Dear Friend,

I’ll never forget the time one of my websites made it to the top 200 of Yahoo.

I had been optimizing the site for a week and a half, and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I had taken the job because my boss thought I was “good with computers”.

I had been typing in my keywords trying to find even the faintest hint of my work, when it showed up like a golden harp on spot 196. I knew that if I could get it to that position, I could get it into the #1 spot.

Less than 2 weeks later, I had not just 1 keyword, but 5 different highly searched phrases in #1 spots on many different search engines.

My company saw a customer increase of 500% within 6 months.

I, of course, got a huge raise… and I learned something very important:

That if a 21-year-old with literally NO REAL computer experience could do that for a company, search engine optimization HAD to be easy.

And it is. I feel strongly that of all the different ways to market a business online, SEO is not only the easiest, but the safest for the business owner. I mean, you can’t really get scammed with FREE can you?

Still Afraid? Let’s Take a Closer Look…

Optimizing a web site is broken down into 3 steps.

Step 1: Find your keyword. Your keyword is a word or phrase that you as a business owner have chosen to advertise on the search engines with. Advertising under highly searched terms give you more traffic (more on this later).

Step 2: Onsite Optimization. This step gives you the business owner complete control over how you want the search engines to see your website. Do you want to be pretty? Do you want to be Big & Strong? You get to decide!

Step 3: Offsite Optimization. My favorite part of SEO. This is where you get to use the Internet to meet great people from all over the world, and trade information with them. You’ll meet business owners, hobbyists, professors, I’ve even met a few actors!

Is That It? Sounds More Like Goofing Off!

I told you. It’s extremely simple. You just have to NOT be afraid, and be willing to learn! Sure, there’s some clockwork that goes into this behind the scenes, but those 3 steps are the only work you have to do!

Once I realized that formula, I began to optimize page after page. Then, the company I worked for added those services to their customer package. I began to optimize all KINDS of websites for all sorts of people!

Want help getting Targeted Traffic?

Find out how my students are experiencing Increased Web Site Traffic by visiting www.optimize123.com today!

This post is written by Jeremy Estes. Jeremy is the author of the Optimize 1-2-3 Training Guide and currently provides free coaching to students via email and telephone seminars.

“If you’re serious about flooding your web site with Targeted Traffic, the Optimize 1-2-3 system is a fast, fun and easy way to start!”

Choosing a domain name for your website is a very important decision, and should not be taken lightly. A bad choice of name could seriously affect the potential profitability of your online business, and prevent it achieving as much success as it should do.

There are many factors you should consider when selecting a domain name.

Firstly, you should try and include your main keyword(s) in your name if at all possible. This will help your site in terms of search engine rankings, because search engines generally rank websites slightly higher if they include their main keyword(s) in their domain name.

In saying that though, ideally it should be relatively short and easy to remember. This is fairly obvious, but is a mistake that a lot of webmasters make. I always prefer names without any dashes or numbers in, as this increases the risk of people mistyping your address into their browsers, and try to keep them as short and as memorable as possible.

Sometimes though it’s just not possible or desirable to include your keywords in your domain name. For example, your main keyword terms or phrases could be two or three words long, and if they’re long words as well, then any available domain name you find that contains these keywords may simply be too long. Also, you may decide that any domain name containing your main keywords would be too generic and unmemorable, so in this instance you would probably have more success trying to brand yourself, and creating a unique, distinctive domain name, that sets you apart from your competition.

Indeed a lot of major companies now prefer to brand themselves with a memorable domain name, and don’t include any keywords at all in their name. You only have to look at some of the biggest companies online to see evidence of this. A lot of offline companies also do this when building an online presence, by simply using their offline company name as their domain name.

One other thing to consider is that you should not use a trademarked name in your own domain name. This is again fairly obvious, but can be a serious problem. You should double-check before you choose a domain name as you could potentially face legal action in the future when the company who owns the trademarked name finds out about your site. At the very least they could demand that you give up the right to the domain name, which could be catastrophic to your business if you have to suddenly drop your name and go for a completely new one.

Finally, whatever name you choose, I recommend, if at all possible, to choose a name with the suffix .com. This will instantly give your website increased credibility, as people still refer to online businesses as dot-coms, even those people that have never used the internet. Also I know from personal experience that when I browse various websites I will always give more credence to a website ending in .com, than one ending in .info or .biz, for example.

James Woolley is a successful marketer who has several money-making sites in various niches. His latest site is a free internet marketing resource guide, which also includes a newsletter filled with free tips and bonuses.

With the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN seemingly changing their algorithms on a regular basis, it sometimes feels like you’re fighting a losing battle trying to keep up with them. We’re all constantly tweaking our websites and chasing links in a desperate attempt to grab, or hold on to, that elusive spot on the first page of results for our chosen keywords, so is SEO really worth the effort?

Well firstly if you have optimized your site well, both through onpage and offpage optimization, and manage to obtain top rankings in the search engines, then you can get a great deal of free traffic to your site, depending on how popular your keywords are that you are ranking well for. So yes of course in this instance SEO is most definitely worth spending time over.

The problem, however, is that if you are launching a new site and plan to get the bulk of your traffic from search engines, you may end up being disappointed because it can take many months before you even get close to achieving high rankings. This is particularly true of Google and Yahoo. MSN is easier to rank highly for, but this is negated by the fact that a lot less people use MSN than Google and Yahoo.

This is why when I now launch a new site I’m focused more on receiving traffic from other sources, and concentrating almost solely on building my own list of subscribers. There are endless ways to start getting immediate traffic to a new site and start building your list.

I personally like to post in forums, write and submit articles to article directories and relevant ezines, pay for advertising in these same ezines, write and submit press releases, promote a squeeze page on traffic exchanges (if my site is related to making money online), credit-based safelists (free safelists are a waste of time) and other list-building services. I also like to write free reports and ebooks (containing links to my site) which can be freely given away (and rebranded for greater distribution) creating a viral effect.

I still carry out the standard onpage search engine optimization techniques, and offpage techniques such as getting keyword-rich text links from directories and other related sites, but I now no longer base my whole future profit model on obtaining top search engine rankings. My thoughts are that if they come they come, but whatever happens as long as I keep building a list of subscribers for each of my sites I know that I can always achieve good profits regardless of where I rank in the search engines.

It also eliminates any stress that can occur when the leading search engines change their algorithms. I’ve seen many instances of long-established websites whose entire livelihood relied on the traffic they received as a result of being at the top of the search engines, but who suddenly saw their sites disappear from the first few pages of results, wiping their profits out almost immediately. Some of these sites had no mailing lists either so they had no alternative profit model in place.

Hopefully you can see that while everyone wants top search engine rankings, it’s not the be all and end all, and certainly shouldn’t be used to base your whole business model on. There are numerous successful websites online who couldn’t care less about SEO, and indeed are nowhere to be found in the search engines. They rely on other traffic-generating techniques, such as viral marketing, joint venturing, or recruiting affiliates, for example, to build and grow their online business.

To conclude, while it’s important to spend some time optimizing your website and obtaining links for SEO purposes, spending several hours a day tweaking every page of your site just to please the search engines is not a productive way to spend your time. Instead you should be focusing on building your list of targeted subscribers, using other more immediate traffic-generating methods where you can see results very quickly, and not have to wait several months before you’re ranking highly in the search engines.

Just keep adding good quality content to your site, and providing a reason for your visitors to return to your site. This should have the effect of boosting your search engine rankings anyway, without having to spend hours on SEO, because other sites will start linking to you automatically, and the search engines will generally reward your site with a higher ranking if it is constantly updated with good content.

This post is written by James Woolley. James is a successful marketer who has several money-making sites in various niches. His latest site is a free internet marketing resource guide, which also includes a newsletter filled with free tips and bonuses.