Boost Your SEO Rankings with This Great Free Tool

The first thing you need to know if you want to learn how to SEO like a pro is what SEO is and some basic terminology.

Don't let people know that you're new to the world of SEO services by tossing out the redundant phrase "SEO optimization." SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization," so if you drop "SEO optimization" in a conversation or email, you're essentially saying, "search engine optimization optimization."

Not good. Leave those kinds of mistakes to the Department of Redundancy Department.

SEO is the art of composing webpages so they will be properly categorized and displayed by search engine services. SEO professionals also work to make their webpages rank as highly as possible within search results.

Central to this practice is knowing what keywords and keyword phrases are important to what you want to achieve on the Internet, and that's what this tutorial is all about.

Google has a program called AdWords. The Internet behemoth wants to sell you ads on its search results pages and in its contextual advertising program. You may want to do that. You may not. However, you only need to create an AdWords account to have access to the coveted "Keyword Tool."

This simple app can prove to be one of the most powerful SEO tools in your arsenal, and it's free. How many other SEO tools can you say that about?

So, when you're leaning how to SEO, how is this keyword tool helpful?

Even if you consider yourself a very creative person, it's highly unlikely you can think of all the keywords and keyword phrases that apply to the product or service you are promoting on the Internet.

With Google's Keyword Tool you just enter some of the keywords and keyword phrases that you've already thought of and the application rolls out the top 50 keywords and phrases from all the data it has gathered. Also, it tells you:

• How many monthly searches are associated with all the keywords and keyword phrases, and
• How much advertising competition there is for each term.

Now it's up to you to select the keywords and phrases that best meet the aims of your business plan and work them into the names of your pages, the headlines and the content of your web pages.

Of course, when we ask the question, "What is SEO?" we need to say that it's much more than just learning how to use this free SEO tool.

However, this is a very good place to begin.