Getting Ahead in 
Our guide to search engine success, updated for 2006 (plus a bonus at the end!)
We are often asked what can be done to get in the top 10 in Google. If there was an easy answer to that, we'd all be in the top 10! (wait - that wouldn't work, would it??)
While no one can guarantee a top ten position in Google or any other search engine, there are many things you can do that will drastically improve your site's rankings. Follow these step-by-step instructions and you'll be rewarded with improved rankings, and maybe even one of those top 10 spots!
Keywords and Phrases
The first step is to determine what your customers will likely type in a search box when looking for your site. These search terms are called keywords and key phrases. This requires quite a bit of brainstorming on your part. You know your business and products better than your customers, so try to think of terms that your customers will use, and remember that most surfers use search phrases of two, three or four words.
For example, let's imagine you are selling ringtones for cellphones. You may know that the hot thing is 'polymorphic ringtones' - but even though most of your customers know this, many may call them 'phone ring sounds', 'ring tones', 'Nokia rings', etc. You need to write down a list of all the possibilities you can think of, including common misspellings. How many people type in 'polymorfic ringtones'?
The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool is an easy way to locate new keywords and determine the frequency that Web searchers search for specific keywords. You simply type in your keyword or keyword phrase into the search box and hit enter. Overture then looks up all the data it has in its network for the past month and brings back your keyword and the number of times it was searched on for that month. It also suggests other keywords that might be good alternatives, along with their respective frequencies. The only draw back of this tool is that it only has data for the overture network.
Once you've got your list of possible keywords, you want to find which keywords have the most searches but the least number of competitors trying to rank well for them. There are probably one or two keywords that stand out as being the most searched with the Overture tool, but these may not be your best choices for optimization since your competitors are also trying to rank well for these terms. Ideally, you want to focus on the most searched keywords with the fewest competing sites. Luckily, there is a tool that allows you to do just that.
Wordtracker.com is a service that will help you determine the best keywords with the least competition. This is a powerful tool that will show you exactly what keywords to target, and it will come up with many you haven't though of. This is much more sophisticated than the Overture tool, and you can find data for all the major search engines. It will pinpoint the most valuable keywords for you. Take the Wordtracker tour to see how it works.
We want to stress how important this step is! Do not take any short cuts here. Choosing the right keywords is the foundation for everything else you will do. You will be wasting your time if you skip this step and optimize your site for the wrong keywords. I promise that you will be surprised at what Wordtracker reveals about what your customers search for. We have always found new keywords that we have not thought of.
Now that you know what keywords you want to target, it's time to optimize a web page for one of your keywords.
Next: Keyword Optimization
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