SEO: What is it and how does it work?
SEO is also
known as Search Engine Optimization, which means optimizing your website or
website’s content so that it can be found easily on search engines by people
searching for detailed terms smoothly. It
is primarily the art of reaching your page found on the largest search engine in
the world – Google.
Google ranks
pages in terms of page rank and searches term competitiveness. Generally, pages
with high page ranks have high traffic flow, many social interactions such as
blog comments, and also many authority back links flowing into the website. The
more competing websites for a certain search term, the more difficult it is to get
your website on the front page of Google.
As we all know,
getting your website on the front page of Google for high-volume search terms
is the key to obtaining tons of free traffic. Keyword or keyword phrase research
often is done to choose the high volume of search terms and advertising
competition. Your goal is to find keywords with high search volume but low
competition and blast SEO.
Here are some
instances of SEO: Sprinkling keywords and keyword terms in your website’s
content. Normally, you would target a 2-5% keyword density for your website.
Getting backlinks from authority sites of similar niches (pages with high PR
and traffic volume), and using keyword
terms as anchor text links.
Basically, a
well SEO-optimized website can easily be seen on Google and will benefit from
free traffic from search engines. Some marketers even go to the extent of
hiring SEO experts or SEO copywriters to optimize their websites as the returns
from the traffic often outweigh the costs of hiring these experts.
In overview, SEO
can be easily understood and used for your online business platforms. The key to
SEO success is to provide highly targeted, appropriate content to your readers and
Google will reward you.
Baby steps to good SEO practices
As
we all are already aware, Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the art of
getting your website or blog on the front page of Google Search for precise
search terms. In this article, I will cover a couple of basic SEO steps which
you can learn and apply to your online business immediately.
Keywords
and keyword terms. Keyword terms are niche-specific words that people
search for. For instance, a keyword could be something like “dog training” (2
keywords). A keyword term is a short phrase that contains the keywords you
are targeting such as “house training for dogs”. Basically, you want to target
these high search volume keywords and keywords and use them in your blog
posts or article frequently.
Your
job is to find the right balance in keyword density. If you overuse keywords in
your website, your website will come off as spam by the search engines. Try to
keep density within 2-3% to be safe.
Are
you the Authority site on the net? In general, Google gives pages with lots of
quality backlinks, high traffic volume, and social interactions such as blog
comments a good page ranking. These kinds of sites are referred to as “Authority
sites”. Your job is to make your website become the authority site by adopting
good SEO practices.
Writing tips – As a general rule of thumb, include your keyword inside the title
and in the first paragraph of the body. Whenever possible, bold or italicize
the keyword or key phrase that you are targeting.
Finally,
you should fill up your website with good, relevant content as Google
spider crawlers are getting smarter and smarter at picking up what’s fluff and
what’s not. Adopt these good SEO practices and you’ll be on your way to tons of
traffic.
Sneaky “Legal” Tricks For Jumpstarting Your SEO
SEO has been the talk of
the town among online marketers. The crucial of SEO in getting you tons of
free highly targeted organic search traffic must not be ignored. Let’s look
into some pretty cool legal and Google-friendly SEO tricks to get your website
SEO juice pumped.
You must try networking
with other marketers. The fastest way to jumpstart your SEO juice is to network
with other marketers in similar niches, such as by stopping and asking them for
a link exchange. You can even offer to pay a fixed amount to have your link
posted on the front page of their website.
Getting backlinks through
Twitter – Recently, Google announced that Twitter will now be a form of
credible backlinks, so the more people you get on the net talking about your
website, the more SEO happy juice you will get.
Optimizing your images.
People say that images don’t contribute to SEO because Google spiders can’t
crawl them. Rubbish, I say – You can add captions, alternative text, and
descriptions to your images and use keywords to optimize.
Organize, organize,
organize! If you’ve tried blogging platforms such as Blogger and WordPress,
you’d realize that you can categorize and “tag” your posts. These are great for
boosting your SEO juice, so make sure you organize your web content
accordingly.
Get your readers to
interact with your blog. Social interactions are an important part of SEO now.
Even giants such as Google have a new concept called “+1” similar to Facebook
“Likes”, which by the way is also a form of social interaction.
In short, applying these
short tips can have a huge impact on your SEO efforts. This combined with good
SEO practices can ensure you a steady flow of free traffic.
The difference between onsite SEO and offsite SEO
SEO or search engine
optimization, when used correctly can get you tons of free organic traffic from
the almighty Google. When it comes to SEO practices, there are two main
categories – Onsite SEO and offsite SEO. In this article, I will explain the
differences between the two and how you can target both of them.
Onsite SEO means
optimizing your website or blog internally to boost your page ranking. There
are many ways to do this – keyword optimization, onsite linking among posts and
pages, using anchor text links, tagging posts, alternative text for images, etc.
Keyword density is an important factor as excessive use of a certain keyword
can make you penalized.
Fully optimizing your
website content is a pre-requisite for good SEO points but it won’t be enough,
you’ll have to incorporate off-site SEO methods together to be ranked
higher on Google.
Offsite SEO involves
getting backlinks from various sources on the internet which does not belong
to your website. Backlinks are basically people from other websites linking to
your website. The higher quality of the backlink, the more Google juice you will
get. People sharing your website on social networks and talking about your
website also constitute offsite SEO.
You can get a variety of
backlinks from many credible sources such as other people’s blogs (of the same
niche), Twitter, web 2.0 pages such as Hub pages and Squidoo, and even YouTube.
In synopsis, the key to
getting high placement on Google’s search engine and successfully using SEO is
to have good onsite SEO and offsite SEO. The internet has evolved from an
information-providing hub to a place of online social interactions which can be
seen through social media sharing, blog commenting, and reviews.
6 SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid
You’ve worked hard to
build your website, and sales funnel and you are ready to enter the world of SEO
for huge traffic. Play your cards right, and you will be awarded tons
of steady passive traffic from organic searches. Mess it up, you’ll be penalized
and slapped by the Almighty Google. That being said, here are 6 SEO mistakes you
must avoid at all costs.
Mistake #1 – Overuse of
keywords. I can’t stress the importance of this enough. Having too many
keywords spread throughout your site can lead to your site coming off as
“spammy” by Google and you will be punished.
Mistake #2 – Link farming. Getting a bunch of low-quality backlinks from other
sites only says one thing – Your site is of low quality. Always strive to get
high-quality backlinks from authority sites.
Mistake #3 – SEO Software
– These are the banes of SEO. Google does not approve of any dodgy software
that claims to boost SEO, get you a bunch of backlinks, or write articles for
you.
Mistake #4 - Blackhat SEO
techniques. These staff has been coined in the early internet marketing days.
Back then they were useful, now they were shunned by Google and anyone
caught using them will be severely punished and banned from being found on the
search engines.
Mistake #5 –No social
interactions. The world is interconnected now, and the almightly Google
recognizes this by now rewarding people who include social interactions into
the mix. Get people to connect with you via blog commenting, social sharing, and
other stuff if you want good SEO.
Mistake #6 – Too little content. Generally, you need at least 100 blog posts before your website can be found on Google especially. If you lack the content, it’s time to get your mojo on.
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