According to Jupiter Research almost 40% of people searching the web actually purchase something. In all cases, they focus on page 1 and sometimes page 2. The percentage of info seekers decreases tremendously starting with page 3 of any search engine.

The dirty little secret you probably don’t know is that 72% of all people who search Google click on the organic search results, ignoring the paid ads section. I do. Don’t you?

Based on these findings, logic will tell you that your website/blog should be listed on the top 1-2 pages of every search engine page. To accomplish this you’ll need a solid and powerful SEO behind your site.

So does SEO matter? Heck Yes!

Here are some things you need to understand before you hire a SEO company or even contemplate on doing yourself SEO for your site:

 1. SEO is an ongoing activity and it stops when your company doesn’t need a web presence anymore.
This is not a “set it” and forget it” task. It’s a long time strategy that needs constant attention and fine tunning as you go.

2. SEO results are not immediate nor permanent.
Whoever is telling you otherwise you should seriously dispute their knwoeldge of the web.

3. If you want to do solid SEO (mainly based on fresh content), think of your site as a weekly or monthly newsletter.
Update it as much as you can and you got yourself a dynamic and fresh site every time.

4. Tag everything (images, links, video, etc.) and link to relevant sites.
Link internally between your pages and ask others to link to your site.

5. Pure SEO is not about TRAFFIC – it’s about QUALIFIED TRAFFIC.
What good does it do that your site list on position 2 on the first page for a “company that sells oranges” when you in fact are “selling space ships”?

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• Educate Yourself About Seach Engine Optimization (techtalkformoms.com)

“Sign up with us for just $$ per month and we’ll guarantee you #1 on Google”

When I hear this type of sales pitch I just want to start screaming. How can someone guarantee a #1 spot on the most dynamic and ever changing medium in the world – the world wide web? Yahoo cannot even guarantee to be listed at #1 on Google’s index. What makes you believe that Junior from ABC-SEO company would be able to deliver?

Unfortunately, lots of businesses believe this baloney and go for it, to later find out that being #1 it’s a bit impossible to realize. Actually, I take it back – you CAN occupy position #1 in Google with one condition:

- The search is based on a keyword is so rare that not even Webster Dictionary hasn’t heard about it. So if your website is about “blue aluminum monkeys” then…yeah – you could be on Google’s #1 position.

You don’t believe me? Just go to any search engine like Google or Yahoo and check their “disclaimer” page. They all mention the fact that there are no guarantees for future positions of a website within a search engine listing; as no stockbroker cannot guarantee future earnings.

Here’s a myth: SEM Guarantees Permanent Top Position

Well, yeah, that’s almost true only if you pay for your Google AdWords and your ad has received the most clicks. SEO however cannot guarantee that because search engines are ultimately the ones making the “decision” based on their complex algorithms.

Show me one SEO specialist who can predict the future of a search engine algorithm and I’ll show you a stockbroker who will guarantee you a million dollars by the end of the week.

In addition, I am not so sure that search engines would really want the same sites to be listed again and again on the same position. That is why search engines change their algorithms almost daily.

New websites, full of fresh content are being added every single day. Very often, they are optimized better built and contain much more interesting material than data posted several months back. The fluctuation of the search engine index is permanent, and that’s the only thing that is permanent about the web.

Just for kicks, try this: Call a friend or a relative (preferably one that lives several hundred miles from where you are) and agree on a keyword to search on. Now type it in Google, both in the same time. Compare the results. Amazing! Right?
For more SEO Killer tips read this article

If a website brings in revenue do you care if it’s not  #1 in Google? You might want to invest a bit of money and experiment with Pay-Per-Clicks to see if your customer base will grow. If the changes in your SEO strategy do not bring more revenue don’t even bother.

Focus on search engine visibility and good user experience rather than be obsessed with Google positioning.

Google Loves Your Website

A German company called SISTRIX analyzed elements of websites that rank the highest placement with Google. They analyzed 10,000 random keywords and for every keyword this company tested top 100 search results.

In order of importance the following is the compressed list of the results:

1. Web page title
2. Web page body
3. Headline tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
4. Bold and strong tags (<b>,<strong> )
5. Image file names
6. Image ALT text
7. Domain names
8. Path to files
9. Parameters
10. File size, inbound links

They also found out that keywords in titles are more important than keywords within the body tag; H2 through H6 tags are more important than H1 tags.

One of the most interesting things SISTRIX discovered is that top results have 4 times more links (inbound) than position 11 (on the second page). With that in mind, design your site or simply modify it accordingly.

Google Analytics (abbreviated GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about who is visiting your website. Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics give you a wealth of information on your visitors and how they visit, browse and exit your site, but the code has to be installed on every page, and in the correct position. In order to accomplish this you will need a Gmail account to login and access your GA dashboard.

Google Analytics is implemented by including what is known as a “page tag”. Google Analytics then aggregates this data in the Content reports to display the number of visits, session length and bounce rates. Google Analytics provides a rough mechanism called “segmentation” to track your users based on data.

Traffic

Google wants you to attract more of the traffic you are looking for, and help you turn more visitors into customers. It seems Google loves to know more about website traffic by offering this service free. Make informed site design improvements, drive targeted traffic, and increase your conversions and profits.

Some of Google Analytics features include tracking how users found a site by listing referral traffic from search engines, tracking what keywords were searched, how a site was explored, displays what links were clicked on and how long users were on the site. Search Engine Traffic – Knowing which search engines are sending the most traffic and how well its converting can help you optimize your spend and SEO efforts.

Marketing

Marketing professionals may want to know where visitors come from, what they do, how to convert more visitors into sales, which keywords are working the best and which ad copy converts. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

GA can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents. You’ll get the information you need to write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites.

While Google will likely provide you the most traffic, if Yahoo or Ask converts better, you might want to see how you can get more visitors from them. Examine every aspect of the available reports, including visitors, traffic sources, content, and goals.

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