Stats today cover everything under the sun. No longer is it just a number of visitors but we can see what browsers, the date and time, how much time they spent on the site, or any given page and a lot more.

I like the fact that the stats will show me what keyword was searched for and where in the listings I was when they clicked on my site. Depending on what stats software you use it will show something like “google.com – blue widgets – 1-10, which means I was somewhere between position 1 and 10 when the search was done, and they clicked on my site for the key phrase “blue widgets”. Ya gotta love this stuff!

Take your time when you look at the stats. Look for little things that will clue you in and how people search, and how they found you at all. Update your site accordingly. You will benefit from all of this with an increase in targeted traffic.

I first used AXS, from xav.com, for my stats and it is really a very good program, even today. I still use it some today and still get good information from it.

Try Google Analytics if you like. It’s free. It’s real good.

Nothing comes close to this information when it comes to improving your site and traffic from it. Get to work analyzing this information and your site will climb in the ranks from this simple, but very effective, optimization effort.

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Google was not even around back then. The term SEO wasn’t even thought up yet. Optimization wasn’t a conversational word and the internet was really a melting pot of ideas and websites that took on all kinds of new and exciting looks. These were very exciting times.

After a while the engines began to work on their algorithms and utilize other criteria to get search results back to their users. This provided much more relevant sites. The meta tags were pretty much left behind at this point. The internet was gaining websites by the thousands and there seemed to be no end in sight.

There was a lot of trial and error back then. Test this and test that. As all this testing was going on it became a necessity to optimize your site if you wanted to have any traffic at all. Online businesses were scrambling to get their sites listed above the fold and SEO people were getting paid to perform these actions.

Times have changed and although I’m still more than willing to optimize your site for you, the fact is, if you have the time or personnel, you can easily learn how to do this work yourself and save a bundle too. My optimization courses, both the SEO Training Course and the Advanced SEO Training Course will teach you what you need to know in order to get your site to rise in the ranks. There is no question about it.

I urge anyone who has the ability to update their own websites to look into learning how to optimize. SEO has become common knowledge and is not longer something that demands being farmed out to special people with special knowledge. You can learn how to SEO your own websites and get the job done just as well as the gurus do.

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I’m not sure if it is overlooked, or if it just isn’t applied, but more often than not I will not see keyword emphasized within the body content when the could, and perhaps should be. This is a lost opportunity to lend some important to your most important keywords.

This question comes up from time to time and often I am asked how to actually place emphasis on particular words in a web page and it’s content. The most utilized way to do this to actual body content is through italicizing, or using boldface. Both work equally well and do bring emphasis to the content that it is used on.

It’s not always implemented as part of an SEO campaign. I don’t know why, I like it, and I have seen some good results from it. You are missing out if you are not emphasizing your content and keywords. As with anything, don’t go overboard, just get with the emphasis!

I can find no benefit to using underlining, quotes or all capitals. If you have any proof of this let me know. I’m really interested in this. My research shows that only the bolding and italicizing of the main body content pays off in SEO dividends.

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Take the time to write up a good title for your content that really shows exactly what the content is about, as well as providing them with no option but to go ahead and read what you have written.

Use the title tag wisely for a web page because it will show up in the search engine results as the title of the particular listing. You want to get the traffic from your listings so make the title engage your reader so they click on your site.

There is nothing that will make a reader move on to whatever is next than a boring title. This holds true for all writing, not only web pages and title tags, and not only the title tag itself, but your heading, which should be the title of your page.

Always use your keywords in the title tag but don’t expect them to be captivating enough on their own to get your readers to continue to your site and read on. Spend some time on this tag to make your readers want to continue reading. Provide them with a question that they need to read on to get answered. Provide them with some need that can only be solved by reading on.

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Google is ever changing and perhaps we like them for that, but it’s no fun when you lose listings, and consequently traffic. It seems that this algorithmic change lies in the area of the long tail search.

Traffic is up, or maybe traffic is down for you, from this update. It’s a two sided situation and some have to win and some will indeed lose.

The long tail keyword is a great thing to have good listings for. The proof is in the fact that generally, getting to the long tail search, people have “drilled down” … starting with a more broad search and adding keywords until they get to be very specific.

I have sorted out things on some sites and done some keyword research into other long tails and begun to optimize for them. I believe I can gain some listings back with this method.

I don’t recommend jumping into the pool and making changes … not just yet anyway … or at least, not vast or sweeping ones. Let’s take a look at our statistics and see what other long tails may have popped up and are now sending us some traffic.

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Keep the title tag short, but not so short that it doesn’t define the page, and be sure to provide both your users and the engines with a very brief yet concise idea of what the page is all about. “Dell Laptops” is a title … so is “17″ Dell Laptops, Windows 7, Norton Security at Discount Prices”. Spend a little time on this tag and it will pay off handsomely.

I don’t like to see a title tag with more than 12 words in it. Less is OK, as long as you are providing the engines, and the users, with the best information.

Give you pages good titles that reflect the value of a page. If you are CEO of your company your title reflects the fact that you are the most, or one of the most, important people in your company. This quick little acronym defines you. Make your web pages be defined as thoroughly with good keyword rich title tags.

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I mentioned the word literary work in describing what I thought website content should be. Well, this apparently scared some people into thinking I was stating that they need to hire a real author to do all their writing. Well, perhaps they do … or perhaps it’s just a matter of writing when you are in the right mood, or teaching yourself somehow to learn how to write. As an aside, I just remembered that there are some online courses you can take to better your writing skills. One such source I’m aware of is Virtual University. Their courses are quite reasonable in price and last I was there they had a course specifically targeting website content writing. I have no clue if it that course agrees with what I’m saying here now, but it can’t hurt!

My beef after visiting these sites, which was the problem I felt when I visited them, was that … even though I had just read their introductory information … I didn’t know what the site was about. It was not fulfilling my need for information about the keywords I typed into the search engine.

A light went off in my head, so to speak, that the content on my sites was probably not providing that warm and fuzzy feeling to my users either. I don’t want that situation. I want my users to get what they came for. So, what exactly is that anyway? Well, the feeling I had was that of bewilderment, or sadness and frustration, that I didn’t know what was going on. I felt in the dark still … not knowing what I was looking for actually is.

I read content that described the company, it’s corporate image, it’s founder. I read content that, although it was wordy, should of been a short caption under the photos. I didn’t get an answer to what was on my mind when I typed my keywords into the search engine.

This event is pushing me to go back over my own sites, and of course my clients, and have a good long look at the content, while keeping the keywords each page is targeting, and asking myself if the content is approaching a definition of the keywords, and answering the question that the users will have when they arrive at the sites.

What needs to happen for many sites is to take the next step to investing time and talent into the content of the site. We need to get past mere explanations of photos, about us content on main pages, descriptions of the company and the founders. I am not as impressed with the qualifications of the company owner, the CEO or anyone else employed at the company, as I am with the site answering my question quickly after I arrive.

So here we are, I believe, at a turning point where sites need to really get on the bandwagon and get their content cleaned up in order to not only meet search engine algorithms, but meet the needs of the people who arrive at the site.

One big thing I learned here is that people want an answer to the question … what does this mean for me … or … what will this do for me. In other words as well, why do I need this?

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I’m referring to training yourself to do this work. It’s not all that difficult, if you know what to do, and you can discover all the secrets of SEO in my SEO Training Course. Of course you can also discover lots of secrets if you subscribe to the Daily SEO Tips Newsletter which is delivered to your inbox every day … of course that will take a little longer to get all the information.

I mentioned in the other posting that, at this point in time, most of my clients are working on my $500 a month plan and sign on for an initial six month campaign. Many stay on with me for the long term and I have clients that have been with me for years … four or more years. When you consider that my course sells for $250, which is only half of a typical month’s campaign price, you can clearly see the benefit to yourself from purchasing access to this course. This is lifetime access as well, to all future updates, tools, etc., etc. Everything that I include as time moves forward. I say access which means you get a username and password to enter a protected area of my site where the course is. I changed over to this method from an eBook because it is so much easier to update and keep the most recent information in front of you.

Right at this point in time I am updating this course. I’m taking it all the way from the Version 1, which I created several years ago and have been updating regularly, to a Version 2 which includes Social Networking and a lot more about inbound link acquisition … the most important advances in SEO over the past years.

While it’s being updated I am selling access for a reduced rate. Today that reduced rate is $50, but sometime over this weekend (before March 8, 2010) I will be increasing this to $75. Soon, and although I expected to complete this update by mid March, it looks like it will be April before I’m done … it’s a lot of updating, I will be increasing this price to the actual purchase price of $250. There is a definite benefit to getting on-board now while I am updating … or wait and pay full price later. I don’t care!

So there you have the latest about the cost of optimization. It can be had for a very inexpensive price if you are willing to learn about it, and do it yourself, or do your SEO in-house. Otherwise the monthly figure is not all that outrageous, and I do work with people on a smaller scale, with less time involvement, to meet smaller budget needs. Contact me to talk about it.

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You can pay very little in this day and age to get your site “optimized”, but to what degree will it be done?

I see a lot of people from Asia advertising their SEO skills and trying to make a living at SEO. For one thing, SEO is not easy. It’s not difficult work that you will break out in a sweat over, no, nor should it give you a headache from straining your brain power. However, SEO isn’t something that you just lean right off, nor is it something that you can learn, completely, in even a year or two of working at it.

I have been at SEO since 1997. I found that back then if I got my affiliate sites up in the ranks, I could earn commissions and bring money home to put food on my table. It was really easy back then, simply put one more keyword that the person in the #1 position and you would then be in the number one position.

The engines quickly caught on to this though, and it became more difficult all the time. The engines caught onto all of the simple tricks quickly and over the course of the past decade, they have become very, very smart. They don’t fall for these tricks any more and you need to really do the right things to get yourself listed. This is all actually for the overall good of every website out there. And in reality, it has made the job of optimizing easier … that is easier if you are doing it for yourself.

I say that because, no one knows your business like you do. If you are writing all of your content, and you know some SEO regarding content and keywords, all you really need to do is right quality content, and make the keyword density right, and include the right keywords. Not all the difficult of a task.

It becomes more difficult for me to optimize a site that is out of my realm of knowledge. I’m not much of a “car dude” so if I have to write about automobiles, I’m going to have a hard time of it. I have worked with clients in many fields where I was not really up on the subject. It was difficult for me to write copy for them. I have farmed it out to those more adept at, and also have had the client himself write the copy. Either method can work.

So, what does all this have to do with what optimization costs? It takes time. Writing content doesn’t just happen, and taking that content and analyzing it for keyword density, and to ensure it includes the most important keywords, it a time consuming practice. So is the on site code and updating. Time, is money. Time spent well, by someone educated in SEO is invaluable. Time spent optimizing by someone who does not know what to do, or how to really get close to the engines’s algorithm … is a waste of time and money.

I’ll say right out, today I charge most of my clients a $500 monthly fee with a campaign minimum of six months. This is basics and gets the job done on nearly all sites. But it is a time frame too … I won’t be spending 60 hours a month of your site, but I’ll be working smart and getting the job done. Compare this with the Asian, who perhaps, would not care if he had to work 160 hours for a $500 USD fee. But what would you get? Well, I’ll leave that to you to figure out. I’m not trying to put down the Asians, who have flooded into the market, not at all, and I would imagine some of them know SEO well, or at least I hope so.

As mentioned a bit above, the engines have really honed in on the algorithm. This translates to on-site work that needs to get a certain number of things done, and done in a certain way. This can really be learned by anyone, and then analyzed and worked on more. That’s what SEO is all about. You can learn how to do this yourself. Why not spend a smaller sum of money, learn how to optimize your site yourself, or have your staff learn it, and save a bundle of money over time. Check out my SEO Training Course to see how you can do it.

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Isn’t the whole idea to drive traffic to your site?

Well then, you need to know what people are searching for, with regularity, and what the competition is for those keywords, before you decide on which one will be best.

I advise you to think long tail, at least when you start, because they will provide a jump start of traffic because they are more easy to get listed for. Later you can concentrate on your favorite keyword that has 60,000 monthly searches and 999,000,000,000 competing sites.

Really, you need to sift through all the keywords and select the best. You need to use some software to tell you which keywords are getting searches. You probably know your market pretty well, but I’ll bet people are searching for you with keywords you have never thought about.

Do the research.

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