Here’s how to improve your Google web site rankings!

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Internet marketing expert Derek Gehl lays out 5 simple steps for finding the keywords that can make or break an online business. Keyword research is fundamental to starting and growing an online business according to Derek Gehl, CEO of the Internet Marketing Center

“Keyword application goes way beyond search engine optimization,” Gehl says. “It’s also critical to finding viable niche markets and researching new products. Yet it’s an area that many of my customers have questions about.”

To address these questions, Gehl has released a report that breaks the process down into five easy-to-follow steps:

Step 1: Create a list of 200 to 300 keywords. “It’s essential to think like a customer in this step,” Gehl says. “What words would you plug into the search engine to find something you don’t know a lot about?”

Step 2: Perform a “competition search” in Wordtracker. Wordtracker is an Internet marketing research tool that shows you exactly how many people are searching for a keyword compared to how many sites are already ranking under it.

Step 3: Size up the competition in the search engines. “Find out whether the sites ranking under these keywords really are competition,” says Gehl. “Are they selling competing products? Do they look professional?”

Step 4: Use pay-per-click ads to test the best keywords. Pay-per-click advertising gives online marketers a quick method for testing which keywords attract the most traffic and which convert best into sales.

Step 5: Include the top-performing keywords in website “hotspots.” Gehl recommends that his clients put their top-performing keywords in key areas on their website, including “title” tags, headlines, and in the first and last paragraphs of text. “The keywords in these areas are given more weight by the search engines when deciding how to rank a site,” Gehl says.

The full report on how to use Internet marketing research tools to find viable keywords is available at http://www.MarketingTips.com/newsletters.

Author: Jas

Jas Dhaliwal is a highly experienced International Social Media Strategist. Currently working as AVG Technologies, Director of Communities and Online Engagement, he specialises in building and engaging with social communities across the web. Born and bred in London, he is passionate about technology and social anthropology. Prior to AVG, Jas launched the social media program for Microsoft’s MVP Award program. Jas holds a BSc (Hons) in Information Systems and has an MBA from Brunel University in London, England. You can follow Jas as @Jas on Twitter or on Google+