August 30, 2008 edition

What is Search engine optimization SEO exactly?

Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Glossary

Are you looking for fresh optimization strategies for your Web site?

Are you looking for fresh optimization strategies for your Web site? Of course you do!

Perhaps you ask yourself about what keywords you have not considered before during you're Search Engine Optimization affords, that might be ideal for attracting new or different audiences. Are you meditating on new keywords? The smartest strategies begin with researching your industry marketplace to see what the demand is. Are you doing new keyword research on a regular basis to find new opportunities? If you are, then good for you....but the challenge is this. So are your competitors. In fact anyone with any experience in search engine marketing at all, is trying to research the best keywords to bring them new streams of business.

Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Optimisation, its all the same!

So then does that leave any windows of opportunity for you to attract traffic or do you think it makes the job a little more difficult?

What if you become more logical and try hunting for keywords that will "logically relate" to your topic?

Will this give you an advantage over your competition? By brainstorming about what keywords to use, you could possibly discover a few new niche areas, but the one problem with brainstorming is this. Most of us tend to use our brain based on a very limited "real world" experience. Just because you have been in business for 20 years, does not mean that you are knowing how people explore and search the Internet. In fact, most people never learn to explore data because they are so busy trying guess at keywords based on what their knowledge is, rather than exploring what the real world is doing.

HINT: The more you hunt for keywords, based on what your brain wants to guess at....the more you will tend to come up with exactly the same lame keywords that the rest of the world is thinking of too.

Stop and think about it seriously............

Let's dwell on this for a bit because the truth is this. The more you "think like everyone else thinks" (usually drawing keywords that are already lodged into our brain based on our experiences)....the more you will be thinking like the rest of your competition. What this usually means is huge numbers of competing pages all trying to rank for deadly dull, obvious phrases. You can build your pages to compete with highly competitive phrases and you can win. That's not the point. The point is more about learning how to "think differently" in order to allow yourself to see things that 99% of the competition never will see.

Consider how people today are searching the net on MSN, Google, Yahoo and the rest of the engines.

Most people are searching fairly intelligently and they know what they are looking for. Our trouble is that unless you learn to open up the data and research it, YOU don't have any idea of what they are searching for.

Don't think for a minute that people who are thinking about buying a home are searching with the term "MLS Listings." They are mostly not using this type of Real Estate jargon. That term would be fine for attracting other Real Estate agents but what are home buyers doing? What conditions exist in their life that cause them to behave the way that they do?

They might be doing "Cost of Living comparisons" by specific city. They might be researching community crime rates or the local Churches or other community statistics. They might be looking for community maps or other directions. People are using search engines these day for more intelligent searches and using much more interesting and detailed searches than just a search for "real estate" as a keyword phrase.

I could share a variety of strategies for optimizing a Real Estate Web site or a Travel Web site or an Insurance Web site or a Legal Web site or any specific industry really, but here is what I want you to think about. I only want you to think about one thing. This one question should open up floodgates of ideas for you, especially if you are a past student of our Workshops or our Online courses, or our local Search Engine Academies.

TIP: This sounds absolutely crazy to say, but STOP thinking about "logical research" and begin exploring data "illogically." Give yourself the liberty to stop "hunting for keywords" and go exploring the wealth of data in an illogical manner. Although you need to understand which keyword phrases to target, try to stop guessing at it and instead, learn how to quickly explore the data with alternative points of view.

10 More keyword research tips to find "new windows of opportunity" without "hunting for keywords."

Use Wordtracker for exploring the conditions that exist in peoples lives that cause them to use the Internet in the way that they do. Listen to these free Wordtracker Magic Audio Tips or grab the e-book for a paradigm shift.

Have you ever thought about attracting in a new audience based on their interests and needs FIRST instead of being always focused on your objectives. Every Web page should have an objective to be fulfilled but sometimes you can get tremendous conversion if you put your objective to the back. It does not have to come first. Stop and go back and consider meeting the visitor's needs FIRST then offer them something that compliments their circumstance or provides a solution to their circumstance.

How about optimizing a page for a specific Web based tool? Not just mortgage calculators, but literally any kind of tool, that will help them with a decision, a solution or something useful. If they are searching for a specific "tool" why should they not be using yours?
Think about the conditions that exist in peoples lives that cause them to "search" the way they do.

What about all of the people who have financial challenges?

What about the people who live alone in this world who are dying from loneliness?

Or how about the folks who are suffering from a specific medical condition?

What about the people who are in the midst of mortgage foreclosure?

Do you have solutions for certain situations? Think about the conditions that you could help people solve. Be found for them and create magnificent content that reads well and meets their needs and don't forget your call to action.

Consider researching "dialogue patterns." Did you know that we often communicate differently when we speak to each other, than when we are writing an article or creating content. Some of the simplest, plain, every day (even boring little phrases) and words we use when we dialogue with each other, can open up amazing new possibilities for traffic. Pay attention when your customers are talking to you and consider exactly, the words they use to speak to you. Try using some of those words as single "root" words to explore search behavior.

***It'll take you time to catch on to this tip because our brains our automatically attracted to the words we "think" sound important and we cannot see how some little acronym or boring sounding expression could ever help reveal anything. Don't miss the boat.

Have you ever thought about exploring hot subject matter? Think more about the "topics" your customers are interested in discussing or learning about in general. People are interested in all types of causes and concerns from religion and politics to statistical data and news. People like to analyze things and discuss things that relate to their industry. Don't limit yourself to thinking that you can only optimize your Web pages to 3 or 4 keyword phrases because you "think" they are all that exist.

Remember to exploring and research opportunities by researching specific colors. Color is a big deal in some industries.

Consider exploring topics related to specific seasons, which may be appropriate for your Web audience.

Try researching common acronyms related to your industry to open up more "unexplored data."

Make sure you are not mixing up acronyms between industries though. Did you know there are over 100 different related meanings to the common acronym we refer to as SEO? And many of these do not relate to the search engine industry. Try using Acronym Attic to check on the meanings for SEO.

If you have not heard this World Talk Radio Interview on Keyword Forensics, you may listen to the archive to hear me speaking about researching behaviors for real estate and other competitive industries.

Search Engine Optimization In Summary:

Remember that your researching behaviors and finding those niche trends greatly eliminates stress on the new SEO and allows you to compete for easy phrases that draw genuine traffic, but without the enormous competition from the crowds who are all targeting exactly the same phrase because they are guessing at the words rather than exploring the evidence that is readily available.

At the time of writing this article, consider the following simple examples I pulled in less than 90 seconds of exploring data: (Note: the down side to sharing these examples is that the numbers will tend to shift once I publish this article)

If you target the phrase:

"real estate" you are competing with 712,000,000 competing pages based on Google today
To attract the same audience you could consider going for:

"real estate washington dc" which is attracting fair traffic but only competing with 131,000 pages.

or alternately:

"real estate washington dc" is a phrase where you could grab visitors with only 131,000 pages competing.

There are big differences in little phrase clusters that are well worth exploring.

Give yourself the liberty to stop " hunting for keywords" and go exploring the wealth of data in an illogical manner. Although you need to understand which keyword phrases to target, we need to stop guessing at keywords and instead, learn how to quickly explore the search data with alternative points of view that reveals those niche opportunities quickly

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