Expectations reality and opportunities. This is a somewhat exaggerated example of a first discussions with the client per please forgive me for a drive across one of the points.

I have a new website. You're the expert. I'll pay you for a full hour but you have to make me number one on Google this week.

I suppose we all have ambitions and expectations. It is the equivalent of saying "I once had a few golf lessons. You've heard of Tiger Woods. I'll pay you for a full hour. Just you tell me how to beat him this week.

 Well if you have a new website, congratulations. The web is undoubtedly source of great opportunity, whether you're just trying to provide information for clients or for the world in general or if you have a business and you are trying to promote it and even sell from your website. It is a great opportunity and I wish you every success.

I am also pleased that you recognise the importance of being at the top particularly of Google. Google is  the number one search engine with more than 75% of searches currently. This graph shows that if you are in position number one you will receive more than 40% of visitors to the number one page on Google. By the time you get to number 10 it is less than 3%.

The importance of top positioning is disgussed in little more detail on video 7 of my series.

We need to begin by explaining a few words on keywords. Keywords are the terms that people put into the search boxes on search engines to find information. Websites are not in position on search engines. You have to receive top positioning for individual pages, themed around keywords. For a new website, most keywords are out of range in terms of top positioning. The opposition is likely to be fairly strong, and the authority of your website begins at zero.

You need to understand the meaning of niche keywords; a niche keyword has an above threshold search volume for the targeted locality of your website with potential for top page positioning on the search engines results page in the relevant country. If you're in the United States then you will want to be near the top for Google.com. If you're in the United Kingdom and you want to be near the top for Google.co.uk. If you're a professional person you me perfectly happy if just one person finds you through your website each month. Where as if you are a  big encyclopedia website such as Wikipedia, then an additional one search per month would be of no real value to you.

A search engine optimiser can work with you to find the niche keywords appropriate for your website. Niche keywords are discussed in more detail on video 7 of this series.

It became apparent to me that I needed a keyword difficulty tool. A tool that would tell me how difficult it would be to achieve top positioning for a list of keywords. I found that PageRank of the HomePage for the top positioned webpages is the most important factor for determining the position of a web page. I call the HomePage PageRank, the G-Factor-1. In this example, I have analysed six keywords, they are for professions, and for people in my locality; they are municipalities, near where I live in the north-east side of London just into Essex. You can see that 59 of the 60 HomePages have some degree of PageRank, mostly 2 or more, and averaging over 4.8. Only one website has a G-Factor-1 of 0. The municipalities are sized between 9000 and 50,000 residents. PageRank is discussed in more detail in video 4 of this series.

 A new web page will have a PageRank of zero. You now see why it is so difficult to achieve high positioning of a web page for a new website. Sadly, the majority of new website owners know very little about search engine optimisation, and there are many search engine optimisers who choose to mislead and this is a quotation from one search engine optimiser and says that they will optimise for any keyword or phrase of your choice. That of course would lead you to expense, and you will already have seen that for the majority of keywords, you have no chance of top positioning.

Internet Business Promoter or IBP is a set of programs, which I have tremendous respect but even in their advertisements I feel there can be areas that are misleading. This is a quotation "No catch, no strings attached, if you follow the advice of IBP's top 10 optimiser, then your website will be listed on Google's first result page.

I am sure that you understand what is meant by if it sounds too easy to be true...

The fact is that a website with a HomePage PageRank of three,will have at least 40 backlinks. A backlink is a link from another website, and these days, webmasters and search engine optimisers are not prone to give backlinks away. A website with a HomePageRank of four will have at least 100 backlinks and Wikipedia the online encyclopaedia has a HomePageRank of 8 and that page has more than 250,000 backlinks. So IBP will tell us that if you are competing with a Wikipedia page, you will need 250,000 backlinks There is more chance of me beating Tiger Woods than you achieving 250,000 backlinks.

With search engine optimisation you must ensure that your efforts are spent on the achievable. Otherwise, you might as well spend your time and your money chasing rainbows.

So can I show you any evidence that I can achieve top positioning.  Well my primary role in life is to be a gynaecologist and I have a website 2womenshealth.com. You will see that it is in position three out of 54,800,000 competitors for the keyword women's health. For gynaecologist in Loughton, my website is in position number one and for gynaecologist in Essex, the county, where we live, it in position two and Essex has a population of 1.7 million. My wife hass a special interest in the treatment of migraine and dyslexia with coloured tinted lenses. Her website is in position number one for the term dyslexia tinted lenses London, and in position three and 'dyslexia coloured tinted lenses' in the world.