How current is your SEO Toolbox? Do you have all the tools needed to research, analyze & diagnose the SEO issues for your website? Are you reading the most useful blogs? How well organized are the RSS feeds you subscribe to? Are you using webmaster tools to gain an inside view to how the search engines see your website? In this article Netconcepts Director of Search, P.J. Fusco shares a few of her favorite goodies in her SEO Toolbox:
?updating and refreshing your SEO toolbox requires a continual flow of information to keep up with the job's demands. Keeping your SEO toolbox well organized and current has never been more challenging
Do you know what the difference is between SEO and online marketing? Confused about the terminology? In this article featured on Practical eCommerce, Jeff Muendel discusses how SEO is a specialty within the online marketing field.
By definition, SEO refers to the process of optimizing a website with the goal of having major search engines (primarily Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live Search) return pages from that website in highly-ranked search engine results. SEO is almost always employed as a form of marketing, but it is a very specific form of marketing that takes place within the search engines.
Lately, some industry blogs have suggested that SEO has grown beyond its primary parameters, suggesting that successful SEO includes expanding into other realms of marketing. I don't think that makes any sense. By definition, SEO - search engine optimization - does not include any form of marketing that goes outside of search engines. The use of the term SEO in such a way is disingenuous and confuses many webmasters and owners of ecommerce sites.
Keyword suggestion tools help you understand what words are used in search queries and what phrases are associated with those words. Keyword analytical tools provide some measure of keyword suggestion functionality, as well as the ability to understand the competition levels for specific search terms. More importantly, keyword analytics tools help you determine the relative size of the search referral market associated with specific keywords and phrases. Content optimization is about prominently incorporating targeted keywords and keyword phrases into the copy on each page to appeal to prospects searching for your goods and services. Doing so ensures your content has a chance to be found for all the right words. Ideally, these are highly searched terms and phrases that convert. That's where keyword research comes into play when optimizing your site's content.
Before you dig into keyword research to determine how well targeted your content is and what the size of your keyword market is, there are a few basic skills to add to your repertoire. Fundamental content optimization skills include:
* How to compile keyword research.
* How to measure content optimization efforts.
* Some basic copywriting knowledge.
* Basic HTML coding and basic SEO knowledge.