If you’re concerned about SEO (who isn’t?) and you’re new to the game, you might want to read this article. Why? Well, things aren’t quite the way they were back in the good old days. Of course, if you’re new, you don’t remember the good old days. Or maybe you do and don’t realize how much has changed. Either way, this article will get you up to speed.

Okay, so just what WERE the good old days of search engine optimization? Well, when it came to on page optimization and keywords, essentially it went like this…use as many relevant keywords as you can throughout the page. But then the search engines saw what people were doing and started dropping the hammer on these sites. Maybe you were a victim yourself. I know I was. Yes, guilty as charged. Anyway, those days are dead and gone. What’s replaced them is a little tricky to work with, but well worth the effort. Why?

Well, it comes down to visitor experience. More specifically, you want YOUR visitors to have the best experience that they can have when visiting your site. And that means, if you have a site on, say, debt relief, they don’t want to see the phrase “debt relief” a hundred times on the page. Not only is that going to annoy the heck out of them, it’s going to tick off the search engines as well. And when that happens, your site disappears from the listings.

Okay, so what DO you want to do IF you want to rank for debt relief and related keywords? Actually, it’s quite simple but DOES take a little bit of thought. You want to mix up your keyword phrases while at the same time, make sure they’re still all loosely related. For example, using debt relief, you might want to use keyword phrases like “get out of debt,” “erase debt,” “relieve debt” and so on. Related phrases are easy enough to find by going to Google’s keyword tool. The key is to use these phrases in a natural way so that they don’t sound forced.

Like I said, it takes a little work, but if you want your sites to stay listed and even have a chance to rank well, you’ll take the time to do this simple little thing.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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