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Posts Tagged ‘Keywords’

Basic On-Page SEO

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Search Engine Optimization is the process by which you tweak ins and outs of your webpage to get higher rankings for the specific keywords in search engine results. Google, Yahoo!, Bing etc. have crawlers with special coding which crawl the online pages. You can also tweak your pages to rank higher by following some simple steps.

Before I lead on to what those steps are, you should know there are two main types of SEO (Search Engine Optimization): On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. On-page SEO deals with stuff that is visible to the visitors on your page and off-page is SEO that’s working in the background. Both have equal importance but somehow off-page SEO tends to get you higher rankings and hence more quality unique visitors.

Part of the process is choosing the perfect keyword. There are a lot of tools online which will help you select the best keyword. The important thing to keep in mind here is keywords which attract a lot of traffic are most difficult to get higher rankings for. So go ahead and select the perfect keyword for you content. Now I will explain the ways you can take the maximum advantage of your keywords or key phrases.

Phrases Including the Keywords are BETTER than just the keywords:
More often than not, single keywords are highly competitive. Having a keyword phrase is usually more effective when it comes to SEO. This is mainly because a lot of times people would search for a phrase, rather than just the keyword. For example, an end user looking for Search Engine Optimization tips and tricks wouldn’t just search for ‘SEO’, they would prefer searching for terms such as ‘SEO Tips and tricks’ or ‘How to do search engine optimization’. So choose a keyword phrase and then work on it.

Placement of Keywords in the Content
Be sure your keywords are present at least 3 times in the first paragraph of your content. While writing the conclusion, be sure to include the keywords again as well. That can help you get great rankings.

Placement of Keywords in Title and Description
Add your keywords to the page title and description as well. Just make sure it looks natural and not spam. People who are avid readers online can tell in a heartbeat if they are being lured into a money making website, not a content website. Be sure to maintain a good balance. As per off page SEO is concerned, there’s not a lot you can do personally. But there are some tricks on that as well.

For starters, the off page SEO is proportional to the popularity of your website. If you are getting a million unique visitors a day, well your website will get the first result for your keywords. By popularity, I also mean to say the incoming links. Recommendations online; people posting links to your website on social networking websites, talking about it on online forums – links on the web to your website, do the major off page SEO. Get other highly ranked websites to link you, which will get you great referrals and ranking as well. Ultimately, people will only share your link if you are providing some sort of value. Be sure, never to forget that.

SEO may be complex to understand at times, but if you try hard enough, you can get great rankings!

Posted by Admin on April 13th, 2010

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More Traffic from SEO Listings

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It’s not enough to simply rank well in the search engines, you also have to make sure the listings you get actually bring you traffic. It doesn’t matter how high you rank or which terms you rank for if your competitors are still getting most of the traffic.

Fortunately, there are some things you can do to ensure that you get more traffic from the listings you get. We’re going to look at the top three ways to make sure you get your fair share of the traffic whenever your site appears in the SERPs.

  1. Choose your title carefully. You should never use your main keyword phrase alone as your title. Not only is this unlikely to get you much traffic, it’s also possible that it will (when combined with other factors) get your site hit with an over-optimization penalty. Instead, make sure your title makes sense. For example, the title “Buy Green Widgets Here – Free Shipping!” would probably pull more clicks than simply “Green Widgets”.
  2. Don’t forget to fill in the meta description field. While most search engines ignore the meta description and keywords fields for SEO itself, they do actually use the meta description information as the description users see in the listings. So make sure your description is something exciting that will get people to click!
  3. Try to make sure your main keyword phrase appears at least once in your title and your description. Whenever someone searches on Google, the words they searched for appear in bold. This helps draw attention, so use it to your advantage. Be sure to use the keywords you anticipate ranking for in both the title and description. If possible, also use those words in your URL. If you can’t use it in the domain name itself, you can name the HTML file after that keyword phrase.

Just these simple steps do help you gain added traffic from SEO listings. It is essential to get the maximum amount of traffic as it can all eventually build up and it will be a key factor in your site’s success.

Posted by Admin on April 10th, 2010

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Hiring a SEO Company

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Sometimes you may not have the time or skills to do your own search engine optimization, or at least not in a time frame that is acceptable to your company. In this case, it may be faster and easier to hire an SEO company to do it for you.

Hiring a good SEO firm is no easy task. There are so many companies out there that claim to be “the best”. Some make outlandish claims that they can get you to number one on Google, and will even guarantee results. The trouble is, no legitimate company can make a guarantee like that.

Any company that makes a guarantee that they can get you to the number one position should be eliminated from the list of potential candidates immediately. If they make such a guarantee, they’re either lying, or they are dishonest.

If they mean they can get you to the number one position for an extremely competitive keyword, they’re lying. No SEO company in the world can promise that, and if they could, they could make millions just getting their own listings to the number one position.

If they mean they can get you to the number one position for less competitive keywords, it may very well be true. But if they don’t tell you that specifically, then they are being dishonest, because they are trying to trick you into thinking they can get you the number one position for your main keyword. Almost any company can get you to the first page for less competitive keywords, but even they can’t guarantee a specific position.

Also, don’t hire any SEO company that claims you must give them a very high ongoing fee each month to keep you at the top of the search engines. Once you have made it to the top for many of your chosen keyword phrases, it’s very easy to keep your site there by just getting some backlinks to your site each month. You don’t have to pay them hundreds or even thousands of dollars to do this.

Look for a company that has great references that can be verified, is willing to work with you without a massive monthly fee, and seems to give excellent support. If they can’t respond to your questions in a timely fashion before you buy, they aren’t likely to be any faster after you’ve paid them.

Finally, never hire an SEO company that isn’t on the first page of Google for its own main keyword phrases. They don’t have to be on the first page for “SEO”, but if an SEO company based in Seattle doesn’t show up on the first page for “Seattle SEO”, how can you trust them with your own SEO?

Posted by Admin on April 8th, 2010

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SEO Over-Optimization Penalty

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Is it possible to over-optimize a website? Definitely!

There will most likely be a penalty for this sites who tend to have great optimization and appear to rank too well for certain keywords.

The main contributor to over-optimization is to do with your keyword phrases and your title/H1 tags. If you use the exact same keyword phrase in its entirety with no other words in your title tag, H1 tags, anchor text, and HTML filename, it will trigger the penalty almost every time. This has been evident in numerous sites that may appear to do well, but in fact, in the background, they are literally committing suicide.

There are a few things you can do to be relatively certain that your site is well-optimized without being hit with an over-optimization penalty:

  1. Never use the same exact keyword phrase for the title tag and the heading tags on the page. Always add a couple of words to either to make them slightly different.
  2. When you use keywords for anchor text, make sure to vary the text occasionally. When a site has an unnaturally high number of pages all linking to it with the exact same keyword, it can throw up a huge red flag. Use your main phrase about half the time, and split the rest between two or three other phrases.
  3. Don’t use your main keyword phrase as your exact page title. If your main keyword phrase is “green widgets”, try a title like “Green Widgets for Sale”. Then you could use “Green Widgets” as the text in your page’s H1 tag.

So why is there an over-optimization penalty, anyway? Well, if you think about it, Google wants to display natural results. They don’t want to display pages that they believe are obviously attempting to manipulate the rankings, because these sites would be more likely to be spam. They feel that truly legitimate pages would rarely have “perfect” SEO. Note that I can place the most random HTML file on the Internet and that could become the next big thing without me even noticing it.

So sites can be penalized for over-optimization because those extremely well-optimized sites may seem “too perfect” to be a legitimate website. Its always good to mix things up and get your site noticed and ranked, but do it without manipulating the system through overusing your keywords and titles.

Posted by Admin on April 7th, 2010

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Keyword Research: Part 2

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Fortunately, it’s a lot easier than you probably think to find the right keywords for your SEO.  Google makes it especially easy with their free Keyword Tool.  All you have to do is enter a seed keyword, and this tool will give you up to 150 keywords that users are actually searching for! KP6GW7MAJEQ2

Google Keyword Tool

Once you arrive at this page, enter your seed keyword.  Let’s say you’re selling green widgets.  Simply enter green widgets into the first box, and then enter the CAPTCHA text in the box below the picture containing a series of letters to prove you’re a human being and not a computer performing the search.  Then click the button that says “Get keyword ideas”.

This will return a list of up to 150 keywords that are related directly to your seed keyword.  You will see a few different columns of information on the results page, including “Global Monthly Search Volume”.  This is the approximate number of people who search for that phrase each month.

You will want to choose keywords that receive at least 300 searches per month, ideally at least 1,000.  Any less than this and it isn’t really worth the time it would take to optimize for that phrase.

Next, you need to check competition.  If there is too much competition, it will be very difficult to rank well.  Search for each keyword phrase on Google in quotes to find out how many web pages are using that exact phrase.  You’ll want to avoid phrases with more than around 100,000 competing pages, at least in the beginning.  This is too much competition for you to rank well with a newer website.

Posted by Admin on April 5th, 2010

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