By Michael Fleischner | Marketing Expert, Internet Marketing Secrets*

Small business owners are often limited by small marketing budgets and manpower. But that doesn’t mean they can’t compete against larger businesses or websites when focused on search engine optimization. SEO is a basic marketing tool that everyone should use regardless of size.

Can the small websites compete with the big guys?

I’m often asked by small business owners if they stand a chance against larger websites when it comes to organic search results. My response is that size doesn’t matter. When it comes to improving natural search results, it’s all about the keywords you choose and how competitive those keywords are.

What makes a keyword competitive?

One way to determine the competitiveness of a search term is to simply type that search term into Google and notice the number of web pages that contain that search term. This number appears in the upper right-hand corner of the search results page and appears as, “Results 1 – 10 of about 228,000,000 for [your search term here].”

The large number you see gives you an indication of how many websites contain the keyword term or phrase you’re searching for. Not all of these sites would necessarily be competitors, but have been indexed by Google none-the-less. From my perspective, when this number is less than 3 or 4 million, the particular search term would not be all that competitive in and of itself.

Determining just how competitive the search term is.

There are a variety of methods to determine true keyword effectiveness (KEI, etc.). However, if you’re just a regular person trying to figure out how difficult it will be to rank well for a particular keyword, consider the following. In addition to the number of sites that contain your keyword, how well optimized are the top 3 sites that appear on the search result. You can determine this by:

1. Visiting the site and determining the Google PR of the page. This information is available by downloading the Google toolbar and looking in your browser. You will see a green bar and ranking (ex: PR5), which tells you how Google ranks this page/website with regard to popularity. Any site with a Google PR6 or better is well established and will be difficult to outrank in the near term.

2. Visit Google and type, “link:www.competitorwebsite.com”. Be sure to replace ‘competitorwebsite’ with the website name you are researching. Remember, this should be a website that appears on the Google search result for the keyword term or phrase you’re researching. This will tell you how many sites are linking to this particular website. The larger the number the more difficult it will be to outrank.

3. Look at the website code. Simply visit the competitor’s website and go to “View”, “View Source”. Look for the meta tags of “Title”, “Description”, and “Keywords”. Are the meta tags at the very top of the page? Does the website also use h1, h2, and h3 tags? If so, they probably know something about SEO and have applied some on-page optimization techniques.

Using the above will give you a good sense of whether of not you can compete for given keywords. As you’ve figured out by now, a company’s size is no indication of their level of experience in optimizing their own website. You’d be surprise of the type (and size) of companies that call me for SEO advice. Keep this in mind the next time you think that size matters!

If In present era the world of quality search engine optimization depends on the key mantra of genuine and fresh content on the web site. Without quality content on the site concept on search engine optimization is a myth. The content, playing the role of a silent salesman can either make or break your website. So, here we present to you few effective ways which will definitely help in persuading the users.

1. Identify a topic – This is of course key when it comes to developing a successful series . Pick a manageable topic that will serve as your website niche. A search engine friendly website has a defined niche. Pick one topic or theme that will be covered on your website. If you are targeting leads in a specific geographic location, then choose one-and I do mean one-main area that will serve as your niche.

2. Do Keyword Research- Use a keyword research tool to determine what keywords and keyword phrases are being searched for most. I recommend the following tools:

* Google Keyword Research Tool – Free
* Wordtracker – Free Trial (I find that it’s a bit overkill for typical SEO jobs)
* Yahoo! Keyword Tool – Gives precise numerical activity of searches.

The goal of your keyword research is to obtain a list of keyword phrases relevant to your website’s theme. Note the levels of searches being conducted for the various phrases. This will help you determine what you want your keywords to be.

TIP: Google’s Keyword Research Tool allows you to add your keywords to a list and export them into an Excel file.

3. Determine Main Keyword Phrase (Main KP)- First, rank the keyword phrases you discover in the order of importance. The keyword phrases that are searched for the most should get higher ranking than the ones with no searches.

Second, rank the keyword phrases in terms of competition. If you find a phrase with a high search volume but a small amount of advertiser competition, you can bet that it will likely have less competition in the natural search area as well.

Choose the keyword phrase to be the Main KP of your site that does all of the following:

* Has the most searches with the least competition
* Accurately describe your web site’s chosen theme
* Describes your product or service in a very common way
* Includes your main geo-target (city, state, country)

4. Determine your secondary Keyword Phrases (secondary KPs) The remaining keyword phrases play an important role in the content of your website. Keep your ranked list handy for integrating into your website’s content. In fact, these secondary keyword phrases will later become the Main KPs of the interior pages of your Web site.

5. Pick a Title – Start writing the content of your web sites interior pages before you write the home page. Decide how many pages of content your site will have and select one keyword phrase from your research that most closely relates to your theme and meets your objectives. Starting with only 3-5 pages when you first launch the website. You can always add more pages later.

6. Start writing interior pages – Start by putting your keyword phrase on the page. This will be your title. Research your page topic and write basic facts pertaining to the keyword phrase. Keep in mind that it’s facts that people are looking for and stay away from all forms of puffery. Give the facts without a lot of hype. This will naturally pull more keywords into the equation. Feel free to weave keywords into your content, but be careful not to overdo it as you can set-off Google’s penalty triggers.

If you find yourself writing sentences just to incorporate keywords-don’t. Stop yourself and get back to the topic. If you are really writing on topic, keywords should flow naturally.

WEB CONTENT WRITING TIPS

* Write scannable text! People scan the web; they don’t read it so write text that can be scanned:

i. Use bullets like they are on sale two for one
ii. Bold keywords
iii. Use a combination of compelling and keyword rich headings
iv. Use headings liberally (practically for each paragraph)
v. Write short, choppy sentences (long ones are for print)
vi. Use the shortest word possible to get your point across
vii. Write at the 9th grade level (even Rhodes Scholars prefer this when scanning)

* Remember your goal is to provide information – The search engines today have become answer engines. People come on line wanting an answer to their question. Providing the answer to these information hungry visitors will help you put them at ease, gain credibility and build rapport. Credibility and rapport online can lead to the same in person when that visitor becomes a lead.

* Incorporate KPs and Keywords – Add keywords liberally, but don’t make it sound unnatural. It’s wise to add them to the beginning of sentences, paragraphs and headings. The very end of the page is also important. Staying on topic is one sure way to get more than enough keywords on the page. Be sure not to over do it. You need a keyword density of 6% per phrase to get real recognition from search engine crawlers. More than that can get you penalized.

* Don’t try to sell too soon or too hard! – Save your sales copy for the end. “Give to get.” Provide the information they crave and at the end, offer your services. Do this as opposed to selling from line one which puts people off and puts them on guard. Be the one to give people the answers they are looking for and they’ll respect you for it and be more open to your soft sell approaches at the end of the page or in the right and left columns.

* Keep your opinions to yourself – Using words like “fantastic” or “incredible” too often sounds fishy. Take a look at the successful Wiki’s and notice that there is very little opinion going on. Of course, your opinion is valuable, but it’s more important to give the facts.

* Edit to the bone- Please do not put copy that’s destined for print on the web. Yuck! Copy written for print is just totally different than that on the web. The web is more succinct, choppier and less visceral, so get out your pencil and click “delete” to many of those extra words you don’t need.

* Be original- You can’t get away with copying the content of someone else. Google will catch you, and if they even remotely THINK your content is duplicated, your page may never see the light of day. Try to take an angle that no one else is taking. Be thorough and go the extra mile to bring content to the table from sources other than the web (like the newspaper, the tv news or Barnes and Noble).

* Do a spelling and grammar check – This goes without saying, since it’s easy to get in a hurry when writing on the web.

7. Write an Introduction to the Series – In it basically 2 main things are done- Firstly it is outlined where one will be headed over the coming days. This might even include announcing your actual topics (if you’re that organized) but could be more general also. Secondly (and more importantly) the focus of the introductory post is to help highlight the ‘need’ that the series will help to address.

8. Interlink your Posts – There are a number of ways of interlinking your series. Here are a few of them:

* Central Page – In this case you have one page/post on your blog that you link to from each post in your series that lists links to each post in the series. For an examples of this check out my blogging for beginners series central page and the 31 days to building a better blog central page. Another variation of this is to make your introductory post the central page and as you write other posts add them to it.

* Links at the beginning and/or end of posts – In this strategy each post in your series will link to other posts in the series. There are two ways of doing this. You can either just link to the post before and after the post in the series or you can link to all the posts in the series from each post (for example my adsense for blogging series and my blogging for change series for two variations on this).

9. Finish your series well – While it might sound obvious to ‘finish your series’.It’s important to do this well. Readers like closure (as do bloggers themselves) and it’s often good to finish a series with a short summary of what’s been written and/or some reflections on the process of writing the series itself. Especially helpful in a concluding post (or just a concluding paragraph in the last post) is the invitation for readers to add their own thoughts and points. On most occasions in my experience a series could have other posts added to it and so it’s a good thing to acknowledge this and invite others to continue it in comments (or on their own blog). In this way you not only get reader interaction but also develop a more well rounded coverage of the topic as your readers add their own expertise and experience.