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This article begins a multi-part series of what's new in the world of internet marketing. My hope is that this information will help you with your marketing planning for the coming 12 months.

Notes and News about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

According to MarketingSherpa, people are still only spending 10 percent of their budget on SEO and 90 percent of their budget on paid search. In addition, over 70 percent of small business owners do their search engine optimization work in-house (they do it themselves versus hiring someone to do it for them); the same percentage conduct paid search (pay-per-click, etc.) in-house.

What does this mean? Small business owners need to learn what works and doesn't work when it comes to SEO and paid search techniques. The cost of paid search continues to rise, so SEO may be a better place to spend your time and money.

Most searchers don't scroll down beyond the first screen of search results they receive from Google, Yahoo or MSN Search. This means that if you are not in the top 10 search engine rankings (organic), you may need to do more SEO work to your website.

Here are some SEO tips:

• It takes good copywriting, with only a few search terms per page. Choose three or four search terms you want to target for the next six months, and build them into the text of your website and your articles.

• Well constructed sentences, with no spelling errors, wide use of bullet points, and short sentences seem to win the heart of search engines like Google.

• Another good way to get high rankings is by issuing online press releases. Press releases get you exposure to the search engines.

• Change the Title tag of your web pages; list benefits in the Title, not just the name of your company. The first 2 or 3 words pack the biggest punch.

• Search for your competition and see what they're doing regarding SEO in their website text; how do they rank in the organic search results?

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