can expect to rank much higher in the search engine results. Focus on lots of less competitive keywords and you’ll get lots of free traffic.

Ideally, you want to find keyphrases that have high search volumes and low competition. The two go hand-in-hand – the phrase “make your own digital camera using a potato” likely has low competition, but it won’t matter if no one ever searches for it. The experts argue back and forth about exactly what type of numbers you should be looking for – “search engine results of less than 500,000″ or “at least 1,000 daily searches” – but it will be up to you to determine which parameters work best for your internet business.

The other thing to keep in mind is that you optimize the individual pages of your site, not just the home page. So you don’t just pick one keyword or keyphrase. You need to select a number of them and set up an actual strategy for ranking high for all of them.

To conduct your keyword research, you can take advantage of a number of free or paid keyword research tools. One of the best free research tools is available through the Google Adwords program, although you can find other good options at SEOBook.com or by searching online. If you’re looking for programs that offer added functionality, look into WordTracker’s subscription service. Any one of these programs will help you identify keywords and keyphrases with high traffic and low competition to build your web pages around.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, refers to the wide variety of strategies used to make your website more appealing to the search engines in the hopes of drawing free traffic to your site.

Getting free search engine traffic is often called organic traffic, or natural search traffic. You don’t pay for it, and if you have the right mindset, you can continue to get large volumes of natural search traffic for years to come.

Unfortunately, when you first launch a website, you probably won’t have thousands of visitors pounding down your door, eating up your bandwidth, just to get a look at your content. When it comes to getting visitors to your website, you’ve got a few choices – two main ones include either paying for your traffic through pay-per-click advertising programs like Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing, or waiting around for free, organic traffic to find you through the search engines.

However, if all you do is launch your site and then sit around waiting for visitors, it could take weeks or months before the major search engines figure out that you’re even there at all, let alone send you any free traffic.

This is where SEO comes in.

You need to design your site and then promote it so that the search engines know what it’s about. That way they know how to categorize it, and when to show it in their search results. For example, if you have a page about windsurfing, should the search engines show it when a searcher types in ‘windsurfing boards’ or is it more related to ‘windsurfing techniques’?

And is your page better than other pages on the same search term or are there other pages that have better information on them?

The search engines need to take all these factors into consideration each time they show results to their searchers. The goal of the search engines is to categorize all the information on the web and rank it by its relevance for the search terms typed into the search bar.

As you can imagine, there are a virtually infinite number of categories, subcategories, and further subsets any page on your site might fit into. And there are so many different variations a web surfer can type into the search engines that you could never list them all.

So matching up pages for the right search terms is a difficult job. And since that’s only part of their job it’s even more difficult. As already mentioned, in addition to showing relevant pages, the search engines need to show the BEST relevant pages first.

It’s all about giving the searchers what they want. Which ultimately means you need to put yourself in the shoes of the web searchers and give them what THEY want. That way your site will rank high.

So what you need to do is help the search engines determine what your web pages are about and then prove that your individual pages are worthy of begin ranked high. That’s what I think of when I think of SEO. And I know you’ll see a greater level of success if that’s how you think of SEO too.

Top Search Engines

Search engines come in all shapes and sizes – from Google all the way down to smaller niche-based search sites. Recent surveys estimate that as many as 10 billion search queries are made every day across all the search engines.

Once you’ve set up your site, it’s important to get it ranked high in the big three: Google, Yahoo and MSN. Promoting your site to these three engines will give you a big leg up in making your site available to the majority of the internet searchers.

Google – According to Nielsen.com’s Net Ratings, Google receives between 53% and 62% of all the searches done on any given day, making it the largest in the search engine market by far. And as Google continues to expand its product offerings – which currently include everything from free email accounts to calendar systems and custom homepages – it’s safe to say that they’ll continue to be the dominant force in the search engine market for some time.

Yahoo – Despite Google’s dominance in the search engine market, Yahoo continues to receive a respectable 17-22% of daily queries – which is no small number when you multiply this out by the 10 billion searches occurring each day. In addition, Yahoo has been around for much longer than Google and carries significant name recognition in the search engine marketplace. Since many people still use free Yahoo mail accounts, it’s well worth your time to promote your site on this search engine.

MSN – Although MSN’s search engine receives substantially less traffic – estimated at between 9-12% of daily searches, it’s still worth promoting your site here since MSN is the default search engine assigned by Internet Explorer. Consequently, there are a number of people who use this search engine out of habit or for simplicity’s sake.

You’re probably also familiar with a number of smaller search engines, including Altavista, Lycos and Ask.com. For the most part, these smaller sites receive such a small percentage of search traffic it’s not worth checking your rankings on them. In addition, you might be surprised to learn that Google supplies the results for several search engines, including Netscape, AOL and the BBC’s search tool. Once you’re ranked with Google, you’ll start appearing in these other engines immediately.

Beyond the three major search engines, you might also consider seeking out micro-search engines related to your niche. For example, the website AardvarkSport.net focuses specifically on providing search results for sports enthusiasts, while other smaller search engines cater to people in countries beyond the United States. Depending on the product or service you’re promoting, you might find that these smaller search engines offer more targeted traffic than the larger mega-search engines.

So those are the most popular search engines. Fortunately, all you need to do is focus on getting high rankings in Google and to a lesser extent, Yahoo, and you’ll grab the most traffic. And in many instances, by ranking high in Google and Yahoo, you’ll rank high in most all the other search engines as well.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

In this third and final module of the SEO Tutorial, you’ll gain insights on Off-Site Optimization, otherwise known as link building. Discover the basics of directory submissions, article submissions, press releases, forum and blog posting, and social bookmarking.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.   

There are 3 videos in the SEO Tutorial series, be sure to watch them all if you’re new to search engine optimization.

Module 1 – Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)

Would you rather read the SEO Tutorial? Click on the links below:
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

This is part 2 of the SEO Tutorial video series. This series is perfect for the SEO novice. In this video you’ll learn about On-Site Optimization. Discover what Meta Tags are and the specifics of Anchor Text.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.   

There are 3 videos in the SEO Tutorial series, be sure to watch them all if you’re new to search engine optimization.

Additional Videos in the SEO Tutorial Series:
Module 1 – Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)

Would you rather read the SEO Tutorial? Click on the links below:
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion