In search engine optimisation, it is a crucial element to select the right keywords when optimising a website. The obvious reason being, if you have keywords with no search volume, you will not receive any traffic. Secondly, if you have keywords that are too competitive, you will find it very difficult (almost impossible) to win high ranks. So how do we find the in between balance for both obstacles? This is where keyword tools would come into place, but how accurate are they?

To start, the main keyword research tools that are found on the market today are Wordtracker, Overture Keyword Tool and Trellian Keyword Discovery. Now I bet many of you are pulling your hair out over which keywords are going to be suitable for optimisation. What makes it probably even more stressful is the varying results between the three different keyword tools i.e. one keyword tool may show a particular keyword to be very good, while another tool may suggest a whole different result for the same keyword. Well stop stressing right now! The truth is that we don’t really know how accurate these keyword tools are and we should only use their search volume figures as an indication as to whether a keyword is popular amongst search engine users.

Let’s say a keyword phrase, “dog products”, has a search volume of 5,000 searches per month on the Overture Keyword Tool. To make an assumption that “dog products” is a good keyword for optimisation, based ONLY on the Overture figure, would be a very bad assumption. However, it gives us a rough idea of the search volume for that particular keyword. The next step would be to use Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery to see if a similar amount of search volume is present for “dog products” (remember to convert searches for each tool to a common time frame i.e. monthly or daily). If we have a very low search volume in BOTH Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery, then I would be very skeptical about using “dog products” for optimisation. The whole idea is to get at least two of the three keyword tools to reflect reasonable / high search volumes before considering that keyword to be suitable for optimisation. If you have all three keyword tools returning reasonable / high search volumes for “dog products”, then the chances are that this keyword is reasonable / high in search volume and definitely worth considering for optimisation.

Once a good set of keywords have been agreed upon through the use of the keyword tools, you should then focus on the keywords that have a low / reasonable amount of competing web pages. There is no point trying to compete for a keyword that has 1,000,000 web pages in competition for it. If you are good at SEO then you could achieve high ranks for that keyword, but it would require a lot of time and investment which could be spent on better things. The lower the competition is, then the more chance of achieving higher ranks.

To recap, there is no indication to say that keyword tools are 100% accurate. Whilst the reseller of the tool may suggest otherwise, I highly doubt it. The results should be taken like a “grain of salt” as they are only useful to give you an idea as to what the search volume might be like for a particular keyword (high, moderate or low). With each tool obtaining its results using different algorithms, in some cases their results will not support each other. Provided you use two of the keyword tools to investigate the search volume for keywords, you should be able to make a good decision as to whether a keyword might be worth optimising for. With that in mind, it would also be wise to use your common sense to determine if a keyword is one that YOU would actually use in a search. Otherwise, what would be the point of optimisation in the first place?

About the author: David Touri works for SEO Sydney, who aims to improve search engine placement with a search engine marketing service for websites in Australia and overseas. He is currently working on the Loaded Technologies website, who specialise in ecommerce website development.

Visit any forum or web page dedicated to the discussion of SEO (search engine optimization) and you will find scads of webmasters and SEO specialists obsessed with improving their Google placement and/or page rank. Why is that? Because Google is the most popular search engine, it’s the one that everyone uses to find what they are looking for.

My question is why? Does the public know that Google has a “sandbox”? The existence of the sandbox has never been verified by Google, but it’s widely believed to exist.

The sandbox is like a penalty box for new web sites. Most say that a new web site will have to do it’s time in the sandbox for about 6 months before ever having a hope of ranking well in Google. In effect, when you search for “widgets” in Google, there is little chance that you are going to find a new widget company, or even a 50 year old widget company that has just produced a web site for the first time.

What I want to know is; is that fair? Is it what the masses want? Do the masses care how old a site is or how many people link to it? Not likely. As a consumer, if I’m looking for a widget I want a good quality inexpensive widget and I want one that I can order online maybe or one that is local to me so that I can go get it. I could give a rat’s behind how long the website has been up or how many other websites link to it… I just want my widget!

I recently created a web site for my company which offers web design and logo design services. There are a gazillion companies offering that ok, well Google says 170 million but close enough! My chances of getting a top 10, or even to the top 50 are minimal, I have to rely on some more obscure keywords and other advertising methods to get anywhere. I can also rely on Msn search because in a matter of a month I’m now in the top 10 to 30 on three of my keyword phrases.

So what’s the difference? Msn doesn’t have a penalty box? They don’t care how long the site existed? They don’t care how many back links you have? My personal theory is that what they do care about is fresh content and a new website has fresh content.

So… what does this all mean? Not much really other than to point out that Google is a snob and Msn isn’t? That if you are looking for the latest on a topic, perhaps msn should be your search engine of choice? To point out that the average consumer doesn’t really care that there are 170 million websites found for their search term, what they want is relevance in the top 10 – 30 (most won’t go further than 3 pages before they try changing their search term or select a site within the top 30)

This has been mostly a frustration rant and perhaps a challenge to Google. What gives Google the power to decide what we as consumers want to find when we search? Who are they to decide that a new site is less worthy than an older established site? Isn’t the content what is important to us when we search? Is there a better way for Google, and the others to provide better more relevant results?

Perhaps Google should consider offering an option to its faithful followers. An option to search without their penalty filter, an option to search on new content, an option to search on the age of the website – giving us the choice to decide what’s important to us – giving us credit for knowing what we want. It would rock the world of the SEO and force us webmasters and designers to go back to working on unique content and service for our customers instead of obsessing on keywords and backlinks. I think that would be good for everyone.

Lisa Campbell is a website and logo designer based in Oshawa Ontario.

http://www.kaediem.com
http://www.surfinglegendsandhoaxes.com

Have you heard of the SETI Project? SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and the project is operated by the University of California at Berkeley. SETI monitors and processes radio signals from space, looking for possible signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. SETI uses proprietary software to distribute computer processing power among all connected PCs participating in SETI project so that the radio signals can be processed faster and more efficiently. SETI effectively creates one big supercomputer from thousands of connected PCs across their network. Now users of the Google Toolbar can contribute to scientific research in much the same way, through Google Compute.

Google has teamed with Folding@home for their first project. This research organization is non-profit and based at Stanford University. They use participants’ combined computing power to analyze the genetic structure of proteins for medical research.

Once installed to the Google Toolbar, Google Compute can be disabled easily at any time. While enabled, it will use your computer’s otherwise idle time to process computing work assigned to it automatically from Folding@home, then automatically transfer results back to Folding@home when complete.

Users have plenty of informational and control options for Google Compute. A system tray icon (a double helix) indicates that Google Compute is running, and when bright, the same icon indicates that processing work is being performed. There are two modes available to help prevent interference with other programs that you use.

Google Compute requires Windows, IE5 or higher, 64 megabytes of RAM minimum, and the English version of the Google toolbar. A high speed internet connection isn’t required, but you should routinely connect to the Internet every few days, and be prepared for a delay while the processed data is uploaded. Data is transferred using outbound HTTP, so it will work through most semi-transparent firewalls. About 20 megabytes per month of data is transferred to the Folding@home project.

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

Search engine optimization as a part of the web design and development process is one of the most confusing aspects of getting a web-based business up and running. Often confused with the concept of internet marketing, the design optimization of your web site for placement in search engines is a much more specific subset of internet marketing and design.

In order to help keep your internet business simple, here is a brief overview of how to kick start your own website optimization process, without the extraneous industry jargon, in three simple steps. As with any simplification, there is the need to leave out a lot of relevant information, so this should be seen as an A-B-C tutorial. To get the most out of your website, follow this up with serious research, and preferably consult an internet business consultancy or search engine optimization specialist.

Why search engine optimization?

So first things first, why do you even need to think about search engine optimization? To start with, we need to understand how search engines work. As much as we’d love to have an intelligent person read our site and rate it highly for us, the sheer volume of information on the internet these days means that programs have to be written to search sites for us and, using intelligently programmed rules of thumb, rate the content for us. Although not infallible, most search engines have become fairly good at this function.

The major search engines each have their own proprietary technology to match a searcher with the content they are looking for, but there are some key principles common to most of them. By understanding what a search engine looks at, and by focusing on making sure that search engines know what your site is about, you stand a much greater chance of reaching your target audience.

Where do I start?

As the saying goes, content is king. Make sure that the content on your website is good, and that your site is attractive and easy to navigate. Also very important is to be sure that your site has been professionally coded using standards-compliant code. This will ensure that when search engines do index your site, that they are able to do so unobstructed by problematic hacks, and at a high content to code ratio. As is usually the case, these same factors will make your site load considerably faster, and it will be much more people-friendly too. With those prerequisites in place, we can start our three step optimization process.

1. Identify keywords

Firstly you need to identify the key things your target audience is searching for. Let’s say, for example, that your business specializes in web design, development and consulting, and you specifically seek to target small businesses in Joondalup, Perth, Australia. Start with 8-10 key search engine terms, for example:

* web design

* web design Perth

* web development

* web development Perth

* internet consultants

* internet consultants Perth

* web design Joondalup

* web development Joondalup

2. Create optimized content

Now you need to create content relevant to each of your desired search terms:

1. Create some new pages, one for each search term.

2. Make sure that each page contains the respective search term in the title. Don’t overdo it though. As a rule of thumb, don’t let your page title run over 80 characters long, otherwise it is likely to be trimmed to that length which could look strange in a search result. Remember that many search engines use this as the link text to your site, so make it attractive.

3. Update your page meta tags to include the search term keywords, as well as common synonyms.

4. Create your page content. Make sure that the content utilizes your key search phrase many times, and use each respective word in the phrase regularly. Focus on keyword density. In short, this means that the number of times the words in your key phrase, divided by the total number of words on the page, is as high a percentage as possible. Don’t overdo this though, because a keyword density over 10% is likely to get penalised. Generally, keyword density in the title, the headings, and the first paragraphs count most, and should be where you target the bulk of your keyword density optimization.

5. Above all, make sure that your page makes sense and offers real value to your intended audience. Many try to do the above at the expense of providing really valuable content on the page. This just results in a user closing the page as soon as they get there, which doesn’t help your site at all, so be careful to make sure that your primary audience — your site visitor — is still king on the page.

6. Make sure that your images have "alt" tags that are relevant and contain as many of your keywords as possible.

7. Create the URL to your page in such a way that it includes your keyword term. So if you are creating a page optimized for "web design Perth", you could set it up, for example, as http://www.mysite.com/web_design_perth . Once again, don’t go overboard. The rule of thumb here is to keep it under 128 characters long. This has the dual advantages that it tells a search engine what the page is about, as well as making it memorable and intuitive for your human readers.

3. Be honest

Like most things in life, deceit seldom pays in the long run. Search engines are continually picking up sites that are trying to boost their rankings unfairly. All it takes is one person to pick up your dishonesty and report it, and your whole site could be banned indefinitely.

Always make sure that all the pages on your site are primarily there for your intended audience, and only secondly optimized for search engines. A big part of how search engines rank a page is by the number of links from reputable websites, and no reputable sites are going to link to a page that offers no value to visitors, or that is obviously there only to rank well in the search engines. A site that offers real value to visitors, that is well designed, well optimized and friendly to search engines is well on its way to growing its traffic.

David Malan is and internet and e-commerce expert with over ten years experience in designing and developing enterprise grade online solutions for business.

He owns and runs RealmSurfer Consulting, based in Perth, Western Australia.

Website: http://www.realmsurfer.com.au
About: http://www.realmsurfer.com.au/about_realmsurfer/clc

How do you get links to your web site? When you ask another web site to place your link on their site, it’s like asking them to do business with you. If your link is not worth trading in the subject of their business, then don’t even bother requesting a link trade with them.

Links are one of the most valuable commodities on the web today. Search engines back links as credit to your site from another site. The more quality back links pointing to your web site the more likely the search engines will see your information as valuable to their customers searching the internet.

Requesting link trades has become some what of an art to most web experts. The company you request a link from needs to know what’s in it for them. Is it going to be beneficial to have their link on your site. Will it bring them added traffic.

You also need to be aware of the benefits of a link exchange. Are they going to let you put a quality text link on their site with your keywords and subject information in it? There is no point in putting a link on a site that won’t get any recognition.

There is a standard rule in search engine indexing that you should have less than 50 text links on one web page. When adding a link to another site, request where your link will go. It is also known that the link should not be placed on a site more than three sub-folders back in the site.

Look for quality link partners and make a case for the benefits of their link being on your site. Do a search for add url "subject" in Google. You will find many web sites have a link page where you can request a link exchange directly through their web site.

Add the Google tool bar and Alexa tool bar to your internet browser, then when you visit their site you will see their page rank. Page rank gives you a good idea of how the search engines view their site.

An easy way to have a new or non-existent site indexed quickly by Yahoo, Google, and MSN is to get on a web site with a page rank of 3 or higher. Being on a home page of a site with a rank of 3 or greater will allow your web site to be indexed almost immediately. A page rank 5 or greater is indexed at least once a day and many several times a day for new content. If your link is on a high ranking web site home page you will surely be indexed immediately.

DO research on your competition by searching the keywords you use. Go to linkpopularity.com and type in their url. You will see the back links pointing to their site indexed by Yahoo, Google, and MSN. Request link trades with the companies listed in the search results. Remember to explain the benefit they will receive when adding their link to your site.

Another way to get great back links is to have great unique content. Write original articles that emphasize the subject of your service of expertise. If you are not a writer, you can higher a freelancer for next to nothing to write the articles for you.

Freelance article writers charge an average of 3-10 dollars an article and most contain 300-500 words specific to the keywords your web site is competing to be indexed with. Once the articles are written, you can submit them through article submissions services like Ezine and GoArticle. Make sure you put your web site link at the bottom of your articles before submitting as they are only beneficial to you if they point to your site once published.

Press releases are another great source of back link production as they can be picked up by thousands of journalist and used on many news sites around the world. The same technique applies to press releases as to article writing. Make sure they are written for quick pick up and indexing and have your web site url at the bottom with your company information.

Above all make sure your web site is optimized for indexing, as having many back links are great but if you don’t have the right meta tags, keywords, and content available for the search engines when they come crawling your site, you may have well not even built the site in the first place.

Good luck and Happy link trading!

Find more articles at http://www.searchengineoptimizationworld.com

Google, the most popular, and many say best, search engine, offers searchers many options to help them zero in on just what they’re looking for. Although these search modifier features are documented on own site, many searchers, including experienced marketers and technically savvy people, simple don’t know these features are available. But these features, along with the Google search box, are only available to human searchers, who can type in their search parameters, and perhaps some keyboard scripting programs as well. But there is a way for programmers and web site designers to access Google’s database from their own sites, in the exact way they need. This is done by using Google’s Web API (Application Program Interface).

With the API, programmers can use most any web programming language, such as PHP, ASP, Perl, .NET, and Java. Google’s Web API provides "data hooks" that allow a remote program to access certain portions of Google easily.

You must be very aware of the Google Web API Terms of Service. You must obtain a developer key that you will include in each API use, you are allowed only 1,000 automated queries per day, and perhaps most important, you may not use the Google API for commercial purposes. It is only for your personal use, and you of course may not violate any laws or copyright protection.

Google provides a developer’s kit to help you get started. Data is interchanged between Google and the application program using an XML structure, so the results from Google should be relatively easy to parse even for only moderately experienced developers. If you have problems or questions, Google offers Getting Help, Reference and FAQ links, and you will find help and discussions on any of several forums should you need more help. Just search Google - from the search box!

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

Google is the lord of websites, there is no any doubt about it. Every one is running behind Google for an opportunity for Google to turn back and look at them. This is the evil going on in the web world. Building a website must have an objective to satisfy the website viewers rather than Google. If your website is liked by all then Google cannot ignore it. After all Google is also running behind visitors to satisfy them.

If your website has good content as the desire of your website viewers then Google cannot neglect your website, since Google itself wants to satisfy its website viewers so how can Google hate your website if it is liked by all. So while building a website always give first priority to your visitors and market you are looking for.

Google is nothing but only the medium to pull visitors to your website which you can do by simply writing your website URL in the wall of your house with a pencil, stamping a website URL in Paper notes, wearing T-shirt after printing a website URL in it, and there are many other Techniques how you can promote your website very cheaply and shortly. Saying this I am not suggesting you to avoid Google but I am saying you to stop running behind Google. Google is an excellent destination for all but why don’t you try to make your own website the destination for Google.

Many webmasters are wasting their valuable time just to see one more green bar in the PageRank box of Google Toolbar and for getting listed in first page of Google Search Page but most of them are unsuccessful for doing so. If that time was spent for the modification of their website then there would be something more they could contribute to the world. Your intension of running behind Google always keeps you backward but if you think of running your website yourself individually then the day will come when Google runs after you to get inside the frame of your eyes for a single sight of yours.

Up to today, Google is successful because it is running independently. It didn’t pray any one for its website’s promotion, that’s why Google is at the top today. Be careful, promoting a website with dirty tricks may cause a demotion of the website which can never be promoted again. You must not promote your website for getting Google’s eye but for dragging more visitors to your website. Aren’t you being blind by running foolishly behind Google? Think once, are you correctly knowing the value of website promotion and the value of website search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN.

Author is a student studying at high school in Nepal. He is also involved in building a website. Some of his websites are Guide for Abroad Studies

All too often, we come across sites which are powered by a content management system. While a CMS can be an invaluable tool to those who need to manage a large amount of data, many Content Management Systems can cause problems with search engine positioning.

It’s not the CMS that causes the problems, necessarily, but how it forms the URL’s in the browser which tend to negatively impact positioning.

In most cases, URL’s are formed something like:

http://www.somesite.com/default.asp? sessionid=sdf43fase33r&variable=123&productid=4323&pagename =44&template=22

As you can see, this CMS relies on a series of variables to display the page. This is where problems tend to develop.

We are always being asked the effect on search engine rankings when using a CMS of this type. When we say that they tend to perform poorly, the first response is almost always "but I always see pages like this ranking."

While this may be true in some cases, we have noticed that in very competitive keyword markets, static pages always outrank dynamic pages. It is not that the spiders aren’t able to crawl the pages, its just that they don’t perform as well in the search engines.

But before we get into the rankings, let’s take a look at what potential barriers there are to indexing the URL listed above.

The first major roadblock which jumps out at me is the sessionid as the first variable. While for most sites the sessionid is critical to tracking users, in many cases, a spider will not index such a page. The reason is that they understand that by simply changing the sessionid, the page may or may not change. Because of the dynamic and unique nature of a sessionid, a single page URL can effectively have many variations, even if the body text doesn’t change. The danger of this is that a spider can get caught within the site (also known as a spider trap) whereby they attempt to index a site but keep getting served up pages with different sessionid’s.

What happens is, even on a site with a few pages, the spider sees unique URLs because the sessionid changes values. While the value won’t change on a single visit, spiders tend to take multiple visits to a site to index the entire site. Therefore, each visit would render a new sessionid, effectively making the page look different to the crawler. A site with a few pages can then have many hundreds of thousands of URL’s that a crawler can see. This creates the potential for the spider to get caught in a never ending loop whereby its attempts to fully index a site never happen, and it gets stuck on the site.

This is why crawlers don’t like sites with any type of "id" in the URL.

But as you can see, simply moving or removing the sessionid doesn’t solve this problem, because there is also a productid. This site risks the spider not visiting it because the spider will see the "id" in the string and may not request the page.

The next problem I see is the number of variables. In general, most crawlers will only effectively index a site that uses 2 or 3 variables. With the sessionid variable, this site has 5, which means that there is a good chance that the pagename and template variables will not be requested when indexing happens. In this case, it would appear that the site relies on the template to display the page, therefore the crawler would receive a 404 error page because the page wouldn’t display properly.

So essentially, you have a site which is not indexable by a search engine spider and therefore won’t rank for anything. So how to you fix it?

Assuming that you can play with the URL string without breaking something, there are solutions.

The first could be to implement some sort of IP recognition software. What this does is checks the users IP address before serving pages. Then what you could do is define rules that say "when an IP belonging to a spider visits, serve the page without the sessionid." This will not only eliminate one variable, but it will help get spiders into the site because they won’t see the sessionid variable.

The next solution would be to use a URL re-writer to change the construction on the URL on the fly before sending it to the browser. Depending on how many variables you have, and how flexible the URL rewriter is, this can have a dramatic impact on search engine rankings.

Looking at the same URL: http://www.somesite.com/default.asp? sessionid=sdf43fase33r&variable=123&productid=4323&pagename =44&template=22

If we were able to remove the sessionid using IP recognition, the URL would now look like:

http://www.somesite.com/default.asp? variable=123&productid=4323&pagename=44&template=22

Now, if we can implement a URL rewriter, we can look at what variables are needed. Perhaps the template variable and the pagename variable are universal, therefore we can effectively combine them.

Finally, if we can replace "=" with "-" for example, we can effectively rewrite the url to be:

http://www.somesite.com/site-variable-123-product-4343/default.asp

As you can see above, "site" replaces the pagename and template variables, and then we use "-" to replace the "=" and "&" symbols. Now instead of a site with 5 dynamic variables which the crawler would have problems with, we have made the page appear static and we have also moved it to within 1 folder deep of the root of the site giving it much more authority. This should in turn translate into much higher rankings, and the site will be more competitive especially in those high traffic keyword markets.

Of course there are other considerations when implementing a URL rewriter, such as, now the site navigation and any other hyperlinks need to be updated to reflect the new URL, and product pages will need to follow the same URL structure in order to be displayed properly.

But proper planning can ensure that the URL rewriter (and optionally, IP recognition software) can be implemented with little impact.

Find more articles at http://www.searchengineoptimizationworld.com

For so many web surfers, it’s almost automatic to type Google.com in to our address bar when we want to search. So big and well-known is Google that many browsers have a built-in search box or typed shortcut for Google searches. In fact, we tend to associate Google with search so much now that the word itself is commonly used as a verb, as in "let me Google that". It’s much the same as Band-Aid, Kleenex, and Xerox, where the brand name is so pervasive that it’s very often substituted for the generic function of the item the brand is applied to.

We’re used to searching from home, where we’ve had Internet access for years now. But Google Wireless search is also available for use from Internet-ready cell phones and some wireless PDA devices such as PalmOne and Palm VII.

To search from Google Wireless, you will need access to the Internet through your wireless device. This can usually be arranged through your cellular carrier if you don’t already have it. You can search the "mobile web", which is a collection of web pages that have been designed specifically for wireless devices. With Google Wireless search, you can also search all of Google, and the search results will be translated into a type of display language that your mobile device can interpret.

On a cell phone, searches are performed using the keypad on the phone and GNS, or Google Number Search. This is a form of search input that Google has developed to help make your wireless searches easier and faster. On PDAs, you can use the built-in keyboard or touch-screen keyboard. For the Palm VII, you will need to download special software to access Google Wireless search.

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

Background
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings. SEO primarily handles what is known as organic search results, also known as the results the search engines present users, excluding paid advertisement.

The main reason people seek high rankings in the organic search results is to increase targeted traffic to their websites. SEO offers a very cost effective alternative to obtain that traffic. Other means such as pay per click advertisement or banner advertising can potentially be expensive, particularly with competitive terms where the cost per click can be several dollars.

Targeting the Right Keywords
As a small business this is particularly important. Traffic for itself is not necessarily the ultimate goal. Targeted traffic is. Selecting common generic search phrases can be a poor marketing strategy for a small business because it can generate a large volume of low-quality inquiries that cost money to handle, yet result in little revenue.

A small business will probably obtain much better results when targeting highly specific keywords that indicate a prospective customer who is ready to buy their product. Moreover, the more specific a keyword is, the lower competition it has, therefore the higher chance to ‘win’ that keyword for a relatively low cost.

Result Driven Approach
Let’s leave all the marketing pitch aside for a moment and really get down to the facts. What really makes an SEO firm affordable? Well, we can start by looking at what is NOT affordable. Paying thousands of dollars upfront certainly does not make sense for a small business, where every dollar spent has to provide a clear return on investment (ROI), especially since the marketing budget is not too high to begin with.

That leads us to next big question – how should we measure the ROI for SEO? SEO has one objective – that is to generate targeted traffic to your website, period. The good news is that traffic can easily be measured. Every web hosting company provides visual server log files that record and analyze the website’s traffic across time. So SEO effectiveness can be easily measured.

Affordable SEO is first and foremost based on a result-driven approach, meaning you should only pay when you see results. Results can be measured in various ways, for instance top page placement in the major search engines or a certain increase (%) in your website traffic. Think of it as placing an ad in a newspaper, it serves exactly the same purpose as SEO – that is generating targeted traffic to your business. So why should it be any different?

If an SEO firm is as good as they claim to be, let them bite their own bullet and guarantee your money back if they fail to deliver top page results within a reasonable time frame (usually 4-6 months). It is only fair.

How Much Should You Pay?
So things are starting to feel right. Your website finally appears on the first page of Google when you type in your search phrases and you are starting to experience a significant increase in your website’s traffic. How much should you pay?

This is a tricky question. My belief is that every keyword has a price tag. It consists of two main factors: keyword popularity and keyword competitiveness. Obviously, you should strive for keywords with the highest popularity (number of searches per day or per month) and the lowest competition (number of web pages competing for the same keyword, knowingly or unknowingly).

Keyword pricing is not a straightforward task. It takes into account multiple data sources that measure popularity and numerous elements to evaluate the competitiveness in the major search engines. At my company, we have developed a mathematical formula that takes all the relevant elements into account and set the right price tag per every chosen keyword. Bottom line, it has to make sense to you, the customer, in terms of ROI. For example, if you pay $300 a month for a specific keyword – you want this keyword to generate revenue higher than $300 a month.

As a small business, this method offers you a modular approach that can be expanded over time. You can start with a single keyword, and pay as low as $100 per month. Then gradually, upon success, add additional keywords to increase your traffic and your income. This way, you decide what is affordable to your business at every point in time.

To conclude: SEO can genuinely take your business to the next level if done right. Keep it simple, make sure you understand what your money buys and make sure you can measure the results before and after.

Written by Tomer Harel, SEO specialist and founder of Key Scouts, a search engine optimization company providing affordable small business SEO services and result-driven programs, focusing primarily on the needs of small businesses.

Please feel free to republish this article provided this resource box remains together with a working hyperlink.