Search Engine Optimization- The Long Road to Success explores the results of following the suggestions and ideas presented in the original article by this author, “Search Engine Optimization for Beginners”. The results have been better than expected and these principles can help you achieve better page rank and higher positioning on the world wide internet search engines at a minimal cost by doing the work yourself.

In the original article, “Search Engine Optimization for Beginners”, I wrote about several topics: my new business and total ignorance of the concept “search engine optimization”; the limited value and huge expense of hiring search engine experts; how I created a long term plan for increasing my website’s popularity on the web after using one hour of an experts time; and how another expert helped me understand what needed to be accomplished, namely: 1) add more quality content to my site and 2) create significant and relevant inbound links to my site.

In my opinion, the two most important things are writing articles for publication plus finding sites that will accept them for publication and researching your competitor’s sites for clues how to obtain inbound links to your site. For other technical issues with regard to search engine optimization it is suggested that you visit you visit seomoz.org and read their article entitled: “Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization”. You may need some technical help. You may need to hire an expert to implement some of the search engine optimizations into your site; but you can do most of the hard work i.e. the writing for your site’s content and doing the research yourself. This will save you a bundle of money.

Keywords are important. A keyword is defined as a significant word or phrase in the title, subject headings, contents notes, abstract, or text of a record in an online catalog or database which can be used as a search term in a free-text search to retrieve all the records containing it. (according to the UCB Library in Colorado). When you write the text for your site, the text should contain every keyword that is also contained in your html code (this is where an expert may be required to insert the keyword code on you site’s html).

How do you find the best keywords for your site? Research your competitors’ sites again and again. Here is how to do it. Let’s assume your business sells baby clothes. Go to a search engine such as Goggle or Yahoo and type in “baby clothes”. Study each of the sites that appear on the first three pages. On each site use your computer to research the site’s keywords: go to View on your computer, then scroll down and click on Page Source. You can easily see the keyword in the public domain code; you can copy them; and you can then decide which ones are most appropriate for your site. Why reinvent the wheel? You can do this research yourself.

One very popular baby clothes site has over 5000 pages of relevant content and over 6000 inbound links. This inspires the internet search engines to rank it at the top of page one in a search for baby clothes. It has a page rank of 5. Obviously, a lot of very hard work has been accomplished for this site.

Another very important search engine optimization technique is to research you competitor’s inbound links. Here you can learn how many pages they have in their sites, and see the most relevant inbound links. You can find relevant directories to link to; and you can find where they publish information or articles about their products or services.

Simply go to Yahoo.com and type in “link:www.companyname.com”. There is a world of internet information for you to see.

By using the above techniques, I have improved my site’s position significantly for several keywords. This has improved the number of inquiries for my business services.

You can follow these simple techniques and achieve better results for your businesses too! Don’t forget to end your article with a Copyright © 2007- name of your company, and a hyperlink to your website, i.e. you website address.

One last thought occurs to me. Do not expect results immediately. There appears to be a time lag, from several days, to several months in terms of the various Search Engines picking up on your efforts. The process is slow and involves a lot of hard work on your part. Nevertheless, I recommend you do as much of the work as possible yourself. The results are satisfying and the costs are minimal.