Keyword Optimization

Hello
I have been doing SEO related jobs for a while now but never had my own serious project.
I am Working on a PR5 website offering various network solutions.

No one has ever worked on this page as far as SEO goes but still it appears in most engines i have searched, how is this possible ?
Also, besides the link exchanges and and registering in directories and more search engines, How do i get my site to appear even close to the top while the search is for a specific word, like 'firewall'

If it makes a differance, It is searched on Google dot il and not com.

Thank you.

Hi Zuliph,
Welcome to seochat.

It's possible because search engines were created before SEO - lol
More specifically, it's possible to rank well by virtue of your incoming link anchors alone (assuming they are broadly related to your content).

Optimising for a single word is quite difficult, the first step is to try to rank for terms which include "firewall"... a good idea would be to start with a "less competitive" phrase.

The optimum answer is to build the best site on the web about "firewalls", then lots of other people will link to it and you won't have to worry about link exchanges.

For the purposes of this discussion - it makes no difference which part of google you're trying to rank in.

Good luck

Thanks Alot for the compelete answer Clicky, helps alot.

I will be doing lots of reading on this site , great community you got here !

To expand a little bit further, I find pages with no metatags attract traffic, sometimes just as well as those with the silly tags.

Spiders index documents, that is what they do. No doubt there are tricks to improve the serps after being indexed, but to rank magically out of nothing, that has not been my experience.

So, your customer has a head start, I might concentrate on improving serps for the keyphrases visitors are currently using to find his / her site (rather than optimizing for NEW keyphrases) because:
- It's easy work, you look through the stats, then go to the engine and plug in the phrases.
- Half the work is already done, it is quite possible attempting to optimize for a more popular keyword will result in absolute failure, so I find it a better option to take what you have, and work with that. If you do that, at least you don't lose, vs. switching keywords and suddenly finding yourself not ranked at all...
- If it ranks number One, well enough is good enough, leave that page alone even if it looks like the worst SEO thing you have ever seen. Come to think of it, one might stand to learn from the page, by studying it and doing nothing to it.
- If it ranks lower, one or two minor modifications can improve the rank by a few spots. I wouldn't overdo it, you need to check the competition and if their page really deserves to rank higher, then so be it.

As an example, I have a page that fights in the top 5 for a fairly popular term. After having looked at the competition, I have to admit their content is at least as good as my own, so the ONLY thing I do is try and come up with better content, but I don't mess with it beyond that. This is one of those cases where I let the page rank 'as is,' knowing my competition is worthy of their own ranking, it is another version of leaving well enough alone.

Hope is help.

First I will check the logs to see what are the keywords the visitors are coming for and which are the pages they land to.

Next I'll search in SEs how I rank for those keywords and improve those pages so I improve the rankings (be sure to have the keywords in the title, in the heading - H1, quite a lot of time in the text, if possible other pages link to that page with an anchor text that contains the keyword).

That's a good begining Later you'll may move to more competitive terms.