- Avoid over-using any keyword within the keyword Meta tag. Do not include multiple versions of a keyword in upper or lower case. Use only one or two instances of any word (at most.)
- Avoid creating duplicate content pages.
Search Engines are known to penalize websites that contain Duplicate or Similar
content. Your content could be similar to other websites on the Internet, or pages
from within your own website could be similar to each other.
- Are your links visible to a search engine spider?
A lot of Content and Links displayed on a webpage may not actually be visible to the Search Engines, eg. Flash based content, content generated through javascript, content displayed as
images etc.
Try this tool which Simulates a Search Engine by displaying the contents of a webpage exactly how a Search Engine would see it.
http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php
- Search for your most important keyword phrase. Carefully study the top 10 results. Which is the best written title? Which is the most captivating?
Which grabs the reader by the throat and makes him or her want to click on the link? Is it the #1 ranked result? Not necessarily, is it? Is it your listing? If it's not your listing, and especially if you're having problems with click throughs with this keyword phrase, how can you change
your title to make it more intriguing and designed to pull in traffic? We're talking about click throughs here. You can often beat the top ranked sites if you have a more appealing and captivating title.
- Make a list of title changes, being sure to include your keyword phrase in the title. Set it aside and don't look at it for two days. Then, bring it out again and study the list again. Begun culling down the list. Get others' opinions. Try a new title, and see if your click through rate will improve.
- While you are increasing your visibility of your newly optimized content, why not also look for ways to increase response from your current traffic too?
One way to increase "business response" with your current traffic is to offer a special promotion. This could be a seasonal promotion, a special offer or a discount on a product featured prominently on your home page. Offer something that is popular at the right price, but don't offer too many choices.
Increasing sales with your current traffic is just as nice as bringing in new traffic. When deciding what you will do, offer something priced for the spontaneous buyer.
- For effective search engine marketing, you need more than just top rankings.
Remember to include strong calls to action to compel a response from the reader.
What do you want the reader to do once they finish reading your content? You need
to clearly build these options into each page and leave nothing to guess work.
Describe what action you would like them to take and never assume that they will
just know what to do, because they won't act unless you spell it out.
- When performing SEO - Focus on writing for the human reader first and search engines
second. While search engine optimization is important to your visibility, try writing your content first. Most people don't write their best content when trying to optimize AND create content at the same time.
Yet we continually see people trying to do this. We teach our students in class, to spend time wisely creating useful content that will be a genuine benefit to their visitors. Once you have written something of genuine value that stands on its own merit, you can go back over the article as a second step and apply some mild optimization. This is much easier than trying to optimize while creating your content at the same time. Following this simple rule of taking it in 2 phases will help you enormously.
- Be sure to include geographical information like your real world address on your pages. Your information should be included in HTML so the spiders can read it. A whole new breed of spiders is looking for area codes, zip codes and city names, to assist searchers in finding stores and services near their location.
Doing so will allow you to come up ahead of the competition when someone searches for your business... in Orlando or a specific geographical region.
- Remember to use supporting words, synonyms, and surrounding text when linking between pages. Allow for at least a 20% topic drift and avoid use the exact same link text (anchor text) to link between all of your pages and Web sites.
Avoid building up link reputation that looks unnatural or contrived. If you're a writer, swap up your bio as well. After all, don't you want to be found under a variety of different keyword phrases that are important to your business?
- Don't ever give the search engines just one way to find your pages. Put links to new pages on your site map. If there's a corresponding page on your site that you can use to link to the new page, do so. Mention the new page on your blog. Do you have a directory associated with the particular topic dealing with the content of this new page? Add a link on that page. Just make sure that you give the search engines several ways to find the new pages.
- Who is your "target audience"? When you write your Web site content, who are you focusing it on?
Have the search engines ever purchased anything from you? Forget the search engines! Focus on your customers! When you write content, write valuable content focused on your customers. Focus on one topic (keyword phrase) only. Your keyword-containing tags
should include that one topic (keyword phrase) only. Everything on the page should be focused on that one topic. Prove to the search engine that your page is about that topic. The page will then be very relevant for the topic. But it be valuable for the customers.
- Don't ever create a page just for the search engines. The search engines aren't and probably won't ever be your customers. Keep your true customers in mind, and give THEM true value throughout your site and in your content.
- Get rid of "code bloat." Move JavaScript and CSS to external files. Remember:
Anything that pushes keyword-containing text further down on the page could be
negatively affecting your rankings.
- Place a robots.txt file on every domain. The first thing a spider looks for when it hits your Web site is a robots.txt file. If it's looking for that file, put it on your site! Robot Manager Pro is an
excellent tool for creating robots.txt files as well as monitoring spider traffic. Download a free copy at http://www.websitemanagementtools.com/robot.html.
- Don't stuff keywords in comment tags. Use comment tags in the manner in which the tag was designed to be used -- to place comments about the page itself. Don't put keywords in comment tags at all.
- Have you ever felt like you were running low on ideas in Wordtracker?
Try using the tool http://www.thesaurus.com to look up multiple new synonyms which you can explore further in Wordtracker.
- Write and article or product review add it to your site and submit it to Article Announce. The article is then archived in Yahoo! and you can expect to see the search engines spider your site more often the more you update your own pages with new content.
- Include a link to your site map on every page of your Web site. Many search engine robots look for your sitemap in order to crawl the entire Web site. If you include a link to your sitemap on each page, you are giving the robots easy access to crawl your entire Web site, regardless of which page they come in on.
- Do NOT stuff keywords into your image Alt tag. Use the Alt tag only for describing what the image is. Keywords in the Alt tag do NOT influence relevancy at all. It is important to use every tag for the purpose it was meant to be used.
- When doing keyword research, do you often see short, meaningless looking acronyms in your lists? People often search with jargon or short forms that may be specific to their industry.
Try using the tool http://acronymfinder.com to unscramble the correct industry-related meaning.
EXAMPLE: Try entering the term: SEO
You might be surprised at how many different phrases this term relates to out side of Search Engine Optimization.
- Have you revisited your various products' sales pages and thought about beefing up the emphasis in your sales copy on the "benefits." A little change in dialogue can go a long way. Test your ideas and learn what works most effectively for you.
Sometimes it's the tiniest changes in text that make the biggest difference. Avoid over-using any keyword within the keyword Meta tag. Do not include multiple versions of a keyword in upper or lower case. Use only one or two instances of any word (at most.)
- You should already know this, but as a note of clarification: Meta tags aren't the answer. Just inserting meta tags isn't going to get you top ranking in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Why? First of all, Google has never indexed them, and Yahoo! and MSN give meta tags a lower weight than they have in the past. We uncovered the demise of the meta tag back in June 2000.
- Be very careful in forums as most of the information that is shared hasn't been tested. Just because you believe something to be true, doesn't mean it is. Most of the reasons that websites get penalized or banned by the search engines is because of misinformation being trusted and used.
- You should have your certification in Search Engine Optimization. More and more companies are asking for this certification. It doesn't take much time and it isn't a large expense. This should be a top priority for you as a professional SEO. In a recent survey, 82% of decision makers preferred certified SEOs over non-certified SEOs. Don't wait until you lose a prospect, get it done now.
- Want a great way to take your internal PageRank and give your site a tremdous boost? Change the internal linking structure from relative to absolute. This will also increase the rankings in the SERPs as well. Remember, it is PageRank, not SiteRank, and internal links are counted as backlinks, but only if they are absolute links.
- Also, don't use any "tricks" that you read in online forums on how to generate more traffic to your site through techniques such as, invisible text, comment tags with keywords stuffed, multiple title tags, hidden tables, redirects, etc. These tricks will get your site penalized or banned.
- Stop spending time analyzing something that's designed to continually change:
There is little value in focusing all of your attention on trying to analyze something that is designed for the purpose of constant, continual and nearly perpetual change. Time is precious and there are far wiser (and more profitable) things to be doing than "chasing algorithms." I know that some people will just not understand this, because it is only natural for some people to want to analyze things as analytical thinkers. But the point is that this approach can become all-consuming and literally eat up chunks of your time which could be spent in far more valuable ways.
- No need for "tricks" or "short cuts" ever:
There is no value is searching for "tricks" or "short cuts" or "cheats" to try and fool the search engines. (The people who are selling you on these ideas do not make their money in the SEO industry.) They make their money using powerful psychologically crafted sales letters that appeal to very basic instincts in human nature - usually with emphasis on the attributes of "human laziness." Although as human beings, we ALL would love to do something the easiest way, realize that even with the smartest of strategies (in any industry,) is going to require some work. Don't waste your time going on a hunt for some little trick or two that avoids delivering any genuine value. Ultimately, the best approach is to grow your understanding and grow your skill set.
- There is no software that can match your human skills for doing the job completely:
Think of software more as having a working tool (and there are some excellent tools to know about for sure.)
But realize that the single most important key to understanding SEO in ways that will quickly profit your business, is to focus on skill-building by reason of practice. It's important to gain your SEO skills first, before fiddling with tools. Tools are nice, but there is no tool that can match the human brain for creating and implementing a brilliant and profitable high traffic, high conversion strategy.
- Learn to focus on making the most of your precious time element - Focus on content for the visitor:
One of the single most important aspects to managing your time well, is to stay focused on creating high value, original content that is useful and engaging to your visitors. With a little bit of the right kind of training, you can become a creator of high ranking, high conversion pages that actually meet your ideal buying audiences need.
- What kind of content should your Web site contain?
- Create content that serves your customer's needs FIRST and your own needs second.
- Create content that will meet your visitor's exact search query and satisfy it.
- Create content your visitor will be GLAD that they found - something of true merit.
- Create content that is based on real "behaviorally based research" rather than guessing at keywords.
- Create content that is truly relevant (and honestly deserves to be found at the top.)
- Create content that is written for your specific visitor so that it flows smoothly and reads well to them.
- Create content that is original and you can feel proud to have created.
- Create content that has a solid, well written "call to action."
- Create content that is based on what a "search engine understands" through artificial intelligence (AI.)
- Yes there are smarter ways to work. Here's how to stop repeating mistakes and accelerate your skill level fast.
One of the smartest ways to learn SEO skills for whatever purpose, is to have a mentor or someone who will give you personal guidance and instruction. Preferably you'll want to study under someone who is well experienced and up to date. The key to the quickest learning curve is to find yourself a personal mentor. Nothing beats working in a hands-on study with direct instruction from someone who has had years of success doing the job successfully.
- Finally, never stop growing and advancing your SEO skills.
Once you gain your SEO comfort level, you'll have a wonderful new confidence knowing for a fact that you can do the job. But then remember not to just stay in that "comfort zone" too long, but learn to keep on challenging yourself. Never stop growing and advancing your skills. Challenge yourself and apply your fresh thinking to test all of your ideas.
You are on an SEO journey now, where new challenges are the norm. In an industry where things are constantly changing. But you'll come to find that "change" itself, no longer scares you. Change now becomes something that can actually work for your benefit in the long term and as long as you stay up to date the best is yet to come. Watch and see. |
