As a Realtor, my Cincinnati real estate website has been active for four years. For the first 3-1/2 years, I averaged about 5 visitors a day.

Then I began studying affiliate marketing, to develop another income stream. I learned a lot about Internet marketing... but what I found most important was how to optimize my site for the search engines. Today my daily number of visitors averages about 30; and the number of leads I've developed from my site has skyrocketed.

In this article, I'll give you the "quick and dirty" way to goose the search engines. Cut through all the fluff, and give you meat and potatoes.

Hubpages is a good start

Chances are one of the reasons you're here on Hubpages is to create more traffic for an affiliate or other website. It's a great vehicle! Because Hubpages ranks well in the search engines, and backlinks from your articles are of high value.

But it's just a start! In fact, you should have done a couple of other things first. Let me explain the....

The 1-2-3-4 Approach To Page 1 Search Engine Rankings

1. Establish metrics for your site.
2. Find some killer keywords that get good search volume; but aren't overly competitive.
3. Optimize your site on your chosen keywords.
4. Create massive numbers of free backlinks, using your keywords as the anchor text.

I'll go over each of these in some detail, and give you a couple links for more information.

If you're gonna spend some time and energy with SEO work, you want to know it's working, right? Can you answer these questions?

1. How many visitors are you getting?
2. How are they getting there? In other words, are they clicking links on other sites, or are the search engines sending them there?
3. For search engine traffic, what keywords led them there?
4. What pages do your visitors find appealing? Which ones do they ignore?
5. How long do they spend on your site before leaving?
6. How many pages do they view?
7. Are they new or repeat visitors?
8. What's your bounce rate from each page?

These metrics are important to you as a website owner. If you don't have them, get them now.

Google Analytics answers all these questions, and more. It's free, and it's really quite easy to implement... even for reasonably inexperienced webmasters.

Keywords are the basis by which all search engines serve their visitors. Someone types in a keyword (more accurately, a key phrase); and the search engines return what they believe to be the most relevant results.

Your task in selecting keywords is to find some that have reasonable search volume, but aren't overly competitive. Your goal should be to rank on page 1 of search engine results. Only a small percentage of searchers will ever look at the second or subsequent pages... because, generally speaking, the search engines do a pretty good job of returning the most relevant results first.

If you're in a very competitive field (like Real Estate, for example), you'll find that short keywords - like Cincinnati real estate - are so competitive that your chance of ranking on page 1 is slim-to-none.

However, it turns out that more specific but related keywords are a bit less competitive... and in some cases, even more productive. Here's some examples:

• Buy a home in Cincinnati
• Search for homes in Cincinnati
• Homes for sale in Cincinnati
• List my Cincinnati home for sale
• Find Cincinnati multifamilies
• Find homes for sale in Cincinnati
• Search the Cincinnati MLS

Got the idea? These are way more specific than the term "Cincinnati real estate". All of them produce traffic. The traffic may be somewhat less... but those search terms are all way less competitive than "Cincinnati real estate". In other words, there are fewer competitors optimizing for those keywords... and so I have a better chance of a page 1 search engine ranking.

How to research keywords

There are lots of ways to do it - some of them free, and some of them cost money. You can find an exhaustive list of them just by typing "keyword research" into Google.

Google Adwords offers a free tool that'll get you started. Simply type in a keyword, and it'll suggest dozens or hundreds of related keywords. It'll also estimate the amount of competition on each term, and the number of monthly searches using that term.

That's just a start, though. Find some keywords that look good from the Keyword Tool, then type them into Google to see how many results are returned. Important: surround your keyword in quotes - like this: "find cincinnati multifamilies". In the upper right you'll see the number of results returned.

Finding the right combination

You're looking for keywords that, optimally, have a good number of monthly searches (at least several hundred), and limited competition (ideally less than 1,000 results when you type your keyword in quotes). If you find this combination, BINGO! - you have a great keyword to optimize on!

What about your competition?

What keywords are they using? Where are their backlinks coming from?

Good questions, right? Easily answered. KeywordSpy will show you - free - the top 10 organic keywords for any website you enter. SEOchat has a Keyword Density Checker that'll examine any website you enter, and tell you about the keyword density on their page.

Yahoo has a great tool for discovering your competition's backlinks. Go to Yahoo, and type this: linkdomain:www.whateversite.com. It'll show you all that site's backlinks.

Researching your competition is a great way to get ideas for useful keywords.

Now that you have 3-10 great keywords, it's time to assure that your site is optimized for them.

You want to develop your site in such a manner that you're optimizing for only 1-2 keywords on each page. So, the more keywords you have, the more pages you'll need on your site. The more pages your site has, the more significantly you're viewed by the search engines.

Affiliate sites with only 1-2 pages are OK, but it's gonna be more difficult to be viewed as an authority on whatever topic if you only have 1-2 pages.

Here's a real quick overview of things you can do on your webpages to get the search engines' attention.

1. Keyword in URL. If your keyword is "natural cure for ADD", then if you can buy a URL like "addnaturalcure.com", the search engines will take notice. Not only that, they'll bold the parts of your url that match the search term entered. So, if someone types in "ADD cure", your site's Google results will look like addnaturalcure.com. Nice bonus.
2. Keyword in Title. Your page's title tag should contain one of your keywords AND something that'll be attractive for the searcher. Because the search engines will often return your title tag in the results. Here's a great resourc that explains this in greater detail: All About Title Tags
3. Heading Tags. Your page should make use of <h1>, <h2>, <h3> etc. title tags, which somehow utilize your keyword.
4. Alt Tags on Images. Each image on your site should have an <alt> tag. Ideally, this tag will be related to your keywords. Since search engines can't understand images, <alt> tags describe the image to them.
5. Keywords in Page Text - You'll want each page to make mention of your keywords several times, in the natural flow of the text. Don't bother trying to put them in there if they don't flow with the text - the search engines are smart enough to recognize whether or not they're in context with the surrounding text.

These are the basics of optimizing your site. There are some other things you can do, but these are the most important.

Your site's reputation is perhaps the most important aspect of search engine optimization. If Google sees that hundreds of sites are linking back to yours, it decides that your site has a good reputation. The more backlinks, the better.

Using anchor text

The anchor text you use in your backlink is important. Here's where you want to use your keywords. If your keyword is "freedom from knee pain" then that's the anchor text you'll want to use in building some of your backlinks.

Don't use one keyword to build all your backlinks, though -- that looks unnatural to the search engines. This is one reason why you want to have several keywords. (Of course, the primary reason is so that you show up on page 1 on multiple search terms!)

Here's how to build a backlink, using the "freedom from knee pain" example:

<a href="www.YourSite.com">freedom from knee pain</a>

That's the html you'll embed in articles and blog entries. Remember, you want it to look very natural to the search engines, so it should be in context - for example:

I've found that if I do the exercises prescribed by my doctor every day, I'm able to achieve <a href="http://www.YourSite.com">freedom from knee pain</a>.

The value of PR

Google assigns a Page Rank to each website. The values are 0-9. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google, for example, have a Page Rank (PR) 8 or 9. Hubpages has a PR 6. Newly created sites start with PR 0.

The higher the Page Rank of a site, the greater its authority. So, backlinks from higher PR sites carry more weight with Google and the other search engines. You should strive in your linkbuilding campaign to obtain links from higher-PR sites. Naturally, the higher their PR, the more Googlejuice your backlink will have.

How to discover a site's Page Rank?

There's an optional add-on for the Google toolbar that will show you the Page Rank for each site you visit. Simply install the Google toolbar, then click the little Plus sign to find the add-on. When you visit a website, its PR value will show up in a new little icon on your tool bar.

Where to build backlinks

Here's where that research on your competition from the Yahoo linkdomain command comes in handy.

Type your keyword in quotes into Google. Examine each of the top 3 or 4 sites using the Yahoo linkdomain command. Discover where their backlinks exist. Chances are, you'll be able to use some of the same sites to build backlinks to your site.

There are also all kinds of free directories all over the web where you can list your site at no cost. Some, but not all of them require a reciprocal link. You'll want to avoid these at first - reciprocal links carry less weight with Google. Just type "free directory sites" into Google... you'll get a bunch of great results.

Relevant sites

If your website is about relief from knee pain, then Google will reward you if you can get backlinks from other sites in the same genre. For instance, if you can find directories specific to health, fitness, pain, etc. - then those sites will build your site's authority with Google.

Article Marketing

Here you are on Hubpages - an excellent place for article marketing. Post an article here, with backlinks (using your keywords in context) to your website. Squidoo, Propeller, and Knol are other high-PR sites where you can post articles. There are literally hundreds of them.

Blog & Forum Posting

Find blogs and forums related to your website. Write a response to a blog entry, or submit a forum entry - again, with backlinks to your site in context. Also good are backlinks from any associations or clubs related to your website's content. For instance, my Cincinnati real estate blog would be a good place to post a real estate-related comment.

When you post to a blog, it's a good idea to "ping" the blog entry. This will inform the search engines that there's new information to spider - and they'll crawl the sites more quickly than they might otherwise. Pingler is a good tool for this.

Watch your frequency

You should figure that a linkbuilding campaign should take place over several months. If you post more than 10-15 backlinks per day, you run the risk of looking unnatural to the search engines. If things look suspicious, your site runs the risk of getting the infamous Google slap. Google has been known to penalize sites, or even de-list them altogether if linkbuilding is accomplished too quickly.

Recap

A good linkbuilding campaign is one of the best ways to rank on Page 1 of Google search engine results. Build several hundred backlinks over a few months' time, and watch your site progress to page 1!

Turns out I've become somewhat of an SEO expert in the real estate field. Based on blog posts I've done on real-estate related sites, a number of Realtors have asked for my help in getting their sites ranked a bit higher.

SEO for Realtors

Rather than responding to them individually, I created a blog called SEO for Realtors. Don't let the title keep you from visiting. There you'll find more depth on the information presented here, and some other insights I think you'll appreciate. While it was written for Realtors, the information there is relevant to anyone who wants more traffic to their website or blog.

If you decide to stop by, leave me a comment (with a backlink to your site, of course!) and let me know you saw my post on Hubpages!

To your wealth!