Finding the right keywords is important not only in terms of link building, but also in terms of knowing what type of content to offer on your site. Keywords can even give you insight into your market by showing you what people want (because they are searching for it). If you take those things into consideration, you’ll understand why it’s so important to have a good handle on keyword research.

There are a slew of paid keyword research tools, many of which are well worth the money if you’re promoting multiple sites. There are also some excellent free keyword research tools out there – they are effective for the professional as well as someone that is just looking to get their feet wet.

Google External Keyword Tool

The first tool everyone should be familiar with is Google’s External Keyword tool. If you’ve ever used AdWords, this is the same tool provided inside accounts. The external keyword tool is one of the quickest, easiest to use tools out there and doesn’t require much (if any training).

WordStream

WordStream offers a simple keyword suggestion tool that is free to use. Their goal is to return keywords with commercial intent so you target terms where money is actually being spent. They claim to have more than a trillion keywords in their database, so you can probably find good terms to target or include in your content by taking it for a spin. WordStream also offers paid options.

KeywordSpy

Another excellent keyword tool is Keyword Spy. Technically, it’s a paid tool, but you can use the free trial and get quite a bit of information out of it. It does exactly what the nae says – it lets you spy on your competition by checking out their keywords. You can also take a look at what they are spending on AdWords (if anything). Thought it’s not as simple to just pick up and use as Google’s tool, you might check it out if you have a competitor you’re interested in spying on.

Other free keyword tools (most which offer paid versions with more functionality) include:

Wordtracker
SEMRush
Wordpot
SEOBook Keyword Tool
Trellian Keyword Discovery

Keywords are an integral part of any SEO campaign, but they’re only one part of it. Using them as a springboard for content creation and helping your market is the best way to go. They can also help you to diversify your anchor text profile, making it look as natural as possible to Google.

Whether you are an individual or an organization, current and potential customers will be doing research on you online. This can be a great thing or a bad thing. It’s a great thing if all your clients rave about the products or services you offer. It’s a bad thing if there is anyone complaining about you.

Before the internet, when a customer was not happy with the service they received, the worst they really could do was complain to their friends and family. Now, someone that is not happy can go on heavily trafficked sites and make complaints that hundreds, if not thousands will see. What’s worse is because the sites they tend to complain on can actually outrank you or your company in the search results. Imagine if one of the first results that comes up in Google is someone complaining about your company?

Thankfully, with SEO, it is actually possible to get rid of those sorts of complaints. Obviously, you want to address any complaints or problems someone might have with your products or services and do what you can to make them happy, but sometimes the customer might not remove the things they’ve already said (or they might not be able to). In those cases, even if you follow up with the complaints it still doesn’t look very good to potential customers. By pushing those sorts of complaints down in the search results however, you will keep them out of sight and out of mind of future prospects.

So how can you use SEO to manage your reputation online? What can you do if complaints come up when people search for you or your business?

One of the most effective ways to drown out the noise of complaints is with press releases. Press releases are typically articles that announce new products or services that your company might be offering. Anything that can be considered newsworthy would make a good press release. There are services that will write these for you, usually ranging about $50-$100 a piece. Once you have one written, you can distribute it out through a variety of Press Release Distribution services. Press release distribution services have media outlets that they will submit the press release to, which will post them.

From there, press releases can get picked up by even more media outlets and syndicated. When this happens, the press releases will start showing up in Google very frequently and can fill up the search results pages, effectively blocking out any negative comments about your company. Posting videos on video sharing sites like YouTube or DailyMotion can help to drown out negative comments or complaints as well. They also give you a very good opportunity to set the record straight.

So take the time to check out the search results for your company name every once in a while. Get in the mind of a potential customer and try to search as though you were someone researching your company. If you find anything negative, try to address it and if it persists, you have ways to manage that.

As far back as anyone in the SEO industry can remember, backlinks have been the number one most important factor in ranking. Types of links, anchor text, number of links, and velocity of links all fall under this category. It’s now getting close to the end of 2012, and many people are guessing that the importance of backlinks is diminishing.

It’s important to note that SEOs aren’t saying that backlinks are becoming useless, but rather that they are becoming less important (relative to how important they used to be). In other words, Google is getting smarter and starting to look at other factors. After the Penguin updates started happening at the beginning of 2012, many people erroneously though that backlinks were no longer a factor, but that is still not the case (and probably will not ever be, at least in the foreseeable future.

So if the importance of backlinks is (theoretically) decreasing, what is Google looking at (or going to start looking at)?

Some think that Google is starting to look at word associations as though they were links. This is very similar to how they rank their places pages. Rather than Google Places pages needing backlinks, they need “citations” from around the internet. These citations usually come in the form of the business’ address and telephone number. When Google sees those citations and matches it with the places listing, it begins to trust the location more and more. This usually leads to ranking increases.

Google can do this with any type of website as well. If many websites that are about Star Wars mention Disney, then Google may learn that Disney is associated with Star Wars. This can occur without actual links, and is already happening in the SERPs. If you have ever done backlink analysis on a page that is ranking very well for a given keyword and found that it doesn’t have any ideal anchors, it’s likely that this type of citation ranking is going on.

If the importance of citations is really on the rise, what will this mean in terms of SEO and promotion? It will mean that content marketing and distribution will be integral parts of your campaigns, in addition to backlinks.

Guest blogging has been around for a very long time, but in 2012 it has become one of the most sought after types of links. There are quite a few benefits to these links, the main two being that they can help improve your site’s ranking and even bring in direct traffic.

Guest blogging is a great strategy for SEO because it is almost impossible to truly automate. In order to get a legitimate guest blog link, you need to actually build relationships with others in your industry. Not only will this yield the possibility of powerful links, it will also provide you with potential offline partnerships.

For example, if you are in the real estate business, getting a guest post from an electrician or interior decorate would be a perfect fit. They wouldn’t be your competitors, and those that are buying a home or renting a space would very likely be in need of their services. In the same way, a chiropractor might want to do a guest post on the site of a personal trainer or a dietician. Visitors to any of those sites would be interested in what the other type of professional has to say, and would then be encouraged to visit the site if the post is good enough. Even if they didn’t, you would get the benefit of the link back to your site which would greatly help rankings.

Guest posts are not very easy to come by, but because they are so powerful you don’t need a large number of them to see results. Obviously, the more that you have on relevant sites the better your results will be, but you can see results with just a single guest post. So how do you go about getting them?

First, determine all the complementary businesses in your niche. Think outside the box when you do this. Any business that is even remotely related to your own might be worth pursuing. When you have an idea about the types of businesses you want to promote, check out the highest ranking sites on Google and find their contact information. When contacting them, you really don’t need to do much more than tell them how you liked their site and would like to write an article for it that their users might enjoy.

When you’ve found some business/website owners that are interested, create the article for them and cultivate the relationship from then on. Hopefully you’ll get a business that you can run promotions with and refer customers to offline (and vice versa, of course). At the very least, you’ll have some extra exposure and another high value link pointing back to your site.

Exact match domains are domains that are composed of nothing but a keyword you are trying to rank for. So if you are a dentist in Houston, and would like to rank for the keyword, “houston Dentist”, an exact match domain would be www.houstondentist.com (they can also end in .net, .org, or any of the extensions, but .com is the most popular).

In the past, having an exact match domain for the keyword that you wanted to rank for could greatly improve your chances of ranking for the keyword quickly. Part of the reason that this is the case is because Google assumes that domain names refer to the brand’s name.

Currently, exact match domain names are not as effective as they used to be. Some SEOs even believe that they don’t make a difference any longer. No matter where you fall on the issue, you should consider a few things before choosing your domain name:

1. Going out of your way to choose a keyword rich domain name is generally not a good idea. Not only will it be much more difficult to remember for potential customers, it just doesn’t look that great (unless it also happens to be the name of your business).

   For example: www.thebest24hourplumberinseattle.com vs. www.seattledrainpros.com

   The former might give you a very slight edge in the search engines, but the latter is clearly better to look at and more memorable.

2. Having your business name as the domain is better from a brand standpoint.
3. If there is a benefit to having an exact match domain, it’s not going to offer a huge boost. You can get any domain ranking for a keyword through the proper SEO and promotion.

Another type of domain name is a partial match domain. These often include part of the keyword you are trying to rank for or the whole keyword plus some extra words (like the, best, cheap, discount, etc.). Like exact match domains, these can give you a very slight boost in the rankings when competition is not incredibly high, but they are not going to make your site rank well on their own.

Ultimately, your best bet when choosing a domain name is choosing something that will be memorable, brandable, and not too long. Imagine how it will look on your business card or company letterhead, and you’ll realize that many exact match domains and partial match domains are not that pleasing to look at.

If you’re someone that likes hard numbers, you should check out what SEOmoz.org has to say on the subject of exact match domains.

When you are working with a small business owner on his or her place in the online marketplace, you have to be willing to do some hand holding along the way. These people generally don’t know much about the world of SEO, so you have to show them what you are doing while you are working with them. Although these small business clients usually do not come with a lot of business, you can certainly expect to get paid a higher rate than you would find at some jobs that provide you with bulk work.

The first thing you need to do when you are working with a new client is to make sure that they understand what SEO is all about. You won’t be able to get very far if you do not take the initiative here because these people need to know exactly what you are doing for them. Some people will say they do not care what you do and basically give you a clean slate, but you are going to have to work with the business owner to get the best results. You will have to explain the value of SEO to your client if they do not seem to understand what it is all about right away.

One way that you can make sure everything goes smoothly with your client is if you create a plan that they will be able to understand. You have to remember that you will probably be editing your client’s website, so you need to make sure that they are along for the ride before you get started. Even if they do not seem that interested in your work, you have to make sure that you lay out exactly what you are going to do for them in the online world. As long as you client understands what you are trying to do, they are less likely to get upset at you for some strange reason in the future.

Try to answer any questions your client may have. It’s always a good idea to answer your client’s questions, even if you think he or she will start to think that you are useless. You can only improve your working relationship by being honest with your client because that is one of the core values of a great working partner. When you are honest with your client, there is a much better chance that they will be honest with you. If you want to make sure that everyone understands each other and that the expectations are set correctly, then you should definitely let your client know that you are happy to answer any questions.

Try to get some help with an increase in the budget. Many business owners are not sure of how much SEO really costs, so some of them will think twice about increasing their budget. Sometimes the budget you are given is simply not going to be enough, and these are the jobs you will need to avoid. If your client is not going to give you the funds that you need for the job, then there is no reason to stick around for much longer.

As long as you stay open with your client and talk with each other on a regular basis, there should be nothing to worry about. When you are honest with each other, you will notice that the problems will come to the surface in the beginning. This means that you will be able to get out of the job rather quickly if you feel like there is going to be some kind of problem.

The first person you call may not end up being the right choice, so you need to keep your options open. Instead of trying to get the right help from one location, think about expanding your horizons and making sure that you are getting SEO help from the people who really know what’s going on.

If you really want to find someone who will be able to teach you a thing or two in addition to helping you get better rankings, then you will need to stick with your local classified ads. Although there are plenty of people available on the Internet, you will probably want to meet with someone in person. There is an extra bit of clarity and better communication involved when you can talk with someone in person, so you should stick with locals if this is something that interests you more than anything else.

In reality, the best person to handle any kind of small job is going to be you. Sometimes SEO isn’t about all of the technical details that come with the job, and that means the kind of knowledge that is in your head is more important than anything else. You always have to do something on your own if you want it done correctly, so that’s the best way to start your SEO campaign. While you may be able to get some pointers from a real SEO professional, it’s important to remember that you are the person who can create quality content. Although an SEO specialist will know all about keyword density and backlinks, you are the one who actually knows about your product or service.

Try to get an SEO professional to show you how to run your own SEO campaign. By getting an SEO specialist to do some of the more technical work, you can make sure that the quality of the content stays high while certain keywords are targeted. This is usually the best route to take on an SEO campaign because it combines the best of both worlds. You can eventually learn enough about SEO to take over the technical aspect of the job as well, but some people prefer to leave that to the pros. Anyone who thinks that they will not be able to handle a bit of the SEO work is probably going to end up with less than perfect content at the end of the day.

There are plenty of different resources to use when you want to find someone to help you with SEO, so make sure to use all of them to your advantage. You can’t leave any stone left unturned when you need help because that is the only way you are going to be able to find the perfect person for the job.

One of the things that is often overlooked in the world of SEO is the relationship between the business and the company or person who is providing the SEO services. There needs to be a rather positive relationship between the two parties because any kind of stress or lack of honesty with each other can ruin a business relationship. As long as both parties put all of their cards on the table, there should be no problems that decide to pop up in the future.

The first important aspect of an SEO business relationship that you need to think about is engaging the client or engaging with that certain SEO professional. Without proper communication with your working partner, it will be hard to make sure that there is a clear plan for your SEO campaign. You have to stay in constant communication with all of the people you are working with because that is the only way you will be able to build a relationship that is beneficial for everyone involved. A lot of people think that they can just hire someone to get the job done and not worry about checking in on that project very often, but that kind of thinking is far from how things work.

If you are the person hiring an SEO you need to make sure that you learn a little bit about SEO along the way. You have to know a little bit about SEO when you get started because otherwise anyone could charge you rather unfair rates. Have your SEO helper let you in on a few SEO secrets, and make sure that you understand the entire process. It’s important to know the methods that your professional is actually using, so you can understand what it means to run an SEO campaign. You have to understand how SEO works to know who is going to be the right option for your business.

One of the main reasons that a working relationship could go wrong is that the expectations between the client and the business could be incorrect. This kind of ties into having good levels of communication with each other, so you need to clearly state what you want to have on your website or what kind of quality you can offer. Being honest and upfront with people will go a long way because telling someone you can do something that you cannot do will just end up as a waste of time in the long run.

At the end of the day, you just need to make sure that both of you understand each other because that is the only way anything is going to get done. There needs to be a strong relationship between you and your partner on your quest for a better ranking. Without this strong relationship, you will notice that things tend to go sour rather quickly when something goes wrong. As long as you are working with someone who understands what you want and what kind of keywords will be able to help you bring more traffic to your website.

By taking a look at the simplest details of SEO, you can learn how to get some professional help with your ranking for a rather low price. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on SEO campaigns, but you at least need to make sure that the people you are working with know what they are doing. You cannot expect to get much out of someone who does everything for you at a low price, so you need to look into someone’s skill level before you decide to pay them. There is really no reason to hire someone at all if they don’t know the first thing about SEO.

As a business owner, you need to make sure that you know a little bit about SEO, just like you need to know a little bit about advertising. You don’t need to know the whole story, but you at least need to get a general idea of what goes on in the world of SEO. When you know what is going on behind the scenes, it makes it much easier to pick out a fair price for an SEO specialist. If you do not know what your SEO professional is doing for you then he or she would really have the ability to charge you whatever they wanted.

SEO is not a one time job. While some people think they can just post some articles around the web and be done with it, the best SEO campaigns are the ones that seem to never end. You need to continually update your articles and get new links if you want to maintain your page’s high ranking over the long term. Anyone who decides to leave their SEO budget closed for a long time will notice that their first page standing may not last very long.

You cannot depend on your normal marketing department to handle SEO because online marketing is a completely different monster. At the end of the day, you have to realize that online marketing is very different from the kind of real world marketing that most businesses already do on a regular basis. While the end goals of both of these marketing types are the same, you still need to recognize the different between the two before you get started.

Try not to get all of your SEO packaged in one deal because sometimes it works better to get specialists in certain areas. You do not want to get one streamlined package for all of your SEO needs at a low price because these packages tend to lack real quality. You may be able to save money in the short term, but you will actually lose money in the long term by having low quality links and content associated with your company.

SEO can definitely help your business reach new customers, but you have to make sure you are hiring people who are actually going to do a good job. Without the right contractors to help you out, you will notice that there have not been a lot of benefits to your SEO campaign.

When it comes to SEO techniques for your small business, you need to remember that the Internet does not revolve around your website. There are plenty of other sites that will be able to help you out along the way, so you should not just try to optimize your site as much as you can. While optimizing your own website for SEO is important, you also need to remember that you can get help from links to your site from other webpages.

Linkbuilding is a great technique to use to your advantage because you will notice that your page’s ranking increases as more people link to your site. Google and other search engines like websites that have a lot of backlinks because it means that this is a website that many people have used in the past. Anyone who is going to want to bring some real traffic to their website is going to need to use a few different methods of creating extra links.

One of the oldest fashioned ways that you can build more links is through link swapping. When you trade links with another website, it means that both websites agree to advertise for each other someone on one of their pages. In this scenario, both parties get better results by pulling together their resources and working as a team. You need to gain some friends in the online world if you are going to succeed, and you can start by taking a look at some of the more popular sites that are related to your targeted keywords.

Another method of bringing more traffic to your company’s website is to create a new blog that will post articles related to your area of expertise. You can then link back to your company’s website from this blog, helping you easily earn more traffic on a regular basis. You can even hire someone else to write the blogs for a low price, which means that you won’t have to do any of the dirty work on your own. It’s usually a much better idea to have someone else write the articles because a writer will know how to stay on topic and write interesting blogs related to certain keywords.

One last way that you can improve your page’s ranking through linkbuilding is by purchasing backlinks. These backlinks are part of tiny articles that someone will post on their website for you, and they are rather valuable because of the fact that they are posted on websites that already rank rather well. When you are getting links posted on high ranking websites, it becomes easier to drive more traffic to your website through SEO.

As you can see, there is more to improve your page’s ranking than just putting some keywords on your own website. You need to plug your website into the network of websites associated to your keywords, and the best way to do that is through backlinking. As long as you have plenty of different and legitimate links to your website, you should be able to drive more traffic to your pages over time.