Today we share with you a recent article from the E-Commerce Times that outlines five “easy” steps to get your online business a good foot-hold in the all-important search engines.

Writes Brandon Leibowitz, “There are ways of achieving top rankings in Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. that are kept secret. In the following article you will learn how to take advantage of these tips and gain more traffic to your site than you could ever imagine. Here’s an easy-to-follow guide to achieving top search engine rankings.”

1. Choose Your Keywords Carefully

… To start our keyword research we need to utilize some very useful tools. The first Web site viewed should be Google Keywords, which is a free tool that displays the amount of searches and competition for specific keywords. It also allows you to find more specific keywords that can better describe your site.

A better tool would be to purchase some type of software such as Word Tracker, which offers detailed information about keywords. Unfortunately Word Tracker is not free, but there are other services that are.

2. Find a Niche Market

This cannot be stressed enough, as it is much harder to receive top search engine rankings for a new site than an established site. A new site will have to fight among Web sites that have established high search engine rankings.

… For example, let’s say you have a Web site geared toward weight loss. You would not use the keyword “weight loss” because it has too much competition. You can use one of the keyword tools to find suggestions of related keywords that you will be able to compete against. You may find the keyword “weight loss surgery” or “weight loss techniques.” These phrases are much better keywords than generic terms like “weight loss.” …

3. View Competitors’ Source Code

It is important to view potential competitors’ source code to see if they have efficiently performed on page search engine optimization. To do this on your browser, click “view” and then click on the “source” option as displayed.

This will bring up a page with all the HTML (hypertext markup language) code on it. You do not need to be an expert with HTML to understand what we are looking for. We need to see if our competitor’s Web site is properly optimized. We look to see if they are using their keywords in the header tags, the title tags, and the image alt tags. These should all be located near the top of the source code. …

4. Keyword Placement

After you have selected a few keywords to use, we want to combine the ones that have like terms. … For the title tag, the fewer the keywords used, the better the search engines will rank your page …

5. Homepage Organization

We want the search engines to notice your keywords and index you according to those keywords. In order to do this, you should start your body and end your body with your keywords. This gives the search engine spider information that your page is highly relevant to your keywords. …

This is just the tip of the iceberg; the article itself goes into much more detail about optimizing your SEO techniques. Check it out here, and let us know what you think in the comments section, below.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably already in the online business game. So, chances are that you’ve already chosen the domain name that defines your company.

But is that domain name exactly what you wanted it to be? Do you suspect that your sales might be better if your domain name was shorter, or more memorable or intuitive? After all, your domain name is the very foundation of your online business. A good one can boost sales just as surely as a weak one can sink them.

But choosing a domain name is also the very first step in kicking off your online business. So, unfortunately, because it’s first in sequence, it’s also often rushed and not given the amount of thought and research that it should be given. Many people who rush to get a website up and running often don’t spend a whole lot of time or thought into getting a domain name that’s just right … and suffer for it later as the customers flock to the competition.

The good news is that it’s never too late to get a better domain name, especially if you’ve yet to break through with big sales or a huge customer base. After all, that’s what redirects are for. And this time, with your business already up and running, you have the time to sit down and really consider what your domain name should be. What’s going to have the best effect on your customers? What name is going to stick in their minds, and what’s easy for them to type in when it’s time to go shopping?

By way of answering these questions, BNET recently offered up a valuable article on just what you should consider if you want your domain name to be a “home run” — that is, if you want it to be the kind of domain name that defines your whole company. The article offers up these four points as key elements when re-thinking your domain name:

1. Brand Recognition: Ideally your domain comes before your corporation. All the best e-commerce sites started with a home-run domain name (think Amazon, Google, EBay, and Yahoo). But for the corporations that already have an established name, it’s often best to retain the corporate name as your domain. Later, you can get creative with your sub-domains, or even alternate domain names, but the a priori choice should be your corporate name.

2. Length: Research shows that domains with 2-7 characters are the best best. Anything more than 10 letters begins to lose its strength with visitors.

3. Imagery: The majority of the population thinks more with their visual part of the brain rather than their logical, speech-related part.

4. Keywords: In search engine marketing — the keyword still reigns supreme in many domain names. This is an unfortunate situation, because nobody wants to name their web site, “easyipphonesetup.com,” but they’ll often feel obligated to do so, in order to capture search engine traffic. Despite the fact that keyword-specific domains serve search engine traffic well, they often don’t resonate with consumers, nor do they look very professional. In this case, i recommend nixing this pitfall. Besides, the good keywords are likely already bought up.

Check out the original article here, and, as always, let us know what you think in the comments.