Lyons Leadership

If you’ve been working online for a long time are still quite baffled about Search Engine Optimization (there ya go, that’s what SEO is!) this this article is perfect for you.  We will cover in this article  how you can use it correctly, and what you need to do to be sure you don’t get your site booted by the search engines.

(First, you  may want to take a look here:, Conquest Authority is an online training product that teaches SEO in absolute detail, but first, you can begin here.)

As mentioned above, SEO stands for search engine optimization. The number one question new internet marketers wonder is what is a search engine? I know this is extremely basic, but this is where you need to start.  Once you learn the very basics, when you start to discover more on the SEO topic, you will have a complete grasp of exactly what it is.

All a search engine is, is a place you go when you are looking for a certain subject on the web. An example, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, etc. These are all search engines. When you are trying to find an answer online, you go to a search engine, put in the information you are looking for, and voila! The search engine “searches” the internet for you and brings up pages of all the websites online that pertain to your query.

Now you know what a search engine is, and you know what SEO is, let me get into the meat of things and explain how SEO works.

The most important thing you should do before any optimization, is you must determine the targeted keywords you will use for your site. To be more specific, finding the terms you want your site ranked for with the search engines. An example of this would be:

Let’s say you have a website targeted around fixing computers. People who are trying to find information on fixing their computers might search for these keywords: what’s wrong with my computer, why does my computer have a blue screen, or where can I get my computer fixed. These would all be considered long tail keywords, and those are what you would want to target, because they are the actual terms that people search the search engines for.

Make sure when picking your keywords or key phrases, they are real terms that get looked for, if not, you won’t get any traffic to your site. (Another tip is to make sure you pick keywords that don’t have lots of other websites targeting them. You may still never get traffic if there is too much competition.) I recommend using a keyword research tool to find some good ones. You can use Google’s free keyword tool, or Wordtracker’s free tool if money is an issue. They are excellent starter tools, and they do the job just fine. Once you start making some money, I really do recommend you get a paid tool because they are so much more effective, and you can really find some good keywords you would never have thought of.

You can read out more about keyword research and finding good keywords here.

Alright, so now that you know what keywords you will use, the next step is to make sure your site is optimized for those keywords. So how do you do this? It’s pretty simple really.

The number one rule is always title your page or post with your keywords. This will be known as your title tag. Title tags have a large influence on the search engines when they go to your site, so whatever you title your page, the search engines will assume it is a keyword and you are trying to rank for it. This goes for your domain name as well. Your page/post title and your website title (domain name) are incredibly important factors in the SEO world.

Once you have purchased your domain (the website address), and you have chosen your targeted key phrases or words, the next step is to add content to your website or blog. Write an article that is at least 400-500 words, and don’t forget to include your targeted keywords or phrases at least 2-3 times in the content. Do NOT go overboard with this, or you will get penalized. Take care the keyword density is not over 7% (amount of keywords vs. actual words on page). Staying under 6-7% is much better. If you go over this recommended safety net, the search engines may see you as “keyword stuffing”. Keyword stuffing means using your keywords too many times in one page, and your website will pay for it if you do that, I promise.

The longer the page and content, the better chance you have of being able to get all your keywords in and not make it look like you are keyword stuffing. In other words, keep your posts and pages long, and you can get all your keywords in. Search engines favor long text articles and unique content.

Do not fret about getting every keyword phrase in your article multiple times, because the search engines are smart, and if you have a quality site, Google will rank you for keywords you never even thought to rank for. The highest goal is getting your main phrase in 2-3 times, and the others at least once.

There ya go!  That’s SEO in a nutshell. Learn as much information as you can about the subject, because it really will benefit you in the end.  Learning SEO takes some time, but in no time, you will be an SEO pro.