Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

Yahoo Answers and the LinkedIn answers area are places where people go to post questions, and if you can be Johnny on the spot with solid answers to FAQs, you could generate a lot of respect for yourself and traffic back to your site.

For example, if you have a site offering services to troubleshoot common computer problems and bugs, you could make a name for yourself by providing a little bit of free advice on these social networks to as a kind of free advertisement of your services. If people are impressed, they might check out your site, and they will remember you when they run into a problem next time. Eventually they might become a customer.

The points system offered by these programs is a way to built trust for yourself in the industry and get a lot of visibility. If you offer good advice that consistently gets voted as the most helpful, others will come to look upon you as the leading authority on the topic(s).

This type of thing can be invaluable. You can even add a page or two on your website to boast about your status - make your FAQ page (which all websites should have anyway) read “Answers featured also on (insert name of site here)” and you can include an about the owner page that touts your experience on the ‘answers’ circuit.

Blatant self promotion, sure, but it works! People will see your work, check it out elsewhere, and come away with a renewed respect for your knowledge which translated into trust in your skills.

Of course, you have to manage your time, and the best way to do this is to check the frequent searches for common ‘how to’ questions and also anything starting with ‘is’ or ‘are’. If you can stay on top of the relevant questions asked, you can start to build a name for your site in your spare time.

Make sure if you add a link that you do it at the end - you don’t want to look like a spammer. Provide relevant, detailed advice in a brief, friendly format. Too short answers are as bad as ones that are too long. If you really don’t have anything to offer, skip it. The goal is to consistently help people, and gain their trust.

Another way to get trust built in your expertise and by extension your site is to write short articles for eHow, and related sites. If you make sure you SEO your content, you might even start seeing some of your articles ranking for your keywords!

These are just a few ways to help boost you internet profile, and go hand in hand with becoming known in the social network communities by blogging on a professional level. Often there are blogs in your field that accept guest bloggers, so if you can land a spot like that it will only add to your visibility!

People will always have questions. This is your opportunity to let them know you have the answers!

Search engine optimization has become one of the most popular and the most wanted internet service of this decade. There is an increasing awareness among website owners about the need for search engine optimization for the online success of their websites. This increasing awareness creates over enthusiasm in their efforts leading them to make mistakes. Often partial knowledge is what leads to majority of the SEO related problems. People read an article on the importance of link building and try to get links from all types of websites irrespective of the nature of the website from which they try to secure a link, its relevance to their website and the pagerank etc. They are not really aware that by linking to websites that are not really relevant to their website or linking with a website that has lesser pagerank can only hinder their SEO success rates.

Similarly, we hear about the importance of keyword density in the content of the web pages and what most of us do is to hire a content writer to develop fresh content that is stuffed with keywords and every third word will be a keyword! Again most of the webmasters are not aware that excessive stuffing of keywords can have their sites penalized by Google and the other search engines. The keywords should not obstruct the natural flow of the website content and it should not make the text look artificial. The keywords should never look forced into the text. To make things worse, there are keyword and key phrase generation software products that generate a long list of keyword phrases for any given area based on the keywords that we feed the software which are supposedly used by the internet users. Most of them have no rhyme or reason and such key phrases too will be forced into the text making the entire text awkward following no rules of grammar. This will frustrate your human users and your website will lose its credibility and that is the irony of the outcome that results from your efforts. You are making all these efforts to attract traffic but if you do not have a palatable website that your visitors will enjoy using then they will decide never to return to your website. You should ensure that your website projects a professional image and meets all the professional standards while at the same time making efforts to please the search engines.

Search engine optimization is both an art and a science. It has to be done with care with enough thought put into it and the solution should be a holistic one. All your efforts should be well balanced. When you include the keywords make sure that the same keyword does not repeat itself for more than three times within every 500 words. You will have better results if the keywords appear once in the first three lines of your text for the first time and the rest distributed through out the text; if possible include the keyword in the heading of the page using H1 tag.

There is a saying in the internet world: content is king. Without content the world wide web is non existent. If you write your content yourself, you need to learn how; even if you hire this job out a good working knowledge of what good content consists of is necessary to ensure you are presenting your best face to the internet world.

The first rule of content writing is make it user friendly! If no-one can understand it, no-one will read it. If your site will be frequented by the average American, use layperson’s terms and keep it interesting, light and informative. If you are writing a scientific paper for a learned audience, do so with as much clarity as possible and resist the temptation to show off.

The second rule is make your content search engine friendly. Search engine spiders crawl the web looking for tasty flies - whoops, I mean content. If all you have is a dry husk they won’t consider you a very good catch! Google is like a highly sophisticated search detail in the jungle, with night vision glasses and heat sensors, but you can save a lot of trouble and avoid miscommunications if you make yourself clearly known.

You can tell the engine a lot about yourself with your content. There are a myriad of formulas for content writing, but a good rule of thumb is to try to make your keywords prominent enough that Google is able to categorize your site without stuffing your content to point that it becomes completely unintelligible.

I have a fictional site I call ‘PetsStyles’ that I use for illustrative purposes. Lets look at a few ways my content should be helping my site.

Articles or webpage content needs to utilize your main keywords. These are the words you want to show up on the SERPs for when a searcher types them in. For example, if I want people looking for ‘dog hoodies’ to find my site, I need to optimize for that keyword phrase. I also want to include relevant secondary keywords or phrases in my text.

A good article will be between 500 and 1000 words (optimum length is a highly disputed topic among webmasters) and keywords should be evenly and smoothly integrated into the text. Again, there is a wide range of opinion regarding the best keyword density, with some camps insisting that anything over 2% is stuffing, and others maintain that even 5% is not too much.

A balanced article will try to fall somewhere in the middle, keeping in mind that readability beats out a keyword rich bunch of babble any day of the week. For a 500-1000 word article, use the main keyword phrase once in the title, again in the first paragraph and two to three more times throughout the text (with the last mention falling in the final paragraph).

The frequency will of course depend on how seamlessly you can work the phrases in, and on the finished length of your article. Using your secondary keyword phrases two or three times each should be sufficient. The goal is to present a consistent view to the spider crawling your site, so they can take an accurate report back to Google.

For my site, my main keyword phrase is ‘dog hoodies’ and my secondary phrases are ‘pet clothing’ and ‘puppy hoodie’. A good sample paragraph might read:

‘Dog hoodies are the perfect way for a pet owner to display team spirit! If you are a sports fan and an animal lover, you can double the fun by finding pet clothing featuring your favorite team. A puppy hoodie with a logo matching the one on your own makes for a enjoyable jog in even wet weather, and lets passersby know just where you stand!’

All right, that’s a little heavy on the keyword density, but I’m sure you get the idea. There’s no way even an automated robot could miss the point of your site!

Tomorrow: How to distribute your content and link it back to your site!

There are specific techniques which have become common for SEO masters when it comes to content. They all hinge on one thing - the ability to catch the attention of a searcher and make them feel you have the answer to their question.

Without further ado, I give you the following, as alternate titles to this blog post accompanied by a short explanation for each one.

Attention! Important Information Regarding SEO Content!

Made you look, didn’t it? A one word lead followed by an exclamation mark is bound to catch the eye. I followed up with two other words that are great attention getters - ‘important‘ and ‘information’; then I told you what the important information is about (regarding SEO content) and let you come to me! You can also use the words ‘urgent’ , ‘update’ and ‘news’ for a similar effect.

How To Write SEO Content for Maximum Results

Here’s another way I can make you sit up and take notice. Everyone loves a ‘How to’ list, and here I followed up immediately with the subject (write SEO content) and added a hook (for maximum results). Again, you can vary the wording using words like ‘best’, ‘ultimate’ and ‘impact’.

Top Ten Tricks To Writing SEO Content

You getting the idea, now? Another type of list, and you can use any number. Odd numbers are becoming common as the catch the eye, and can be used to alliterate with other hook words, such as ‘The Seven Secrets for-’ or the ‘Eight Exceptional Ways to-’.

Why, Where and When

Phrasing your title as a question is a great way to grab attention as well. People ask questions continuously, and thanks to Alex Trebek we are well acclimated to looking for a question to find the answer. Questions like ‘Why does,’ ‘Where can’ and ‘When do’ are common queries, and you can capitalize on them by using these keywords in your title. ‘Who’, ‘Will’ and ‘Do’ are also possible.

Once you have gotten your audience’s attention, you need to present your information in an easy to navigate format. Numbered list should follow some sort of natural progression. Headers should be evenly distributed, and bullets used judiciously.

Avoid large block of text. Plenty of white space is the rule, and you want to paragraph with even distribution of text and spacing in mind. If the content is for your own website, make sure you frame it out with a wide margin or border on each side, as it will be difficult to read otherwise.

There is a reason many sites offer print friendly version! Reader friendly version requires a more elaborate eye to attention and detail, with borders and graphics to break up the text so it doesn’t seem overpowering or dissuading. You want your reader to proceed undaunted to read your text after you have lured them to looking at it!

If you follow these simple rules when starting to put your article together, you will have a good chance that people will believe you to be helpful and informative. Whether you actually are or not is a matter which we can address tomorrow! (Oh, those are more good words… ‘simple’ and ‘rules’!)

SEO is all about getting your site noticed. You are intensely pursuing the traffic that can come your way by a top ranking on the SERPs. You have probably scattered content in the form of articles, video and graphics all over the web in an attempt to gain those precious back links and the requisite PageRank.

Did you realize you can utilize those articles still further by making them lead directly to conversion sales or additions to your subscription list? Don’t underutilize your content. There is so much more it can do besides provide SEO for your site - you can make it become a traffic driver in its own right.

The main idea for most articles written for publication in directories, etc, is to provide valuable information. There is no rule that you have to provide ALL the information. Using teaser articles to lead customers back down the path to your site is a perfect way to increase traffic as well.

Instead of just writing one article, write a series of three. Include enough information in the first one to make it valuable enough to keep the attention of the searcher, but leave a question unanswered, and provide a teaser text at the end ‘Learn more…’, ‘Find out what…’ etc. Let them follow the lure back to your site or blog.

The second section should be even more helpful, but still withhold a key piece of information and leave the visitor looking for more. Then you can set the hook by promising them the secret to success if they just ‘click here’. This should send them to a squeeze page.

You third portion is devoted to one thing. The conversion. You are attempting either to make a sale or get the visitors email address or other info for a subscription list. You do this by promising one more time that they will have what they need as soon as they make the purchase or fill in the required fields.

This is your hard sell page. You can offer a free eBook or other gift for filling out the subscription field, or make the proffered sales item a ‘one time special’ or buy now for free shipping. These are proven techniques that result in high conversions.

All three articles should run between 300-500 words, and be search engine optimized as well as friendly and personal. Using the first person “I had great success with” etc is a great way to gain trust. Add a few testimonials from people who have benefited.

Most importantly, once you have gotten wht you wanted, DELIVER. You want repeat customers and referrals, so make sure the customer leaves happy. Don’t string them along if you don’t really have anything to offer them, and don’t use false testimonials or reviews - you will eventually be exposed and lose all your credibility.

Once you have learned to utilize your content to its full potential, you should see a rise in your non engine traffic and your conversion rate will begin to multiply!

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