Yet another bunch of words that I hear all the time, and while I know what it DOES (helps people to find your site faster... for example, if you type the words “make money online” into the google search engine, our site comes up 3rd, which is TOTALLY AWESOME!) but I don’t know what it is, or how to do it.

Since SEO (yes, it is so popular that it has an acronym that any webmaster, newbie and netrepreneurs like us should know) is such an important topic, I thought I’d best spend some time getting familiar with this acronym, and putting it into practice.

Generally, when a search is being done on a search engine, the first two pages of search results are the ones where the eager searcher will focus their attention.

Before we go further, there are two main ways that your site is classified as being seen in the search engine. There is an organic way (searcher types in keywords and your site comes up) and paid search (the sponsored sites that appear at the top and side of the page when you get your search results). What is meant by SEO, is improving your organic search results.

How do Search Engines Work?

The way search engines (in this article, specifically Google) read the information on websites is that they send a “spider” to crawl (read) the content [read my article – Richard (shameless punt!)]. This spider crawls the content starting at the top left corner, and reads (as we do) from left to right, top to bottom [Correction: If the site is in a left to right language, yes. But there are right to left languages and they must so be defined in the section of a page – Richard]. If there is more than one column, the spider will start on the left column, and move top to bottom, left to right. As it should be read.

All the content, starting with your domain name, moving through headings, and text are crawled, indexed and ranked [Only Google gives them annoying page rank thingies that nobody really knows how it works, but many think they do – Richard]. The first starting point on optimising your site for searches is to make sure that your domain name is related to the article [more specifically the content – Richard]. Your first keywords indexed by the spiders comes from your web address.
For those with more technical know-how, pop over to Richard’s article on spiders here.

Keywords

This term has been mentioned in my article on Adsense, and now I’m saying it again in SEO...
Keywords are those words that are searched for on the internet, and should be plentiful in your site content, domain name, meta tags, alt tags and many other places that you probably need a geek to help you understand [Keyphrases as well like “good food” and “earn an income online”. But don’t over do it, else the search engine will see it as spam and penalise your site – Richard]. Needless to say, I will be discussing just domain name, and content. Them tag thingies need to be done by someone with a technological clue. [<- skimp="" p="">

On my website, my main focus is making money online. Making money, make money, making money online, online, money... those are my main keywords. The things that when typed into a search bar, should bring my site to at least the first page of the search results. The more often I use them, the more often the methodical spiders who, while they are incredible pieces of software, are just machines, will pick up my keywords, and rank me highly accordingly. [Again, don’t over do them – Richard]

You know that my site is called make-money-online.co.za and makemoneyonline.co.za. My main keywords are part of my domain name so that the spiders, and the readers, know what my site is all about. In my headings I try and include my keywords, and throughout the articles too. [Headings work the same as in MS Word. It’s a special type of HTML tag that defines that specific content as a heading – Richard]

Google provides free keyword tools to help choose your keywords. You type in your keywords, and it brings up a list to tell you how many times those keywords are searched for, how many other websites are using them, and other related keywords. And I didn’t even need Richard to show me how it works!  [ :) ]

For example, here is my search for make money online. You can see that there are a lot of people out there, in the UK alone who want to supplement their income from their armchair.

Something else I hope you notice (I certainly did) is how precise the term is. For example make money online forums... it takes my keywords a step further, makes it specific, and brings on its own searchers as well. So if you want to get a good ranking, be specific! Don’t just talk about the news, talk about the making money online news!

Keywords are one of the main (free) ways that you can get your site in a good position on the search results page!

Keep your site up to date

MMO COZA has been around since 8th April 2006. [Uh, actually since 2001 : makemoneyonline.co.za – Richard]After 2008 it was left alone for a while (no new articles, content wasn’t being reviewed) and our Alexa ranking plummeted. Now that I’m taking it over, we’re reviving the site now and we are slowly climbing back up the ranks.

The lesson in this little story: if you want to make money online, you have to keep at it. Don’t get complacent and leave the site alone. Those spiders I spoke of will stop coming to your site because there is nothing new (so you’ll stop being ranked in searches) and your readers will stop visiting your site as they no longer have anything to hold them there.

Top tips as written by the SEO Cowboy:

While I was trying to learn as much as I can about SEO, I stumbled into the corral of the SEO Cowboy, and he had just what I needed to read. True beginner tips. Nothing I would have to run off to the Uber-techie to have translated from Geek to English.

For the word out of the horse’s mouth, mosey on over to the cowboy yourself, I just wanted to share a few ideas from his site here (I’ll stop with the puns now, promise).

The number three tip:

Write natural quality content. With all the talk of keywords on other sites, this resounded true to me. The last thing you want to do is try and write a site just to get up in the ranks. You want to make it interesting too.
The cowboy points out that quality content is:

• Simple and makes sense
• Should not be too repetitive
• Offers value to the person reading it
• Give related material (like I do – with all these links scattered about)
• Is updated (made fresh) regularly

The number eight tip:

Open a Google Webmaster Account. I already have one of these thanks to Richard. We get info about what Google thinks of our account, “straight from the horse’s mouth” (the Cowboys punny words – honest!).

As a conclusion, which can’t be said by me better than I read it, the Cowboy’s conclusion:

“Stick with quality content and write for your readers, make a great title that best describes what you just wrote and then publish your article to the world through social media. Like I said from the start… keep it simple.”

[Have to, have to... some people get smart with keywords, too. They also add spelling mistakes into keywords. Everybody’s human and make spelling mistakes. Search a bit for make mony onlne and we come up 3rd! Lights coming on? Good! Especially in Adword advertising... – Richard]

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