IMS

Why Do people Search The Internet?

2011-01-08T19:29:00.003-08:00

If you sell any product or service it is your business to get to know your customer. What are their problems? What kind of solutions are they looking for? What is on their mind when they search the web?

Imagine these two typical search scenarios...

Megan has a new pet parrot and is not sure if she can feed it peanuts. She is online to find out if it is safe to do so.
Some one told Roy about a new video store that has opened up nearby and is offering the first three rentals for free. He is now online to check if the video store has a website.

Both Megan and Roy are looking for answers to simple questions. Megan just wants to know if she can feed peanuts to her parrot. Roy wants the website address of a nearby video rental.

As we all know, human beings don't follow fixed patterns. So unless they are extremely disciplined individuals, both Megan and Roy are likely to do much more than just find answers to their simple questions.

Megan may come across a pet information site and sign up to receive periodic informational messages. She might even notice a useful book on the subject and order it from Amazon. She might also see an online pet store and order some toys for her pet parrot.

Roy might notice some blog about the new Star Trek movie, get interested and spend a lot of time browsing forums, blogs and forget all about the video store.

Wouldn't You Love To Help Prospective Customers Learn About Your Products?

At first glance, Megan wanted to know if she can feed peanuts to her new parrot. But is that all? Consider the following situations...

She is a new pet parrot owner and is very excited, wants to take good care of it. She is certainly interested in learning more about parrot care.
She got the parrot as a gift and is not completely sure what to feed it. She happens to have peanuts in the house and was wondering if it is OK to feed it to the parrot!

Wouldn't you love to help prospective customers like Megan learn everything about pet care from your petcare shop's website?

Get To Know Your Customer

As a Search Marketer, it is your job to identify the search scenarios that will lead prospective customers to your site. The above case is simple example of how an online search might take place and then proceed to a sale.

Importance of Long-tail keywords

It is also a good example of why you should include long-tail keywords in your web page copy. You might have optimized your web pages for keywords you think are very important. But, millions of people search the net looking for solutions to their immediate problems. They often come across web pages that provide additional information and offer other alternatives.

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/whysearch.php

The Keyword Difficulty Myth: Keywords with high search result counts are difficult to rank for!

2011-01-08T19:28:00.005-08:00

In the early days of the Internet it was common for marketers to decide how difficult it is to rank for a keyword by checking the number of search results in Google. If a keyword has a large number of search results, it was deemed a "high supply" keyword and hence difficult to rank for! There is even a Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI for short) based on the keyword "suppy" counts and search volumes.

This method has long since lost its appeal.

Fact: The Web is Full of Junk Sites!

The search result count is no longer a factor that determines if it is easy or difficult to achieve top ranks for a keyword phrase because the web is full of junk sites created using automated tools.

The viability of ranking high for a keyword phrase is mostly based on how many high quality web pages are ranked in the search engines. Even for keywords that have millions of search results, there may be only a handful of quality web pages in the search engine results. The rest will be made up of junk automated pages or Made For Google Adsense pages.

Even if Google shows 3 million search results for a keyword the actual relevant, displayed results are mostly less than a thousand!

You can easily verify this by scrolling through the Google search result pages. After a few pages you will see a message like...

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 915 already displayed."

What this means is that, in many cases you can reach the top 30-50 places in search rankings with basic keyword optimization. The real competition comes after that. So, just high number of search engine results should never scare you off!

What is really important is a proper competition research and not a decision based on how many web pages are listed by a search engine in its search results!

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/kwresults.php

Starting your first website? Five Tips to get that initial traffic!

2011-01-08T19:28:00.003-08:00

"My website is on-line now. I don't see any visitors. Submitted the site URL to some search engines, but nothing seems to happen! How am I ever going to get that traffic you talk about?"

The above is a slightly edited version of an email we got.

Yes, getting that initial traffic is not very difficult if you already have another established website. But what if it is your very first website?

Here are five different ways to get started!

Before doing any of these make sure that your site does have something substantial to offer. Otherwise the site will just fall back into obscurity after an initial burst of traffic. What you need, is to turn your first set of visitors into evangelists who will talk about your site on forums and their blogs. If your site is just another "Me Too" site, this is not going to happen. There has to be some thing unique or different about your site. A good "Wow!" factor will also help!

Get Links

Get one or more established websites to link to you. If it is a well known site and you get featured at a reasonably prominent location on that site, you will get a quick flood of traffic. A blogger friend or some one with an established website can help you. If you don't have any one to help you, you will need to be a little creative. If your site is software related you can submit your product to one of the known software download sites.

Get Help from an On-line Community

Get involved at a related on line forum and talk about your interests. Make sure to follow the forum rules. Most forums will allow you to include a signature at the end of your post. Ensure that you also contribute something of value to the forum.

Write Articles

There are sites that accept articles for publication. Write a series of good articles about your field and submit it to such sites. Include information about your site at the end. You can even get articles written for you for a fee. Make sure that your articles are original and provide valuable information.

Issue a Press Release

This is probably the best method to get your site noticed. Create a good newsworthy press release and submit it using one of the on-line PR sites sites like prweb.com or PRNewsware.com. Again, you can get experts to create a good press release for a fee.

Do PPC Advertisements

Create PPC advertisements and use Google Adwords or Yahoo advertising network. Please see the posts on Pay per Click strategies.

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/traffic.php

Keep Track Of Your Website Performances Through Monthly Snapshots

2011-01-08T19:27:00.003-08:00

A previous article suggested creating a target market snapshot and having it in front of you while doing strategic keyword research or creating the sales copy.

In addition to keeping the target market snapshot, you should also have quick access to how your sites are doing. This will help you to quickly identify problems with your sites and take actions to improve the performance.

So go ahead and create a website snapshot view of all your important websites!

You need to be using a good web analytics service or software for this. Make sure that you collect new data every month.

Here are some suggestions about what your website snapshot might contain...

The list of top 10 entry pages as reported by your website analytics.
The list of your top 10 exit pages as reported by your website analytics.
The top 10 performing web pages on your site. We will call these your star pages.
The overall bounce rate for your site.
The individual bounce rates for each of your star pages.
Visitors per day and per month to the website.
The top keywords that brought traffic to your site and the top landing pages for those keywords.
The list of long-tail keywords that brought traffic to star pages or that got you good results.
Your sales / expenses / income / profit data.
Any other parameter you think is relevant.

Open a folder and start filing this information every month. If possible, take hard-copy prints and file it physically. Use it to analyze how your sites are growing and to fix any negative trends.

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/sitesnap.php

Five Types Of Products That People Will Always Want To Buy

2011-01-08T19:27:00.001-08:00

We often get emails from people asking about the keyword research they should do for finding a good niche.

Is keyword research based on search volume counts and number of search results in Google the right method for deciding the type of product or service you want to offer?

Good products that fill a need will always do well. Here are five types of products that always find buyers! Combine these product types with a unique idea and decide the kind of Internet business you wish to create. This is even more important when marketing during times of recession.

Products that make or save money

People always want to make more money. If your product or service will help them earn more or save money they will always buy it. Even if your product is not directly connected to making money, it is always a good idea to explain how it can save money for them.

Products that help people learn

People are always looking to learn something new. "How to" guides are always popular for this reason. This is also the reason why there are so many ebooks out there. Be careful about this because it is one of the most competitive niches on the Internet. However, this is also one of the easiest niches to enter.

Products that entertain

It is no surprise that the top searches on Yahoo Buzz are almost always about TV shows, actors and sports. This niche does require some unique expertise. Go for it if you have a good talent for creating entertaining videos, cartoons, etc.

Products that make life healthy and comfortable

People want to live as comfortably as they can, without any aches and pains. Do you have an idea for a product that will help them do that? This niche is often abused and may have a bad reputation because of all the spam associated with magic herbs and pills.

Products that save time and effort

People love pressing a button and getting things done! Do some research on popular topics and make your work available to your customers for a price. You could also create a software that will save your customer hours of work.

Competition Strategy Studio Can Make Your Product Idea Search and Competition Ressearch Very Easy!

The Competition Wizard in Competition Strategy Studio is a fantastic tool for finding product ideas and researching your competition. If you haven't tried the software recently, please go ahead and download a free trial.

Competition Strategy Studio is available as a stand-alone product or as part of the SEO Lab Pro software suite.

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/products.php

Long Term Strategy vs. Short Term Tactics! Is Your Internet Business Vulnerable?

2011-01-08T19:26:00.001-08:00

While browsing a popular forum you often see the same question being asked again and again. It is about doing something using a very popular third party product. You have some knowledge on the subject and decide to create a solution.

So you spend a few weeks creating a script for processing the output from the product in question. The original third-party product is extremely popular and doesn't offer that particular feature. You decide to turn your script into a membership site.

Your service is a big hit!

You start getting many subscriptions. After a while you get so comfortable that you quit your day time job.

Disaster Strikes! The Perils of Short Term Tactics

The original product developers have updated their product and has now implemented the same feature into their offering, at no extra cost!

Suddenly no one wants your service. The recent subscribers are angry and want their money back!

Is your on-line business vulnerable?

What happens if you are suddenly not able to process credit card payments? Do you have a backup plan?
What happens if your web hosting company suddenly shuts you down? How long will it take you to be back up and running?
What if 40% of your website traffic comes from a single source and you suddenly lose that source?
What if a lot of your income comes from a single source (example? Google Adsense) and suddenly you are shut off from it?

Many of these vulnerabilities exist because of using short term tactics instead of creating an overall strategic plan for your on-line business. Your ideal strategy should include multiple tactics to minimize possible future problems.

Short Term Tactics and Long Term Strategy

Many Internet businesses are based on short term tactics without any thought to a long term business strategy. This happens because most of the initial product / service ideas are based on some opportunity that was suddenly exposed to the product developer. But things change very rapidly on the Internet and a long term strategic growth plan is very very important.

It is a good short term tactic to create a service that expands a popular existing product. But it is not good strategy to build a business that is completely dependent on a third party resource. Doing so creates a situation where a third party has control over your product. A simple tweak in their product can and will kill your business.

Unfortunately, the truth is that most on-line businesses do not bother to develop a long term strategic plan.

Develop a Long Term Strategy For Your Internet Business

Creating a practical and profit generating business strategy for your Internet business is probably the best way to ensure that your Internet business is successful over the long term.

A product like SEO Lab professional can quickly help you see the big picture and accelerate the strategic thinking process because of it's stress on competition research, monitoring and business intelligence data visualization.

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/longterm.php

Do You have a Strategy For Safeguarding Your "Invisible" Business Assets?

2011-01-08T19:25:00.001-08:00

The Invisible Business Assets

One of the most important part of your Internet business strategy is safeguarding your business assets and resources. Unlike a regular brick-and-mortar business, an on-line venture involves a number of invisible assets that are difficult to quantify. Here are some...

Your domain names
Your Websites
Your search engine rankings
Incoming links from other websites
Your mailing lists
Your products and services
Your email communication archives
Sales and customer records
Your on-line accounts at your web-hosting provider, email provider, etc.
Your reputation at forums and other community sites
You on-line account passwords and access data.
and so on...

One important fact about an on-line business is that it is very easy to lose everything in the blink of an eye. A computer crash can instantly kill your business or set you back by months or years. Some thing as silly as not paying a $10 domain renewal fee can make your profit making website disappear!

Plan your business restoration strategy

So, if you haven't done so already, sit down and plan your business restoration strategy in case of an emergency.

Consider creating a document containing important information on your business assets. Leave detailed instructions about how to manage your websites even when you are not around. Keep it in a safe location so that your successor can find it. Include important passwords and other login data.

Make a list of all essential monthly and yearly payments. Make sure that these are paid even if you have an emergency.

Use a remote backup service like Mozy (or any other backup service) to do daily backups of all your important work. It is important to backup to a remote location so that the data is safe even if there is a natural disaster in your area.

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/assets.php

Why Emails From Your Customers and Forums Posts Related To your Business Are Extremely Important for SEO!

2011-01-08T19:24:00.003-08:00

It is no longer easy to find relevant information on the Web!

How many times have you found it difficult to find the right information on the web? It simply is not easy to find something through a search. You end up doing a large number of searches, always getting thousands of search results, but none with the right answers.

The problem is aggravated because of a large number of web pages that exist for the simple purpose of making you click a Google Adsense link. There are millions of Made For Adsense (MFA) pages out there!

Is your product or service difficult to find?

Having a product or service that solves a customer problem is very good... but, you also need to let your customers know that you have the solution.

Most people try to achieve this by doing a keyword research and then optimizing their web pages for those keywords.

Are You Speaking In Your Customer's Language?

Unfortunately, your web pages may not describe the problem and the solution the same way a prospective customer would describe his or her requirements.

This is exactly the reason why people fail to find what they are looking for. Prospective customers search for solutions using the terms they know. They don't do a Keyword Research to find which keywords to use!

How do you Learn Your Customer's Language?

Start looking through the customer emails, third party forum posts and blog comments (note: comments, not the posts!) to see how people phrase their questions.

Do you see keyword phrases you haven't thought of?
Do you see other ways to express the problem and your solutions to the problem?

Add frequent customer queries to your FAQ section and provide the answers. This not only reduces the number of customer support queries, but also provides a direct way to make your web pages contain web-copy as a customer would present it.

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/kwemails.php

Why Creating a "Target Market Snapshot" Will Help You Develop Better Performing Web Pages

2011-01-08T19:23:00.000-08:00

A very common question we get asked is... How do I know which keywords to target?

Keywords are the means by which your customers find you. So, knowing your target market is the first step towards identifying the right keywords.

Do you know who your ideal customer is?

Perhaps you do... Do you take that into account when you create and plan your website marketing strategy?

Here is a simple tip...

Create a snapshot view of your ideal customer. Always keep it handy and make use of it whenever you do any keyword or SEO research.

Here is what you do...

Write down the description of the product / service including the customer problem the product attempts to solve.
Define the market, including the demographics
List the direct and indirect competition.
The basic sales plan - How are you going to reach the customers
List the top sales implementation plans you will be executing.

Take a hard-copy print of everything.

Always keep it in front of you while you use SEOLab Professional or any other SEO related resource. Try and think like your customer and check if your web page headlines and copy makes sense.

What Next?

Create a list of 10-20 keyword phrases that relate to your product or service. Make other lists containing the top competing URLs and web page titles for these keywords.

Check if your own web pages contain these keyword phrases. These should be in page titles and the main headings. Modify your web pages accordingly or create new pages. You can use the SEOLab URL Explorer in SEOLab Pro software suite to analyze your web pages, check the titles, descriptions and headings. Make sure that your web pages answer the questions your customers may have about the problem your product / service will solve.

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/snapshot.php

Eight Ways To Reduce Your Web Page Bounce Rates

2011-01-08T19:22:00.003-08:00

Are too many of your website visitors bouncing away after they see just one page on your website? If your bounce rate is below 20 or 30% you probably have a very good entry page.

In some cases you may want only a precisely targeted visitor group to proceed beyond the entry page. If not, a bounce rate of over 50 or 60% requires immediate attention.

Here are eight practical methods to reduce the bounce rates...

Improve your web page headline

Most times a wrong web page headline can make the visitor quickly click the back button. Your headline should make the visitor want to continue reading. See creating good headlines.

Add Videos, pictures or screen shots that will catch attention

Adding a nice screen shot of your product or a photo will cause visitors to give a second look. Use a good caption below the picture to grab their attention and make them interested.

Change your website design

If your bounce rates are way too high, a new web site design may help. Go for a simple, practical but decent looking design.

Improve the web page load time

Is your web page loading too slow? Remove unwanted images or optimize the images. Get rid of all unused style elements

Target the right visitors

Are your site visitors coming to your site with the wrong expectation? You may have optimized your web page for the wrong keywords or others may be linking to your site with an incorrect anchor text. Use a software like SEOLab Professional (for semantic keywords) and Good Keywords to find better keywords.

If you are using Pay Per Click, make sure that your advertisement text is precisely targeted. Try different ad combinations till your bounce rate improves.

Remove Annoyances

Does your web page have anything that annoys your visitors?

What is annoying is highly subjective. So you should have a good understanding of your target customer. A simple rule is to always make everything very easy for your visitors.

Change from hard-sell to soft-sell

Are you trying to hard-sell your product when a soft sell is more ideal? This is a very common reason for customers to leave immediately.

Your product pricing is also an important factor that contributes to a high bounce rate. The way you present your product is very important if it is an expensive product.

Provide more choices

If you have other products or services provide links to those. Add a prominent button, make a nice looking graphical banner or stamp that will catch their attention and so on.

Be careful with this though. Too many choices can cause visitor confusion and make genuine prospects click away to a different but wrong product.

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/bounce.php

Types of Headlines used in Sales and Marketing

2011-01-08T19:22:00.001-08:00

Different Types Of Sales and Marketing Headlines

Here are the different types of headlines you will normally encounter in sales and marketing. Use this list to decide what benefit should be highlighted in your web page headlines and how!

Headlines that enumerate a list (People like to read lists!)

Five ideas to improve your ----
Top Ten Reasons To ...
Four Things You Absolutely Must Know To ....
Ten Reasons Why ----

Headlines that ask about a problem the reader will identify with

Do you suffer from ...?
Are you threatened by ...
Do you often find yourself struggling ...

Headlines that offer to teach you or make you an expert

Learn How To ...
Discover The Top ...
A Guide To ...
Every Thing You Wanted To Know About ...

Headlines that offer to reveal secrets

They Tried To Ban This ...
Secrets Uncovered ...
Exposed For The First Time Ever ...
The Real Secrets To ...
The Ugly Truth Behind ...

Headlines offering instant gratification

Instantly Transform ...
Instant Strategies To Create ...
You Can Do This In Five Minutes ...
Get An Instant 35% Boost ...

Headlines offering to simplify things

Simple Ideas To ...
This is Not For The Experts ...
... For The Rest Of Us
... Any One Can Do In Their Spare Time!

Headlines announcing something

Releasing Shortly...
Announcing The...
Now Available For The First Time ...
Offer Closing Soon ...

Headlines that offer a guarantee

.... 100% Money Back!
Guaranteed To ...

Headlines that contain a testimonial

I started using ... The results have been fantastic ...
I could never believe ...
... Amazing! Thank You ....

Picture / Graphic Headline

Screen shot with a caption, Illustration etc. Use this if a picture is more likely to immediately grab the attention. However you will still need a compelling sub-heading or caption.

Headlines that shock

No examples! Just read a tabloid!

Coming Soon! Headline Generator and Swipe File Manager

We will be releasing a new software integrated into SEOLab Professional for creating good headlines. Monitor our blog for details!

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/hltypes.php

Learn How To Instantly Create Powerful Headlines!

2011-01-08T19:21:00.000-08:00

Your web page headline is the most important factor that determines if your site visitor stays or bounces away. A compelling headline will have him or her wanting to read more. An uninspiring headline will cause him or her to immediately go away!

How To Make Your Web Page or Blog Post Titles Unique and Interesting

Here is a simple tip to make your web page titles unique, interesting and search engine friendly!

Use SEOLab Professional and do a competition analysis on the topic you are interested in. Click the Top Titles tab and look through the web page titles of your top competition. You will see all the titles listed along with their strengths (The strength is based on the ranking in top three search engines).

Can you create a better title? Use the headline types from below for creating good headlines while keeping an eye on the existing titles. Make sure that your title is unique and better.

Looking through these titles will also give you more ideas about keyword phrases and also ideas about topics you may want to discuss in the future.

How do you write good headlines?

The truth is, powerful headline creation ideas are all around you. It is very easy to improve your existing headline to one that really works!

Before you decide to change your headline, you should determine the target market the headline is meant for.
Write down the most powerful benefit your product or service offers. Think your product has too many benefits? Learn about the different types of headlines to decide which benefit should be highlighted in the headline.
Be specific and avoid generality. A headline that says some thing very general is not going to attract any one because they would have seen it all before. There should always be a unique or specific benefit mentioned in the headline.
A headline should make the reader want to continue. Create multiple headlines and do an A/B test to find the best one. Then create new ones and try to beat the old headline.

Related Topics

Types of Headlines

Coming Soon! Headline Generator and Swipe File Manager

We will be releasing a new software integrated into SEOLab Professional for creating good headlines. Watch this blog!

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/headlines.php

Why Would You Want to Research Your Competition

2011-01-08T19:20:00.000-08:00

Why Should You Research Your Competition?... How Should You Do It?

There are a number of reasons why you would want to study your competition

To improve your products and services and make them better than that of your competition
To find your competitions' weak points and and exploit them
To learn the way your competition operates so that you can always stay ahead of them.
To generate your own ideas that are better.

Using SEOLab Professional For Competition Research

When you do any keyword lookup using SEO Lab Professional, a list of top competing sites and top competing URLs are automatically generated. You can access these using the Competition and Top URLs tabs.

Right click on any of the URLs and select Open in Browser to view site in your default web browser.

Once you have your competition's site open, first check if it really is a competing site. Many top ranking web pages will be Made For Adsense (MFA) sites created using automated software.

If you think you have a found a competing site, it is time to dig a little more... Here are some of the things you can do...

History of the Competitor

Use the web archive to learn more about the history of the site. When did they get started? How did the website look when they started?

Remember that your competitor may have a number of websites. You may be looking at one of their smaller websites. So, check for other sites they own and operate.

Online Visibility

Use the Site Link Pop Meter (Site Analyzer Tab) in SEO Lab Professional to study their on line visibility.

Again, remember that they may own multiple websites. So check for other sites they may be operating.

Website Features

Check their web pages. Do they make it easy for their customers? Is your website better? If not, how can you improve?

Are their products presented properly? Does their website make you want to purchase?

Do they offer a newsletter?

Do they appear profitable?

Do they have third party advertisements on their sites? What do that tell you? Do they appear to be a profitable business? Are they active? Do they update their website often?

What appears to be their primary source of income?

Communication with Clients

Do they have a blog? If yes, subscribe to their blog feeds. What do their blogs discuss? Do they allow blog comments? What do people comment on their blogs?

Do you have a business blog?

Purchase Process

Buy their products and study the way they handle the purchase process, post purchase handling, back end products, etc.

How do you compare with them?

Do they Make the News?

Go to Google News and search for the competitors. Are they in the news?

Do they have any recent press releases?

Do you do issue press releases?

Are they growing?

Are they hiring? What kind of Jobs are on offer?

Job openings often reveal their future plans and directions.

Make Use of Whatever You Learn

Use any information you learn to make your own plans and improve your products. Some of our upcoming software tools will help you organize and tabulate information such as the above.

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/whycomp.php

Keyword Research Completed? Ten Things You Should Do Next!

2011-01-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

Completed Your Keyword Research? Ten Things You Should Do To Make Your Website Optimized For Humans and Search Engine Spiders!

Improve Web Page Titles and Remove Duplicates

Look through your web pages. How many of them have no titles or titles that are too generic / duplicates?

It is very easy to get a list of all titles and description tags using SEOLab URL Explorer (part of SEOLab Professional). Simply type in a URL to get a list of the titles and description tags of every page linked from that URL. It just takes a few minutes!

Modify your titles to include important keyword phrases and get rid of duplicate titles.

Improve The Web Page Headings

Do the same with your web page headings. Use a good page structure that includes <h1>, <h2>, <h3> tags. Don't over use the h1 tag.

SEOLab URL Explorer is extremely useful for checking heading structure of web pages. The lower panel in the software window has a tab called "Headings" which will show you all the heading tags used for the page highlighted in the top panel.

Make sure that the headings are natural and contain the important keywords if relevant. Simply don't stuff keywords into headings.

Check Web Page Copy

Use keyword phrases in your web page content. Keywords when used properly as part of web page text can really increase your traffic from long-tail keyword searches. However, don't over-stuff keywords and make your web pages spammy.

Make Effective Use of Anchor Texts

Use keywords in link texts (anchor text). Replace the links that say click here to more relevant ones that have the keyword in it, if possible. Use good anchor texts even if you are linking to pages on your own sites (internal links)

SEOLab URL Explorer is very handy for checking anchor texts. You can quickly get a list of all anchor texts used in any web page with a single click after entering the URL!

Create relevant Alt Tags for Images

Use relevant image tags (img alt tags). Many images may not even have an alt text. Look through your web pages and add them wherever possible.

Alt tags are used for images so that people with visual disabilities can understand what the image is about (for example, a text reader can read out the alternate text).

The SEOLab URL Explorer will help here too. The "Anchor" tab in the lower panel will display links with an image as

IMG [Anchor Text]

Don't stuff keywords into the alt tag. Just describe what the image is about. Some people do suggest optimizing the alt tag because it is used by Google image search.

Check Your Competition

Do a Google / Yahoo / Live (Bing) search for the keywords and then study the top competitors. Improve your products, services and web pages based on your research. The blog post linked above has some tips.

Competition research is very easy if you use SEOLab Professional.

Write Articles or Blog

Write an article that contains some of the important keyword phrases and post it to your blog. Don't have a blog? Start one. If you don't want to mess with technical things you can easily start a blog by signing up at Blogger or Typepad.

Start a PPC campaign

Start a Pay Per Click campaign and Bid on the keyword phrases. Create new Adword groups if required. Make sure that your landing pages have good quality score before you create new ad-groups.

Learn From Your Log Files

Study your log files and pick all the long-tail keyword phrases used by your visitors. The advantage of studying long-tail keywords is that the intention behind the search is more easy to understand. Do you think your product or service can help such visitors? Optimize your web pages so that you offer what they are looking for.

Get Inbound Links

Try and convince others to link to your web pages using relevant anchor texts. While this may not be always possible, you can and should ask your affiliates and friends to use relevant and useful keyword phrases while linking to you.

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/tenkwtips.php

IMS

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