Not surprisingly, the same principle applies to search engine optimization.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to be everything for every potential customer, or targeting a half-dozen potentially profitable keywords and phrases on every page. Resist the urge. The best SEO content isn’t the longest, or even the most keyword-rich, but the content that’s pointed firmly in the right direction.

Here are three quick tips to help you study your SEO aim:

Target one keyword or phrase per page. Pick one term to focus on, and then devote your webpage, blog post, or article specifically towards it. That will keep you from having to form awkward sentences and headlines to mention it two or three times. Once you have targeted that keyword or phrase a few times, move on to the next one.

Make a keyword list and move through it. That approach is going to take more time, but you’ll achieve better longer-term results by thinking week to week and building slowly, rather than trying to optimize your site for dozens of keywords at once. Remember that good SEO takes a little bit of patience.

Know where your profits are. The keywords you should target first aren’t necessarily the ones that get the most traffic, but the ones that convert at the highest rate. Know your metrics well enough to identify them, and concentrate your firepower where it matters most.

Concentration, focus, and persistence are more important to search engine optimization than almost anything else. Keep that in mind and you’ll always be firing your optimized content with a steady hand. SEO can be confusing and many businesses don’t understand how it all works, Design Extensions can help your website rank higher, for the keywords that people actually use, that convert searches to dollars.

These are all decent guesses, and maybe half-correct. That’s because the biggest mistake in online marketing is making any mistake over and over again.

How do you stop yourself from repeating costly errors? By evaluating the effectiveness of what you’re doing in a subjective way. In other words, by studying the numbers behind your business website. A lot of business owners can talk about the number of visitors their website is receiving, or how many sales they’ve been making, but getting a good understanding of your online business requires a deeper look than that.

Here are three easy to use and understand metrics you definitely want to keep an eye on:

The numbers of visitors coming from certain sources or advertising campaigns. Often, it isn’t possible to tell that a certain message is or isn’t responding to a segment of your market until you take a closer look at your traffic sources. Viewing these with a critical eye could show you where you need to tweak your offers or benefit statements.

Your most popular pages. In many cases, business owners see this kind of data as simply “the products and prices that customers respond to most.” That’s a starting point, but high numbers of views in your frequently asked questions or shipping policies, for example, could indicate that buyers have concerns about how quickly they’ll receive their order. This is only a simple example, but it’s representative of the kind of trend you should be looking for.

Parts of your site where visitors exit. This is even more important, since they can help you to identify parts of your site that aren’t fully optimized for conversions, or that buyers are responding to. If potential customers are leaving you at any point other than the one that brings them closer to buying from you, then it’s costing you money.

There is any number of mistakes with your content or marketing message that you can inadvertently make on your business website. The real mistake, however, is to keep reproducing errors by failing to study the numbers closely enough. Need help studying those numbers? Let Design Extensions help, and we’ll do what we do best so that you can do what you do best.

While it’s true that your on-page SEO and inbound linking strategy is likely to have the biggest direct effect on your search engine position, your choice for web hosting may factor into the mix more than you think. Here are three reasons finding the right post could affect your search engine rankings:

A good hosting plan will load your site quickly and keep it online. All other things being equal, the major search engines seem to prefer websites that load quickly for users. They also place a preference on sites that don’t experience a lot of downtime. In other words, Google and the other engines don’t want to send searchers to a destination that’s likely to frustrate them, or not be there when they need it – both good reasons to choose a quality business website hosting plan.

Your business website could share server space with a blacklisted site. If another webmaster or business owner has been using the same server as you, and using it to spam people or run a shady online company, then there’s a small chance that you could be penalized for their indiscretions. Keeping good company, and staying in the right neighborhoods, is important to your SEO campaign.

Having the right hosting company makes it easy to add new content. The easier it is for you to go into your site’s file manager or CMS, the fewer reasons you’ll have to put it off. You want it to be a simple process to update and optimize the content on your pages, which is an area where a good business website hosting plan can be worth its weight in gold. Fresh content is the cornerstone of any sustainable SEO plan, so choose a hosting plan with that in mind.

Finding a business website hosting provider might not be your first SEO consideration, but it’s one that matters more than you might think. Given that the top spots on Google are more competitive than ever, doesn’t it make sense to have every possible advantage on your side?

With all of the different ways Design Extensions can help your business be seen, isn’t it about time to give us a call?

Here you will find recent information about projects we are working on, things we are interested in, and other fun stuff related to web design, graphic design, online marketing, and things we enjoy.

Bookmark it, tag it, digg it, subscribe to it and check back often.