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Posts Tagged ‘search engine optimization’

5 Points to Remember During Search Engine Optimization

August 2nd, 2009


Search Engine Optimization is the process of writing your articles or content on the blog in such a manner that allows the search engine to find your content when users search for information. The search engines never reveal how they work but many people have inferred their process after a lot of experiments and experience. Here are 5 points that are usually considered to be useful for SEO.

1. Know your keywords: Even before you start writing your content, you must know what keywords you are going to optimize for. Keywords are those words or phrases which are most commonly used by searchers on the internet. You can find out the most popular keywords using tools like WordTracker and Google’s keyword tool. Then you must weave those keywords in your text so that the search engine finds your content relevant for the user.

2. Write for the reader, not for the search engine: Many marketers in order to manipulate search engine results include way too many keywords in their content. The result is that the content becomes unreadable for the human while supposedly good for the search engine. However, this strategy does not always work. Search engines are becoming smarter and they are able to identify such manipulations and accordingly give a lower ranking. You must remember that you need to write for human users and not for computers. If you write well, people will spread the word but computers cant.

3. Optimize tags: Another place that the search engines looks is the tags. On a web page, there are Meta tags in the html source file. Make sure you include the same keywords in the Meta tags. You should also include the keyword in the title and headings. In case of a video, you must add the keywords in the tags field.

4. Optimize anchor text: While writing articles or using a signature file on forums, you can use keywords as the anchor text. The anchor text is the text that links to the desired URL, in this case, your site. It has been discovered that search engines use the anchor text to determine whether the page at the end of the link is relevant or not. Do not use generic anchor text like “Click here” or “Visit” as this will not help in SEO.

5. Easy navigation: Make your site easy to navigate. If you have a lot of content or heavy graphics and videos, then you must take more care to organize the content and make it easy for the visitor to find information.

Search engines are continuously evolving. Today, they are able to search text, images, and videos all in the same set of results. So SEO is also developing into an art based on a foundation of science. You need to learn both the art and the science to be successful.

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SEO Tips: 5 Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid

March 23rd, 2009

There are many ways to utilize SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in your marketing campaign.

While there are many great methods to utilize this effect marketing method there are some common SEO mistakes you should avoid. These mistakes are often made by those new to this way of marketing or in the process of learning it.

Here are the 5 common SEO mistakes to avoid:

1. Link Farms. Link Farms can be hard to tell sometimes. Many look similar to directories. The problem with Link Farms is unlike directories there is no real purpose to have the list of links on a page except to provide backlinks. This method may work for a little bit but once the search engines catch on even the person with their link on the page can get penalized. Avoid Link Farms, if you are looking for good directories you will know by looking at the quality of the site and the fact that the list of links has a real purpose.

2. Keyword Stuffing. This is probably the most common SEO mistake. Quite simply it is using your keywords and keyword phrases so much that it is evident you are stuffing the keywords in and/or does not read well. Try putting keywords and phrases in your title (as long you can create a good title), description and lightly peppered throughout your article you will have just as good results and provide great content. Remember the purpose is to provide great content so when the search engines direct people to your content those people will want to either buy from you or find out more about you.

3. Ineffective Keywords. Sometimes people do not even do keyword research and other times they do it ineffectively. Either way is a mistake. In any type of marketing you must know your target market. Know who they are and what they are searching for, what your competitors are doing to reach them and then do your keyword research looking for long tail keywords that have a good amount of search volume and less competition. The key is to have keywords that will bring targeted people ready to buy to your site.

4. Using Blackhat. While blackhat techniques will get you fast traffic, they can also get you ineffective visitors, get you banned and overall could make you look less than credible. With the many effective whitehat techniques there is no need to change going to the dark side of SEO.

5. Not using Meta Tags. This is such a simple technique to do, however so many people easily dismiss the power of Meta Tags. This involves title tags, keyword tags, and description tags. It does not take long to fill these out and if you are a blogger there are many great plugins that make this an easy thing to do and to remember to do. Make sure you keep in mind the research you did for your keywords when filling out your Meta Tags

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Top 8 SEO Tricks for Higher Google Rankings

March 3rd, 2009

There are many ways to get higher Google rankings. By using these 8 SEO tricks you will not only get to the top of Google faster, you will also rank better in other search engines as well. If you are not using search engine optimization in your blogs, articles, online advertisements, videos, sales letters, squeeze pages, websites, etc. then you are doing yourself a major injustice.

There is a misconception that search engine optimization is hard and takes a long time to learn.

While there are many new ways for SEO popping up and like everything else dealing with marketing it is an ongoing education it is not super difficult to conquer.

The 8 SEO tricks I am about to share any one even a newbie can start utilizing right away to get higher Google Rankings. There will be no black hat tips here; these are white hat tricks that work.

There are two main things that Google factors in when calculating your page rank:

1. How much relevant content does your site have?
2. How many backlinks do you have going to your site?

You can conquer both requirements by following these 8 SEO Tricks.

1. Use keywords in titles. Use this trick for your title tag in your HTML header, titles of articles, blog posts, ads, squeeze pages, videos and sales pages. The key is to use a keyword or phrase that makes sense. Do not squeeze a bunch of keywords in and have your titles sound ridiculous.

2. Use keywords in the body. Use this trick in the detailed content of your website, blog posts, articles, press releases and other writings.

3. Use keywords in descriptions. Use this trick in your website’s Meta descriptions for the search engines, descriptions of your articles and anywhere else that asks for a brief description of your content.

4. Use keywords in tags: Use this trick in Meta tags, tags for articles, blog posts, videos, online ads, press releases, online photos and anything else that allows you to add tags.

5. Use keywords in domains and page URLs. Use this trick when picking out a catchy domain for your site, also when naming other pages on your sites, if possible use keywords, i.e. permalinks for your blog articles.

6. Refer to quality external links (Linkbait). Use this trick when linking to other sites on your pages, posts etc. Anchor text them using a keyword phrase relating to the page you are linking to. It looks better, tells your audience a little about the link and Google counts those keywords for you as well. Also, trackback on quality blog posts.

7. Content, content and more content. The more relevant content on your page the better Google will index your pages and even more so when following the above rules.

8. Get quality backlinks. There are many ways to do this. Put your link in author boxes for articles and press releases, use a link in your signature when posting in forums, set up a HubPage and Squidoo page and link back to relevant content of yours, social bookmarking and trackback on high ranking blog posts and then go comment while adding value and mention your article you wrote with the link.

If you implement all 8 SEO tricks you will be well on your way to efficient search engine optimization that will get you higher Google rankings.

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2 Tips To Get Your Web Sites Ranked High On Google

June 4th, 2008

Search engine traffic from natural keyword or key phrases (what many call organic traffic) from Google has a lot of benefits with the biggest 3 being:

  • 100% Free! You don’t have to pay for this traffic.
  • Targeted! Someone SEARCHED for information on something you provide.
  • Leveraged! You don’t have to send any emails, ads, press releases or articles.

Here’s 2 highly important tips to get your Web Sites ranked highly and respectably on Google:

Tip #1 – Write valuable content Google likes.

Here’s some points to help you with this:

  • Write from your heart with your personality – don’t be fake.
  • Try to limit each page or blog post to 2-3 occurrences of the keywords or keyword phrases you want people to find your particular page or blog under. For example, if you want them to find your Web Site on Google by searching for “Widget XYZ”, then type “Widget XYZ” 2-3 times in the page or blog post.
  • Try to mention each keyword no more than 4 times per page or blog post.
  • Do not include all occurrences of your keyword or key phrases all in the same paragraph or blog post.
  • Aim for 150 to 250 words of text per keyword on each page or blog post.

Tip #2: Link your Web Site to other Web Sites

You want as many quality and topic relevant links as possible coming to your Web Sites from other Web Sites.

IMPORTANT: Do your best to ensure you use the same exact URL since Google sees “http://www.samplewebsite.com” differently than than “www.somewebsite.com”.

When you add your links to other Web Sites or when you ask other Web Sites to link to yours, stay consistent with your URL. Do not have 30 links pointing to “http://www.yourwebsite.com” and then 2 pointing to “www.yourwebsite.com” and 4 pointing to “yourwebsite.com”.

Consistency is a key. I love a great cliche’ when it’s appropriate!

Personally, I always use the fully qualified URL. For example:

TraVerus.

Hover over the above link and you will see that it points to http://www.whatistraverus.com and NOT www.whatistraverus.com. It’s the same address, but Google treats them differently.

Here’s some points to consider when thinking about linking your Web Sites to other Web Sites:

  • Links to your Web Site should be from pages containing relevant and related content. If your Web Site is about computers, do not get it linked from content about fishing!
  • Google has a Google PageRank (GPR) assigned to all Web pages ranging from 1-10. Try to get your links on Web sites with a higher GPR score. More on this later.
  • Links to your pages should have your keyword as the anchor text of the hyperlink (like the TraVerus example above).

By the way, let me save you from this misery. If you ever come across something called link services, AVOID them. Most of them simply generate junk Web Sites with no real value just to add links everywhere.

Google frowns at pages produced by these link services and may remove your Web Site if your link appears on these junk Web Sites. And you definitely DO NOT want this to happen.

Before we continue, understand this: Google REALLY likes links that are part of valuable page content.

Read the bolded section in the sentence above aloud – seriously!

So when you approach a Web Site owner and ask him to list your link on his Web Site, make sure you explain to them the benefits of linking back to your Web Site in a section of their Web Site that has good valuable content with similar topics your Web Site contains instead of just linking back to your Web Site off in some link repository.

So now you are probably asking how do you find Web Sites with a good Google Page Rank (GPR) rating to link back to your Web Site.

Well, finding great links like this is not a mystery; in fact, with the right software, it’s fun and usually easy.

The product I recommend and use is SEO Elite.

If you are really serious about driving traffic to your Web Sites, do yourself a HUGE favor and go read about and watch the videos of SEO Elite RIGHT NOW because it is THAT good and it will explain how you can use it find the web pages you definitely need linked to your Web Sites.

Bottom line: Write good content and use SEO Elite to find Web Sites with high Google Page Ranks (GPR) for the keywords you are interested in to link back to your Web Site, contact them and discuss how you can get links to your Web Site listed on their pages in a relevant and related section, and your Web Site should see a big boost in the search engines!

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