Search Engine Optimization Software, Free SEO software

The paid keyword advertising alternatives
The natural search results are ranked by the search engine's algorithm while others are
simply paid advertisements from companies willing to buy their way to the top using pay-
per-click (PPC) advertising. When performing a search for almost any conceivable keyword
on Google, Yahoo! or MSN, you'll likely see a set of results labeled as Sponsored Links or
Sponsor Results. 
Some sponsored results may appear in the same format as the natural search results, while
others are listed within colored text boxes along the side of the page. Please see the
illustrations below. 
 
An illustration of the "sponsored" and natural results on Google, Yahoo! and MSN
The pros and cons of PPC
Long gone are the days of ranking well for competitive keyword phrases within weeks of
putting a site online. As a matter of fact, new sites can rarely rank well within their first year
of existence. This is where the pay-per-click advertising alternatives comes to the rescue.  As
long as you have a valid credit card handy you can start getting visitors to your site
immediately once you sign up with Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, or MSN
AdCenter pay-per-click advertising. The greatest benefit of PPC is the immediate traffic you
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get to your site, but the downside is the on-going cost of bidding on keywords month after
month.
Who uses Pay-Per-Click advertising?
?  Advertisers who are either not ready to commit a budget or time for
improving their natural search engine ranking. Small and mid size business
often face a dilemma when it comes to SEO. Hiring a SEO company, or doing in-
house SEO both require financial resources and time commitment. In most cases
small e-commerce companies choose the easier PPC route at first, but often they
quickly realize without proper investment in the advice of a pay-per-click specialist
and conversion tracking tools they can loose a lot of money very quickly.
?  High profile companies who's websites can't be optimized using traditional
SEO techniques. Corporate websites are often an untouchable property for SEOs.
Key executives rarely give the go ahead to redesign a corporate website to achieve
higher search engine ranking. In these cases PPC is the only way to gain visibility
on the search engines.
?  PPC advertisers who want to be in the top results for thousands of
keywords. These companies view the cost of PPC as any other off-line promotion
method and hey usually heavily invested in visitor analytic tools to accurately report
their break even points and profitability for every keyword they bid on. 
?  Webmasters who want to test the performance of keywords quickly so they
can build an expanded keyword list for organic ranking. Smart webmasters
know that to properly test a keyword's relevance and suitability can be quickly
achieved with PPC. It takes only a few minutes to setup a pay-per-click campaign
with thousands of keywords and with the use of the free Google Analytics it can
take less than a few days to find the best performing keywords.  
?  Advertisers who have a recognizable brand names, but want to have their
ads on top of the search results, when other competitors are also allowed
to bid on their brand name keywords. A perfect example of this is the airline
industry. Online travel agencies are regularly bidding on airline company brand
keywords such as "american arilines", "soutwest" etc.
It's not uncommon to hear of advertisers who spend tens of thousands of dollars on a
monthly basis for immediate visibility on Google. Also many advertisers have new websites
that are either too young to rank well or may have been penalized for spammy SEO
techniques. The point we are trying to make is, PPC is a great alternative to get your site in
front of millions of search engine users quickly providing (1) you have allocated a monthly
budget, (2) researched your keywords thoroughly, (3) and set up a proper visitor and
conversion metrics reporting tool. We can't emphasize enough the need for visitor and
conversion measurement tools prior to engaging in any PPC campaign. Google Analytics is
great free choice for webmaster to track their keywords and conversions that can be tied
back to their Google Adwords campaign keywords.
PPC can also come very handy to find suitable keywords for your site by testing a large
number of keywords at once and measuring the conversion results closely. This process can
help you weed out the poor performing keywords and find the true gems. The key is to set
up proper visitor tracking prior to starting any large scale PPC campaigns. 
What is the main advantage of search engine
optimization?
One of the main advantages of high natural search ranking is your site can get visitors from
the search engines 365 days a year without any cost to you other than your own hosting
costs. It's like getting a full page add in the Yellow Pages under the category of your choice
indefinitely. Do you know any better advertising alternatives that are completely free? 
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We don't, that's why we think you should follow this guide closely and refer back to it as
often as you like during the optimization of your website. Although getting free visitor traffic
from the search engines is a very cost effective way to drive targeted traffic to your site, it's
not without a steep learning curve. The complexity and difficulty of learning SEO can be
directly traced back to the search engines themselves. How is that so, you may wonder? The
search engines are in the difficult position of trying to reveal as little as possible about the
inner workings of their technology to the public, yet they need webmasters like you and me
to provide them with the website's that provide the search result in response to the millions
of search queries. 
Why your website doesn't already rank well?
If your site had been online for a few days only, we can assure you, you are asking for the
moon. Longevity on the web is gold, and the search engines reward websites that have a few
years under their belts. It's not to say your website has no chance of ranking well if it's only
a few months old, but older websites have the staying power many younger competitors just
can't match, especially on Google. 
Beside the age factor, we could list at least a dozen or more search engine ranking factors
that your website probably hasn't incorporated into its pages. There are also a number of
other external influences (hint: links) that are in your "SEO blind spot" right now. We
promise that by following our SEO guide you will be well equipped to uncover the secrets to
your own website's ranking.
Is your website's focus global or local?
There is a huge difference in time and effort needed to climb to the top of the search results,
and it all depends on the keyword phrases you want your visitors to find you by. Attaining
top ranking on the search engines depends on the competitiveness of the keyword terms you
are targeting. Meaning, the fewer web pages competing for the same terms the higher your
chances are of succeeding. 
Let's say you are the webmaster of a small local real estate firm in Ajax, Ontario Canada with
a population of about 80,000. Your job would be fairly simple and straightforward to get a
top ranking for "ajax real estate" or "homes in ajax. In this case, the webmaster could
probably get a top ranking just by creating unique title tags for the website with the
keywords in the title tag and "sprinkle" the same keywords in the body text. The home page
title tag for our real estate site in Ajax could look something like this <TITLE>Ajax Ontario
Real Estate Agent : Ajax Home Realtors</TITLE>
On the other hand if you wanted to rank in New York or Los Angeles for real estate related
terms, your chances of succeeding would be severely tested. You may already know the
reason why. That's right, a bigger population means more real estate offices with websites
that have the same keyword terms somewhere on their web pages. The end results is a
bigger optimization and link building effort, and most likely more time needed to get the
same results as our friendly Ajax realtors. Since there are many more sites competing for the
New York and Los Angeles real estate terms, naturally the New York or Los Angeles based
real estate webmasters would have to go beyond title tag optimization. They would have to
do some serious content writing, optimization, and link building to get a number one ranking.
However, this should not discourage you because the search engines rankings are not written
in stone, and even the number one website can be unseated with persistent effort and
patience.
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Website owners who sell products or distribute their content worldwide are in a tougher
situation when it comes to SEO. It's easy to see why. Once we remove the local geographical
terms and do a search for "real estate" only, we are presented with over 370 million results
from Google: Results 1 10 of about 370,000,000 for real estate. Unless the keyword phrase
is fairly unique, competing globally for popular keywords terms will take more time and
careful link building. In some cases, it can take as much as one year of search engine
optimization to achieve a top 10 ranking for a very popular term. 
Your website's age and the Google "Sandbox"
You may not know this, but how long your website's has been online is a key factor in how
much work it will take to achieve a decent search engine ranking. We are not talking about
the domain's original registration date, but the actual time elapsed between the site's going
online and now. The longer the site has been online without any significant down time the
better. Sites under the one year mark will have a very difficult time, especially on Google due
to factors which even Google doesn't disclose publicly. There is overwhelming evidence a new
site needs to be online for a minimum of six moths to one year before it can reach top 10
results for even moderately competitive keyword terms. This artificially imposed ranking
ceiling on new websites is referred to as the Google "Sandbox" in SEO.
The Google "Sandbox" is a phenomenon that was first observed in 2003 and ever since we
can see evidence of new sites with commercial focus competing for highly popular keyword
phrases are ranked artificially low for a period of between 6-12 month depending on the
market segment and specific keywords. The theory behind the Google "Sandbox" is Google's
attempt to control newly build spam websites and link farms from rising to the top of the
search results in a short amount of time. Unfortunately Google never openly acknowledged
the existence of such a filter or algorithm, so we have no official confirmation from Google,
but we can assure you it does exists. 
The only sites we have seen escaping the Google "Sandbox" are educational or government
domains, or subdomains of well established older websites. Another group of sites that may
escape the "Sandbox" is sites targeting low competition keyword phrases with local
geographical focus. For example a new site that competes for the keyword phrase "toronto
handyman", or "toronto carpenter" may be able to rise to the top of the results in less than 4
months. On the other hand a new site targeting the keyword phrase "las vegas real estate"
will face the same Google "Sandbox" just like other commercially focused sites in popular
niches and may take over a year to achieve reasonable results.