SEO consultants will tell you that you need to be in the Top 30 or you can pretty much give up any hope of getting a visitor to your web site.

Yes, there is truth in that Top 30 goal. Occasionally, a potential customer will make his or her way to the #30 position in search of a particular product or service. The odds just aren’t that high.

Yet, industry research and ongoing search engine user behavior analysis shows that most people will focus on the first few results. Who can blame them? It takes a great deal of patience to wade through the rest of the options.

It’s going to mean a great deal more if you can get that prized search term in the Top 10 (first screen) or even the Top 3 or Top 5 with the right SEO marketing strategies.

With so much competition, is that even possible? Yes – if you’re realistic. Here’s the key: don’t spend an inordinate amount of time in the single keyword “cars” if you offer something more specific, such as “automotive accessories.” You stand a much better chance of getting that coveted top spot with a more reasonable search phrase.

Don’t ignore those single words if they really represent what you do. Generally, single words have a fighting chance if other SEO factors are rooting for you along the way, including pages with lots of content, options to include content up high, other pages featuring the same keyword, a domain name with the keyword, a page name with the keyword and plenty of link popularity built around the keyword. You just have to tie it all together.

Obviously, fewer people search for “automotive accessories” than “cars.” But you’ll be able to reach more search engine users – and prospective customers – if you frame most of your SEO strategy around specific search engine phrases that adequately reflect what you do. Join the Top 10 Club and reap the benefits

Everyone wants their websites to be search engine optimized, or SEO-friendly. However, there are some common errors that people make when they’re doing SEO work on their site, and these errors can actually cost them that highly coveted top ten ranking that everyone wants. Here are some things to avoid when doing SEO work on your website.

Remember the ALT tags! Almost every image on your website (not including the background and any images that serve as buttons and the like) needs to have ALT text. This is the text that shows up if the image doesn’t load. More importantly, however, it’s the text that tells search engines what the image is since the programs can’t actually see the picture. A good ALT tag will include two or three of your keywords, and it’s a great place to stick in extra keywords that the viewer will (hopefully, unless your image is missing) never see.

Don’t use the same title tag on every page of your site. While it may be easy to simply write one title for your homepage and then leave it on every page, this is another place where you’re losing out on a place to stick keywords. Vary the title for each page so that search engines will notice the difference, and try to include different keywords for different pages.

Avoid scripts! While Flash and the like are becoming more compatible with search engines, it’s still difficult for more search engines to see inside Flash objects. This means you’re losing places to put meta tags, ALT tags, and more.

Don’t just write for robots. While writing articles with a high keyword density might get your page ranked higher by the search engine, it’s going to send actual human readers away. They don’t want to read anything redundant or clumsy. “Our furniture store in London provides great furniture for London residents looking for furniture designed specifically for London” is going to either annoy readers or make them laugh at the horrible writing. Be sure your SEO phrases and such can be integrated into the text seamlessly so they don’t stand out and don’t over-use them.

Also, actually write your website text yourself (or hire someone to write it). Don’t plagiarize – don’t copy and paste text off of one website and put it on yours without making it clear where the text came from. Too much duplicate text on your page will be flagged by search engines.

Likewise, avoid any bad SEO practices like hidden text or keyword stuffing. Hidden text refers to adding a ton of keywords at the bottom of a website and then making them the same color as the background, effectively hiding them from viewers. Search engines still see them, however. In the past, this was a technique that did actually make search engines rank sites higher, but today’s robots are smart enough to recognize this technique and ignore it. Likewise, keyword stuffing, or making a webpage that’s almost nothing but keywords, raises a number of flags in search engine robots and may actually get your pages ranked lower.

Finally, make certain all of your links describe where they’re going. No one likes to click links that aren’t clearly described by the surrounding text or give a good idea of their target. Plus, links are another factor a search engine uses to determine site relevancy, so not clearly marking them is detrimental in several ways.

In efforts to increase sales and profitability, more and more companies are turning to online marketing initiatives – specifically, search engine optimization. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art and science of the mixture of technical and marketing into a finely tuned website that is both search engine, ranks well for certain keywords and phrases, and suits your audience a perspective buyer and seller.

According to a recent American study found that only 20% of all businesses outsource search engine optimization programs to professional SEO Companys. The remaining 80% would be to conduct search engine optimization or they believe they have all the resources and skills to do it in-house. Of this 80%, it is likely that 90% of these companies can not be found on the Web – they do not exist. In order to generate a significant amount of Web visibility, your website must typically rank in the top-30 results.

So, the question boils down to what is in your best interest to the business?

Make your SEO program in-house or subcontract. To answer this question we will first focus on the knowledge, skills and resources necessary to implement and maintain a good program for search engine optimization.

SEO knowledge and skills

1) Basic understanding of how search engines and directories.

This may seem too obvious, but you would be surprised the number of people do not understand how they actually work. This knowledge is the basis of your SEO program.

2) Website design

Although SEO is not completely a technical marketing process, it requires a fair amount of technical knowledge of what constitutes search engine-friendly web design. Some elements of web design can help your search engine rankings or hurt them. Simply knowing who is who.

3) the experience SEO Expert

This is the most important and most difficult to obtain knowledge. If you have never implemented a programme of SEO, then you are in a big surprise. Search engine optimization programs require a lot of research and are extremely tedious. More importantly, they need real SEO experience. That means knowing what strategies and tactics SEO work and those who do not.

In-house vs. out-sourced programmes SEO

If your company is considering conducting your program search engine optimization in the house, here are some questions to consider.

• Who will be responsible for the analysis, design, implementation and measure the success of your program SEO?

• Is this considered the role of your department, marketing or other service (s) in your company?

• Do they have the time, knowledge and resources to successfully implement and maintain your program search engine optimization? And do they really care if it works or not?

IT Department

Typically your IT department handles multiple tasks daily troubleshooting your company’s LAN or WAN to fixing the sales department laptop? Over a long IT person of the day, what priority and focus do you think he or she will commit to for your listing? And even if your IT department has some skills in web design or development, these skills represent only a small percentage of the knowledge required for a successful programme of search engine optimization.

Marketing Department

Typically, your marketing department juggles many marketing projects and the faces of both the timely completion. From handling new campaigns for print collateral is preparing to launch new products or services, marketing personnel’s time to spread very thin. In addition, our skills and your marketing department is in the technical aspects of web design and search engine optimization? Do they have the time to become well-versed? Do they have sufficient internal resources? Often, the answer to both questions is no, they do not.

Other individual (s) within your company

Well, the responsibility falls on someone outside or your marketing department. Who’s who and why are they responsible for your SEO program? To give interested parties a new “project of the month,” usually result in another tick off their monthly to-do list and frustration by senior management on their website is why not produce results sales.

Summary

From a business standpoint, it makes sense to try to mobilize domestic resources to maximize your company’s productivity and profitability – whenever possible. However, there must be a line drawn in the sand between what your organization’s capabilities are and what they are not.

As you can see, there are no more search engine optimization than meets the eye. In order to implement and maintain a SEO program, you must acquire the knowledge, skills and resources. This can be done by hiring a professional search engine optimization of the company. Professional SEO Companys have devoted their resources and experience to support your company’s web marketing initiatives. Building on their experience and know-how, your company can quickly and more effectively successfully implement the programme of SEO Expert.

After the web site design and the completion of the basic SEO, the next investment any business owner should consider is in search engine optimization. In order to understand SEO pricing, we have to underline the fact that the optimization process in itself is very advantageous, since presumably the traffic generated by a well-indexed page will pay for itself. In fact, the art (or science depending on who you talk to) of SEO was created with such a purpose in mind: increase leads and sales, increase conversions, and ultimately generate more money!

Several factors influence SEO pricing, and the amount of work required is first on the list. While the financial investment for good SEO varies depending on the size and the complexity of the pages , please understand that good SEO that you don’t do yourself isn’t cheap. Companies and agencies that offer SEO services often promote a free site analysis based on which the SEO quote is created. With this kind of report, you’ll learn about how competitive you’ve been, what problems you face , and what changes need to be performed on the site.

Ultimately, your goals and your budget ultimately determine the price you should pay for SEO. Sometimes, the service provider will be able to recommend the less expensive alternative substituting elements that are not necessary for the optimization and suggesting various money-wise solutions.

There are lots of steps involved in the optimization campaign, and SEO pricing can be kept under control when you know exactly what needs to be done. Thus, any good SEO company will first initiate optimization by competition and industry investigations. Next should come the keyword research and the key-phrase selection, followed by the phrases implementation. Then, the web masters will continue with building of links and their submission to search engines and directories. SEO is a constant process, and requires active monitoring and communication between the owner and SEO agency to be effective.

To give some general figures of where SEO pricing can range, the whole process could cost between $2,000 and $10,000 according to the complexity of the site and the features of the competition. Beware of too low quotes since these are generally practiced by people with little experience in the field, and who may not perform the best of job on your site. The choice is yours!

Most people familiar with organic search engine optimization know about PR Web and optimizing press releases with keywords. However a growing number of companies are finding that the PR Web podcast service is an easy, cost-effective way to enter the social media marketing arena and extend the reach of their press releases.

Normally a search engine optimization expert will either write from scratch or optimize an existing press release for a customer using relevant, targeted key phrases that are searched. A new twist that you can add to the mix is to conduct a telephone interview with a PR Web representative and have the resulting audio file produced into a high quality podcast. This service costs $100.00 for a 4-5 minute podcast, or $200.00 for a 10-20 minute podcast (these fees are over and above the press release contribution fees that PR Web charges). PR Web handles all the technical details. All you have to do is participate in a telephone interview and then PR Web takes the podcast file and publishes it on its site, and submits it to podcast directories and iTunes.

If you have ever wanted to promote your business using search engine optimized press releases, now is the time. By augmenting your press release with a polished, professional sounding podcast, the marketing possibilities are endless. You can link to the podcast from your home page in a weekly “featured podcast” segment you create. You can create podcasts when you introduce new products. Work with a search engine optimization consultant to maximize your key phrase research and build an entire archive of press releases and podcasts on your site for the search engines to crawl. Content is definitely king, and by committing to a regular schedule of optimized content creation, your company will improve its organic search engine rankings.

You may have a website, but a website is only as effective as its optimization. Search engine optimization encompasses many different activities, all of which boil down to making the search engines find you and your content, bringing traffic to and conversions on your site. Two of the most effective ways to do this are by publishing press releases and submitting your website to directories, online references that categorize and link to other websites – hopefully yours.

By submitting your website to fee-free directories like Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project, you can gain exposure, increase your page rank, become more visible on search results pages and, ultimately, get your customers’ attention before your competitors do. (The SEO Advantage.) Directories are often administrated by the equivalent of librarians, who accept manual directory submissions and are often experts in a particular field. That said some directories have been criticized for delayed approvals, rigid organizational structures and editorial disputes. (Wikipedia) The result was the inception of “wikis,” collections of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses them to contribute or modify content. Wikis generate meaningful topic association and offer the same advantages as directory submissions, but without the tedious submission and approval process.

While you’re submitting your website to directories and wikis, press releases should be a regular addition to your online content. If properly optimized, press releases have been proven to increase traffic to websites, improve search engine rankings and secure greater coverage in the media. (Shift Communications) Five questions can help you develop SEO-friendly press releases:

Is this press release consistent with my other SEO strategies or initiatives?

What are my website’s top keywords/phrases, and are they relevant to the press release?

Are there additional keywords that would be appropriate for the press release and enable it to generate more traffic?

Are there specific components of my website I want to emphasize or promote with this press release?

 Is it appropriate to add multimedia (video, podcast, images, etc.) to the press release?

Start with a strong title and, if appropriate, subheading with keywords; search engines give more weight to bolded headings. When writing your press release, determine the best keywords to include, then supplement them with colloquialisms that would be more commonly used in conversation. Try to mention your three most important keywords at least three times throughout the press release, but don’t fall into the trap of overusing hyperlinks. Focus on the important key phrases to avoid irrelevant search results or, worse yet, getting labeled as spam. The keyword density of your press release should always lie within 2 to 8 percent, depending on its length. By visiting www.keyworddensity.com, you can enter your URL and a particular keyword to get an accurate keyword density analysis.

Remember that press releases are informational announcements, and therefore should be kept between 300 and 500 words. The length of your press release should determine how frequently you use your keywords and how you use hyperlinks. Furthermore, be sure that hyperlinks aren’t the only way to redirect readers to your website; list your complete URL somewhere in the copy.

Finally, put it out there! Your press release should not only be permanently linked in a specified section of your website that readers can always find, it should also be in as many relevant online locations as possible. Once readers catch on to your content in a third-party location, they’ll start going straight to the source – your website. Optimize it, and they will come.

You can assign a person at your store to write, manage and submit your press-releases. The same person may be responsible for your SEO strategy. Alternatively you may consider hiring a third-party agency to manage your press releases. If you are an izmocars (http://www.izmocars.com/) Rainmaker customer, press releases and directory submissions are part of our SEO strategy. Our Strategic account manager works with you to identify press worthy events and specials, and we issue the releases on your behalf. Our online marketing specialist make and maintain submissions in directories that are relevant to your website, geography and products, including consumer-focused wikis, free and paid directories.

Please contact us to learn more about our Rainmaker program and how it can help you get more traffic to your website.