When it comes to SEO, there is so much information online, that it literally can be information over load for most people. Especially if you are just getting started in your online journey. The key to remember, is that, ranking organically on top of the search engines, is just 1 way to get traffic to your site. There are a number of areas that you need to become proficient at, if you want to become really good at the ranking game. I have listed several key areas below.
Don’t get scared off if you are just getting started. I will break down each area to its most basic component, so that you get it. When I first got started over 5 years ago, I didn’t know anything and I was green, as green could be at internet marketing. Can anyone learn this SEO stuff? Sure, if you are willing to apply yourself and invest the necessary time to become proficient at it.
There are a number of areas that you will need to understand as follows:
Keyword research
Optimizing your website
Meta descriptions
Tags – title, h1, h2, & h3
Internal link structure
Keyword density
Overall Site Structure and Navigation
Back linking
Original Quality Content
I am sure, I have not listed every single SEO item, but, the above list will more than cover what you need to know to get started and pointed in the right direction. SEO doesn’t boil down to only one way of doing things. There are many ways to achieve the same results.
One other area that I did want to mention before diving into the meat of this article today, is ensuring you understand and read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Many people, especially some SEO firms, will utilize black hat techniques that may allow your site to rank initially, but quickly become penalized, resulting in a loss of rankings, or worse, getting de-indexed and your site disappearing for good from G’s search results. For some detailed information, go here – Google’s Webmaster Tools
The main goal anytime you are trying to rank for a keyword term, is to ultimately be ranked number 1 on Google. Yes, I now people use Bing and Yahoo, but the majority of people still use G, when it comes to doing any research online. In fact, I read an article from Chitika, that did some in depth research on what a number 1, 2 and 3 position actually meant in terms of how many people visited your site. From the results, number 1 gets double the traffic as position number 2.
While, no company or person can guarantee a number 1 ranking in the search engines, there are many people out there that have enough technical knowledge, that they can at least achieve page 1 rankings, provided that the term is a winnable term. What do I mean by winnable? For my personal definition of that term, it means getting within the top 3 positions. The further down you are, the less traffic you get, resulting in likely, less revenue for your site.
In addition to ranking organically, there are other ways to use SEO to rank your site, such as, local search in the area you live, video’s, blogs and even image search. For example, my internet marketing toolbox, that you see on the sidebar will show up in Google if you go and click on image and do a search on internet marketing tools. That image is on page 1 for images, when you type in that term. When I was looking into the images area today, I noticed someone actually used my custom image for their own site, without asking permission first. Whenever that happens, don’t be afraid to send the webmaster an email to let them know the issue or problem. I sent them an email and they promptly removed it.
SEO and ranking comes down to your overall understanding of how everything interacts together. Each piece is akin to a giant gig saw puzzle. When you put them together properly, the puzzle is solved. Much like SEO, when you add just the right elements together, you create the best chance of ranking.
Keyword Research
Without a doubt, one of the absolute most important factors to doing well in the world of internet marketing and making extra money, is your ability to choose the right keywords to target. If you go after terms that are simply not winnable, you will never make money. There are a variety of ways to analyze keywords, including buying software programs like Micro Niche Finder, which I do actually use because it helps me with ideas on different combinations of words.
My approach to picking keywords includes factors like, which site is ranked 1 to 3, can I beat those sites, how many searches per day does that keyword actually get, how much CPC does it pay if using Adsense, is it seasonable or a year around keyword term, can I write about that particular subject matter easily or do I need to immerse myself into it first, interest in that particular niche, what are the current trends for that term, and is it a buying term.
Those are just some questions to keep in mind that you will need to decide upon, when doing keyword research. One other key area that most people want to know immediately, is how many searches per day does that term get. When using Google’s keyword tools or any other keyword software, remember that they are estimates and are not accurate. In fact, when looking for terms to go after, I would not go below 50 to 100 searches per day. The reason for that, is because that number that is spit out by whatever program you use, will be off. So, if its only 50% accurate, then by going after 100 daily searches, I might really be looking at 50 searches.
I am currently testing out a new keyword tool that is giving much more accurate results, because their program allows for their own spider bots to go out into the internet and find out what the search results are. They essential emulate what a normal search engine does, when it crawls the internet. However, at this time, using one of the other tools is fine as well. I want to see how those search results pan out before recommending it to my readers here.
In terms of CPC – Cost Per Click for Adsense purposes, I would not go after terms that are less than $1.00 per click. Its not worth my time or yours to consider anything less. Remember, even the best site that gets lots of traffic, will only get so many people actually clicking on an Adsense Ad. So, if you are strictly going this route for your website, then make it worth it.
For my own personal experience and opinion, I don’t bother with Adsense anymore. I have like 1 hub page that I am using it on right now, but its not getting any traffic right now, so I really could care less anyways. I prefer to monetize my websites with affiliate offers or creating my own products that pay much better. Besides, I have read to many horror stories with people using Adsense and getting their sites banned just cause.
When choosing the ideal niche to target, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got was first, choosing something that you are interested in and have some knowledge in. If you don’t have a particular area of expertise in, that’s OK, because you can get lots of great ideas online from literally thousands of places.
For instance, say you don’t know where to start or what kinds of things to even go after. One great place to get ideas is Amazon. They have an affiliate program that pays out between 4 to 8%, depending on how many sales you make each month. The one caution, Amazon has eliminated some states now because they are getting taxed there. Instead of paying it, they just cancelled all the affiliates programs for those select States that passed the new tax law.
Honestly, there are literally tons of affiliate programs out there for your keyword terms. Even Walmart has an affiliate program, so you will always have some options with monetizing your internet site. Other places are Chitika Adsense, Clickbank etc. Just search out affiliate programs online and you will find thousands. You can go to places like the Warrior Forum for additional affiliate programs.
How To Optimize Your Website
From what I have seen over the years, there are many people that simply lack an understanding of the importance of optimizing their websites. The key to remember, the more properly your site is optimized, the less you need to do to rank it on page 1. When you add just the right tweaks, together they all add to give most sites a nice bump in rankings. Heck, even G comments about proper on site optimization. Hey, if you don’t want to make things easier for you, that’s fine, because people like myself and other’s that do “get it” will just wave as we pass you by on our way to page 1 and position 1.
So what should you include exactly to optimize your site correctly?
For starters, ensure you add your keyword in your title, so that the search engines know exactly what your page or post is supposed to be about. You also need to write as natural as you can, because you need to write for people, not search engines. It doesn’t mean you can’t naturally include your keyword term or terms you are going for on a page or post. Of course you can, but if you take time to create quality content, it will flow naturally for your readers without them even realizing what you are actually doing.
That’s the point of creating great content and its purpose. The more you can get people involved and interacting within your site, the better you will do long term in building a viable business. Remember, the longer people stay on your site, the less bounce rate you have, which helps to increase your overall rankings. The search engines want in a perfect online world, to give the end user the best content and best experience. The longer people stay on your site, it tells the search engines, that your site are what people are looking for. Why else would anyone stay for long periods of time, unless you had something worthwhile to discuss.
As well, when using WordPress for instance, the title that you have is actually an h1 tag. I would include some h2 tags within your keywords as well. The other nice thing about WordPress, if you use something like all in one seo plugin, you can actually create individual title and page meta descriptions for each page and post on your site. No longer, do you have to rely on the search engines giving you the first 2 lines on your page as a meta description. Matt Cutts has also stated that Google doesn’t use meta descriptions as ranking signals anymore. People used to many years ago, keyword stuff those, in essence cheating their way to the top.
I was looking over some info at G’s webmaster guidelines and they clearly state you should have a title tag for each page on your site, rather than a universal one. It helps to how distinct each page is on your site.
Internal Link Structure
Setting up your site properly, also includes setting up your internal linking structure correctly. There is nothing worse than having a poorly set up website or having dead links on your site that can affect your rankings. As well, when you have a proper internal link structure, the search engines bots can crawl your site more easily. They factor that in as a signal in their algorithms. Make sure you create a sitemap.
Some people will create what’s called a Silo Structure. An example of what I think is an ideal silo structure is the About.com site. If you study it carefully, look at each category and how they have an organized linking structure. Many people having differing view points as to whether this really helps your ranking structure. I am not so sure anymore they pass anymore link juice, versus optimizing a page or post properly. I might have read or heard somewhere in one of the forums, that Google has now changed their algorithms to give less importance to a silo structured site. Again, I am just not sure right now. I would focus more on optimizing your content and adding value for your readers, versus just this particular set up.
If using WordPress, you can get a free plugin called Google Sitemap Generator. It will allow you to create a functional sitemap for your entire site. This allows the bots to crawl your site properly. I see some sites with a lot of content, yet they don’t’ have a sitemap. I really don’t understand the reason behind that, as Google in their webmaster guidelines suggest you do include one.
You can also customize the URL’s or what’s known as permalinks of your individual posts and pages for your website. If using WordPress, you have several selections to choose from, including category, followed by the title of your post. The default settings are not very good for people copying and referring to your site. As well, its not in my opinion effective for search engine rankings. In fact, I would just select customize your permalink in the back office settings of your website and add the following code /%postname%
Here’s an example of what one of my url’s looks like using this customized perma link:
http://about-internetmarketing.com/internet-marketing
If you place your cursor over any of my pages, categories or posts, you will notice the difference and how structured my url’s are, versus someone using the default category. Notice how I don’t have any stupid numbers or odd characters after the dot com. That’s what I mean by using a customized perma link structure. I think it also looks more professional. But, the big reason is because the search engine spider bots will know what your page or post is all about.
The above covers the important areas for navigation and site structure for a website, now its time to talk about going about ranking your site. This can get really detailed, so I will cover the basics here.
Back Links – What are they!
Getting a back link means, when another site is using a contextual link and pointing it back to your site. In essence, its a vote for your site. Now, there are many types of back links and people from all parts of the internet community have differing viewpoints about what’s important and how to maximize getting back links. I will say, that with Google’s latest updates to their algorithm’s, the value of certain types of back links is diminishing. No matter what anyone tells you, a back link is not just a back link. Clearly, certain types of links give more value and weight than other types of links. For instance, a link from a forum, with no additional content, doesn’t seem to carry the same weight as say a year ago.
Keep in mind, back links are just one signal that the search engines use for ranking purposes. As the algorithms improve over time, you may see a day when getting back links won’t matter in the least. There are social signals that are becoming a bigger part to the overall ranking factor. This has been well documented by Google and others. This is the direction they seem to be heading.
What seems to be more favorable and something that looks more natural, is getting links related to your own field. Now, I have not done any personal extensive testing, but I have reviewed a number of case studies that seem to give some evidence to support this. Having said that, if you got a back link from say, a page rank 7 site, even if its unrelated to your niche, I would say it would matter in a big way because that is a site that has authority in the search engines eyes.
I have been having an on going discussion with a friend of mine over even needing back links to rank anymore. The reason, I mention this is because the site with the most back links, doesn’t seem to rank number 1. In fact, often times there are sites with 10% of what another site on page 1 might have, yet rank 1. Why? That’s a good question and something I have been racking my mind around in terms of trying to analyze why sites end up number 1. Heck, the entire SEO industry is focused on ranking number 1 and trying to figure how and why.
I will also say that, the more your site is optimized, the less back links you will need in the long run. I still value in having some back links, but certainly not the kind I would have got for some of my sites 2 years ago.
In addition, the more content you add to your site and the more often you do that, the more frequently the search engines will come and crawl your site. Sites that have a lot of crawl activity, typically seem to do better as well in the search results.
You can get back links for forum profiles (less effective today), related websites, comments, private networks, article directories like Ezine Articles etc. The list goes on and on. I tend to go with higher quality back links that are natural.
What do I mean when I say a natural back link? That means, someone reads your article, they like it and give you a contextual link back to your site. That is the highest form of a back link and it looks completely natural. Some people go to the dark side and do black hat techniques for getting links. Look, I will just tell you, that if you go down that route, you are a fool just asking for trouble down the road. Why invest time into a site, just to take a chance and get it de-indexed. It’s simply not worth it anymore.
Writing Quality Content – Your Best SEO strategy Overall
I have always had original content on my websites, especially the important sites that make extra money. The best way to kill your website is to scrape or use a high percentage of duplicate content. Several years ago, it didn’t seem to matter much, but, clearly this has changed with the times. The search engines have declared all out war on trying to reduce the internet plagued with duplicate and scraped content. Just look at what happened with the latest Google algorithm update called Panda. They wiped out many popular article directory sites like Ezine from ranking on page 1.
Your best strategy for the long term is creating kick ass quality content. Invest the time, like I have in this article for instance. I spent several hours writing this article and I will still tweak it in the coming weeks to come because I will add on more information for this particular subject. I will tell you this, that you can actually rank very well in time if people like your stuff. People will give you likes from Facebook button, add a back link naturally to your page or post. G and the other search engines have said from day one, they want the best and most relevant content to be ranked on page 1.
You don’t need to complicate it here. Yes, there is lots of stuff to learn about SEO, but you know when something is good or not. Don’t take short cuts because it will only bite you in the ass in the future. Some people like taking short cuts and creating small 5 page sites, putting Adsense on it and ranking the site. In the past, you could get away with it, however, not like you used to. The safer way and better way, create quality content that people will actually want to read.