Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

The clock is winding down on another decade! Have you decided that this is the year you really get your site up and running? If so, SubmitEdge can help.

We usually don’t use our blog for advertising our SEO services, but right now is the best time for those New Years resolutions, and why shouldn’t you get a little help to make your site the very best?

Let’s take  just a little look at the things you can do to kick start your website into the new year:

Get submitted to directories and search engines. Not all will index you automatically! Manual submission is a great way to get indexed and noticed.

Get links from high PageRank sites that are relevant to your own. You want your incoming links to bring you juice!

Produce optimized, relevant content for your website and all other areas of the net – article directories included.

Take advantage of social media. Comment on blogs and forums, submit to bookmarking sites, and use social networks like Twitter and Facebook to boost your online image.

Use a clean, accessible design for your website. Validate your site to ensure it is coded properly and will be easily crawled by search engine spiders.

Track your rankings, and carefully manage PPC campaigns to maximize your budget. Make the most of everything you ahve so you can continue to grow and thrive.

Maybe you can do some of these things yourself – but in the areas where you need a little help,  just take a minute to look at what SubmitEdge has to offer.  There’s a package for everyone, so you can take advantage of professional assistance in the areas you need help with, and gain advice for stuff you want to do yourself just by adding this blog to your reader.

Happy New Year!

Now it’s time to take what you learned in 2009 and put it into action!

If you used any sort of tools (hit counters, analytics, keyword generators) in 2009, you have to have learned a few things. If you have any sort of seasonal slump, you know it now. You should have learned which pages on your site were high functioning, and which were a waste of space.

In short, you should now know what did and didn’t work, and hopefully have an idea of why.

This is great! It means you are positioned for 2010 – if you use your head. The main mistake a lot of website managers make in the new year is resolving to ‘do it right’ this year – then rushing off and finding a whole new way to ‘do it right’ and completely ignoring everything they learned the year before.

For example, let’s say that you noticed that a lot of the links you got in 2009 haven’t helped you. Instead of figuring out which ones are useless and why, you rush out and sign up for a service that offers you x number of links in x days.

If you really looked at your situation, however, you’d see that a lot of the sites you linked from had little or no Page Rank – so what you need to do now is concentrate on link building from sites with good PR. Does your new service offer THAT?  If not, find one that does.

Same goes for content. If you notice that all your pages that were constructed for 50 cents a page by a cheap outsource freelancer have a really high bounce rate, maybe you nee to consider hiring better writers – even if they cost a bit more. Hiring the same cheap SEO keyword stuffing writers might get you cheap traffic, but your conversion rate will likely be nil. Using an SEO service that produces quality content and will stand behind their work is a good option.

In other words, sure – look for new outlets and ways to get things accomplished – but don’t ignore what you learned already! Make 2010 better than 2009 by applying your knowledge to your new efforts.

Lets take a quick peek back at some of the stuff we learned in 2009:

Don’t be a black hatter. Black hat tactics will sink your site. In case you don’t remember, here’s a list of black hat actions to avoid:

• Cloaking
• Link farming
• Buying or selling links
• ‘Rewriting’ content that does not belong to you
• Spamming

Now you know what NOT to do – here’s the DO list – ways to prosper in 2010:

1. Create fresh, original content
2. Consistently keep new content coming
3. Utilize all avenues possible to publish new content – article sites, video sites, blogs, etc
4. Social network your heart out. Social media is the future.
5. SEO everything, but don’t keyword stuff.
6. Budget your time and finances according to the greatest need.
7. Balance your growth with value.
8. Keep your promises to your customers.
9. Always be looking for new contacts
10. Create new and exciting ways to reach your niche market

If you follow these guidelines, your New Year will be bright!

Writing good headlines isn’t just for newspapers. You have to have a good headline for your articles as well. With the need for SEO, your title may need to be keyword optimized, so you may not have the freedom to be too creative.

Your subtitle, however, can be used to draw attention. This post, for example, is about how to write a good headline.  I could have used a subtitle to jazz it up. But what should I have used?

People like to be shocked and stunned. They also like to read about things that are sexy, exciting or new. Good headline writers know these things. They also know that humour is appreciated, as are references to common culture:

Lets see what subtitles could have been selected for this post:

New Research Shows Why People Click (could use a scientific discovery showing percentages of people who click on headlines with different rtigger words)

Sexy Headlines Hint at Revealing Secrets (sex sells!)

Exciting Ways to Spice up Your Headlines (oooh, excitement)

Headlines – the Good, The Bad and the Ugly (everyone knows that movie)

How Headlines Affect Your Bottom Line (haha!

Make your Marquee Sparkle (headliner – get it?)

News at Eleven Words (eleven is about all you can get away with)

Do you see where this is going? You are probably writing about something more intriguing than how to write a headline, so put on your thinking cap and be creative. Get more people to choose to read your article that the next one, and see your links and conversions rise as well.

Ready for 2010, yet? Here’s a few tips to make it run smoothly

Out with the old

Time to clean house. Anything that you’ve been putting off – products that just aren’t selling, pages that get no traffic, links that no longer work – clean them up and get your site ready for the new year.

In with the new

While you are at it, write down some ideas for things to replace those tired pages. You should prepare some content and develop a new direction for y0ur website for an even more successful year

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

Touch base with your contacts. Send a warm email out, letting people know about your site and what you plans are – include a coupon as well, or incentive for them to visit your site. This is the time of year when people are doing their own resolution making, and some of them may be ripe for a contact to spur them in directions where they may find themselves in need of what you offer!

Make a resolution

It can be small, but should hold significance. Perhaps a vow to work on your website at least twenty minutes a day – real minutes, not sitting at your PC and visiting your Facebook Page.  If you do one piece of content a day, or chase down a new link per day, or build a widget – you have done something good for your site’s future!

That’s it – it’s simple. Just recommit to your website’s success. You can make great things happen in 2010 – especially if you get started now!

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