Getting your site high up in search engine results is an art without a simple one size fits all solution. However, it is informed by hard data obtained from various software tools, the core set of which you will use over and over again in similar ways. How you actually react to the information you get from these tools is where the art comes in.

If you start with an existing page that you would like to optimize, the first step is to determine what keywords to optimize for. Search engines will reward a page if it uses a particular word or sequence of words multiple times. However, there is a much-debated sweet spot of 3-6 repetitions or a 7% density of a keyword or keyword phrase that you will need to shoot for to optimize it for top search results. Any less and your page will not be considered authoritative. Any more and your search ranking may be viewed as spammy.

A good place to start in finding a particular keyword or keyword phrase to optimize for is a word density tool. SEO Quake is a free Firefox plugin, which has a keyword density feature that lets you search for single words, and keyword sequences of specific length. Look for the most used sequence on your page which best describes its content. Or make a note of several if there is more than one which stands out.

Now you need to see how those phrases look in historical search engine results. The leading tool out there for this analysis is Wordtracker, which is a website where you can look for words or phrases and see how many people have searched for them, as well as how many other sites out there use the exact keyword phrase in their website. It is a pay site, but is extremely valuable. Start with a free trial account and play around with it to see how it works. The magic of Wordtracker is that it helps you find the right combination of maximized number of searches crossed with minimal competing pages.

The phrase you are looking to optimize for may not have many searches, or too many competing pages. So this is where you might react to alter your content slightly in order to find a better niche for your page in search engine results. Google has a free site where you can search for a phrase and it will suggest similar ones.  You can see right there what the search volume was for them in the previous month. If you find one with more search volume, plug it into Wordtracker to see if it has a reasonable number of competing pages. And if the phrase is a reasonable substitution for your existing one, then bingo, you have improved your potential for search engine rankings and associated traffic.

There are many other tools, techniques and variations of search engine optimization out there. But this summary gives you a taste for an essential part of it.

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Andrew Crowe Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, How To, Technology, Web