Here is a great example of someone who did just that with the phrase “video SEO in Google”.

Why is video such a great opportunity? Search engines are designed to search written content — words — for clues to index things. In a page of 500 words, the search engine might make its indexing decision by looking for keywords that amount to only 2% to 4% of the total words on the page.

But a video can’t be searched in the same way. So search engines rely on far less information (through descriptions, tags, and perhaps outgoing links) to indicate what the video is about. The density of information is far greater. It’s like fishing with dynamite instead of a hook and worm.

What does for local businesses? You may not want to search for a broad term like “restaurant” or “plumber”. But you can still search pretty high with far more local terms — like “Miami plumber” or “Cincinnati restaurant” — using video.

Video gives good SEO benefits, but it also is a nice way to give a personal touch (which is one major reason why people buy from local vendors).

If you don’t want to do this work yourself, please see our Local Domination Packages.

The bottom line for Google was a very website-searcher-centric idea: Put the most authoritative sites first. The more authoritative it was, the higher it should rank. (Which makes sense for internet users who are using search to find something).

They measured authoritativeness by a variety of factors, including keywords, backlinks, and more.

Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz‘s CEO, wrote a very compelling blog in which he talked about how Google’s rankings algorithm has changed over time. He even provided a handy chart which shows an estimation based on Fishkin’s experience and observations.

Essentially, he says that authoritativeness is still key at Google and they measure 4 basic things:

• The authority of the domain
• Anchor text
• Keyword usage
• Backlinks

View his chart below and read the blog post here.

Learn how search engine optimization (SEO) has changed

What a motivator to get into the top 20 (or, better yet, the top 10) of Google search! And the way to do that is with better PageRank. The higher your PageRank, the higher you’ll appear.

One of the ways to get higher PageRank is to be linked to from higher PageRanked pages. So, if your site’s PageRank is 3, strive to be linked to from pages that have a PageRank of 4 or more.

I like to use this tool, Google PageRank Checker, before I post anything on another site.

Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t avoid lower PageRanked pages. But if you have to spend your time somewhere, focus on the higher PageRanked pages.

According to Google PageRank Checker, here are a few pages to link back to your site from:

Wikipedia.org (PageRank: 9/10)

Twitter.com (PageRank: 9/10)

About.com (PageRank: 8/10)

LinkedIn.com (PageRank: 8/10)

Squidoo.com (PageRank: 7/10)

Suite101.com (PageRank: 7/10)

How search engine optimization fits in

Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a big part in the first step of this activity. You might incorporate SEO techniques into articles and press releases you distribute around the web; and at the same time, you might incorporate SEO techniques on your website so that it’s easier for search engines to find you.

The problem with SEO

Now here’s where the conundrum is: You need people to find you so it’s tempting to optimize your keywords to make it optimal for search engines. BUT, you need people to eventually buy so you want your content to make sense to them so that they are participating in your sales funnel. Unfortunately, these are not always congruent goals! Some experts pin optimal keyword density at 4%, which means that you need to have the same keyword appear 4 times in 100 words. That might be fine for search engines, and it might even be okay for some keywords, but a lot of keywords (especially long-tail keywords) start to seem excessive when written at that density. In a 500 word article, a keyword needs to appear 20 times. That’s excessive for any live reader. Your work might be search engine optimized but it is not human reader optimized!

When your reader finds your content annoying or difficult to understand, they will not buy from you. So, you might enjoy a lot of traffic (which accomplishes your first goal) but you won’t see as much sales (your second goal).

There are other techniques that you can use in your search engine marketing in order to reduce keyword density and improve readability while still creating search engine friendly content! That’s what this blog is all about!