Achieving a top ranking position in Google is every webmasters dream. Unfortunately very few ever make it high enough for it to make a big difference on their traffic volume. If you are one of the few to make it onto the Top 10 list, you have probably found out that your listing doesn’t always stay on top. So, besides all the other advice online, it is also extremely important to under stand your competition, and to properly use their key words to your advantage. This article will be part one of a two part series. Below we will look at GoogleRankings.com and how this useful tool will help you in your quest to achieve a top listing within Google. Just as an addendum, we use these tools on a daily basis to achieve top 10 listings for our web properties.

GoogleRankings.com is an incredible tool that every webmaster should consult. Now, because Google rankings fluctuate multiple times a day, the site is sometimes a couple hours delayed, however it provides a great resource in quickly finding how your competitors stack up against your website. Not only that but you can use different key words in conjunction with a website to see how they rank. Incredibly useful in determining which key words should be used in your content and advertising.

As an example, if you were to decide on using a specific keyword phrase. Type in that key word into GoogleRankings.com, along with your competitor’s website, and you will see how they rank in regards to that specific phrase and/or word in Google. This will allow you to specifically pinpoint which phrases and/or keywords your competitors rank low in, which you will in turn begin to focus your attention on.

Once you have figured out which key words your competition ranks low in, you are well on your way in implementing specific strategies in achieving a Top 10 ranking in Google. Part 2 will discuss how to become even more specific in targeting your keywords, and virtually ensuring a top 10 listing.

Darren H. currently owns and is involved with various online marketing and management companies. He is the author of “How to get Listed in Google within 72 Hours.” and prides himself on helping many individuals and business customers achieve top 10 rankings within Google in an extremely short time frame. To learn more and get started today please visit: http://www.marketingoutlet.com/google_article.htm

Writing articles for your site and for the use of others, is a simple proven way low cost way to get more traffic.

Articles can be used for all subjects and just like newspapers and magazines, is a recognised way of sharing information.

Articles a low cost way of promotion but they do take time which can pay you back year after year for your efforts.

Most people tend to think that they can’t write well. It’s nothing more than sharing helpful information that you have learned. For example the idea of this article is to help format you thoughts and then the best way to format it best for users. So lets get started.

1. Firstly you need to choose who is your target market. Who is your article for and why would they find it helpful?

Example: "Home business websites who are looking for low cost traffic"

2. Choose the purpose of you article. Why are you writing it? How will you use it? This will help guide the content of it.

Example: "Provide an article for distribution, which other webmasters/ezine owners can use creating links back to my site, and subscribers to my ezine"

Always keep the purpose of the article in mind, which will help you keep on track with your content.

3. Article Subject -What are you going to write about? What subject? Use other articles you have seen or experiences you have had for ideas.

Example: Using articles for low cost online promotion

From the subject you have chosen you need to create a headline of sorts- some thing that makes people want to read it. Create curiosity and use emotion.

Example: How to turn words into free traffic for your site

4. Format Outline -This is when you decide the format of your article, just like you were taught at school.

a. Introduction - An outline of what you are going to discuss and why.

b. Main body - Points you are going to cover including any references to helpful sites or site involved in what you learnt

c. Conclusion - What resulted and how it worked or it didn’t. What could you do differently next time.

d. Resource box - Normally a link to your site, information about your site, about you. Here is good article on resource boxes:

http://digitalawol.com/box

5. Checking - At this stage you should have the outline of an article. You need to get someone else to read it over, spell checking it, making sure the information flows well.

I also recommend leaving it overnight before using it. It gives you a chance to re think it.

6. Online formatting - If you intend to make your article available to ezine owners, then you need to make sure it is formatted correctly and easy for them to use. The standard accepted format is 65 Characters wide- in plain text.

Most people us Microsoft word for word processing so you will need to re-format by using a program such as Note Tab light http://www.notetab.com/ (no cost) which will format your article correctly.

One thing you will also need to do is ensure you only have paragraphs of 4-5 lines otherwise it creates a "mental block" for the reader, and becomes too hard to read online.

So now you have a formatted, helpful article ready for your use. The last thing you need to keep in mind is that you need to provide helpful, well-researched information. A full-page ad for your site will not do you any good and will get deleted quickly.

Try to write from your own experiences and it will come across as real and very readable.

My next article will cover getting the information out there and working for you.

You can get the next article by subscribing to our ezine. It will surprize you find out that there are places you should NOT post your article, as they may not help your business.

Need more visitors to your web site and no more BS? Paul Easton is the editor of Power Promotion Plus. Learn how to increase traffic on a budget. Signup now and get your 3 gifts:

1.Free Meta Tag Software -2.Unofficial Pop Up Windows Crash Course -3.Affiliate Marketing Plan Builder - A step by step guide to a successful affiliate marketing program.

http://www.CreateToolbar.com/

(This article is available for reprint simply by adding the above Bio and no changes are made to the article or its content)

In this article you will get a few advices on how you might be able to improve your high search engine ranking optimization for Wisconsin related terms.

Maybe you too sometimes have felt frustrated creating all that useful content on your site in order to make it more useful and to make it rank higher or closer to the top in the search ranking.

Let me share two little tricks with you that you might not have heard about before:

1. Search engines love good and natural content.

Write natural for your visitors and use simple search engine optimization just to make it clear for the engines what the page is about.

2. Use synonyms and related words throughout your articles.

The top search engines, not only in Wisconsin, are getting better and better at understanding synonyms and related words.

Also remember that you need many pages on your site as well as a great number of inbound links in order to be successful.

Here’s a top strategy that many use:

Build loads of slightly optimized and designed content as part of your high search engine ranking optimization for Wisconsin. Do this and other sites will naturally link to you.

When working on your search engine optimization, it is also easier if you can identify a niche that you know something about. If you enjoy writing it’s even better.

Please remember though, if you are writing and optimizing a site for your favorite state Wisconsin, always blend related words into the articles. Doing so will not guaranteed, but more likely get you a high or improved search engine ranking for you Wisconsin site.

If you work hard I have no doubt that you won’t succeed, but keep in mind that high search engine ranking optimization for Wisconsin will need some effort.

Johnny runs a hockey site and loves ice hockey equipment and skates more than anything.

There are a lot of operators (commands you can enter in the Google search box to return specific results) you can plug into Google in order to find what you want. For webmasters and website owners, however, a few particular operators can be especially useful. Operators can be used to locate potential link partners, evaluate current inbound links, and determine what pages of your website still need to be added to the index. Here are the operators we think you should know:

link:

Simply enter this operator followed by your full url (including http://) with no space. Ex: link:http://www.googleadvisor.org

This operator is one of the most popular and widely used. It simply shows you what (and how many) webpages within the index have a link to your url.

Using this operator, you can also plug in the url of your competitor(s) to see what sites link to them. These websites may be a good place to start in your search for link exchanges (or even one-way links).

site:

This operator will restrict all results to webpages within the domain or website you enter. For example, if you enter site:googleadvisor.org you will find all of the webpages of this site that are listed on Google. This a good operator to use if you want to see just how many webpages of your site Google has indexed, and likewise, how many pages are not listed - the ones you may want to submit, or resubmit, to Google.

allintitle:

Here you enter the operator and some keyword that you are interested in. The results will show you websites and webpages that have that keyword(s) in their title. For example, intitle:google will return all sites that have google in their title, including Google Advisor. This may be used to once again find link partners within your subject area, and to evaluate possible competitors.

Similarly, you can also use intitle: if you want to do a similar search, but open your results to those webpages with the keywords in their content as well . For instance, intitle:google advisor would give you all sites with google in the title and advisor somewhere on the webpage.

info:

This operator is not terribly useful, but its interesting to see what you find. Simply place your url in front of the operator like info:www.googleadvisor.org to get a Google page with your website title and desciption. The page will also contain links to your website’s cache, related websites (you can also use the related: operator for this), and more. If your website is new to the index, and you are not appearing for any keywords yet, this is an easy way to find your website and confirm that it is indeed listed. Note: some operators like related: will not work for new websites.

To obtain the full list of operators, visit: http://www.google.com/help/operators.html.

We hope these few operators mentioned above will be of the most use to you as a webmaster or website owner.

Bradley James is the Webmaster of GoogleAdvisor.org [http://www.googleadvisor.org], an informational site providing free information to casual searchers and Webmasters about the Google search engine.

Got one? Two? Three?

If you have competitors, then you should have at least one Unique Selling Proposition (USP). The more REAL ones you have, the better - for your Branding, your business recognition, and your sales!

We all have competitors, and the more you have, the more important it is that you have a Unique Selling Proposition (at least one).

Allow me to explain. Let’s use a recent example of a company that sells laser toner cartridges… Do you think they have competition online? You bet they do, another category that is swamped with resellers. Sound like yours?

The task of coming up with a USP can sometimes be tough. But every company needs this, it sets you apart from your competitors. Let me stress this again, it is one or more reasons why prospects should work with you, or buy from you, or do business with you, instead of your competitors, period.

Let me narrow this a little further, it used to be if you had the best price, - you got the business. Although still a minor USP, price alone should not be the only consideration, it’s not really that unique… Yes, you still need to be competitive, but I don’t want to be the cheapest guy… we’re in this to make a profit, right? So don’t make price your ‘only’ USP. Combine it with more value, something your competition doesn’t do, or doesn’t offer.

O.K., back to our example. This company needed more than price, their product pricing is right inline with everyone else, so now what?

First of all, you need to know what your competitors do offer.

This is not a new concept. You can’t compete if you don’t know what you’re up against. So take a little time and check out what they have. Do some research, you’d be surprised what you might find - or not. Special offers, free shipping, a contest, great customer support?

Take a step back, imagine you are the customer and you do buy toner from someone a few times a year. If they do not get great service or it’s just average, then chances are you can sway them your way. This references "customer loyalty" another chapter, but it follows first getting the customer. So, let’s get the prospect as a customer first.

Now, what do we do to sway these prospects? We offer them what the competition doesn’t. This can be discovered with your competitive research. Oh, and if you still haven’t found a USP or a few - then Hyperformance Media can help you with this as well.

Write down every idea that you and your team come up with. Please don’t worry about how silly they might seem (at the time), just brainstorm with the data you have gained. The reason I say to include the silly ones, and others is because sometimes those little ideas that you laughed at can actually be morphed to create your USP. No idea is too far fetched at this point, and usually the ideas you laughed at are, in fact, some things your competitors don’t offer. That’s where we go next.

On the toner company we came up with all kinds, some were already offered by competitors, some were not. The idea is to initially come up with as many as possible. Here are some of what we narrowed the field to (we started with about two dozen);

* Price (of course) * Free Shipping (varied by quantity/price) * Great Customer Service (so everyone says) * A Contest / Promotion (a what?) * Free Gifts (vary) * Referral Savings (with parameters) * Reminders? (to buy)

The next step is again to nail down our list, get creative, really think here. This alone still makes us more competitive (once implemented), even if others use the same approach. Why? Because before we did this, there was a ton of competition, and as we add these USP’s we now narrow the list of our ‘real’ competitors. We are now more competitive within our industry, because we now offer things that (most) of our competitors do not!

We are getting more competitive immediately by implementing some simple offerings. Let’s take each one in this example and see how we can use it or discard it to our advantage.

* Price - Still very important in any market, but very tied to customer value (or perceived value). If your product or service is not competing here - it does not necessarily rule you out, more on this later. However, this is usually where a shopper starts (because it’s easy), and you want to be considered with this group. In this example, we agreed that (based on our research) we were in the market on price. So our price is competitive and that’s great, but not unique enough to get the business.

* Free Shipping - In our research, we found that most of the company’s who were offering this service were just a couple dollars higher in price (covering their "free" offer). So while it may have some perceived value, it was not enough for this company to offer that, so we discarded this one. If however, your costs are such that you can ship for free and still be competitive and profitable, this is a worthwhile USP.

* Great Customer Service - This is stated everywhere, making it tough for the consumer to know what is reality. It is hard to judge until you are a customer. It would be more valuable to offer testimonials of Great Customer Satisfaction. Not Customer Service, but Customer Satisfaction. There is a big difference here. So we DO want to take some of our really satisfied customers and put together, or request their testimonials. This is much more powerful than the words or promise of "Great Customer Service". So we will use this, but focusing on satisfaction with testimonials in our advertising pieces and website, etc.

* A Contest/Promotion - This covers a broad area, but can be extremely successful when implemented and marketed properly, so be creative and if possible, develop one for your business, product or service. After our discussions, and research, we have begun developing this idea. Example: Every time you buy from us, you get another chance at winning "Free Toner for a Year". I know you’re saying… free toner for a year - what are you crazy? Bear with me on this… first of all, most of their customers use 4 to 6 toners in normal use in one year (In our contest, we can actually cap that in our rules, i.e., "Not to exceed 6 cartridges". So we associate our costs to that, which does not make this a cost prohibitive program at all, depending upon the program success. Again, the mileage and customers we gain from our contest is potentially huge, and if it works well, we continue it… at a maximum cost of 6 toners per year for a Grand Prize.

* Free Gifts - Don’t discount this one, many people grab hold of these ‘offers’ to feel like they are making out. All else being the same, the customer does get something for nothing. Now, if the item truly has no value, then the customer has little to no interest. And, it actually ‘cheapens’ the image

of your firm (be careful). We decided with our products and business customer profile, this would not work for this business. But it could work for you or your products.

* Referral Programs - Another potential attraction (savings) for your customer. I say potential because this type of referral program, like price, should not be the only USP. When used in conjunction with others, this can steadily grow your business (sales) as well. You need to develop a program that somehow rewards referrals. For example, it can be something simple like "Refer a customer to our business and when we ship their order you will receive or accrue credits, dollars, points, or 5% off your next order". Get the idea? The key is to make it of value, and still keep it cost effective.

* Reminders - This was it! The big one, it was unique, it has great value to the customer, and it reinforces our Customer Satisfaction! This was also laughed at when first mentioned.

So? What was the plan? We acquire a software program that can be set to automatically e-mail each customer based on their own usage when their toner and supplies were potentially running low (i.e., 30 or 90 days or any date we choose. Once set-up it is all automated (cost effective)! It also gave us their e-mail address (important anytime) and with our reminders we could include any special or seasonal offers that might further attract more sales.

So, what did this company find?

In a nutshell - Their products are priced well to compete. In this case, we discarded free shipping as not really cost effective. We stressed Satisfied Customers in all of our marketing materials with testimonials and real-life examples. We are also developing a contest to further set us apart from our competitors. We could not find a free gift we thought would add any value to the customer (but continue to look). They are considering a Referral Program as well.

The real USP in combination with the others was our unique E-mail Reminder System. At that time, no other competitor was offering anything like this! This IS a Unique Selling Proposition and was perfect for our example. Put all these together, and this company has numerous ‘edges’ on their competition. Once customers are aware of these differences that set you apart from all the rest - growth is almost certain! That company is in a much better position to ‘own’ their market online, or at a minimum increase their market share.

The more you get the word out, the more you’re sure to benefit from these type ideas.

I understand this was a pretty broad example but you should get the idea.

You won’t always come up with an idea that no competitor has or offers, but if only 3-6 competitors offer that same USP, you are still in the top tier of your competition instead of lost somewhere un-noticed while buyers continue to purchase through your competition. You decide.

Use this article for your training, website, or newsletter by simply adding the following footer;

Written by and Copyright © Scott Sedwick http://www.hyperformancemedia.com ss@hyperformancemedia.com

About The Author

Scott is the Founder and Sr. Project Manager for Hyperformance Media, Inc. a website marketing company since 1996. His 24+ years experience in the computer industry can help your business succeed online!

Copyright SS ss@hyperformancemedia.com http://www.hyperformancemedia.com

Wisconsin is one of the most beautiful places on earth as well as the home Green Bay Packers (my favorites).

Many people also want to get a top search engine ranking in Wisconsin, because this is a place where people have money.

Scoring high in the search engines often means money for those who can improve their sites enough to reach the top of the search engine ranking for Wisconsin related phrases.

Since the search engines are getting better and better for each month, it is often not enough just do get the on-page search engine optimization factors right on the pages you write.

It is key to get many inbound links to your site as well.

You might not have thought about this, but search engines are in business and they too want to make money. Search engines are after the advertising dollars spend by advertiser and the more people that use their search engine, the more money they make.

The bottom line is that search engines only want high quality pages show on top of their ranking. This way people will continue to use their service and they can continue to rake in the advertising dollars.

Let’s just say that your Wisconsin site is about as good as other related Wisconsin sites. If the on-page factors of the sites are equal, the site with the most inbound links will show on top of the search engine ranking.

This is the reason for you to make sure you get enough inbound links if you want a top search engine ranking in Wisconsin.

But, how do you get those links pointing to your Wisconsin site?

One good way to get inbound links is to submit your site to a Wisconsin directory or to write press releases.

Johnny runs a hockey site and loves ice hockey equipment and skates more than anything.

Part I of this article discussed some of the points that should be included in a search engine optimization proposal. Visit the resources section at the bottom of the page if you wish to get a copy of the whole article.

Part 2 will discuss the following topics:

Creation of Meta Information
Site Map Creation
Link Popularity Building
Web Site Load Time and HTML Validation
Downloading and Uploading of Web Pages
Browser Search Engine and Directory Submissions
Compatibility and Resolution Checking

Creation of Meta Information (title, description, keywords)

Meta information is used to provide additional information about HTML documents so that the search engine crawlers are able to index the information more accurately.

There are 3 important types of Meta tags as far as search engine optimization is concerned:

Title tag:

The Title tag is not a Meta tag. However title tags play a vital role in your site’s rankings. It is these words or phrase that appear in the title of your page in the hyperlink listings on the search engine results. I include the most relevant and specific keywords or key phrases in the title tag that best describe the contents of the page.

Meta description tag

This gives a short and concise summary of the content of your web page. The description appears in the SEs just below the title tag. I ensure that the meta description tag is brief but includes some of your top keywords. The words used must inspire the visitor to check your site out further. Each page must be customized so all your web pages will not have the same meta tag descriptions.

Meta keywords tag

Although not as relevant as the other tags mentioned above, the Meta keywords tag is still recognized by some SEs. I include a number of meta keywords for you that are relevant to the content of your web pages.

Site Map Creation

The creation of a site map page enables SE spiders better crawling of your site. It also helps visitors to quickly scan your whole site for relevant information. A link and a short description of that link is created for each page of your site. The site map page is then added to your main navigation menu.

Link Popularity Building

Link Popularity refers to the number of links pointing to your site, from other sites on the web. There are other terms used for Link Popularity, such as Link building, In Bound Links, Back Links, etc The Search Engines consider your site important and rank it higher if other sites link to your site. There are two types of links you can establish on the web. One type is to trade links (Link Exchange), where you give a link from the links Page on your site to the partner sites. The second method is to establish only "incoming links" also called ‘one-way links’ or ‘non-reciprocal links”. With non-reciprocal links, you do not need to link back to them.

There are several ways of developing Inbound links.

Some of the techniques I follow in one way link building are:

a) Submitting to Free Directories

b) Writing articles and submitting to various sites for publishing to increase the link popularity of your site.

c) Press releases

d) Sending requests to established sites explaining the site quality and asking for links. In the link exchange process, you trade links with prospective partner sites by offering a link to their site from your own site. I provide reciprocal link building services to increase the link popularity of your site.

Web Site Load time and HTML Validation

Search Engines don’t like sites which take a lot of time to load. They sometimes ignore these sites and place them lower in their index than fast loading sites. Some reasons for slow load times include html errors and bad image optimization. Sometimes sites are coded badly which can be a big block for visiting search engine crawlers. I will check your site’s load times and make the necessary changes to the html where necessary.

Downloading and Uploading of Web Pages

To make the necessary changes to your site, web pages will need to be downloaded to my computer. After changes are completed the pages will then be uploaded to the server.

Search Engine and Directory Submissions

Your site is submitted by hand to all the major search engines, directories and some specialized directories. Not all SEs and Directories have the same rules for submission, therefore care will be taken to submit to the appropriate search engines by following their specific guidelines.

Browser Compatibility and Resolution Checking

People view sites in different browsers and at different resolutions. I make sure your site can be viewed in all the major browsers and in the most common resolutions. Adjustments will be made to the site’s code where necessary.

Resources
Increase Web Site Sales with a SEO Proposal - Part 1 & 2
http://www.isitebuild.com/seo-services

Why You Need a SEO Maintenance Plan
http://www.isitebuild.com/seo-maintenance-services

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com

To choose a Search Engine Optimization Plan or SEO Maintenance Plan that fits your web site, visit: http://www.isitebuild.com/sitepromotion

Many online business owners and marketers use a variety of tools to make their business successful. Good strategies include maintaining a web site, publishing an ezine, joining affiliate programs, advertising on other people’s ezines, and much, much more. As any good Internet "guru" will tell you, getting your name and product "out there" is the most important part of your success. So, the general rule is: Use as many strategies as possible.

What I suggest is that you take this rule one step farther. What I think works best is combining as many of the strategies together, as possible. In other words, when you can, build your own network, using the tools you already have in place. And I’m using the word network, as it relates to networking your online systems — not in the sense of a prospect or client network, though I have some tips on that, near the end of this article.

So, let’s break down this concept. Suppose you have a web site that promotes a product or service. You probably have a sales letter, some testimonials and a merchant account, so people can buy your product. Now, what I would suggest next, if you don’t already have it, is your own ezine (online magazine, operated by an e-mail autoresponder). You get visitors to subscribe to your ezine, using a pop-up or another type of FREE subscription form on your web site. Again, this may not be new to most people, but here’s another spin on it. In addition to your pop-up or basic sign-up form on your site, why not add a page to your site, with a link on your home page, that does nothing but promote your ezine.

You see, many people pass up your subscription form, because they are afraid of SPAM, or they don’t know enough about your ezine. Will it interest them? Or, will it just bombard them with more advertising?

A separate page can explain exactly what the ezine does, promote articles that you have in it, even give a sample issue, so prospects can see what they are getting. Be sure to have several subscription forms on this page between sections of your text, so people have plenty of opportunity to subscribe. Also, be sure that visitors are linked back to your home page, once they’ve subscribed, so they get back to looking at your product. Any good autoresponder will have this feature, which is crucial, because although you desperately want people signing up for your ezine, you also want them to read your sales letter and, hopefully, buy your product.

Make sure your ezine articles always link back to your web site, so you are constantly promoting yourself. After all, this is really what ezines are for.

Another part of good online networking is to set up affiliate programming, in a similar fashion to the aforementioned ezine promotion. That is, instead of just offering your own product as an affiliate program, set up a separate page on your web site for affiliate programs you use. So, you might have a link on your home/sales page called "Other Great Products." Obviously, you can use your own creativity for this title.

This link will take visitors to a site that promotes other products, for which you gain a commission as an affiliate. If you are unfamiliar with affiliate programs, visit ClickBank, the largest free affiliate program on the Internet. Most Internet marketers only offer their own product to people, who want to join affiliate programs, or they may offer just one other related product, with a link on their home page.

Plus, don’t forget any other web sites of your own. Always be sure to link to them on all of your URLs and in your ezine articles. The key to building your own online network is to be sure you have promotional pages for all of your products and affiliates on your web sites and to link everything together. Remember, you want every visitor on your e-mail list, and you always want them landing back on your promotional pages.

One final thought. Promoting your business network offline is also critical to your success. Some basic techniques I use are:

• URL on return address stickers

• Business cards with ezine address and web site

• Fliers at community businesses and public places (be sure your community knows you above all others)

• Free seminars in regional communities, discussing my topic (remember, you don’t need to make money here – all you want is to get your name out there and to get e-mail addresses, so you can add them to your ezine list)

• Teach a class at a community college (get more e-mail addresses)

• Give free information away at community festivals, like Home Days

• Advertise in your local Money Saver magazines. It’s cheap, and it reaches tens of thousands of people, who love cheap or free stuff.

• Anything else you can think of that get people to your site and to your ezine

Stay positive. Building a network takes time and hard work, but it’s well worth it in the end.

Mark Barnes is author of Winning the Mortgage Game and several other finance books. He is also publisher of Biz Sense Online and Let’s Talk Sports, weekly business and entertainment ezines. See Mark’s work at www.winningthemortgagegame.com and www.bizsenseonline.com. To get Biz Sense Online, send a blank e-mail to bizsenseonline@getresponse.com

To get Let’s Talk Sports, send a blank e-mail to letstalksports@getresponse.com

The closest you can get to a guaranteed high search engine ranking is to add a high number of quality articles to your Wisconsin site. This might earn you the top ranked site in Wisconsin.

What you need to understand though is that the search engines want content and they want lots of it. There are a few basic optimization skills you need to know about, but basically you need to fill your site with high ranked content articles about Wisconsin.

Keeping the content narrow and about Wisconsin only is how the search engine likes it and this is how you eventually will improve the ranking for your Wisconsin site.

When I build new sites I usually aim for at least a hundred optimized articles or pages about the niche I am working on. This gives me, and you as well, more chances for being found by the top search engines.

The more optimized pages you got, the more chances you have to receive traffic from search engines. Just consider this example:

1. You have one page on your web site. This optimized web page is likely only to receive search engine traffic when people search for this exact phrase.

2. You have a hundreds search engine optimized pages and there is a possibility that your site will get found for all these Wisconsin related phrases.

The bottom line is just to keep building and writing those pages and one day you might get a top ranked site in Wisconsin.

But remember, there is a lot of work involved and when it comes to search engine optimization and it is never guaranteed that you will get a top ranked site in Wisconsin.

Johnny runs a hockey site and loves Reebok hockey equipment and the NHL more than anything.

You can easily get confused by all the search engine optimization companies and SEO experts that offer SEO services. It’s hard to know who to trust or what should be included in a SEO proposal. I will endeavor to clarify some of these points for you in this article, so that you can make the best choice when looking for SEO services. I don’t profess to be a search engine optimization expert but have attained top rankings for my own site plus some of my web site design clients.

What a SEO proposal should include:

SEO objectives
Site Analysis
Keyword Research
Competitive Analysis
SEO Copywriting
Creation of Meta Information
Site Map Creation
Link Popularity Building
Web Site Load Time and HTML Validation
Downloading and Uploading of Web Pages
Browser Search Engine and Directory Submissions
Compatibility and Resolution Checking

THE PROCESS

The process will differ for new sites versus established sites. If a new site has been built with SEO in mind, many errors can be avoided. An established web site may already contain SEO or design errors that need to be repaired so it can attract visitors and make sales.

SEO objectives

Increase your search engine presence, rankings, number of visitors and ultimately the sale of your products.

Site Analysis

An overall analysis is first done on your site, to assess what is needed to best optimize it for the search engines. Based on this analysis the proposal is adjusted to include the necessary work to be done. This may include: design, layout, navigation, colors, background, fonts, images, broken links, meta tags, web copy, html validation, browser and resolution compatibility, loading times, search engine rankings, site statistics and creating error pages.

All of the factors listed above have some influence in attracting search engine spiders and visitors to your site.

These factors are already taken into consideration (which makes it much easier) if I design your site from scratch.

An established site already indexed by the search engines will need to be thoroughly analyzed for errors before optimization can begin.

Keyword Research

One of the basic steps in search engine optimization is keyword research. Here competitive keywords relating to the site and unique to your domain are found. Keyword research is done to maximize the impact of search engine optimization. When your site ranks well, more relevant customers come to the site leading to an increase in conversions and hence income for the site. The accurate identification and careful selection of these important keywords and key phrases can literally make or break any web site or online business.

Competitive Analysis

This is for better search engine ranking performance. I study the sites of all your competitors who have high search engine rankings and find out the keywords for which they are ranked. I analyze your current meta tags and recreate them based on the keywords I have researched. I also analyze your recent web site stats (if you give me access). I can then see how many visitors you are getting, where they are coming from and what keywords they are using.

SEO Copywriting

SEO copywriting is rewriting the text on your site in such a way that it becomes search engine friendly while remaining appealing to the surfer. Keywords relevant to your site are optimized so that your site ranks high when search engines crawl your site. I direct targeted traffic to your site, ensure they are provided with the specific information and hence increase sales for you. My copywriting services include modifying your site headings, HTML text, layout, design and even images where needed. Some pages may only require a small amount of editing or none at all, whereas others may need a more extensive rewrite.

Part 2 of " Increase Web Site Sales with a SEO Proposal " will discuss:

Creation of Meta Information
Site Map Creation
Link Popularity Building
Web Site Load Time and HTML Validation
Downloading and Uploading of Web Pages
Browser Search Engine and Directory Submissions
Compatibility and Resolution Checking

Resources
Increase Web Site Sales with a SEO Proposal - Part 1 & 2
http://www.isitebuild.com/seo-services

Why You Need a SEO Maintenance Plan
http://www.isitebuild.com/seo-maintenance-services

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com

To choose a Search Engine Optimization Plan or SEO Maintenance Plan that fits your web site, visit: http://www.isitebuild.com/sitepromotion