Welcome to SEO Bacics, Part 1. Today’s topic is : What is SEO, anyway? Enjoy it.
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Whatever technique you are using to get traffic to your site be it SEO or article marketing or social networking or PPC or anything else contextual, you know how important keyword research is in getting visitors to your site don’t you? There are a bunch of products that can automate this task but you’re on a tight budget and you want to get free keyword research to optimize your efforts.
Well free is a relative term. There are free tools but it means you have to put the time into using them and your time really has a cost. But when you’re first starting out it makes sense to use the free keyword tools just so you understand how the process works. It will help you evaluate the pay for products when you finally decide to go in that direction.
Over 80% of all traffic starts as a search which means you want to do whatever you can to be on the first page of that search engine, preferably above the fold because that’s as far down as 70% of the visitors go. Getting to that position is not only about using the correct keyword optimization but it is an important starting point.
So how do you rank on page 1? It starts with an idea for content. That content can be for the website or an article but this is the stuff that you want to rank for. Decide on a broad keyword for the article and then run it through one or two of the free tools to get keyword phrase ideas.
So where are these free keyword research tools? There are two that are very popular, Google’s External Keyword Tool and the free version of WordTracker. The two big differences between these tools is that Google will undoubtedly have more keywords listed but they will not have that great a list of long tail keywords. The second difference is Google will express the number of searches monthly while WordTracker shows daily.
So let’s say you have a site that promotes dog supplies. You might consider a piece of content on dog training because you have a number of products that fit into that category. Go to Google External Keyword and enter the general term dog training.
You’ll notice you get a long list of keywords and that dog training gets over 1.5 million searches each month. If you then open another browser and Google dog training you’ll see there are over 45 million results. Two things are important here. First broad keywords are not buying keywords, they are used by people looking for free information. Secondly, this keyword just has way too much competition with 45 million returns.
If you scroll down a little further you’ll find electric dog training collar wit a little over 5,000 monthly searches. Do a Google search on that term and you’ll get 45,000 returns. Now we’re talking. The longer tail keyword is looking for a specific need to be filled, one that might be filled by your products. This is a better buying keyword.
Now if you did that same drill on WordTracker you would likely find even longer tailed keywords. The search volume won’t be as much but the keywords are buying keywords.
The last thing to check is the competition for the keyword. Some people will tell you to place the keyword in quotes and find the results of pages that have that exact keyword phrase. You can do that if you like but how many people do you know that search that way? None right?
What’s important is to see who is on the first page and if you have a chance to bump them. Firefox has a free SEO plugin that will show you the page rank and much more for each return.
If the first page is dominated by .gov, .edu or Wikipedia returns, you probably will not stand a chance because those will be considered authority sites. If however, you see articles from article directories or sites with a PR of 2 or less, give it a shot.
Yes all this is time consuming but that’s the cost of free keyword research.
You’ve got this home based business and you’ve put up a website and now you’re just waiting for people to come and visit. Build it and they will come is not a viable system to develop traffic unless you can get some divine intervention. Eighty percent of all visits to websites start out as a search. That’s a huge percentage. How do you get your fair share of that traffic? Well, here are some internet marketing help tips on how you can set up free website promotion and get a better ranking on the Big G.
Everything starts with content, of course. You have to have well written valuable information to be considered relevant by the search engines. If you have a page that is short on content, or is a PLR article, odds are you are not going to rank.
Always keep in mind the ultimate goal of Google and the other search engines. They want to return the absolutely most relevant pages to their users in order to be the favorite search engine. The more users they have, the more monetization opportunities exist for them. They have a set of criteria in evaluating each page for relevance and they guard those criteria like it was a nuclear bomb secret. Anyone who tells you they know exactly how Google works simply isn’t telling the truth so beware the programs that say they can game the system with some new great software.
What we do know for sure id that Google looks at a number of things. How they weight each item is uncertain, but if you have them all you aren’t going to hurt yourself.
First is the content on the page. As we’ve said is has to be relevant and it shouldn’t be stuffed with keywords. Google is looking for a natural language that would include other keywords relevant to the base keyword. This is called LSI and you can learn more about it on Google’s site.
The Article title, page metatag, and the name of the page file should all have the keyword you’re trying to rank for in it.
Easy so far right?
Google also takes into account what other people think of your site. The thinking is, if you have a site on gardening, and a rose club has allowed you to post a link on their site, then the rose club must think you’re site has value for their members. This is called backlinking and the more relevant backlinks you have the more “votes” Google sees.
To be worth anything in the ranking process, these backlinks have to be from a relevant site. In our example, a rose club is linking to a gardening site. That’s an excellent backlink. If that gardening site has 20 links from like type sites they will rank better than a gardening site that has 1,000 links from totally irrelevant sites. Beware automatic directory submitters unless they have directories that are in your niche. Getting a link from a site that has nothing to do with your niche is next to worthless.
One of the easiest ways to get quality backlinks is to create other similar sites and link back to your main site. This doesn’t mean you have to go out and buy a bunch of domains, you can use free platforms like Squidoo, Weebly or HubPages to create blogs and link back. So if you have a gardening site, create a garden supplies site on Squidoo and a recipe site on Weebly and perhaps an office plant blog on Hub. All three are relevant to your min site and will have good backlink juice.
Forums are also a great source of free quality backlinks. If you join a forum and become an active member, often the forum will allow you to include your URL in your signature. Each time you reply to a comment or start a thread you have another backlink. Just be sure that your participation is substantive and not just spam.
There are literally dozens of free classified ad sites. Don’t expect a ton of visitors from these places, but if you place an ad in the correct classified section, Google will pick up the URL and count it as another link.
There are dozens more ways to plant your URL across sites and build backlinks. Just remember that the more relevant the sites where you leave them, the more juice or votes Google is going to reward you with. Do a good job of backlinking s interne marketing help and your well on your way to ranking on page 1.
At this very moment there are billions of people that are using the internet to surf, gather some facts and information and have fun. For this reason alone there are also millions of people from all walks of life who are creating a website and one of the major reason is that they have seen the potential to expand their business to the help of the internet. But creating a website alone does not warrant that an individual would be successful this field or that the web site he has will be searched and visited. A website without number of traffic is a site that is dead. It is a given fact that traffic inside the web site synonymous to being frequently searched. There are 10 ways to make your website more popular and here is how it works;
1. Develop a nice design and concept. Having a nice design that is carefully planned will give an impression to your readers that your website is a legitimate and trustworthy website. Use appropriate fonts and colors, this will make important element in your website to be more appealing and eye catching.
2. Make your website convenient and easy to navigate. Think of every regular Jane and Joe that would conduct the search. And the way to do this is by having a simple yet powerful keyword or phrase that would make your website be visited by search engine crawlers for indexing.
3. Have relevant content rich articles. Bear in mind that the people visiting your website are looking for information and answers to their problems. It is important that they can find substance in the articles in your website; you should be able to provide quality and informative information. Is at this point that search engine spiders and crawlers will regularly visit your site because of the quality content you are writing.
4. Manage your site. It is important that you keep your articles fresh and updated. Remember a SEO worthy site is those that sites that are giving informative articles. And being informative means that you have to supply fresh information to your visitors so they will keep visiting your site and bookmark it even.
5. Be accommodating and answer queries and questions regularly. As much as possible prompt in answering their questions.
6. Join social networking sites from there endorse your website, then create links that will lead into your websites.
7. Be creative and create some stir in your target market. Give press releases to make your website popular. There are other websites and press release directory that is available that you can use for this kind of advertising.
8. Offer free giveaways like free newsletter, free tutorials or live video instructions that are related to the contents of your site. This will generate traffic and will rapidly make your website more popular.
9. Incorporate informative events that are happening in your circle. Make your readers be informed in the world you belong too, incorporate news about what is the latest development that pertains to your product.
10. Be informed, learned how SEO works and how top search engines such Google and Yahoo operates. Understand how these giants operate and how they track down relevant and informative websites to belong to their database of indices. Learn how to get a rank from this giant search engines and apply it into your website.
The article was written by Leia Mahalo a freelance SEO and SEM specialist working for i-trepreneur.com. If you wish to contact Naomi please visit i-trepreneur.com Blog.
Just a few short years ago, it seemed like it would be impossible to make money now blogging, but that is simply no longer the case for a number of reasons. If you have a solid niche to write on and are able to put in the effort, you can make yourself a nice income by writing about something that you love, which is great news for nearly everyone.
The first thing that you must do is learn how to use WordPress. This program makes blogging easy because it will handle all of your HTML and formatting for you. That way, all you will have to do is worry about creating good content that people want to read in order to make money.
WordPress can also be used to build up a squeeze page, which will help you build up a list of potential clients. You can get these individuals to sign up for updates, which makes it much easier to make sales later on in the process.
The way that people actually make money is through advertising and there are plenty of different forms of advertising that can help you make money now. The first way that the majority of people earn money by blogging is through Google AdSense, which is a program that will automatically place ads on your blog based on the content. If your blog generates clicks or sales for these advertisers, you will make money.
Secondly, bloggers will place banners on their websites in order to help other sites gain traffic. If your blog is popular enough, webmasters will pay you for this service, since you will have the power to send traffic to their websites. You can usually negotiate a price with the webmaster, but it will be based on how much traffic you drive.
Thirdly, you can directly sell other peoples’ products through your blog with the help of a Pay Now button. This button makes it possible for you to track your earnings because you will receive a commission for every sale that you are responsible for. This is a fast way to make money now, as long as you are selling something that people truly want to buy.
Blogging makes it possible for writers to distribute information almost immediately, which makes it possible to build up a substantial reader’s list. Readers want information as quickly as possible and since a blog can be updates in a matter of minutes, you will always be in control of your new content.
The more frequently you make information available to your readers, the more traffic you will bring in and, therefore, the easier it will be for you to make money now. As long as you stay committed to your cause, you will have plenty of chances to make money through blogging.
Search engines are by far the best way to drive potential customers to your websites. But to drive those potential customers to your site you need to provide them with signs to direct them to your site. To do this you need to select some carefully chosen keywords.
No matter how good your website or your product is, without having great keywords that you have chosen with great precision, then your website or product will be of no use. Your keywords play a very high role in your marketing strategy.
The best way to find the right keywords is to look at it from the view of your customers. Otherwise, it can be hard to be objective if you are looking at it from the business side. You need to be able to think like your customers.
A good way to start of is to actually ask your customers. Ask for words and phrases from as many potential customers as you can. You will quite possibly find that many of the words or phrases that your customers come up with will be words and phrases that you hadn’t even thought of yourself.
Once you have a list of keywords and phrases from your customers, and then add your own keywords to the list. Then once you have your completed list you will need to evaluate your keywords. The reason you need to sit down and evaluate your list is to narrow down the list to a reasonably small number of keywords and phrases that will be likely to direct the highest number of good quality visitors to your site. Having lots of traffic coming through your website is no good if the quality of the visitors is not high. With low quality visitors you are not likely to make many sales. You need to have good quality, targeted visitors who are much more likely to make a purchase.
Popularity is one of the ways to evaluate your keywords. The more popular the keyword, the more often you will have potential customers typing that keyword into the search engine. However popular keywords may also have a great deal of competition so your website may rank quite low for that keyword and will therefore not receive that many visitors.
Popularity is good, but it isn’t enough. You also need your keywords to be specific. The more specific your keyword is to your product, then the more likely that a potential customer can find your site. Also the more specific your keyword is then the more likely that your potential customer is a good quality, targeted customer.
The last factor to take into account when evaluation your keywords is motivation. Once again you will need to think like your customer. Try to think about what it is that would motivate someone to search for your product and what keywords they would search for. You don’t want a ton of visitors that are just browsing and very unlikely to purchase, so stay away from keywords that you think will attract browsers. Use good motivational keywords that will attract the customers that know what they are looking for and have already decided what they want, now they just need to make their purchase. This is the motivation that you are looking for and that will give you targeted visitors and many sales.
Once you have your keywords selected, you will need to continue to evaluate your keywords. If you aren’t seeing the results you want then re-evaluate and possibly choose some new keywords. Trends are always changing and so to is the way people talk or the lingo they use, so always keep that in mind and keep updated with your keywords and phrases.
