My name is Zafar Ahmed, I am an SEO based in Pakistan

You are encountering a strange problem. Your website is recording a substantial quantity of hits every day. But those record numbers of footfalls are not translating into sales! This is where the right keyword selection comes in.

WHAT IS KEYWORD SELECTION?

Let us begin by defining a keyword. A keyword may be defined as a phrase or term that a searcher uses to find relevant data on a specific topic. Examining various potential keywords to hit upon the correct ones that are required is called keyword selection. You can strike gold if you hit upon the correct keyword. And if you can’t, your business will fall flat on its face.

Highly Qualified internet traffic which will generate sales is what you should be aiming for, because simple common sense reveals that a thousand visitors with a thirty-five percent conversion rate makes more sense than twenty thousand audiences with a 0.5 percent business conversion rate!

HOW DO YOU PERFORM A KEYWORD RESEARCH OR KEYWORD ANALYSIS?

Analysis of Keyword is the initial step in right keyword selection. You first have to determine an extremely specific primary keyword. For e.g. “APPLE IPOD” is a more suitable primary keyword than just “ipod” alone.

It has been proved by research that sixty-five percent of searchers prefer to use phrases than individual words. Look up the keyword phrases related to your business that is being searched for by your target customer base.

Invest in a tool like OVERTURE keyword suggestion tool or WORDTRACKER, ESPOTTING or GOOGLE SANDBOX. If you type in the main keyword, you will be bombarded with a number of relevant keywords with high searching attributes. Single out the top thirty from only one site and remember to take count on each keyword.

Next, go to google and look for each keyword included in double quotes. Note down the no. of websites displayed at the top-right area. Enlisted there will be the first ten of the overall number.

FORMULA FOR KEYWORD SELECTION

You now have to set up your selection of thirty keywords. Record the number of searches and the amount of competition on a spreadsheet. Calculate an index by applying the formula as follows. Write down the index beside the subsequent keyword.

Index is equal to 50*(A+B) where A= (specific searched keyword/ (max no. of search results appeared in the list) B=1 (Calculation of competition obtained for the specific keyword)/ (max no. competition appeared in the list)

Work it out on an excel sheet.

Sort out the list of keywords following a descending order as per calculated by the value obtained from the Indexing. Now put the keywords shortlisted for 15 keywords in the list with the highest index.

However it is very important to remember that less traffic purchasing more products is more desirable than more traffic that does not generate many sales. Don’t blindly go for keywords having high traffic volume, however, less competition. Your priority should incorporate to the relevancy of your site.

Your next guideline is to gauge visitor intent. Try to understand your client’s psychology. Put yourself in his boots and try to think what he will search for and how he will do it. Let us suppose, he will search by typing in the keyword IPOD. The computer screen will display a host of websites hosting major IPOD companies.

This will probably confuse him and he will settle for a shop close to his location to purchase the ipod. Therefore his next keyword phrase will be IPOD with his geographical area. There are high chances of his getting hold of the website address listing a local shop that will facilitate him making his purchase.

The bottom line is that you have to use your brains and add relevant keywords at the top-list position and you will be more successful this time.

Now concentrate on the possible spelling mistakes that people commit. Also remember, same objects are sold under different names in different countries. What is a “jumper” in UK is called a “sweater” in USA. Take the help of friends and relatives to prepare such a list of additional keywords.

Bring out your previous list and include these new keywords in appropriate places. Your list will swell up by approximately ten or fifteen more keywords.

Check out the possible keywords listed in the highest ranking rival websites. Add the missed out keywords to your list. Apply your common sense and intelligence as well, for wordtracker or overture tool isn’t perfect.

GOLDEN RULES FOR THE RIGHT KEYWORD SELECTION/PLACEMENT

On the homepage use the top five keywords. To improve the ranking of the page put the keywords towards the top of the webpage. To put up your keywords, make use of this list of important locations.

Meta keyword description
URL/Filenames
Body text on top, bottom and middle of page
Italic/bold tag content
Title tag in anchor tags
Header tag content
Anchor text
Alt tags in pictures that are not links
Alt tags in pictures that are links
Title Meta tags

Four to nine percent is the optimal frequency range. You should never cross the nine percent frequency limit or else you will be penalized by major search engines.

One of the most important features of the SEO process is linking campaign or back linking.
A ranking algorithm is employed by popular search engines like google, yahoo, msn etc. to determine the quality of incoming links, to evaluate the value of that link to that search engine, to evaluate the content on the blog linking in or the site, the link text, page rank of the linking site and a host of other such things. The gist of the story is that everyone desires the right kind of sites with the best type of link and not just anyone linking into your site.

WHAT IS BACKLINKING?

Creating links between your website and other relevant websites is called back linking in internet parlance. Of great importance is also the kind of text you use in your back links. Your most desirable keyword phrases should be stamped on your back link. There are many websites which enjoy a high rank on the web page of search engines simply by virtue of proper back links though they don’t meet any other SEO criterion.
However, search engines also qualify the back links apart from counting the number of back links you have.

HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHICH IS THE BEST TYPE OF LINK?

Those links that use the keyword you are trying to rank for are the right type of back links. For e.g. if a virtual online shop sells sports furniture or items of interior decoration, you would like a prospective buyer or enthusiast to blog about the items for sale in your shop , create a link to your site and this would generate free publicity, improve the good will of your business and maybe translate into sales.

BEST WAYS OF USING BACKLINKS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

In order to find the right kind of sites to which you would like to link your website, sift through google to zero in on your keyword and cast a glance at the top hundred listings. If they are not your rivals, you would want to get the maximum number of these to link to you.

You can also examine each of those site’s back links and try to obtain some links from those pages in case you fail in the first step. A tool like BACK LINK WATCH comes in handy to find out who is linking to your rival websites or to the primary ones.

Stay far away from paid links for they are being penalized by search engines, link swapping and linking farms i.e. link within the actual content on the webpage.

Go for linking bait also referred to as viral marketing. Anything like a fun web game or free tools or videos or good content that would make people want to link to it is called link bait. However you have to check whether it is associated with the keyword you are trying to rank for so that the people who will link in will, naturally use those keywords.

Press is also another medium to advertise. Suppose a blog praises the service you offer or a new product that you have started selling, but it has forgotten to use your link, dispatch an email quickly and request them to link to your site by using one of your keywords, present in their article. Trust me, it really works.

The best way is to create your own blog, fill it with content that your target audience wants to read. Then create a link back to your own home page using your keyword. Blowing your own trumpet always helps in business.

Try to figure out which sites your audience is likely to frequent and reach out to those sites. Offer to contribute your content. They might publish it if it is well written and worth reading and interesting enough. Post your comments on blogs and forums not only to simply insert your link but also to add a valuable dimension to the discussion. Be careful while doing it or you might end up being banned for your blunt commercial approach.

You can try out a few more ways to use back links to your advantage.

While online, the moment you come across something that has a YOUR HOME PAGE option, post your comment.

Make use of blogroll or wordpress, exchanges of link, your link in emails, press releases, and your links in forums or you can submit

your site or link to directories. You may write reviews or articles for people and insert your website URL. Whatever you do, practice discretion and don’t breach internet protocols.

If you spend 30 minutes to one hour out of 24 hours to create back links in this way, almost immediately you will see significant results. Do it and you will be better off for it.

You have to be aware of and serious about linking strategies if you are adamant about a great ranking on google. There are innumerable ways of obtaining links. Our focus will be on strategies which are free or low cost, fast and provide the very best output. I will recommend three tactics that will push you to the top of the lot in google before you can blink your eyes.

We shall start off with obtaining incoming links from various directories. Google attaches great importance to links from directories because google looks at them as forms of endorsement. Some of the popular or not so popular directories are yahoo and DMOZ.org i.e. the open directory project. They power most of the search engines like google. No directory is similar and for getting links to sites they offer various kinds of options. Featured below is a list of the different ways in which various directories link to different sites:

FEATURED HOMEPAGE LINK
On the homepage of a website you will find this link featured. It will cost you a bomb!

FEATURED LINK
If you pay the stipulated fee your link will grab a premium spot.

RECIPROCAL LINK
You have to first link to the directory. Only then will they link back.

PAID SUBMISSIONS
If you shell out the stipulated fee, the link that you have submitted will be reviewed and the page will possibly be listed. They might charge you an annually recurring fee or pay in installments. Yahoo will charge a whopping $300 to review a commercial site.

FREE SUBMISSION
Yes, it is free. And they are not taking you for a ride. Submit your link to DMOZ. It is the best. Yahoo search, AOL, GOOGLE are all powered by it. However submission guidelines should be strictly followed and carefully choose the most suitable subcategory to include your link.

Yahoo in spite of being so expensive and the most popular cannot be called the best in any way. If you list yourself with DMOZ, you will be more benefited than if you list yourself with the damn expensive yahoo, and to top it all, DMOZ is free! Yahoo’s popularity can be attributed to its being a directory that is frequented by people. Whereas, search engines account for the popularity of DMOZ and the latter is more value for worth. Being nominated by DMOZ is a great thing.

TOP 5 DIRECTORIES
Apart from DMOZ.COM, there are four other top directories where you can enlist for free like visitalink.com, getlistedrightnow.com, domaining.in and directoryvault.com. Affordable expedited listing services are also offered by some of them, as well as featured listings.

An updated list of directories can be found in one site, but all these directories do not offer free enlistment. You have to check all of them individually to see which ones are free.

THE PROCESS

1- First Visit TopWebSiteTips.com

2- Next Scroll down to the bottom of the webpage till you reach the drop down box

3- Thirdly Choose the google PR you like

4- Then Search

5- Fifthly , Click on the general directories only box after 1st return set if you want to do away with niche directories that will be displayed in the results

6-Finally Rerun the search

You can also avail yourself of the paid submission service to make the major directories enlist your site. However this doesn’t come free and will cost you some money. Check out that they do the following:

1- They are submitting it only manually.

2- Verify to see whether your site is already enlisted or not

3- They have to provide you with proof of submission [screen captures generally]

SEONext offers an extremely viable directory submission service but you can check out on google to see if there are others. There are many in fact and many of them are pretty good. The slow submission service that they offer makes the process of creating links appear even more natural to various search engines including google.

Conventional reciprocal link campaigns can be a tad slow if lacking in automated software, but it is the best way to obtain quality links.

TEN STEPS FOR RECIPROCAL LINKING CAMPAIGN

1- you have to first enlist the important attention grabbing keywords

2- using the customization tips given at the end, prepare a standard letter which you can easily customize for the various sites

3- run searches on google for all the keywords. Note the matching URL for each

4- from the list strike out direct rivals

5- run a check through your list. Each site has its contact information. Jot them down properly.

6- build links to all the pages from which you want to obtain links. It is not the homepage however. It should be from that page on your website that is most suitable. Limit yourself to a maximum of ten outgoing links per page. Remember, less is more.

7- customize the email. Outline the considerations below. Send the mail

8- you should verify the back links given

9- if there is any outgoing link that does not reciprocate within 30 days, strike it out

10- every fortnight, check your incoming links. Conduct another check to see whether you have been relegated to a not so viable page by the people linking to you and whether you are still receiving the links you were promised or not.