If you are searching for a search engine marketing tactic or niche – then keyword research is how you start, you will probably begin your search online. Thus, you will likely be hit by a number of tools that can be used in order to compile lists according to your subject. Some of these tools are free, while others might charge a small usage fee. The problem is that they all claim to produce the best lists on the internet, but this can’t be true for all of them. Some companies (such as SEOintelligence) use their own keyword methods to come up with words that are truly unique. If you want to drive the most traffic to your site, hiring a competent company is probably your best bet.

The major issue with any use of a keyword tool is not the tool itself, rather – most people don’t know where to start or begin, or what to do with them once they have the words in their possession 9keyword analysis paralysis!). The reason behind this is that (as with any other kind of marketing) there is a “right” and “wrong” way to use keywords. If you don’t know how to use them precisely, then they simply won’t work for you – no matter how much you might have paid for that keyword list. In short, hire a marketing company that will keep your site on top of those ranking pages by using keywords properly.

Brick and mortar marketing is not an easy game, so why would internet marketing be any easier? The truth is that it takes skilled professionals in order to market a website with any success. Unless you have training in internet marketing, this is one thing that is best left to the experts. You can use any keyword tool for search engine marketing that you find, but you have to know how to use those words the right way in order to gain anything from them.

We recommend using SEOintelligence for keyword research and tracking.

And, of course there probably is another more competitive reason (IMHO): Google secretly wants to clone/buy Twitter (think of the impression opportunity for ads!!!!)

The Definition
SEO is quite simply a practice (the experts believe it’s a process) of modifying, improving all aspects of your website (internal and external) to direct more traffic (read visitors) from the various search engines. SEO firms are many and varied; some SEO firms focus on specialized areas, while many others have a more general approach towards this process. Moreover, the optimization of your website for the different Mega Search Engines takes into consideration several unique factors that can be loosely classified as website optimization.

Search engine optimization is a discovery of various aspects that have the potential to generate targeted traffic, while ensuring that your website is not just search engine friendly but also well linked and marketed by utilizing the intrinsic offerings of your business.

Want a more complicated jargonized definition of SEO?

The Reason
As a webmaster you may wonder why your website needs SEO at all. Let’s consider this. According to comScore’s study on search engine rankings for America in the year 2008, it’s been found that Google (the big daddy of search engines) is at the top of the list. It commands a market share of 53% alone (an increase of 3% from 50% in September 2007. (Check the graph below). In January 2008 alone, Google received 7.7 billion search queries (Google search – 6.2 billion and YouTube – 1.5 billion).

Almost all the internet traffic is directed by the big search engines namely, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL, and AskJeeves. The most important way to ensure your website’s success is to… be discovered by the web spiders or the search engines. If your website content doesn’t exists in the databases of these SEs, you simply haven’t arrived and are anonymous, hence, unsuccessful. Irrespective of who or what your website caters to (services, content, products, information etc) search engines are, unarguably, the only method to navigate for a majority of the web users.

Essentially, search engine optimization is a way of making your website attractive enough for SEs to discover it and direct traffic so that they can be converted into potential customers, ensuring success of your venture. Studies have repeatedly proven that search engine driven traffic can make or break your business. Not to be overlooked are facts that targeted traffic also provides free (or paid) publicity, exposure, and (of course) revenue for your company.

The Benefit
As a business owner, website owner, or SEO specialist, you’ll want to work hard to make sure that the big search engines find your site and throw it within the first 20 results for a targeted keyword. Why? Here’s why:
• Google has a market share of 53% – 58% for current year
• Yahoo has 22.9% market share
• Microsoft has 9.8-10% market share
• AskJeeves has 4.6% market share and
• AOL or Time Warner has 4.6% market share as well.

So, in this introductory article on What is SEO, we’ll just like to say – making an investment in SEO (time, money, and sweat) will definitely bring you exceptional return, albeit you need to be patient.

Get the best Search Engine Marketing service now! Try our 14-day FREE trial by clicking here.

Why can these guys do it?
Well it’s simple – experience.

Jeremy Hermanns has been in the SEO/PPC space for almost 6 years. He once worked at a small company called Overture/Goto and was a PPC Keyword Category Analyst, he took that skill set and later became the Director of Search Engine Marketing for TribalDDB (a division of DDB-Omnicom). Jeremy has since worked with over 50+ Fortune 500 Top Search Engine Clientele. Having Managed over 250+ SEO/SEM clients in his career, Jeremy know what it takes to rank on difficult search terms and large complex hosting platforms. Jeremy has dedicated the past year of his life to developing SEOintelligence, and is determined to provide the BEST SEO Toolset available anywhere.

Kyle Bunch co-founded Blogebrity — the site dedicated to covering the exploits of blogging’s A-list — with Jeremy Hermanns in 2005. Since then, he’s served as Publisher and occasional Guest Editor, blogging about blogging with great aplomb while exploring new levels of meta. To balance the inherent geekiness of those two jobs, Bunch satiates his appetite for sports as Co-Editor and Publisher of TrojanWire and contributor at AOL’s USC FanHouse, writing about athletics at his alma mater, the Unversity of Southern California. Kyle is currently a Senior Producer at R/GA in New York City.