Website Design – SEO

SEO Tips for Blogs

Originally conceived to be something like an online journal for individuals has become yet another tool businesses can use to market themselves online. Web logs or blogs are now being used not just for the sheer purpose of writing, but also as means SEO (search engine optimization) experts use to increase a website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERP).

An interesting thing about keeping and maintaining a blog (also known as blogging) is that anyone can blog. What will make a blog more successful than most is simply a keen sense of its target readership. Of course, it will not harm the blogger (a person maintaining a blog) to possess a few basic skills navigating the Internet and creating links to other websites and blogs.

Bloggers today are finding that they can not only write and publish their thoughts for free, but also can find themselves getting compensated for writing. This is because one of the techniques in SEO is to create content that is rich in keywords, which is basically what search engines look for in ranking web pages in its SERPs.

That said, here are some tips to make your next blog an effective SEO tool.

1, Choose a Theme (and Stick to It)
Most blogs never gain a real readership because it simply is a mishmash of a writer’s thoughts, with very little coherent theme to bind the entire blog together. If the blogger does it for the sheer purpose of a journal, there’s really nothing wrong with that.

However, as an SEO, a blog has to have a theme that will tie all the posts (individual articles) together. This is because instead of just looking for keywords, a search engine will also assess whether the page just happens to have a lot of keywords mentioned in the post or whether the entire blog is about the topic it is searching for. The former will rank less than the former in the SERPs. Given this point, it will do you well to pick a theme that you are interest and won’t tire of writing about.

2. A Place You Can Call Home
Working alongside the idea of a theme, When creating your blog (whether with your own domain name or an a free blog site), give it a URL that has words related to the theme. For example, if you are going to blog about bonsai making, try to use words that are related to that in your blog’s URL (such as www.bonsaienthusiast.com). Name your blog using words that are relevant to your theme as well. Search engines look at these things as well to determine how high your blog could possibly rank.

If you are blogging on a hosting site, it is possible to have your blog delegated into a proper category. This will help make a search engine easier to find your blog given that the category is strongly related to themes and search keywords.

On a related note, your individual posts should also be titled with words that are closely related to your theme. Again, working on a blog with a bonsai theme, one post could be titled “Miniature Trees: How to Get Started” while another one could be “Selecting the Right Pot for a Bonsai”. This will give your posts a URL that is rich in keywords, which helps in a page’s ranking on SERPS (but you already know that, right?).

3. Link And it Shall Be Linked Unto You
Another thing about blogs that SEO experts are finding to become a great advantage is the fact that blogs make it easy to link to other blogs, which in turn makes it easy for other blogs to link to you.

This is yet another criterion a search engine uses to rank a particular page in the results pages. The more incoming links it possess about the keyword in search will increase ranking status because the page shows that a lot of people think what you’ve written is a good source of information.

So when writing on your blog, be sure to take the time to read other people’s blogs and other online articles related to your theme. Create links to them so that you point your readers to more information. This will increase the chances of other people creating links that will point to your blog.

4. Keep it Coming
Since blog content is so easy to create, search engines scour blog sites very regularly. That means if you keep on creating new content on a regular basis, search engines will have to keep up with what’s new on your blog.

By regularly creating fresh content on your blog, search engines will tend to look to your blog first before others that are not maintained and renewed as regularly as you do. It helps in the rankings as well, which is the whole point of this article, right?

These tips are just to get started on using a blog for SEO. As you go along, you’ll find more tricks of the trade that will help you push you up the ranks on SERPs. Of course realistically, don’t expect to rank on the top 3 pages on your first try. But give it a few weeks. And for as long as you keep to the tried and true principles, it may not be that far until you’ve captured a good ranking for your blog.

Search Engine Copywriting For SEO Without Losing Readability

Copywriting is one significant factor when you want to achieve excellent search engine ranking. Yet, a lot of times website owners think that all that they have to do is to incorporate keywords in page tags and include some keyword mentions in their articles. While SEO copywriting not exceedingly hard, writing for search engines is more complex than that.

“Search engine optimization copywriting” or SEO, is a method of writing viewable or easily scanned text on your web page which is very acceptable and readable for the internet user as well as targets certain or exact search terms, having the purpose of ranking high in search engines.

“SEO Copywriting” generally optimizes and enhances other on-page components for search terms being targeted, namely the title, the description and likewise keywords tags, alt text and headings.

Search engines require and look for authentic content pages, rather than additional pages which are designed solely for attaining high rankings; this then, is the concept of “SEO copywriting”.  And for this reason, search engines may not likely consider SEO pages with undesirable copywriting content.

Simply put, your site’s content must follow good marketing standards, having great interaction with your visitors because excellent “SEO copywriting” acknowledges the fact that humans make the purchasing decisions and not “spiders”.

It is recommended that your content comprises of about 250 words that are viewable per page, having a maximum of two targeted keywords or search terms located strategically inside the text as well as in other on-page components.

A good quality and informative copywriting content indeed is the very foundation for a website to be successful. A good content and excellent website setup will direct your visitors to what exactly they desire while collecting or inquiring for information in your website. A well developed and constructed content page really is important for powerful website content and can take a huge bound in your keyword ranking approach.

Always remember that internet surfers do not “read” all the time your content, but rather, their tendency is just to scan through the page, searching for prominent and attractive sentences and words. Meaning that for you to magnetize your visitors, you need to write not only convincing and captivating content, but also scannable.

When a prospect visits your site searching for a service or product, it can be due to fact that they find your information educational and helpful; thus it actually depends on the quality of your content and what type of information that you supply your visitors that determines whether they stay or leave your website. A content rich in keywords will leave an enduring impression for your SEO campaign.

Here are a few guidelines on writing good quality SEO content:

1.  Understand and determine your “key phrases” before you begin writing.  Returning and then editing an already existing copy so to reach higher keyword concentration can be a difficult task which often results in fragmented sentences, complicated statements and a copy that is stiff sounding. If you already know the “key phrases”, then you are able to construct a complete and flowing stream of ideas.

2.  Know who your target audiences are.  You need to determine your target clients before writing your content, so that you can address them properly. You can not write a good quality, informative and persuading content without knowing your visitors requirements, problems and needs.

Your content should offer a solution to their problems and you need to first identify that problem before you can determine a solution.

3.  Incorporate your “key phrases” in the headlines.  Almost all search engines believe that a headline is a significant part of your copy which means that the text that comprises the headlines bears additional effect.

When you make headlines, be certain to construct them so that they also carry the keyword that you have used in your content. Also take note of the “HTML encryption for your title. When you make bold headlines and incorporating them in “<H1>” or “<H2>” tags, they will catch the search engine’s attention.

4.  Scatter or distribute properly your “key phrases” all throughout the body of your article.  To do this effectively, focus on just a maximum of three primary keywords and let them naturally flow in your article.

There is what is called a “3 percent guideline” which states that 3 percent of the words in your article must be “keywords”. You should take note however, that this is only a guideline; do not ruin a good article just so to achieve the three percent guideline by insisting on the keywords in sentences where it does not fit just so to achieve the “3 percent guideline.”

Just remember that a literature form of writing is not what is required in SEO copywriting; it just makes a poor web content. SEO copywriting demands that you specifically need to write for the internet, something that is very much different from a literature or storybook style of writing.

There is more to web copywriting than merely writing well. Keep this in mind:  Effective web copywriting and keywords “search engine optimization” mean the same thing.
Search Engine Copywriting For SEO Without Losing Readability

Say No To Illegal SEO Techniques

Search engine optimization spamming, substantially increases the possibilities that a website or page will appear at the top of results on search engines for a certain keyword.

Businesses that use illegal SEO techniques to control, raise and improve their search engine positions, are denying or removing the rights of ethical websites to be heard and seen.  Regrettably, there are still many individuals who believe that “illegal SEO techniques” do no harm.

It is unethical and illegal for “spamming sites” to control search engines in order to gain high rankings in search engines at your website’s expense. You acquire your search engine position fairly so you deserve to be safeguarded from deceitful individuals who steal your visitors, publicity and income.

Remember that any effort so as to deceive search engines to achieve higher rankings is regarded as “SEO spam”; under no circumstances should you implement such methods in your marketing campaigns.

Never sacrifice your principles just so to reach your goals. There will be a great risk involved, such as your website can be penalized or worst, banned from top search engines and can stay banned for a long time.

Unethical and illegal SEO techniques:

1.  “Keyword stuffing”.  This means employing the use of the same or exact “keywords” in your “META tags” or anywhere in your content repeatedly.

2.  Hidden links and text.  Search engines work by scanning pages for certain keywords which are submitted into a search request and display results where the exact keyword appears typically, on a “page”.

Webmasters then insert some links or texts that are only readable by search engines but can not be seen by the human eye.  You can, for instance put a white link or text with the appropriate keywords unto a certain web page with also a white background.  Individuals can not detect it and will not even notice the difference; however “spiders” can read it and rank that site higher.

3.  “Mirror websites” or “Sybil attack”.  These are several sites having identical contents but different “URL”, all linking to one another, constructed for a very cruel objective.

4.  “Doorway pages”.  Normally, these are pages of poor quality constructed to rank highly particularly for one or even more selected keywords.  These do not affect your website visitors and only constructed for search engines.
These pages can contain the exact content of other sites but generally exhibits only a link going to the main page with no “navigation menu”.  They can at times dwell on the very same, however typically on other business’ server.

5.  Cloaking.  Delivers many different web pages for search engines and visitors. Webmasters construct their servers so that it can identify “IP addresses” of spiders then provide them with content rich and optimized pages, at the same time displaying different web pages for individuals.

Cloaking can likewise redirect a web visitor to their home page.

6.  “Link farms”.  Purposely to acquire link popularity, link farms are typically one page consisting of fifty up to one hundred or even more links to certain websites having no similarities with your website’s content.

Search engine “spammers” are aware of the fact that their pages’ content are of poor quality and are useless to individuals that visit their site.

The unethical and illegal websites prompted Google (Google page rank) as well as other top search engines in improving search technology that now has faster, better and advanced spam filters that can detect illegal techniques then ban such websites from search engines forever.

Risks and dangers of Unethical and illegal SEO Techniques

SEO spamming can, in reality bring about high rankings.  Do keep in mind however, that the effect is only temporary. Webmasters using illegal SEO techniques can benefit from their high search engine position for days, weeks, even months however once search engines discover webmasters using these illegal techniques, then they will be banned from search engine index for possibly a lifetime.

Even if one is not banned for a lifetime, it is difficult to be “re-indexed”.  One may need to start over and purchase a new “domain name”.  So then before using any illegal SEO techniques, think wisely and weigh if you are prepared to put your entire internet business in jeopardy just for months of obtaining a high rank in search engines.

Off Page Factors On Doing SEO

SEO, or “Search engine optimization” is a method used by experts to improve a website’s search engine ranking, with the objective of having it in the search results’ “top 10” or at the very least, having it in the first three pages of “search results”.

Off-page SEO pertains to all the influencing factors that determine your website traffic levels and ranking which are not inside the website; they are principally links that comes in your website from other websites referred to as “link popularity”

Link popularity is a key factor utilized by the famous search engines in ranking websites.
In order for SEO, to be useful, it needs to provide valuable, authentic and educational website content as well as information at the same time maximizing “Off-Page” factors in securing good ranking in search engine positions.

Almost all search engines put a great deal of significance in a website’s “link popularity”. They utilize the amount of incoming and outgoing links to websites to establish the relevance of a website for specific keywords or key phrases. Take note that incoming links prove to be more significant compared to outgoing links.

Google, one of the top search engines, makes use of its “Page Rank” or “PR” as their means in measuring the “link popularly” of a certain website. When you installed the “Google toolbar”, you easily can view a web’s PR.  A PR of a website is read from 0 to ten, ten being the highest. When you see a grey “PR” bar, it signifies that, that particular website have either not yet been indexed or was dropped or have been banned.

Acquiring quality links coming from good or reputable websites can be a difficult task. A reputable website only will agree to link to your website when you can offer them certain benefits.

Reciprocal Linking and how to go about it:

Reciprocal linking in simple terms means exchanging links so to enhance link popularity. This often entails sending e-mail letters to certain webmasters of your choice that you find has complementary and relevant content.
Write a polite, personalized and good e-mail letter to the “webmaster” that you want to “exchange links” with. Here are some guidelines:

1.  Download the Alexa (http://www.alexa.comand) and Google tool bars. Google “tool bar” will permit you to view the “PR” of other websites, so that you are aware which sites have great traffic and link with them. The Alexa “tool bar” supplies you with estimates of the website’s traffic as well as the sites that are being linked to it.

2. Visit particular websites that you want to “exchange links” with in order that you will know what that particular website is all about.

3. Send email letters to websites which you want to be linked with.  In your letter, mention important things regarding your website and explain the benefits of having a “link exchange” for both your sites as well as both your visitors.
Place a “link” to the website and inform the webmaster as to where he can find the link. Likewise, furnish the key phrase or keywords that you need to be “linked”.

4. Broadcast your willingness to “exchange links” in your website. You may use a “reciprocal linking” link or “link to us” as well as a “web-form” for possible “link partners” to enter their details.

Incoming “one way linking” and how to go about it:

Incoming “one way links” are considered by webmasters to be the best kind of links that one can for one’s website, but also one that is hard to acquire. They can increase link popularity and website PR. They point out to all “search engines” that your website is an expert on key phases or keyword employed to “link” to you.

Here are some guidelines:

1. Construct an informative, good quality and educational website or unique, educational and authentic web page content. Great content is what webmaster look for so to refer you to their visitors by way of links going to your website.

2. Offer free tools and helpful service in your website.

3. Give something away for free at your website, such as quality e-books, downloadable trial software, gift or a useful program in exchange for “links”.

4. Arrange an award for winners to link to your website before they can claim their prizes. Make certain that your policy is clear to everyone.

5. Allot a budget so you can pay for niche directory listing. Present excellent and relevant articles with links directing to your web home page and give your consent to webmasters to display your articles in their sites.
Link popularity will not grow overnight

Allocate a time each week just for working on building links, so that it becomes a regular habit.  Select one day each week as well as schedule the time.  You need to oblige yourself on a regular basis and make your priority, or else you can not accomplish it.

Note that “link building” is gradual and accumulating process. Over time all the links will start to add up until such time that there will be hundreds and even thousands linking to you.
Off-Page Factors On Doing SEO

Modern SEO Techniques

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are methods that aid in the improvement of a website’s ranking in the listings of search engines. There are different kinds of listings that are displayed in the results pages of search engines, such as paid inclusion, pay-per-click advertisements, and organic search results. Utilizing SEO can increase the quantity of site visitors that acts on the activity that the site intends.

Sites have different goals for search optimization. Some sites search for all kinds of traffic. A SEO strategy that is broad in scope can be advantageous for sites that cover broad interest, such as directories and periodicals. On the other hand, majority of the sites attempt to maximize their pages for a high quantity of very specific keywords that radiate the possibility of a sale. Usually, focusing on well-chosen traffic produces sales leads of desirable quality, and allows advertisers to pull in more business.

The importance of having a high rank for an advertiser’s site cannot be emphasized enough. Unfortunately, many site owners believe that their site has a high-ranking, when the truth is exactly the opposite. Others who are aware that they do not possess enough presence in search engines do not know that it is possible to archieve the ranking they want, and that they can get it through means that are a lot easier and more efficient.

So what are the techniques that advertisers must employ to maximize their optimization and garner the site activity and profits that they seek? Here are some of the most useful ones.

1. Title tags should be written in a creative way. It should be created with the strongest keyword targets as the basis. It is the most important tag of a web site when it comes to optimization. The specific keyword of the web site that is being optimized should be the one that is placed in the title tag. It goes without saying that every site should have its own title tag.

2. Carefully select the words and phrases to be assigned to Alt tags. Alt tags are not really mandatory, but they are provided for text browsers because images do not get displayed in web browsers, and it is the Alt tags that give information to the users about its significance. The rule in Alt tags is fairly simple: only key phrases or key words should be put in Alt tags, overdoing may cause a site to disappear in search results or get banned from it indefinitely.

3. Manage keyword density. Keyword density is the percentage occupied by keywords or keyword phrases in a web page. Ideally, keywords are used once in the title tag, the heading tag, and in bold text. Keywords should be placed at the top of the page, and phrases can be inserted in every paragraph, depending on how long the paragraph is.

4. Determine the appropriate page size for the site. Speed is a vital element to the success of a site, and it important to both online visitors and the search engines. It is recommended to limit web pages under 15K.

5. Create rich themes for the pages. Search engines are increasingly getting particular about themes. Content should be created as often as possible, and the pages should be maintained to 200 to 500 words. The content should be created in relation to the market, and should be linked to the other related content present on the site.

6. Make the site’s design attractive to the viewer. All efforts in optimization will be in vain if the site is poorly designed and if its contents are hard for viewers to read. There should be more text content than HTML content in the web site. Viewers should be able to use the pages in all major browsers. It should be noted that most search engines veer away from JavaScript and Flash.

7. Stay away from the bad techniques. Utilizing them could get a site blacklisted from the search engines. Spamming is a no-no, and the following techniques are considered spamming: doorway and identical pages, tiny or invisible text, cloaking, usage of keyword phrases in author tags etc.

Advertisers should keep in mind that simplicity is the basis of a successful SEO campaign. Sites should be easy for viewers to locate, follow, and read, and should contain relevant content. Following the techniques above will prove worthwhile for site owners in the future.
Modern SEO Techniques

Keyword Selection and SEO

Everyday, hundreds and millions of Internet users access the network in search of something they need or want. In the earlier days, users had a much easier time locating just exactly what they sought because very few online entities were in existence, and they offered very little services. Thus, it was easy to determine which sites actually contained what they needed.

Fast forward to the current period, and instead you find hundreds and millions of content varying in degree almost to the same extent as to the number of average users of the Internet per day. Businesses, institutions, and even individual users generate their own websites and content by using simple means, and as such, a searcher may end up having to choose from hundreds of choices in pursuit of materials related to what they are searching for.

Search engines play a huge role in making the current scenario work. Major search engine service providers, like Google, create user interfaces that allow for their users to enter words, or keywords, relating to what they are searching for. Various methods are then employed in order to search for the content links. Either they employ purely organic searches, which lists matches to the keywords regardless of whether they are paid or not, or they utilize crawler search engines. Crawler search engines simulate the crawling movement when they travel through the codes of each website and deciphering relationships between links and pages.

To maximize the potential of search engines in providing businesses their much-needed online traffic (and hopefully translate traffic into sales), SEO or Search Engine Optimization method was created. SEO is centered in trying to provide a business with quality content and websites in order for it to help rise in the rankings in the query listings. Central to SEO is a customer-oriented approach, and is achieved mainly by providing well-written information in the website, as well as making sure that the content found in their websites are relevant to what the users are looking for.

However, for SEO to work, there must be a clear and tangible relation between keywords and relevant content. After all, if the search engine finds great difficulty in tracing matches back to keywords provided by the users, chances are, the website will not be found by the target market.

SEO works with keywords at the very onset of the business. The business picks a variety of keywords to which their website will be related to in search engines. If the user enters in the search engine a keyword that matches the keywords related to the business’s website, a high-ranking match is displayed among the listings.

Keyword selection and the effort that goes with it is only justified; after all, the nature of the keywords a business selects can make or break its campaign.

In order to effectively match a business’s keywords to those that will be entered by the users, selecting keywords must take into consideration the variety of keywords under the same topic that could be utilized when searching for it. For starters, making a list of around 50 keywords and selecting those that make greatest impact will help narrow down the keywords that should be bid for by the company when trying to get a spot in the listings.

In selecting keywords, it must also be taken into consideration the sort of response generated by certain keywords, alongside the people who would respond greatly to those words. By selecting keywords with the expressed intent of targeting a particular consumer base, the business creates a greater probability of visitors to the website being actual interested buyers instead of web window shoppers.

Moreover, selecting keywords that are closest in relevance to the content of the website better streamlines traffic into that which yields profits.

Popular keywords are those that users often enter into search engines and look for. These popular keywords (and the subsequent websites) usually are recipients to huge amounts of traffic, and as such, are subject to higher rankings in listings.

While popularity, relevance, and targeting are important, it must be balanced with the competitive demand for a particular keyword. Obviously, more businesses vying for the same word would create difficulties in acquiring that keyword for a business’s use. Before selecting keywords, it is imperative that checks may be made in order to make sure that while the keywords are popular, relevant, and targeted, they are also not within the too competitive bracket, which will make it extremely difficult to acquire and rank.

Keyword selection is important in every SEO campaign. Only in pre-meditating keywords and studying market behavior in relation to these keywords can the benefits of this productive relationship be clearly seen.
Keyword Selection and SEO

Getting quality inbound links and seo

It’s the dream of every online blogger to be the acknowledged king of the hill. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), to be king of the search engine hill is to have as many people link your site to theirs. One-way.

Search engine optimization is a method of preparing a site for high ranking in search engine queries. Methods on optimization vary between legitimate ways like continually improving content relecvancy and ease of navigation to tricks like keyword stuffing, link farming, etc.

The term used for people to have your site linked to theirs one-way is to have an inbound link. With search engine giants like Google and its PageRank system, it places significant value on the number of links pointed to your site because it is considered a vote of confidence and relevance by that site.

As stated by Google: “In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B.” And a large vote of confidence online not only means fame but most likely even fortune. This is because the relevancy of a site causes it to rank higher in the search engine search strings, attracting more attention from consumers and attracting revenue from companies willing to pay to appear on the same site.

In effect, one-way inbound links are now as good as gold.

So far, there are five effective ways to acquire inbound links:

1.    Wait for Offers. The normal way of getting inbound links. This method is the most ethical of the strategies. This methods banks on the fact that if the site has great content that is constantly fresh and interesting, with a navigation system that does not require rocket science, people will eat it up. Offers will come of their own volition. Then you get your links.

2.    Play Musical Chairs. A devious way of getting inbound links using reciprocation with a twist. Reciprocation is the most common form of getting links which doesn’t hold much water with page ranking systems of search engines.

Normally search engines can detect reciprocal links, but if reciprocation is layered, i.e. indirect, it takes the engine much more work to detect it, requiring more complex algorithms. The price for doing this trick is steep, though. You have to have more than one website. Some people make a pretty penny putting up links one-way.

3.    Apply for Inbound Links. Yes, it’s not a crime to promote your site. You can submit your site for review at people-run directories whose interests run into the subject matter of your site.

If the world wide web is the analogy of the earth, a directory can be best described as a town, where almost everybody knows each other. Any new arrival gets a thorough once-over and the whole town votes to see if you can get to stay.

4.    Links for Sale. Some high-ranking sites are willing to sell their outbound links to the highest bidder. Sites that are popular with PageRank or other search engine ranking systems use this extra capacity for extra income sometimes.

However, the drawback to this is that the sites are only mercenary, selling their sites for rent. You have no link-equity other than the amount of cash you shell out to keep on existing on their site. Search engines such as Google are actively trying to dampen these efforts as it degrades the relevance of their search engine results.

5.    Be Generous, Distribute Content. Of all the strategies stated, this is a highly effective method of getting better quality, legitimate one-way links. You give other websites a reason to put a link on their sites to point in your direction.

All sites are always looking for fresh content for their sites. A site cannot expect to stay number one in relevancy if they just keep on refreshing the content of their sites once every month. Most of the time these sites will even pay for fresh online content to a slew of writers. For a discounted offer, you can have a “about the author” link posted on the site with your own content. Be creative. The key is to make it mutually beneficial.

Ultimately, with a little patience, elbow grease, and luck. It pays to just be honest and stick with the stuff you like to talk about. You don’t regret eating up the time and you enjoy the process.
Getting quality inbound links and seo