SEO Explained

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and Meta-Data Overview - Search Engine Optimisation describes the process of increasing visitors to your website from search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, ninemsn and many others. It involves a blend of marketing and technical strategies to ensure the position of your website increases in the search engine rankings so that more people come to your website.

From a structural perspective, meta-data is stored in a different part of the web page’s HTML code than the usual web content that people see.

Meta-Data Overview: Meta-data is information about a web page that is not visible to the website visitor and as such is not part of the “core” content of the page. It provides useful information regarding the page to various pieces of software such as internet browsers, search engines and the website crawlers used by the search engines to identify your relevance to the keywords used in your website.

There are three primary pieces of meta-data that you should be concerned with.

Title: This is without a doubt, the most important piece of meta-data there is. One could further argue that it is the most important part of your web page, period. Why? Two reasons. First, the title is what is recognized to be the one piece of information that describes what the page is about. (Similar to a book title or article title). It shows up at the top of the browser when users are browsing your site. It is the default title your browser and book-marking sites will automatically use when people decide to “save” your site for future use. Second, it is what search engines also use to figure out what the site is about. Compared to everything else on your page, it gets the most “weight” from the search engines. Think of your meta-data title just like you would if you were writing an article for the Wall Street Journal or authoring a book. The title is immensely important.

Description: This is an “abstract” or summary of the web page. Most SEO experts will advise you that you should ensure that important words and terms about your site should be crafted into the description somehow. I would agree. Another use of the description is that currently Yahoo! (and possibly other engines) use this provided description, or a part thereof, when your site “matches” on a given search term and it has to show a small summary of your site below the title.

Keywords: This element provides a set of key terms or words that describe the web page. Many years ago, when search engines were first introduced, the keywords element was very heavily weighted towards determining the context of a web page. It was a quick way for the search engine to “figure out” what a web page was about (instead of having to scan all the content). But, as time went on, people started abusing this “feature”. They stuffed words into the meta-keywords element that had nothing to do with the web page’s content. (The rationale was that by stuffing “popular” words, they’d draw some traffic). As a result of this abuse, the importance of the meta-keywords element has been greatly diminished. Search engines no longer look at this information as the definitive way to figure out context. However, most SEO experts continue to advise that it is important to use the keywords element because it is still used.

Google AdWords Explained There is one central idea, one key concept that Google wants you to understand and if you get this right, Google will reward you with lower prices per clicks while your number of new customers will grow incrementally.

On the other hand if you don't get it right, you will pay more than you have to per click. The one thing that matters to Google is relevance.

Google's mission is to build a search engine that gives people exactly what they were searching for, as fast as possible. If you were searching for "Rain Forest Butterflies" they wanted to give you the very best and most popular butterfly websites on the very first page of results.

They have an amazing mathematical formula for figuring out who visited websites and why, and using that information in their search engine.

When Google began to sell pay-per-click advertising, they were extremely concerned that advertisers should offer messages that were highly relevant to the search enquiry.

Google rewards you for being relevant, and they let people who are searching vote for you. If your ad gets clicked on, it's relevant. If it doesn't, it's not. It's that simple.

The higher your click-through rate - i.e., the more people who see your ad and click on it - the less you have to pay for the position you want. But if you ads don’t interest visitors Google will make you pay more to get your ads to show.

What really matters is that your ads and your content be relevant to the keywords you're bidding on. Your message must match what the person is thinking.

A Valuable Little Piece of Customer Psychology for You:

When you think about your product or service you have to think about its relevance to the consumer who is using Google to find a supplier. If you can put yourself in the consumer’s position and write ads that appeal to them the number of clicks on your site will increasedramatically.

The price you bid is almost never the price you actually pay. You almost always pay less.

First, it's a little bit like EBay. You pay 1 cent above the position below you, not the maximum that you bid. But there's an even more important secret that is the key to getting lower and lower prices, even while other bidders are jumping into the game:

Your click through Rate (CTR) is more important than how much you bid. The click through Rate is the percentage of people searching who actually click. If 100 people search, your ad shows up 100 times, and one person clicks through, that's a 1% click through rate. So let's say I have a 1% CTR and I'm paying $0.50 for position number Two.

Now let's say you have a 2% CTR. If you play your cards right, you may only have to pay 31 cents to get position number two and knock your competitor down to position number 3.

That means that you were 2 times as relevant, and you got to pay 1/2 as much!

The rules can be very simple, but the implications are huge. When you achieve high click through rates, you can pull your bid prices down, and yet stay at the same position on the page, while your traffic goes up.

The difference can be quite amazing. Here's an example of two ads - they are almost identical but one got nearly twenty times the CTR as the other:

Popular Networking Terms
3 Page Guide - Free PDF Download
Complex Words - Simple Definitions
www.network-experts.com.au
2 Clicks - CTR 0.1%

Popular Networking Terms
Complex Words - Simple Definitions
3 Page Guide - Free PDF Download
www.network-experts.com.au
39 Clicks - CTR 3.6%

Notice what happened: All that has changed is the reversal of two lines - and the click through rate jumped from 0.1% to 3.6%!

That means that the ad on the right gets more than twenty times as much traffic - and I could pull down my bid prices and get that for the same amount of money as I was paying before. Just think how much money we'd be leaving on the table if we didn't discover this!

This is just one of dozens of tricks I've found that let you push your bid prices down, down, down while your traffic goes up. Beat your best, and you can get more and more traffic for less.

I just explained how Google ranks your ad higher as your CTR goes up. That rewards people who have more money than brains.

While Google may tell you simply to bid more, the major reason that keywords get made 'inactive' is this: the message in the ad doesn't match what the person wanted when they typed in the keyword!

How do you fix this problem? By organizing your keywords into narrow themes and by testing different ads that match people's searches - like I described above.

Then watch as people's clicks vote on the words that actually sell. This is an absolutely foolproof method of getting your ad placed higher on the page, and my Definitive Guide shows you dozens of variations on this method that you can use right away.

The success of your campaigns depends on keywords you bid on, specifically: 1) Choosing the right ones 2) Choosing enough of them 3) Bid wisely.

The number one mistake most people make is bidding on too few keywords. If you're only bidding on 10 or 20 keywords, you'll have a very hard time making it work. That's because the 10 or 20 that you're bidding on are the same ones everyone else is bidding on.

You need at least 100 or 200. As a matter of fact, a thoroughly designed campaign for most products or services will have as many as 1000.

Why would you possibly need to bid on 1000 words and phrases? Because if you sell Digital Cameras, there are probably 30 or 40 other bidders for "digital camera." But if you bid on "Sony Mavica MVCCD400" there will only be a handful of other bidders and you can get those coveted 5 Cent Clicks.