Search Engine Optimization

This page is not a comprehensive overview of search engine optimization. It is merely a look at some of the issues involved in optimizing a site which earns from advertising revenue. I'll give you some resources to find SEO instructions as well.

When you optimize a site for search engines, you are automatically optimizing it for AdSense ads. This means that if you target certain keywords for the search engines, that is also what is most likely to show up on your pages. The one little twist in there though is that either the search engines, or the AdSense ads may be less relevant if they run short on items with closer relevance, so you will get some variance, no matter how you target your site.

Some people talk about how easy it is to use Pay Per Click to drive traffic to an AdSense site, and then earn from the clicks. First of all, the math shows clearly that it is, in fact NOT easy to do that. I'm not going to go into all that here, because it is covered elsewhere, but I will state that if you optimize your site for one thing, and try to get traffic for something different (even if it IS just a little different), it may not quite work. Most pay per click advertising systems make sure your site is relevant to the keywords you pick, so you have to be choosing items that are VERY closely related if you want to use that tactic - such as optimizing for Diabetes ads, but targeting traffic for only a small segment of that target market such as Cinnamon for Diabetes, so that your traffic keywords still contain the ad keywords.

Optimizing for search engines is doubly important on an AdSense site, because it affects your ability to get free traffic from the search engines, and because it affects your ability to earn well once the traffic is there.

The same rules hold though as for any site:

1. Good content. Fill your site with content that is about what you say it is. Make the content useful, informative, enjoyable, or whatever you feel will make it draw.

2. Metatags and Alt Tags. These don't make a whole lot of difference, but are worth putting in for when they do.

3. Title tag. This is the coded title that shows up in the title bar of the browser - it is NOT visible on the page. The general consensus is that this is one of the more important things, and that almost every search engine pays attention to this tag.

4. Backlinks. Get links from other sites to yours. Use tactics that actually work! Check out http://www.badmarketingideas.com  if you need to know what works and what does not.

5. Use keywords the right way. Look in the Keyword Optimization area of this site for specifics.

6. Everything else is optional - Things like a keyword domain name, keywords in links and filenames, can all nudge, but are not quite as important as the other things.

Remember, a site can do well with just good content. It can do even better with some other strategies to nudge it up more, but all the other strategies combined cannot make up for the lack of solid content.

More information on SEO can be found at http://www.seositepromotion.com/  .

Search Engine Optimization is not something you do because it makes your site a winner. It is something you do to improve your chances of getting more traffic that you do not have to pay for. It is the beginning of a solid free or low cost marketing campaign, it is not the end. Combine it with other sound strategies to get the most out of all of them.