7 Steps to Better Search Engine Optimization

One of the biggest challenges that face web site owners is trying to traffic to their websites. This is usually achieved by getting the best possible ranking with the search engines, which comes down to trying to get onto the first page of Google or the other engines such as Yahoo and Bing. It’s important to understand if you are promoting a popular product or services you may have hundreds if not thousands all competing for that same spot. For you to get the edge over the competition you need to do some fine-tuning of your site with search engine optimization. This is not as complex as it sounds and the steps below can give you some guidelines to improving your site to get some search engine attention.

Step 1: Check the layout and design of your website

While you may think you have an impressive looking website, it could also be at the root of your problems. Does your copy start half way down the page, making it more difficult for the search engines to grasp what your site is about? Have you got bloated over sized graphics that make your page slow to load or too much white space between the lines? It’s not difficult to tweak your pages to get them right. 

Step 2: Have you placed your keywords strategically through your website?

Keyword stuffing can be detrimental to your site but so can lack of keywords. It’s no longer good enough just to put your keywords in the title and meta tags, you need to have a certain percentage placed appropriately within your copy and articles. Your critical keyword is ideally to be found in your first paragraph of text, and should also be used in headlines and in your hyperlinks.

Step 3: Text links and site maps

To get your site recognized and positioned you need to make sure that all of your pages are being found by the web spider when it crawls your site; which means you need to get your site indexed correctly. It’s important to include a site map in your website that shows all the links to your inner pages. Another good habit to get into is creating a navigation menu with text links, these are a lot easier for the search engine robot to follow and identify all your pages. On page search engine optimization is just as important as off page.

Step 4: Backlinks – Quality vs. Quantity

When you are trying to position yourself a highly competitive category you will need quality backlinks to your site, preferably PR 6 & 7 when you can get them. You will find that when you have good content in your site others are willing to link to you as it provides credibility for their own sites. This can take time link building, in the meantime you can actively search yourself and start requesting links, the more the better. Don’t overlook that quality will outdo quantity any day in terms of getting your site a better ranking.

Step 5: Keep up to date with search engine rulings

Search engines change their rules quite frequently and it is important to keep yourself up to date. This isn’t as hard as it may sound, there are numerous forums and blogs on the net that regularly post information on the latest changes. Search engine optimization (SEO) can be complex, but following these few simple steps provides the basics for getting started. Are you trying to rank your website or blog higher in the search engines?

Have you tried repeatedly to make more money with your product or service, but your site simply cannot be found? This is something that many people face when doing Internet marketing. It can be very tricky when trying to get top rankings for any keyword, even if you have an exact match domain promoting your products or services. There are a few search engine optimization techniques that tend to work regardless of the niche you are in. In this article, we will present a couple different ways that you can achieve higher rankings for your website or blog regardless of what you are trying to sell.

Best Search Engine Optimization Techniques

One of the easiest techniques to implement when it comes to search engine optimization is to use images on your website. This is an old technique that many people use today, and it helps them rank well in the search engines, but only if it is done right. What you need to do is find an image that relates to what you are selling. You then need to add what is called "alt tags", which is essentially the alternate text that shows up in case the image is not shown. What most people do wrong is they actually use multiple images on their website and put their main primary keyword in the alt tags over and over. To the search engines, this is basically spam. When you do this, they will actually degrade your ranking. Therefore, to improve your ranking, you should only use one or two images for each page or post, and the alt tags should only be general words. You can use your primary keyword in one of the images, but going beyond that, your ranking is sure to fall.

Another great tip is to use internal links that only use related keywords. Instead of using your primary keyword to relate to your secondary pages, you should use variations of the primary keyword. This is more natural to the search engines because the average person would not use the primary keyword over and over. Just like with the alt tags, you need to do this sparingly, or else this will also be regarded as spam by the search engines and you will never achieve high ranking in the search engines by doing this too much. Search engine optimization is actually very easy to do with keywords, but if you do an excessive amount of it, it will always backfire, and your site will probably never be found in the organic listings. Hopefully these techniques will help you in finding higher rankings on the search engines. By only using your main keyword a couple times throughout your entire site in the hyperlinks and alt tags, you should be able to improve your overall rankings because Google and the other search engines will not see you as an Internet marketer, and will focus more upon the content that you have on your website or blog.

Content is Key in SEO

Anyone who owns a business is on a constant lookout for the best ways to market and promote their business. There are the usual means of marketing like phone books, newspapers, radio and television. They all have their place, but they are not very targeted. Certain things can be done like getting demographic information to make it a little more targeted. But, these forms of advertising largely depend on their numbers. There is also word of mouth advertising which has its place, and should definitely be pursued. But, when paying for advertising it is best to look for the most targeted advertising possible for the least amount of money. And, the most targeted available currently is by using the Internet and search engine optimization. 

One of the main things you need to consider when performing search engine optimization is the actual content of your website. The search engines actually read the content on your site and file it away for later. Then whenever someone searches for a term they will go through what they have read and decide which site best fits for what the searcher needs. The initial content helps the search engine spider figure out a theme of the site or page. So, if the spider determines a certain page on your site mainly deals with car headlamps it will keep that in mind. Then whenever someone searches for car headlamps it will figure out which site is most relevant to that term to place as number one. There are more factors that go into it when determining which site to rank first, but the content is one of the big ones. 

It is best to build individual pages around each term that you have determined fits the theme of your site. And, you will want to use your key phrases within the actual content itself. You do not want to use the phrase too much because then the search engine will sense that you are trying too hard to force your word into the content, and it may actually penalize you. It can penalize you by lowering your ranking or not even considering your site in the results at all.

A good rule is to use a one to two percent keyword density. So, if your content is 500 words, you can safely use the phrase about five times. By using the term that much you will help the search engine understand the content is related to that word without trying to spam the search engine. Search engine optimization takes work and patience. And, if you use someone to do it for you it can take an investment as well. But, the targeted traffic you can obtain from using it can be quite valuable. If you set it up correctly, you will have something marketing your business for you all hours of the day with little work on your part. And, you will have traffic that comes to you looking for answers or solutions to immediate problems. That means hungry buyers and more money in your pocket.

Current Trends In Search Engine Optimization

If you run your own website or blog, or in fact spend any time on the Internet (and who doesn't)you will have heard the term "search engine optimization". Also abbreviated to the acronym SEO, search engine optimization is a term used for the tactics of using certain keywords to improve a website's search engine ranking. In years gone by search engine rankings (where you appear in the search results)was dependent to a large extent on how "keyword rich" your sire was. This led to a situation where site owners and SEO experts were simply flooding articles and websites with certain words and phrases. This practice led to articles which did not read well and in extreme cases were simply gibberish, with no context and no effort being made to engage the reader in any way. The case today is very different. Google, which runs the most popular search engine in the world is making every effort to encourage site owners and SEO experts to clean up their act. What Google wants to see is sites that are filled with good content. This content needs to add value to the experience of the Internet user through providing unique and valuable information.

The information supplied can be in the form of video, images or copy. In fact many content experts believe that a combination of these three is the secret (or not so secret) formula to attracting more visitors to their online channels, be they blogs, the social media or their websites. The more quality content that a website has, the more links it will attract. In essence the content is attractive to other site owners who may feature that content on their own websites and provide a link to the original source. Google recognizes that this type of content is shared willingly due to its unique high quality information and rewards the developers of such content with a higher search engine ranking. The production of quality content is especially important in the social media due to the ease with which it can be shared.

Goof content can reach millions of social media users, allowing a business to increase traffic to their site and increasing the possibility of making sales. The rise of unique and engaging content has not meant the end of search engine optimization through the use of keywords. Today the job of the SEO expert is to produce articles and content that is rich in keywords (but not too rich, around 3 - 4% of an article should be keywords)but still readable and interesting to the site visitor, in other words adhere to the Google guidelines for the production of unique and value added content that enriches the Internet experience of the user.

Effective Search Engine Optimization Tips

Many companies choose to make use of SEO experts in order to increase both their site ranking and optimize their content. In addition to keywords these experts will also recommend behind the scenes changes to the website itself (such as meta tagging) which increase search engine rankings. Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of building back links to your website, in order to make it rank higher in the search engines. If your website does not rank on the first page of Google or other search engines, it would be impossible for you to make money using this website. You have to promote this website using search engine optimization techniques to get it to rank higher in organic search results. 

Search engine optimization could be done in two ways. One is on-page optimization, while the other is off-page optimization. On-page optimization is about modifying the title tag and meta description of the website to include the primary keyword that you are targeting. This is rather simple and does not take much time. But, off-page optimization is a cumbersome process and it would mainly target the back link building process. You need to build back links to your website in order for the search engines to rank your website higher in their search results. A back link is a vote in favor of a particular website and the search engines count it as such.

There are several methods to build back links to a website, in order to rank them higher on Google and other search engines. Quality and unique content are a must for a website to get good rankings on search engines. Without good content you would not have any traffic to sell your product to. Duplicate content is being marginalized by most search engines and websites with duplicate content would be penalized, most of the time. Always ensure to include engaging content to attract customers to your website and make profits by selling your products and services to them. Article marketing is one effective technique to build links to your website. Write unique articles and forward them to online article directories with a back link to your website in the resource box in the article. This would make Google give your website favorable points and rank your website higher in its search results. 

Posting quality content on high quality social networks is another effective tip to enhance your website presence in the search engines. You could link to your website in the article body that you are posting to the social network sites. This is a quality back link in the eyes of Google and other search engines. Social bookmarking your website is one of the most effective techniques to rank your website higher in the search results. It is a high quality back link in the eyes of the search engines. 

How Search Engine Optimization Has Become More Sophisticated

Directory submissions are another form of back linking method that is effective in increasing your website presence in the search engines. Submit your website to high PR directories on the internet. Use directories that are relevant to the topic of your website. The above tips are effective in increasing your website presence on the net. But, remember to always provide high quality content when submitting them to various platforms across the World Wide Web. Internet marketers are very familiar with the need to use good search engine optimization in each individual post or article they write. Without good SEO, Google will not send the traffic they need to be successful. 

Over the years search engine optimization has become more and more sophisticated. This has been necessary in order to keep up with the technological advancements of Google and other search engines. Gone are the days when marketers could get by with using a targeted keyword phrase in the title of an article, and then loading the page with the same keyword phrase over and over again. Worse, these pages often contained no information at all; they were pages filled with nothing but links to affiliate sites. Those marketers found that the search engines sent them so much traffic that they could still make a boat load of money from the 1% or 2% of the visitors who would click through on one of their many affiliate links and make a purchase.

It is easy to appreciate why Google needed to do a better job of understanding where they were sending traffic. Would you continue to use Google if every time you searched for something you were sent to a link farm? Do you like to be sent to a page that offers absolutely no information about the subject of your search? Of course not. No one does. As technology improved, Google started learning how to separate sites that had informative content from those that were abusing the system. They started learning how to identify articles with original content. They started rewarding articles that included words and phrases that were related to the title of the post. They also stopped sending traffic to sites that repeated keyword phrases over and over and over.

As Google became even more advanced they started looking for and identifying excessive affiliate links. They also started noticing the number of ads that were placed inside an article --- and where in the article the ads were placed. Today Internet marketers have learned that practicing good search engine optimization really means providing informative content that is relative to the keywords in the article title. They have also learned that the article cannot be copied and that the article should be filled with words and phrases that are related to the subject.

How To Achieve Search Engine Optimization

Some feel that Google wants to get rid of Internet marketers. According to Google, however, all they want to do is to send the people using their service to websites that provide what they are looking for. After all, when you use Google, that's what you expect. Everyone wants to be sent to a website that that answers a specific question or solves a specific problem. So when you are preparing articles or posts for your websites or blogs, just remember to think like Google thinks. Make sure that you provide relative and informative content. That is the first rule of good search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the process of ranking a website so that it will appear on the first page of a search engine. Google is the most viewed of the search engines so it makes sense to optimize for Google. By doing so the webpage will also show up on Bing and other search engines.

The process is fairly well defined and straightforward, and if followed will produce favorable results. The first thing to do is to search for keyword and keyword phrases that pertain to the product or idea that you will be promoted. If a product is not being sold, a concept or an idea could be promoted, which is fine. For keyword discovery, go to the google keyword tool and input your keyword. Let’s say the keyword is snow shovel, because snow shovels are going to be sold. So the word snow shovel is input and an entire page shows up with varying statistics. Many combinations of key phrases with snow shovel in the phrase show up. The object is to choose the most descriptive phrase with the best statistics.

The product must be in demand with a low competition factor. Assume that the phrase “ergonomic snow shovel” appears and it has a monthly search of 9250 and has a low competition factor. This would be a good choice for a keyword from which to build a website. The objective is to find a product or concept that has a higher demand factor than there is competitive websites promoting the product. Next, go to a site like godaddy.com or hostgator.com and purchase a domain name like Z“ergonomicsnowsovel.com”. Hostgator will also host the website very inexpensively. As the website is built, the keyword phrase should be used in the title of the website and used two or three times in the body of the text of the webpage. 

The title should be in the H1 headline mode and could read something like, WHY BUY ERGONOMIC SNOW SHOVELS?

The body of the rest of the webpage can go into the advantages and testimonies from people who have used the snow shovel and are quite excited and motivated to relate how the snow shovel was easy to use and helped save their back from strain. Once the website is up and running, it now needs to be promoted. The best way to do this is to write articles with a link pointing back to the snow shovel website. Good place to start is https://www.ezinearticles.com and https://www.goarticles.com. Also Sqidoo, Digg and Hubpages are good promotional sites. Posting on blogs will create traffic back to the new site as well.

In this mode, whoever has the most quality links posting back to the website wins. If 50 to 100 links are created of a quality nature, it will help to boost the rank of the site on Google immensely. The word quality has real meaning here. The quest should be to find blogs that will allow posting in the area of your product. For example, a blog which has as its subject matter “Lawn and Garden Equipment”, and has a Google ranking on the first page is a site you would definitely want a link from.