As mentioned previously, on-site Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the actions you take on your website to make your site appeal to the search engines. These include actions like the words you choose to use in the navigation links, meta tags, and the words within your content.

Meta tags are snippets of code you can include on your website to give the search engines more information on what your site is about. Visitors to your webpage won’t be able to see this information, but the search engine programs that scour your site will appreciate the tip off.

Alternatively, you don’t want to frustrate the search engine robots by bogging down your site with loads of pictures and flash animations. Search engines rely on the words and phrases on your site to get a feel for what it’s about, so that they know when to pull your site up in response to user search terms. If the search engine robots encounter lots of images or movie files, they won’t be able to figure out what your site is about and as a result, it will surely rank lower in the search results.

It’s important to get your on-site optimization right because you control it (as opposed to the off-site strategies I’ll cover later). The following are a couple of quick, but important on-site SEO principles to implement.

First, if you’re aiming for high search engine rankings, you’ll want to focus each page on a particular keyord or keyphrase. As I mentioned earlier, an ideal keyphrase is not too competitive, but still searched for frequently in the search engines. Once you’ve identified your target keyphrase, you’ll want to write content that includes this keyphrase about 2-5% of the time. Don’t go overboard – your content should still sound natural. In the short run, you can trick the search engines by stuffing a page full of your target keyphrase, repeated over and over again, but this is a poor long-term strategy.

Second, the domain name you choose is important as well. The domain name should reflect the main keyphrase for your site and, whenever possible, be a .com domain. Although most experts disagree whether a continuous domain is better than a dashed domain – “www.makemoneyonline.com” versus “www.make-money-online.com” – it is becoming increasingly clear that .com domain names are given more weight than some of the other extensions, like .info or .us.

There are many other on-site optimization tips, these are only a couple. I’ll cover meta tags in the next part of this tutorial.

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 techniques can be broken down into two general categories – onsite and offsite. Both of these will benefit your rankings, so it’s worth your time to address them both when building and promoting your website.

On-site SEO includes the specific actions you take on your webpages to increase your search engine position.

Off-site SEO techniques are the actions you take outside of your webpages to increase your search engine position. Backlinks are one of the most important strategies in the offsite SEO toolbox. For example, say you’ve put together a site on reducing hypertension and heart attacks. If Google or another major search engine notices that the American Heart Association has linked back to your site, it assumes your site must include good content. The more of these quality links back to your site you get, the more free traffic you’ll receive from the search engines because your site will rank higher.

Both on-site and off-site optimization help the search engines categorize your site and rank it higher. On-site optimization is more under your control than off-site optimization. So you need to make sure each page of your site is well optimized and then start a link building campaign.

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 we’ve discussed, the internet revolves around keywords and keyphrases – the specific terms users enter into search engines when they’re searching for content. Finding competitive keywords to target on your site is as much a science as it an art, as you need to search for elusive keywords that aren’t too competitive, but still have significant search volume. As the internet becomes more and more competitive, smart web site owners are turning to long tail keywords to generate traffic.

According to DoshDosh.com, the long tail refers to “a socio-statistical theory which suggests that the collective sales of products in low demand can exceed that of popular products and bestsellers.” In terms of keywords, this means that it’s easier to succeed using longer, less competitive keyword phrases, like “how to establish a home-based vending business”, than it is with more popular keywords, such as “lose weight” or “make money online.” By using long-tail keywords, you’re shooting for the small fish in the pond, while the rest of the marketing community is trolling for the record-breaking bass.

The idea of the long tail is summarized in the following graphic:

Courtesy of www.DoshDosh.com

At the far left of the graph, we see the most popular products on the marketplace – those that receive the bulk of the traffic and interest on the internet. The amount of traffic for these products quickly levels off as we move right along the graph, but you’ll also notice that the long tail section is much longer than that of the popular product section. The long tail section represents all the traffic coming from longer, more obscure search phrases.

So what does all this mean for you as a site owner? When you’re just getting started, it’s much more difficult to get ranked for popular search terms, given the amount of resources the existing sites have to maintain their rankings. However, it’s entirely within your reach to rank at the top of the search engines for long tail keywords, using a combination of on-site and off-site search engine optimization strategies.

If you rank high for lots of long-tail keywords then you will receive lots of free traffic from the search engines.

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

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