‘Daily SEO Tips’ Articles
SEO and Domain names as a strategy
The starting point of finding a great domain name is to realize that you do need own your own domain name, not some byproduct of other blog systems such as cars.wordpress.com or bikes.blogger.com . Most website owners have figured this out already but a lot of bloggers haven’t. That’s because it takes a bit of work and some money. First you have to purchase the domain, then host it, pay the monthly hosting fees, install the blog, write content, build links, onsite SEO stuff, and so on. Not quite as easy as signing up for a blog service and pounding out your first blog post all in ten minutes.
If your blog is nothing more than a personal diary then the free blogging services may be all you need. But if you’re looking to build an audience, sell a few products, or make a name for yourself, buying your own domain name is a must.
Whether you’re a business, a blogger, or something in between, selecting your domain name can be a trying process. Those of you who have searched for the “perfect” domain name know what I mean. You go through dozens, if not hundreds of different options looking for just the right one. When looking for domain names for your business or blog, here are a few guidelines:
Keep it short
Short domains are the hardest to find. Unless you’re willing to shell out big bucks, give up on the dream of getting your business’ initials (i.e. ppm.com, emp.com, etc.). But that’s not to say you can’t find just the right short domain name for you. You don’t need something as short as three letters, but I wouldn’t go much longer than three words. Even though long key term keywords are just about gone, some are expiring as well. You could try getting a service like www.deleteddomains.com to find what you are looking for and you can download them everyday onto an excel spreadsheet for easy reading offline. That is what I use to find terms that I may want to use in the future. This is also a good tactic if you want to look for additional income as a domain reseller. That is beyond our scope of this topic, but wanted to throw that in there as a “lightbulb” if you want to make extra cash on the side.
Make it memorable
You want your domain name to be something that can be remembered easily. Word of mouth and your ability to make podcasts to say it on the recordings, matter. When looking to get a short domain name many people try to cut corners with abbreviations or clever spellings. The problem with that is clever spellings have to be explained when passing the site on verbally which is longer than the domain name itself. The simplest way and plenty of domains are available for them is to use hyphens between long term keywords. For example buy-my-car.com or real-estate-sales.com . With those all you have to say is the domain name, with ” Hyphens” in between the words. People nowadays understand that concept.
Use keywords if possible
It’s not always easy to find domains with your primary keywords still available, but keep looking. Just avoid the temptation to load up your your domain with all kinds of keywords.
The perfect place to shop for domain names that people have keywords and yet are cheap, is EBAY. There are many domains there that are sold way below market value, but you must do your homework. Research the domain history and make sure that it’s now blacklisted in Google.
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HOW TO USE AND GET BACKLINKS TO GAIN SEO
Links
Links are the most important element after content on the internet!
Why? Because this is how the internet world is woven together – through links much like a spider web, hence the term World-wide-web.
This artile will explain some factors about links and how to use them in the right way for acquiring good rankings in search engines.
Link campaigns
Every successful web site has to have links pointing to it. That’s the core principle of search engine rankings. So to gain visitors and rankings in search engines a link campaign has to be planned and executed.
Where to get links
Links can be obtained in several ways – the most popular are explained below.
Directories – are the best way to start working on your link campaign. There are hundreds of directories and many of them are free so it is good to start there. Some might need a backlink before accepting inclusion, some might require a payment but in return will give 4 to 10 links to your website to different pages and with different link anchor texts.
Forums and newsgroups – are another option for gaining links – all it takes is posting into related places and along with posts include also links to website. Links can be placed in your signature or also in part of reply .
Blogs – are a great solution to give its owner total control over content and links. As a lot of blogging companies offer blogs for free it just makes sense to create them and use for link creation and building a network of sites around central website, however these blog sites have to be linked by other external sites, so you need to create campaigns for those as well.
Articles and press releases – represent a very powerful strategy for getting one way links as well as an instant stream of extra visitors if the article is republished by some online or offline medium. Places to submit articles to are:
http://www.prleap.com
http://www.prweb.com
http://www.newswiretoday.com
DMOZ and Yahoo directories – these two are very powerful in eyes of search engines – also called trusted sites. Link from any of these will assure search engines that your site should be high quality. However, it is quite tricky to get in free, if not impossible, to DMOZ especially if it is a 13 page affiliate site with links and banners everywhere. The same applies to Yahoo as well as 300$ to 600$ non-refundable fee to review your site for inclusion which won’t guarantee inclusion.
Link exchange – most popular way for gaining huge numbers of links and improve site rankings. Only disadvantages that reciprocal links are worth less than one way links.
Link gaining speed
The speed of links appearing in a website is used for several spam prevention filters invented by search engines. For a new website it wouldn’t be advisable to get more than 100 links in the first month. This mean 2-3 links a day as an best way for first month.
Why? Because site has to grow slowly as it would do naturally.
Next month the number of links can be grown at speed of 3-5 links per day.
On third month up to 5-10 links a day can be added.
For older sites that already have a good reputation and have PageRank of 4 or more and 500+ links, the speed can be faster – 10-30 links a day.
It is important to add links to internal sections/pages and add new content constantly as the link campaign is being executed.
This is the difference that we offer here at PressmyAds.com. You as an advertiser get to choose the type of link you want, the level of the site and such. For example if you are starting out , you may want to get the cheaper anchor text advertisement at the silver level, since those site most likely won’t have many pages to create the backlinks and furthermore, are probably crawled less by the search engine spiders. If your site is more established, then getting an RSS feed advertisement would be best for deeplinking and your SERP’s will increase for long keyword strings.
Tags: backlinks, seo
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Creating great content on each and every page, Make it count!
Body text
This is what your visitors will actually see when landing on your site. There are many things to consider when placing keywords in the text of your pages. A majority of the search engines index the full text of each page, so it’s vital to place keywords throughout your text. However, each search engine uses different ranking algorithms, so there is no magical percentage of repeating your keyword to attain. Make it natural and you will be rewarded. Also you want to avoid typing like Elmer Fudd, your visitors will just bounce away in seconds.
These are general rules that everyone should follow:
1. Use your main keywords. Use the home page as the source for your main keywords. There is a higher chance of being indexed on your home page than your other pages, and in some cases will be the only page indexed by some engines. Some engines rank a page high if it has at least 100 words, so make that your minimum. Directories include pages based on the quality of their content, so make sure your pages aren’t simply lists of keywords or looks spammy.
2. The H1, H2…H6 tags are given special relevancy weight, and you should plan to integrate your keywords into your heading. You don’t have to go extreme, just use one H1 for your most important keyword and two H2’s – one for each of your secondary keyword phrases and then move on down the line. End your page article with the H6 tag and use the underline for emphasis.
3. Bolding and italicizing your keywords at least once doesn’t hurt and actually gives you a very small boost (recommended, but don’t go bolding every keyword on the page) .Mix and match now and then.
4. When creating your content pages, keep the following four concepts in mind: Keyword prominence, proximity, density and frequency.
5. Keyword prominence - the best place to place keywords in the text is at the top of each page, preferably the main page. Use it as your title tag as well. The closer your keywords are to the start of the page or the start of a sentence, the better. This concept is known as “keyword prominence.” You’ll often see it used to describe search engines’ algorithms. In some search results, the first sentence is used in the description as it overrides the Meta Description tag. Also some engines also say the bottom of the page should contain keywords as well. Here is an example how search engines see your page. You have a page with the following links at top:
Home Schooling
and this heading :
OUR EDUCATION COMPANY IS OFFERING THE BEST RATED HOME SERVICES
Now, you think you did a good job with the keyword “Home “at the top of your page. A search engine, however, sees your page this way:
Home Schooling Contact OUR EDUCATION COMPANY IS OFFERING THE BEST RATED HOME SERVICES
Now your keyword placement doesn’t look as good as it did before. Try to place keyword-rich text at the very top of your page. If you are using images at the top of your page, make sure to include ALT tags, which are images’ descriptions. Always add ALT tags to your images to make sure search engines recognize all the content on your site. ALT tags filled with keywords can also be used to boost your keyword frequency and help you make better rankings. Also surround your images with relevant text with the keywords as well.
6. Keyword Proximity - Some engines, such as Google, use the concept of “keyword proximity” as part of their ranking formulas. As suggested by the name, “keyword proximity” means the how close keywords are to each other. Put your keywords as close together as possible and make sure your sentences are clear.
Here’s an example:
- We have been selling warehouse packaging products for over 5 years.
- We have been selling products for warehouse packaging for over 5 years.
In this case if someone should look for “packaging products for warehouses”, the first sentence will rank higher because its keywords are closer to each other. Also take note that the search engines rarely take into account singular or plural terms, they are smart to ignore it.
7. Keyword Frequency - is a measure of the several times keywords occur within a page’s text. It’s tied to the concept of keyword density. Search engines want to see more than one repetition of a keyword in your text to make sure it’s not an isolated case. The recommended repetition is about 9 percent of the total words of the page. Try not to break the 10% barrier.
8. Keyword Density - the last point on visible text is keyword density. Simply stated, keyword density is the number of occurrences of a keyword divided by the total word count. For this, I try to keep my initial density to between 7-9%. However, this number may have to change depending on the level of competition. Also, be warned that the text used in anchors
<a href=”page.html”>this is your anchor text </a>
affects your density. Don’t worry if your initial density is lower than that of your competitors as you will learn later in this article that there are many ways to affect your keyword density other than placing your keywords in your visible text. Also take into account the Alt Tags you placed on images and videos.
9. Anchors and Links - Anchor text is that part of a hyperlink that is viewed by a user on a webpage (The Clickable text).The keywords in anchor text enhance the relevance of the target page about the keywords used. While the relevance of the page containing the anchor text is also enhanced to some degree (because of relevant keywords appearing on that page), the real gain is the target page URL.
Use this knowledge to build the relevance of each page of your site, through optimized anchor text containing important keywords, relevant to the theme of such pages, from other pages of your site. The inclusion of important keywords in the anchor text can make a big difference in the final ranking of your site pages. Use these type of links to connect your site.
All search engines that matter, give significant weight to the anchor text on your pages.
For example, if your keywords phrase is “tennis rackets” and you have a link with anchor text “Read all about tennis rackets here” on a page , pointing to another page about tennis rackets the tendency is to link “here” to the anchor text content URL because the best way is to link “tennis rackets”. You can also find (or insert) important keyword phrases in your page’s natural text and link it to relevant target pages of your site. The target page’s name should include in it, if possible, your keywords. This is how a hyperlink code looks like:
< a href=”target-page.html”>tennis rackets</a>
10. Frames , Java scripts, Flash
About frames: DON’T USE THEM; they are not spiderable from the search engines. Regarding Java scripts and Flash do not use them excessively. The reason for this is that spiders cannot read JavaScript (or Flash) and thus any link or text created by such JavaScript will not be counted in your indexing and will produce a lost opportunity.
11. Navigation
The navigation structure of your site is important because it is through your navigation that the search engine spiders are able to access all of your web site’s content. For sites with a few pages you should have every page of your site linked to every other page of your site. This can be done by having a menu or by putting a link to every other page on the bottom of your page. For sites with many pages it is advisable to include in directories or sitemaps to the pages that are content related. For example, if you sell 10 different types of shoes and you also sell food and clothes you’re probably not going to link the sport shoes page and the leather shoes page from the food page-but rather from the shoes page itself.
Tags: anchor text, content, Keywords, seo, tags, text
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Title Tags !
The first step in creating a webpage is to provide a “Title Tag”. Without it , just pack up your laptop and find another hobby or job.
The title tag is the most important piece of real estate on your site as far as the search engines are concerned. So don’t blow it by just making it your domain name. A title tag could be as long as you want, but you only have about 60 characters before the search engines stop using the text and moves on to other elements on the page.
Since the title appears as the anchor text in the link in the SERPs pages ,it must be filled with the most important , relevant, and eye-catching information that you can come up with.
Keywords
People who type in specific words into the search engines , expect the engines to give results that match their original query. We know that the search engines look at over 200 different signals in their algorithm to decide the result of any page against the keyword searched. The title tag is the most important factor. You don’t necessarily need your keyword in the title tag for it to come up in the search results, but it helps a great deal.
As you can see from the image, the term searched for was in the title tag and because of good SEO techniques, ranked not only #1 in the search result, But outranked the actual company that makes the item searched ! And imagine all those e-commerce sites that have that specific search term ” Nike Air Max 90 “. Where are they in the picture? Just below the result again.
Gripping.
The next thing your title tag has to be is gripping, take your audience and totally grab them, hook, line and sinker. We just showed you how to make it more likely to be clicked simply by putting keywords in it, but that itself is only the beginning.
The trick is to make sure that the title tag is both keyword rich and compelling. This will help move your site to the top of the rankings, but also make sure that visitors are more likely to click on it into your site. Mix your keywords with other close terms for that same object or term, just as in the example above. Try to keyword spam it without looking spammy. I know that’s more of an art than science, but the best form to use is just check out the title tags of other sites and see how they use it to drive clicks to their sites. Also from our other post, use the Meta Descriptions to it’s full value as discussed in the post.
Avoid Common mistakes
Creating and placing your title tags properly is crucial to ensuring they are effective. Without it, the content on the page just has it’s value reduced by a lot. Here are a few common issues:
Same on Every Page: Each page in your site is unique. This means your title tags to be unique on each page as well. On a lot of sites you’ll see the same title tag across all the pages “Welcome to My Site, We are so-and-so.com “or something like that. That hardly describes the page at all, and at that point, the spiders crawling your page will most likely flag it as a useless page and a waste of resources to crawl it. Go through your site and customize each title, ensuring it uniquely and accurately describes the content of the page.
Leading with Business Name: There are good reasons to have your business name present in your title tag, but that should not be by default. If you use your business name be sure to think through the reasoning and make sure it’s sound. The best possible position for your Business name should be at the end of the sentence, broken by a | entry.
For example : Air Max 90 Shoes | KicksOnFire.com — That would a great textbook form of a simple title tags. it gives the searcher best of both worlds.
List of Keywords: Avoid placing your keywords in the title tag to just try to throw as many in there as you possible can. “Cars | Autos | GPS | Sports Cars | Car Shows.” Of course that gets all your keywords in there, but it does nothing to make someone want to click on the result and visit your site. Remember, the best way to drive traffic to your site is not just the home page, you should have a page for each keyword that your targeting in a separate area from the home page. Remember, if you have a good landing page, that is optimized for that particular keyword, then users will no doubt go to your home page, stay on your site longer and reduce the bounce rate number of your site. This in turn will make your site a better user exerience, and the search engines will notice and reward your site for it.
Lack of Description: Aside from getting your primary keywords in the title, and making it compelling, you also have to make sure the title tag provides enough of a description of the content to make sure it gets a targeted click. There is more on using proper descriptions on another post here on using meta descriptions.
Remember , use title tags all the time, on every page, and make them unique with great keywords that is associated with the content on your page.
Tags: Keywords, seo, Title Tags
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A big misnomer about SEO is that everything we do is to increase search engine rankings. This is not true, our jobs are to drive and convert traffic, and there is no better example of that as SEO’s ignore the Meta Description tag. Even though this description tag doesn’t weigh at all into the search engine ranking algorithms, it is still a very powerful part of an effective traffic conversion campaign.
Just like the “Title Tag” , the Meta Description tag will often show up in the search results. Generally what you see in the Search Engine Results page ( SERP ) is the clickable title anchor text link and then the description follows it. If the description is placed into the results, it becomes a very important part of enticing visitors to click on the link into your site. This should be the eye-catcher to get that traffic, not the fact that you where on top of the page. This is very important now, since search engines like Google and Bing are starting to place in the top of their results irrelevant results to youtube videos, real-time tweets and images .
If your description tag fails to adequately tell , or better yet, shout to your visitors whats on the page then it’s likely they’ll click on another result. Capture them when you have the chance !
The reason many SEO’s don’t put much stock into the description tag is because they stubborn on the belief that people click on rankings, not on search results. This is not true. Of course more people click on sites that rank higher therefore the use of Adwords/Adsense, but pay close attention to how the descriptions for those sponsored links focus on the description to get the best possible user to your site and able to convert on that click. You should do the same for your organic traffic. This is when the magic starts to happen and you will be rewarded. A part of the algorithm that takes into account of your site is bounce rate and time spent on site. Search engines know those stats , and use them to gain a better perspective on the quality of your site. The better the ” User Experience” on your site the higher your rank will be. If you drive traffic to your site, and you optimize the landing page for the particular traffic that you just attained from those meta descriptions, The more likely your user will 1. come back again, 2. bookmark your site, 3. you will get a bump up on the search engine results when that person searches for similar topics based on their personalized results that search engines are starting to use.
Those who take the time to look through the search results, reading titles and descriptions to find the site that is targeted to their search term, are likely to be a targeted visitor one they land on your site.
The general rule is that you want each of your description tags to be unique. The text copy should b e a 20-35 word summary of what the searcher will expect to find on that page, and that page only. Descriptions for each page must unique from the next. Make sure you optimize the page in a unique way, using primary and secondary keywords while making it compelling to the audience and try to attain that newly gained traffic and keep them in your site with relevant links to other places in your site. The clock is ticking once they come to your site, the longer they stay, the better you will rank in the future. It’s a win-win situation.
Tags: meta descriptions, seo
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