Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

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How is your website doing on the search engines? Need a little help?

Well, you’re holding the right book in your hands. This book will

walk you through the steps to achieve a targeted, compelling presence

on the major search engines. There are no secrets or tricks here, just

down-to-earth, real-world advice and a clear program to get you

where you want to be. And, with luck, you’ll even have a little fun

along the way!

If you could think of the person that you would most want visiting your website,

who would that person be? Traditional advertisers (TV, magazines, newspaper, direct

mail) might describe this person in terms of their demographics: 18 to 24 years old? Male

or female? Wealthy or not so wealthy? But in the world of search, our focus is very differ-

ent. This is how we think:

Who could be a more perfect target audience than someone who is already looking

for your company, your product or service, or just the sort of information you’ve got on

your website? The trick, of course, is to figure out who those people are, develop an

extremely targeted message for them, and put it where they will notice it.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

encompasses a wide variety of tasks that

improve a website’s presence on search engines. Maybe you’ve heard a few SEO catch-

phrases—

meta tags

keyword density

, or

PageRank

—but you don’t know exactly how to

tie them all together into a meaningful package. That’s where this book comes in!

Why SEO?

There are many good reasons to pursue SEO for your website. If you’re a numbers per-

son, you may find these stats compelling:

• A 2004 survey found that in business-to-business (B2B) purchasing decisions,

63.9 percent of respondents stated that a search engine would be the first place

they would go to research a product or service. (Source: Enquiro/MarketingSherpa)

Pearl of Wisdom:

The person you

most

want to find your website is the person who is

searching for you!

Introduction

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