You’ve probably typed a search term into your favorite engine and clicked an ad to discover a site with absolutely no information, but tons and tons of links. These sites are called link farms and are part of the global campaign to fool search engines. The business model is pretty simple; an unsuspecting web browser stumbles on their link farming site and they either:

1.    Sell ad space on the site

2.    Redirect traffic to a paying site

3.    Plant some nasty stuff on your computer like spyware or viruses.

There’s an entire industry of enterprising web wizards that do this with pay per click campaigns. If you can traffic at $0.05 per click and sell it at $0.10 per click, you can run that engine forever and constantly make money more money. All those nickels can add up to a lot of money and often these methods fuel some of the dirty corners of the internet.

Another dirty tactic is called typosquatting, or using a slight variation of a web site’s address to fool you into a site that’s not what you expected. www.bankrate.com is a useful site full of financial information, www.bankrait.com is a link farm.

Other sneaky tactics include buying up people’s domain names the second they expire, filling forums and comments with spam links, and luring traffic with offers that are too good to be true.

I read recently that an enterprising pharmaceutical spammer can make up to $4000/day selling Viagra. With that much money out there, it’s unlikely to see us winning the spam war any time soon. Google will keep making tweaks to the search engine model and spammers will keep tweaking their business model to stay ahead.

What Does This Mean For The Good Guys?
Much like the battle between bacteria and anti-bacterial soap, this constant back-and-forth war between Search Engines and spammers means both have gotten really sophisticated. The intricacies of PageRank and link building techniques are getting too complicated for mortals.

It’s not just that techniques in SEO that worked two years ago stopped working, it’s that they can be very detrimental to your business. Google and the other search engines are doing a pretty good job of blacklisting the IP addresses and business names of known spammers and God help you if you end up on those lists.

Focus on Being a Productive Member of the Web Team
Bottom line: You’re not sophisticated enough to do battle on the same playing field as professional link farmers, spammers, and pay per click arbitragers. Just like you wouldn’t try to place bets against professional currency speculators or Wall Street bond wizards, going head to head with professional spammers is a losing battle.

What you do have at your disposal is your deep understanding of your product or service. If you’re a real estate agent, take the time to produce some useful videos about buying foreclosures or managing a fix and flip. If you’re an attorney, spend time answering basic legal questions in an honest and useful way. If you run an organic skin care company, teach people how to take care of their skin and avoid harmful chemicals. Spammers may be very good at fooling search engines, but Google always finds ways to highlight honest links built by real people around quality content. And the goal of every search engine is to find more of your content and less spam. You can win that battle.

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Many businesses aren’t global by definition. Realtors, Chiropractors, Insurance agents, Restaurants, Hair Stylists, and many other local service providers count on local traffic for their business. It used to be very hard for local businesses to compete with global search giants, Pottery Barn would beat out any local furniture store, and what restaurant could compete with Olive Garden. Luckily, the search engines have been working hard to solve the problem of directing local traffic to local businesses. Here’s how to win the local search game.

Post your information on local search engines
The local search engines like Dexknows.com often search each other’s indexes and therefore share information. Larger search engines like infoUSA.com or Localeze.com also share information through data exchange or syndication. This information gets passed onto larger search engines like Yahoo Local profile and Google Local Business Listings. So start by getting your business or service listed in as many local search engines as you can find (hint: they advertise on local TV stations and Billboards). Most of these listings will be free or a have a very minimal charge. This will cause a trickle up effect to the larger searches.

Other great location specific search engines are Yelp.com, Superpages.com, Marchex’s OpenList Network.

Find a way into the local blogs
Many bloggers focus on a neighborhood like Highlands, or very small region like Northwest Denver. These are great resources for local listings. To find these blogs try a basic search like Denver blog or Littleton Blog.

These are very well indexed by search engines for a specific location because they mention the neighborhood so many times. Businesses that are mentioned or linked in these blogs have a very high relevancy and trust factor in the local search engine rankings.

Local directories
Local directories are also well indexed by search engines and are highly relevant to cities or neighborhoods. The best kind of directories are edited by humans because they tend to have less spam than the free-for-all types. Best of the Web is a great example of a local directory, or you can look to Yahoo’s Regional Directory. Try looking for Denver directory or Colorado directory to find more.

Be ruthless about your profile
Do frequent searches in your area and see what turns up for you. Many directories will allow you to edit your profile, so make sure you have your business name, address, and phone number correct wherever you can find it.

Take some time to carefully craft the description of your service. Use comfortable language and a touch of levity to make your Restaurant or Health Clinic stand out among the other choices. Also, take time to get a professional photograph taken and include in any directories that will let you. People will notice a photo and often choose your smiling face over the no-name service just above you in the rankings.

Local search is a huge growing business. Instead of running a very expensive phone book ad, take a few hours to explore what’s out there in local search, you’ll be amazed at the results.

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Two exiting new technology products launched this week and took very different approaches to marketing.

Windows 7 is the long awaited new operating system from Microsoft. Because Vista, the previous operating system was a complete mess, Microsoft really wanted to hit it out of the park with Windows 7.

Cute is the New Black
They launched a TV ad campaign with Kylie, a 4 and a half year old self-described PC girl. She finds happy words and pictures of bunnies her dad’s PC and quickly makes a slide show complete with Rocky music. The ad is sickeningly sweet and goes right for our emotional responses. We all know that cute sells, but I can’t help feeling this is a bit much.

Viral. Like Swine Flu
Microsoft also made an attempt at viral marketing with its “host a Windows 7 party” campaign. Yes, it really is as dorky as it sounds. Sign up and Microsoft will send you Windows 7 napkins, Windows 7 gift bags, Windows 7 balloons. Invite your friends over for a party to celebrate the launch of Windows 7 and have fun installing it on laptops and troubleshooting together.

“Wanna come to my Windows 7 release party?”

“No.”

The concept was certainly viral, but not in the way Microsoft had hoped. Pretty soon, it was every tech reporter and blogger’s favorite thing to cringe about. Someone dubbed over the release party video with a censor bleep and created a hysterically dirty version. Other people ordered the kits and threw parties to mock Microsoft. It created a lot of buzz, but at what cost?

Ride the Wave
Around the same time, Google launched Wave. Wave is a new web platform that lets you collaborate with people in real time on a document. The idea is it replaces the back and forth nature of email and gives you a really good way to create something in a team.

Google realized a couple things:

1.    Wave is full of bugs  and isn’t really ready for mainstream yet.

2.    Wave is very hard to describe and a bit counter intuitive to understand.

3.    Wave, like a telephone, requires other people in the network to collaborate with.

Google’s approach was different. They released an early beta project to a very few selected technology reporters, developers, and geek influencers to get them playing with the project. They gave them each 20 invite recommendations (yes, you still have to be chosen by the Wave committee). Basically, they handpicked a buzz group to be excited about their product. It may seem a bit heavy handed by Google, but they are also paying close attention to the feedback they’re getting. The technology group that they hand selected would are also the types of early adopters who help grow and shape a product in its infancy. Buzz also goes hand-in-hand with a community of users who can make your product great.

Microsoft’s approach is a classic push marketing model. We’re not sure we need a new version of Windows, lord knows the last upgrade was a mistake. So Microsoft had to saturate the advertising market and use all sorts of gimmicks to make us pay attention. We’re left with a feeling in our gut that Microsoft is desperate for our money which makes us a bit less likely to buy.

By limiting its user base to a select few and creating an exclusive kind of buzz, Google has created a classic pull market. People are excited for Wave invites and will take the time to really play with the technology and find good uses for it, because they’re one of the chosen few.

Push vs. Pull
In online marketing, the classic push model is flashy banner ads, spam emails, not-so-subtle twitter posts, etc. The pull model takes more work. You have to fill your site with good content, write interesting articles, and give your customers something special to discover and share with their friends. It takes more work, but in the long run, your customers will respect you more.

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About a year ago, Twitter instituted a no follow policy for all of the links on the site. Every link on Twitter is prevented from passing along the SEO juice to the sites it links to. Whether you believe that Twitter did this to curb spam on the system, or that they just cowed to Google’s demands, the change effectively negated much of the SEO usefulness of twitter from a link building perspective. Having your tweet passed along to 100,000 followers no longer has the effect of drastically increasing search engine placement.

Is Twitter Still a Useful SEO Tool?
So that leaves us with an interesting dilemma, should we scrap Twitter altogether from our SEO tool bag, or is it still a useful part of the conversation?

The Power of the Pyramid
The power of Twitter has always been in the pyramid effect of Twitter’s follower system. If I have 40 followers, and they each have 40 followers, and they each have 40 followers, the information quickly gets multiplied across 10’s of thousands of accounts. Even if this no longer has the effect of creating 64,000 incoming links to your site, it still puts your thoughts and articles in the hands of thousands of people.

Remember, the goal is to be a useful part of the conversation and SEO prominence rises out of that goal. If we publish good articles and people tweet them, they will find your site. Twitter still drives traffic, even if it doesn’t have the secondary effect of driving traffic through Google.

The Alternative Search Engine
Twitter is starting to bill itself as an alternative search engine. The new Twitter home page features the most popular topics by the minute and a very prominent search bar. A Twitter search is different from a Google search. A Google search is about long term relevance: Who’s the closest chiropractor, or who sells inexpensive silver jewelry. People are searching Twitter for a very timely type of relevance i.e. is it hot now? Jay-Z, Neil Patrick Harris, and Mad Men crowd the front page.
For a certain kind of fashionable product or of-the-moment star, a #1 Twitter search ranking may be more valuable than a #1 Google rank. Twitter the search engine can drive real organic traffic to your site and you may find that traffic from Twitter converts at a higher rate than traffic from Google.  Analytics may tell you to dump Google SEO altogether and spend your days on Twitter.

It’s a New Idea, So It Has to Be Good
Twitter, like many new technologies, hasn’t found a final resting place yet. Most of us in the internet community recognize that Twitter is important because lots and lots of people are using it. Businesses are tweeting, grandmas are tweeting, Steven Colbert is … well, he’s doing it too. There’s a danger in jumping on the bandwagon of all new internet technologies, but we’re pretty sure this one is going to be around for some time. As it evolves, it’s more useful to be part of the conversation than start fresh from scratch. Set up a Twitter account. Make a new post for every article you write. Collect some followers and see what happens. The rest of us are waiting to see too.

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One of the most important criteria for search engines to find your site is number of quality incoming links. We know that incoming links are essential to your SEO campaign, but often it is hard to know exactly which links to go after. If you’re just trying to build links in the dark, you’re going to waste an awful lot of time and energy for not a lot of return. That’s why we’re so excited about this new tool from SEOmoz.org

SEOmoz.org recently released a new tool built on their Linkscape research. It’s called Competitive Link Finder and it is part of their Pro series of tools that you can access for around $80/month.  The goal of this tool is to help you find all of the really great links that are driving traffic to your competition.

Here’s what the results look like:
Now I Have the Info, Now What?
With this competitive research in hand, you can really start to understand why a site outranks you. Remember, the formula for ranking higher than your competition is to beat them in:

1.    Indexed pages

2.    Incoming links

3.    Incoming links with the anchor text matching the keyword you want to rank for

4.    Site age

5.    Domain PageRank

6.    Page optimization

Now you can have an exact roadmap to which incoming links are necessary to rank higher.

Why is This Tool Better than Others?
Here are a couple really useful features of the tool:

1.    Ignore NoFollow Links: The tool ignores all of the nofollow links, so you only see which sites are linking directly to competitors.

2.    Ranked by Importance: SEOMoz constantly refines their metrics. The results are a really good estimate of the most important and valuable links.

3.    Comprehensive Data: Linkscape crawls the most important sites on the web, so you’ll have access to the most important information.

4.    Finds the Important Hubs: One important model of SEO traffic is finding the “Hubs” or important pointing sites that drive a huge amount of traffic. This tool is great at locating hubs.

5.    Keep Track of New Links and Competitors: View hundreds, and even thousands of link sources and new competitor sites as they move up the ranks.

6.    Compare Your Site to Any Similar Site: It’s important to find all potential competitors, not just direct competition. You’re limited only by your imagination.

Find Your Competitors Using Google
When faced with a new killer tool, often stare blankly at the input form and aren’t really sure what to do.

Here’s a good place to start when using the tool. Use Google to search for your most competitive key words. The top 10 sites in your industry are your most important competition. Sites like Wikipedia.org are not necessarily your competition.

Once you have a list of the highest competitors, find the ones that are just above you in the rankings.

This is a useful list because it will give you a good idea of what to do to rise up in the rankings.

If you spend a couple hours with this tool, it really will give you a good idea of how to raise your site rankings.

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SEO isn’t rocket science but you do need to have an arsenal of tools if you want to outrank your competition.

You want to focus on these key areas when it comes to SEO. If you can beat out competitors in the following areas, you have a 90% chance of outranking them in the search engines.

•    Indexed pages

•    Incoming links

•    Incoming links -with anchor text matching keywords you want to rank

•    Site age

•    Domain PageRank

•    Page optimization

However, there are some forces that may be against you and could negatively affect your ranking. Avoid the following:

•    Duplicate content – this is a big No-No in SEO

•    Website structure - poorly built/coded

•    Internal linking - structure is bad

•    Incoming links - generated from link farms and/or poor quality sites

•    Incoming links – not relevant to the topic associated with your site

•    Lack of content/keyword issues - not enough content around keyword you want to rank

•    Page optimization - don’t have at least ONE page optimized for that particular keyword

Indexed Pages
It’s easy to find out how many pages search engines have indexed by running searches through Google, Yahoo and Bing.  The syntax for each search engine is different – use the following:

•    Google – site:thecoolblog.com

•    Yahoo – linkdomain:www.thecoolblog.com

•    Bing – site:www.thecoolblog.com

Incoming Links
The best tool to use to find incoming links is Yahoo Site Explorer. This tool allows you to find what websites link back to your sites.

Get MORE incoming links than your competitor and make sure they are BETTER links:

•    Higher-authority sites

•    Similar sites/topics related to your site

•    Links with right anchor texts

Incoming Links with Anchor Text Matching the Keyword You Want to Rank
Anchor text is clickable text in a hyperlink.

You can utilize tools to check how many links point back to your site with the right anchor text. It’s important to get as many links as you can with the right anchor text. It’s better to have 100 links if 75% of them have the anchor text: “search engine marketing (SEM)” compared to 1,000 links with only 5% having that anchor text.

•    SEOmoz Backlink Analysis (paid membership)

•    Backlink Analyzer (free software)

Site Age and Domain PageRank
Another great tool to use is SEO for Firefox. This addon allows you to find the site age/date.  This is important when you are trying to find a keyword to rank.

You can also find the PageRank (PR) using the same tool above. It allows you to see where that particular page is ranked in Google (which is helpful when you are figuring out your competition’s rankings).

Page Optimization
It’s difficult to rank for a keyword you don’t have any optimized content for. If you don’t optimize pages for your keywords, it’s going to make it harder for you in the future when it comes to your rankings.

Create a chart for EACH keyword you want to rank. This allows you to analyze your metrics and figure out what you need to do better to outrank your competition: Do you need more links? Is your site younger than your competitor’s? Is your PR lower or higher than your competition?

The chart needs to include the following:

•    Incoming links

•    Indexed pages

•    # of Matching Anchor Texts

•    Site Age

•    PageRank

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You’re stumped! You just created the BEST content to add to your blog but you are now stuck. What are the MOST effective SEO keywords to use on your site? Where do you start? What tools do you use?

Keyword research is THE most important part of effective SEO. If you pick the wrong keywords, you will waste both a lot of time and money. You also won’t get the search engine rankings you want.

There are some basic criteria you need to keep in mind when searching for keywords:

•    Relevancy – What keywords are relevant to your market/niche?

•    Search volume – There are many users searching for that keyword/term

•    Current ranking – What is the keyword ranking? If it’s a high volume keyword such as “marketing” (ranked #10) compared to “retail marketing” (ranked #600)– go with the former because you’ll get better results faster (more qualified traffic)

How to Avoid Bad Keywords
•    Keywords should be relevant with a high traffic volume

•    People aren’t always going to search for difficult terms. Don’t use complicated terms such as “freestyle snowboarding champion in Lake Tahoe, California”  It’s very unlikely that a person is going to search for that specific term – keep it simple!

•    Sometimes keywords with high search volumes may be more difficult – you may have to work a little harder! Check out the following tools to analyze keyword difficulty: SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool and SEOlogs Keyword Difficulty Check Tool.

How to Choose Effective Keywords
The first step in choosing keywords is brainstorming. You also need powerful tracking tools that will lead you in the right direction.  Learn about the buying process and how consumers research and buy online.

•    First, ask yourself this question: “How would my customers/clients search for my products and services online?”

•    Brainstorm a seed list (it helps to brainstorm with other colleagues) – choose a list of terms that would answer the above question.

•    Use the following keyword tools to expand your list: Google Keyword Tool, WordTracker and WebCEO.  This is how you optimize keywords/terms that people search for the most.
•    Place keywords you find underneath your seed list. The goal is to grow your list with well-optimized keywords/phrases. You need to figure out which keywords have the most relevancy, search volume and current tracking.

•    You could spend up to hours looking for optimized keywords – that may sound long and boring but you could end up with the wrong keywords and mess up your SEO. It’s better to take the time to research keywords NOW then to regret it later!

•    Pay attention to keyword discovery – broad keywords (broad terms with a high search volume) versus long-tail keywords (less searches but more specific/relevant terms related to your products and services)

•    Figure out the search volume for each keyword. You need a relevancy value for each keyword and then calculate the score of each keyword.

•    Choose 5-10 primary keywords (keywords that have high relevancy and search volumes), 20-60 secondary words (lower search volume but very relevant) and keyword modifiers (words that go before, after or in the middle of primary or secondary words – i.e. “free”)
When choosing keywords keep the following criteria in mind:
•    Brand names (i.e. Target)

•    Generic product names (i.e. laptops)

•    Product attributes (i.e. affordable laptops)

•    Brands (i.e. Dell laptops)

•    Models (i.e. Dell Inspiron E1705 laptops)

•    Action keywords (i.e. buy laptops)

•    Problem-related keywords (i.e. how to fix laptops)

•    Specials (i.e. laptops free shipping)

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Link building is an effective online marketing strategy and the key to your company’s success. If you strategically place your links, you’ll be surprised with the qualified traffic you get and how those links build and grow over time.  More links equals more sales and customers!

Keep the following “link building formula” in mind when building your campaign:
•    Links from related sites are worth more than unrelated sites – This is basic common sense. If you have an e-commerce site that sells running apparel, you don’t links from sites that sell cars.  Choose links related to running apparel/running-related products.

•    You want high authority websites linking back to you – A link from a reputable news source such as CNN is worth more than a link from your friend’s parenting blog. It’s also advised to check the authority of the URL linking to you (and the page where the link to your site is located). Sometimes if a site is new they don’t have a PageRank yet. You can easily tell the reason behind why or why not a site has a PR.

•    Quality and Quantity of Links – You need to be aware of the quality of your links, where they originate, the quantity (are you getting a lot of links?) and your anchor text. Are you getting links with keywords you want to rank for in your anchor texts?

Remember that NOT all link building strategies are appropriate for EVERY business/company. You need to figure out what works best for your industry/niche and create your campaign accordingly.

Add Value to Your Content
The KEY to effective link building is to always, always add VALUE to the content you create. If you create bad, irrelevant content, no one will link to your site and you will have stopped your campaign in its track.

You also have to look like an authority in your field. You want to show visitors that you KNOW more than your competitors.  Remember to always add value with your content – how will your content solve a problem or make a person’s life easier?

Links will come to you VERY easily if you stand out with your content and make a unique statement. Link building is contagious and if you become well-known as an industry expert, friends of friends will tell their colleagues and the links continue to BUILD!

Create Natural Looking Links
The worst thing you could do is to make your links LOOK unnatural. Make your links look natural – do NOT create links with the same anchor text because the search engines will throw up red flags. Mix up your anchor text with “click here” or “check it out.”

Common Link Building Tools
•    Web Directories – Add URLs to web directories such as DMOZ

•    Blog Directories – List in blog directories such as Blogarama

•    Article Directories – Add articles/content to free article distribution sites i.e. EzineArticles

•    Press Release Distribution Sites – Utilize free press release site such as PRWeb

•    Video Marketing – Post videos (include links) on YouTube

•    Social Media Sites – Don’t forget to post on all the social media sites such as Facebook, Digg, HugPages, etc.

•    Online communities/forums – Interact with online communities and forums – answer questions and participate (another way to be seen as an expert in your field)

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When creating SEO content, stuffing your content with keywords won’t work (keyword stuffing is also an unethical SEO tactic). Not only does your content have to sound unique and exceptional, keywords need to be placed strategically within your content.

When you write articles, keep your keyword list handy and insert keywords as you write. Your goal is to create quality content that adds value to your readers.  If your article sounds like nonsense with strings of keywords crammed into paragraphs, you’re not utilizing correct SEO practices. It’s fairly simple to add a few primary and secondary words within articles without jeopardizing your entire content quality.

How to Optimize Your Blog
There are three main reasons WHY you want to create QUALITY content on your blogs:

•    MORE pages indexed – Search engine spiders crawl content (quality content equals more page indexing!)

•    Provide visitors with GREAT information – When visitors find you on Google, the rapport with your readers begin right there! When you provide valuable, quality content you engage your readers. Great content gives you a competitive edge over every other business floating around on cyberspace.

•    Links – When visitors read an informative, helpful article, they write about it on their blogs/sites and link to it. They also share with their friends and they tell their friends, etc.

Calls to Action
Visitors read your blog posts because they want to learn more information or are interested in what you have to say/share.

At the end of each blog post, you need to add a call to action. A call to action is a specific task that you ask your visitor to do. You can’t just “assume” that after reading your great post that your visitor will know what to do. You need to push them in the right direction.

•    Subscribe - Visitors can subscribe to your blog by RSS feeds and email. WordPress provides a useful plug-in, Subscribe2

•    Tell a Friend – You’ll receive a better response if you remind people to spread the word about your blog. Tell a Friend is an effective WordPress plugin that makes it easy to remind/email people about your blog post

•    ShareThis – Allows visitors to share content with friends through social bookmarking platforms such as Facebook, Digg, Twitter, etc.
•    TweetMeMe – Invites readers to “re-tweet” your posts (i.e. share your article on Twitter)

How to Write Great Content – Best Practices

•    Brand your own writing style – Stand out amongst other bloggers by creating your own unique voice and style. Don’t try to copy other writer’s styles.

•    Write in a conversational style – Keep language simple and easy to understand. You don’t have to be a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist to create winning content.

•    Write UNIQUE content – Do not copy content from other sites and create content that solves a person’s problem or makes life/business easier.

•    Plan posts strategically and add “teasers” about upcoming posts/content – keep readers engaged so they’ll come back and read more!

•    Always encourage comments from readers and answer comments quickly. Include related posts at the end of each post.

•    Include guest bloggers on your site – You’ll add free content to your site and create new relationships within your industry/niche.

Content Examples
•    “How To” articles –  How To Lose Weight on The Flat Belly Diet

•    Lists – Top Ten Family Vacation Spots

•    Demonstrations – A video demonstrating yoga poses

•    Case Studies – How I Built a Worm Farm from Scratch

•    News – Write about late-breaking news that affects your business/industry

•    Humor – Add a personal touch and humor to your content. People love it when you share practical advice.

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Keyword cannibalization occurs when pages on your website compete against each other for certain keywords. Your pages are “cannibalizing” (eating) popularity from other pages to gain search engine ranking.

Webmasters are sometimes unaware of keyword cannibalization, or just automatically optimize the same keyword on all pages thinking it strengthens their SEO. Actually, the OPPOSITE happens and it hurts your SEO.

Keyword cannibalization is detrimental to your site and can affect pages in the following ways:

•    Causes bad indexing – Google crawls your pages and is forced to choose one of many page versions based on its “best” query (and may not even pick a relevant page).

•    Website pages compete against each other for a position in search engines

•    Reduces SEO effectiveness – Anchor text, keyword targeting and link power are spread across many pages

•    Quality of your content suffers – When you write about the same topic on every page, your content sounds replicated and dull (which makes your site less attractive to links)

•    Limits search engine traffic – Don’t put your keywords in one cyber basket. There are thousands of variations that would work just as well (if not better) in the rankings compared to that one phrase/keyword that’s repeated on every page.

How to Avoid Keyword Cannibalization Issues
The biggest problem with keyword cannibalization is duplicate content, especially when pages have identical titles and meta descriptions.  Think carefully about your website structure including anchor text and keyword placement/prominence throughout pages.

In order to clean up your pages and make them SEO-friendly, the following tips will help you solve keyboard cannibalization problems.

•    Create unique meta tag titles and descriptions for your home page and sub pages. Use words that specifically describe that page.

•    For blogs, create unique headlines appropriate to the blog. Variations of keywords are acceptable as long as you don’t go overboard with them. If your blog is about California wine trips you could use “California wine vacations” or “California wine destinations.”

•    Organize keyword lists. Use broader, competitive keyword phrases/terms on top level/shallow pages. Your home page and top level pages will have more potential for ranking when you use those broader terms.  Add those specific “long tail” keywords when you create blog posts or write articles – these are known as your deep pages.
If you are a novice when it comes to SEO and can’t figure out which keywords to on your pages, don’t worry – there are great keyword search tools available!  Begin your search with a broad term and use those results to find the most popular and relevant keywords to add to your pages.
You may be surprised to learn that the keyword you originally wanted to use didn’t get as many searches. For example, you wanted to use “California red wine” but it only has 6,000 searches. However, you changed the phrase to “California wine” and it generated over 200,000 searches. “California wine” would be a better keyword phrase to use.
The following keyword search tools will assist you with finding appropriate keywords for your content.

• Google’s AdWords
• Wordtracker
• Nichebot
• KeywordDiscovery

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