In this third part, we’ll take a quick look at most of the other important factors to improve you score.

Let me remind you that each factor adds “points” to your final SEO “score” for each keyword, and that this sum is how well you do in the eyes of the search engines when it comes to search engine rankings.

The higher you compare to every other page, the higher ranking results will be; all things are equal.

Of course, on page SEO is just one part, and not even the largest part, of what decides the final search engine rankings one of the easiest for you to control and do.

Okay, let’s look at these final on-page SEO factors.

Ads-to-Content Ratio

If the search engines find too many ads on a page compared to the amount of content then they will withhold or subtract “points”; this was one of the reasons so many marketers (particularly bad ones) were affected by the Google “Panda update”.

Unfortunately, at this time, I don’t know what a good balance is but since Google feels that having ads in places people expect content to be hurts the page, they feel this annoys people (yielding a worse experience), you should stick to common places like the sidebar or use text links in the body of your content (which has always worked well).

How Fast Your Page Loads

Google, and I expect the other search engines, is now rewarding Web pages that load faster with bonus points which help lead to higher search engine rankings.

You’d be surprised at what can impact the load time.

Obviously, big, unoptimized images slow it down but the number of requests to a single domain, invalid HTML, use of table tags, big JavaScript files, the number of Web sites on a shared server and much more.

Fortunately, most of them you have some control over so you can make improvements if you need to. A side note, WordPress sites tend to run slowly just by their very nature although there are things you can do for them.

Check the Speed of Your Page Here

High-Quality Content

The search engines love high quality content because the people who use search engines love high quality content and the search engines have gotten better and being able to tell if the content is high quality.

You need to be creating only quality content that provides good value for the keywords you’re using.

This would include longer articles (no more of the 250 word articles that gave little to no value and just tried to trick the search engines), having good information that would be of value to the reader, make it easy and pleasant to read (no more one paragraph articles), providing other, useful ways to convey the information (charts, infographics, etc.), have your style match the expectations of your audience (if they expect informality be engagingly informal, if they expect an academic treatise be formal and academic), etc.

Use Different Modalities

The search engines like to see different “human–computer interaction modalities”.

That means have target different senses in different ways by having video, audio, photographs, graphics images, etc. (some day soon we’ll probably be able to add touch and smell modalities!)

So, try to include at least some pictures and graphics in your content. Videos are also excellent to add if you can, even if it’s just a YouTube video you didn’t create that’s on the subject of your article.

Optimize Your URLs

In part 1, we saw that it is helpful to have your primary keyword in the Web address but I only talked about the domain name part of the Web address; while technically not true, you can think of it as the part of the Web address before the “dot”, like Google is the domain name of google.com or Harvard is the name in hardvard.edu or StreetGuideToWebTraffic is the name of this Web site.

However, you’ll probably not get more than one keyword in that name but every Web page won’t be for that keyword, at least directly, they are usually much more specific.

For example, this Web site’s primary keyword is “web traffic” so I have it in the name “StreetGuideToWebTraffic” but this blog post is much more specific. SEO is a subset of web traffic and on-page SEO is a subset of SEO and this page’s primary keyword is “on-page SEO” which is not in the “domain name” at all.

However, if you look at the full Web address (technically called the URL) you’ll see it’s “http://streetguidetowebtraffic.com/blog/seo/optimizing-your-on-page-seo-2″ which contains the primary focus of the site, the sub-focus of SEO and the specific focus of the page “on-page-seo”.

This is good the people, easier to understand and remember, and therefore, the search engines like it.

So make sure your pages have the primary keyword in the full Web address by naming each individual page appropriately. Don’t use generic names like page12.htm or put in numbers, random characters and the like; of course, don’t cram the Web address with keyword either — you’re probably getting it by now that being natural is the key.

One side note, always use just one form of your Web address when you make links. By that I mean, don’t use www.YourDomainName.com sometimes and YourDomainName.com other times; it just dilutes your results.

In the worst case use the rel=”canonical” attribute, here’s a video where Matt Cutts of Google talks about it if you don’t know what it is:

Have Valid HTML

As I mentioned earlier, your page will load slowly if the programming code is invalid.

At worst it won’t display right but Web browsers do their best to try to properly display invalid Web pages but it makes them work harder and slows down the page loading.

The same is true of search engines, as part of them indexing your page they try to understand the code of the page (to find images, links, text, etc. and if the code is invalid they may not be able to figure out what’s what and either bypass your page, get it wrong or penalize you.

The easiest way to check this is go to the W3C Validator page and enter the address of your Web page; not it validates a single page not an entire site. It will check your page and give you a report of the results so you know where you need to fix things.

Unfortunately, easy systems like WordPress blogs rarely validate 100% because of all the parts created by different people (like WordPress itself, plug-ins, themes, even what you type and how WordPress interprets it).

Still validation is important to do and fix what you can, they fewer errors the better.

Don’t Over Optimize

One final tip, don’t over optimize.

Now, after two very long posts on optimizing you might think this is a weird way to end but the search engines understand that Web sites are done by people and that people are perfect so if they find everything perfect they’ll think it’s done by a machine (or a computer program in this case) and question the page.

So, as I’ve said again and again, be natural and don’t worry about doing everything or doing everything just perfectly.

Conclusion

And that’s it. Whew!

If you don’t understand something about on-page SEO after this 3 part series then I don’t know what else I can do

Let me give you a quick summary of this post, you’ll find a similar summary at the end of part 1 and part 2.

Keyword Density

For best SEO optimization put your keyword phrase(s) in the content of your Web page.

Aim for a keyword density of at least 2% and no more than 5 or 6% but don’t obsess about it, make the content excellent and make sure read well and include your keywords where it makes sense; this will usually get you into that range anyway and improve your on-page SEO score.

Position of Keywords

For best SEO optimization put your keyword phrase in the first and last paragraphs of your Web page, as well scattered throughout the content; try to get the primary keyword phrase in the second and third paragraphs also.

You can do the same with any secondary keywords you have for the Web page but keep the flow of the content as readable and natural as possible, don’t force keywords into the content at the expense of quality and clarity.

Links to Trusted Sites

For best SEO optimization add a few links out to trusted authority sites in your Web page; however, don’t overdo this (2-3 in a 500-750 word article) and make sure they are not “nofollow links”.

Links to Untrusted Sites

For best SEO optimization have few or no links out to untrusted or distrusted sites in your Web page and make sure they are “nofollow links” when you do have them.

Link to Your Own Pages

For best SEO optimization add some links to other pages on your Web site but, like all the other advice, don’t overdo this; have a least one but don’t have more than 2-3 in a 500-750 word article — by the way, since you trust yourself make sure they are not “nofollow links”

Ads-to-Content Ratio

Don’t put too many ads on the page so that it overwhelms or even intrudes on the content, and try to keep the ads where people expect them like in a sidebar or footer, or use text links inside your content.

How Fast Your Page Loads

Try to get your pages to load as fast as possible, test how fast you page loads here:

High-Quality Content

You need to be creating only high quality content that provides good value for the keywords you’re using; that includes longer articles, having good information, and easy and pleasant read providing different ways to convey the information, and match the expectations of your audience.

Use Different Modalities

So try to include at least some pictures and graphics in your content. Videos are also excellent to add if you can, even if it’s just a YouTube video you didn’t create that’s on the subject of your article.

Optimize Your URLs

Make sure your pages have the primary keyword in the full Web address by naming each individual page appropriately.

Have Valid HTML

Having valid programming code on your page is important, check your own page here.

Don’t Over Optimize

Don’t do too much, be natural and don’t worry about doing everything perfectly.

Google has a Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide you can read and download; it’s always valuable to get information from an authority even if they may also have some self-interest.

I hope you take the information in this series and use the search engine optimization techniques to improve your on page SEO and your search rankings. If you have any questions, suggestions, or other comments please leave them below.
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This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Optimizing Your On Page SEO, Part 3

This second part we’ll look at most of the other important factors to improve you score; remember that you can think of it as each factor adding “points” to a total score for each keyword and that the sum of those points is how well you do in the eyes of the search engines.

The better you do, the higher ranking results you’ll get if all things are equal; I add that last part because on page SEO factors are just one part of the ranking and not even the most important part but one of the easiest for you to control and do.

Most of the talk about on-page SEO is centered around keywords, and rightly so, because proper use of keywords are the largest single factor in having a good SEO score. However, other very important factors are things like the quality and value of the content and the total user experience, so don’t neglect those.

Okay, let’s get down to it and look at other on-page SEO factors.

Using Keywords in Your Content

Since the search engines read your page to try to figure out what it’s about so they know what searches should show your pages, you need to have your primary keyword phrase in your content as well as any secondary keywords you’d like the page to rank for.

And it makes sense, if your page rarely or never has the phrase in it, why would Google and the other search engines think your page is about that keyword phrase — even if you have it in the title and meta keyword tags; remember never use keywords in titles, headings, or meta tags if you don’t use them in the content and vice versa.

There is some argument over whether to create a Web page for each keyword phrase or if you can combine multiple keywords in a single page…

Based upon what I’ve seen it really comes down to two questions? If you can answer yes to both then having a page use multiple keywords is okay, of you answer no to either of them then stick with one keyword phrase; the questions are:

1. Would somebody who is looking for, and interested in, your primary keyword phrase also be interested in and looking for (at this time) the secondary keyword phrase?
2. Would it appear natural, complementary and cohesive to combine two or more keyword phrases?

Most of the time I find you can use more than one keyword phrase and get rankings for both of them from the same article. Just be sure not to use too many keywords; too many is relative, of course, and depends upon the niche, the topic, the length of the content and things like that — use your best judgment but err on the side of using too few keywords rather than too many.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is just a fancy phrase for the percentage of your content that is made up of keywords; that is, the number of times your keyword appears in the content divided by the number of words in the content.

For example, if a keyword appears 23 times in a 500-word article then take 23 and divide it by 500 which is equal to .046 or a keyword density of 4.6%; some people calculate a multi-word keyword phrase as one word and others calculate it as however many words is in the phrase (therefore, a 2-word phrase appearing 23 times would count as 46 words and the keyword density would be 9.2%).

Fortunately, this is another easy way to improve your on-page SEO score, just repeat the keyword phrase a number of times throughout your page but don’t do it too much.

Position of Keywords

Of course, you want to have your keywords scattered throughout the body of your content and fit in naturally, however, there are some places you want to make sure you have keywords.

In part 1, we talked about having keywords in the heading tags but you’ll also want to make sure your primary keyword phrase in the first paragraph and the last paragraph.

I also like to try to have the primary keyword phrase in the second and even third paragraph if it makes sense and flows well. This really solidifies in the “mind” of the search engine that the Web page is about the keyword phrase.

You can do the same with secondary keywords if you’re using them, but it’s less important.

Links in Your Content

Nowadays, search engines look for links in your Web pages and count them towards your on page SEO score, either positively or negatively.

This is true for both links to other pages in your Web site and links to other Web sites.

Links to Trusted Sites

In the past, the search engines liked to see links from sites they felt were trusted or authority sites to your Web site; Google used their PageRank as a rough guideline to decide how well they liked the site, with higher numbers being better than lower numbers.

While that’s still important the search engines have started giving “points” for links from your Web site to trusted/authority sites; these are called trusted external links.

Their thinking is that if your content links out to trusted sites then it’s more likely that the quality of your content and Web page is better.

Don’t think though that you can just add a hundred links to a Web page to authority sites and you’ll zoom to the top of the search results because that is completely wrong.

Not only are there many other factors that decide where you are ranked if you put in too many links from a Web page the search engines will look very unfavorably on the Web page and downgrade it so you’re worse off than if you had no links.

Nobody, except maybe a few people at the search engine companies, knows the perfect number but I’d recommend no more than 2 or 3 in a common 500-750 word article.

It’s good to make sure these links are not “nofollow links”; read the Wikipedia discussion on no follow links  here or the Google explanation with video here.

Also, try not to always link to the same trusted site with every link, have some variety (like above I linked to 2 different trusted sites).

Links to Untrusted Sites

The exact opposite is that you should not have many, if any, links out to untrusted sites; these are called untrusted external links.

Of course, this can be hard because maybe 0.1% of the site on the Internet are trusted (I made up that number and if anything it’s too high); actually this can’t hurt unless you have a lot of them but don’t be needlessly sending people away from your Web site.

Even worse is links out to sites that are distrusted, these will have a negative effect in your on-page SEO score and you’ll end up with a lower search engine ranking.

For all these untrusted and distrusted links you should make the links “nofollow links” to let the search engines know that you particularly don’t trust them either but they may have some value.

Link to Your Own Pages

The search engines like to see links to other pages on your Web site from a Web page; these are called internal links.

They like this inter-site linking because it helps them understand the Web pages (the assumption being that it links to something related), it helps them understand the other Web pages, and it helps them understand the overall structure of your Web site. It also helps your readers navigate which is a great benefit on its own but the search engines like it when you make a better user experience for the people they send to your site.

However, the way that your Web site links to itself is also important; search engines like text links because they are understandable to them, that is, they contain context from the words of the link, whereas a graphic that’s a link provides none of that information so they don’t add value (see the alt tag section of part 1).

Also, the best links are links within the content of your Web page rather than in the menus or side bars or footers or anywhere else.

As you may know or guessed from a couple of paragraphs ago, the words you use for the link should be keywords of the page you’re linking to; this also helps the page you’re linking to because the search engines have a better idea of what it’s about.

For example a link with the words “click here” is worse than a link with the words “read part 1 of on-page SEO”.

One more thing about the words of the links — this is commonly called the “anchor text” — is that the latest Google updates made it so you should vary the anchor text of links so that it isn’t always the primary keyword you’re focusing on.

This is true with link that are on your own Web pages as well as links elsewhere that links to your pages.

The old recommendation was to always use the same anchor text but the search engine feel it’s not natural to always use the same anchor text so mix it up a bit while still including your keywords like I did above in the “read part 1 of on-page SEO” and even once and awhile use something completely different, even that “click here” would be fine.

Conclusion

This blog post focused on keywords and links within the content of your Web page; whereas part one focused on the various tags,

Let me give you a quick summary of this post, you’ll find a similar summary at the end of part 1.

Keyword Density

For best SEO optimization put your keyword phrase(s) in the content of your Web page.

Aim for at least 2% and no more than 5 or 6% but don’t obsess about it, make the content excellent and make sure read well and include your keywords where it makes sense; this will usually get you into that range anyway and improve your on-page SEO score.

Position of Keywords

For best SEO optimization put your keyword phrase in the first and last paragraphs of your Web page, as well scattered throughout the content; try to get the primary keyword phrase in the second and third paragraphs also.

You can do the same with any secondary keywords you have for the Web page but keep the flow of the content as readable and natural as possible, don’t force keywords into the content at the expense of quality and clarity.

Links to Trusted Sites

For best SEO optimization add a few links out to trusted authority sites in your Web page; however, don’t overdo this (2-3 in a 500-750 word article) and make sure they are not “nofollow links”.

Links to Untrusted Sites

For best SEO optimization have few or no links out to untrusted or distrusted sites in your Web page and make sure they are “nofollow links” when you do have them.

Link to Your Own Pages

For best SEO optimization add some links to other pages on your Web site but, like all the other advice, don’t overdo this; have a least one but don’t have more than 2-3 in a 500-750 word article — by the way, since you trust yourself make sure they are not “nofollow links”

Now, take the information in this and in part 1 and start to improve your on page SEO and your search rankings. If you have any questions, suggestions, or other comments please leave them below.

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This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Optimizing Your On Page SEO, Part 2

In short, SEO is how you get your Web site high up in the search engine results; getting onto page one and, more importantly, the top 2-3 positions which will get you a lot more traffic.

One aspect of SEO is the actual pages of a Web site; this is called on-page SEO.

There are certainly rules that Google and the other search engines follow when they look at your pages.

Essentially they have a scoring system somewhat like the Olympic figure skating or gymnastics scoring in that they look for certain things on your pages and give you “points” for having certain things on your page and the better job you do on those things the higher your score will be.

On-page SEO is an important aspect of SEO although it isn’t the most important factor. It’s more like “style points” that will give you extra credit to put you above your competition.

It’s also the easiest part of SEO, something that is in your control and doesn’t take much time and effort.

Let’s look at the different aspects of SEO one by one and see what to do and what not to do…

As part of my business, I am in the process of building an SEO optimization WordPress plug-in for my blogs. While there are others out there I found them inflexible and incomplete so I thought I’d build my own.

To do that properly I really needed to go through my own SEO processes and make sure — through research and testing — that I verified and discovered what on-page SEO is working today; not a bad thing to do even without the need to but them in the software and something I do periodically.

Your Web Site Address

This is definitely an important part of on-page SEO, some people rank this as the most important aspect although I’m not sure I’d go that far.

What it means is making sure you use your primary keyword in your Web address, for example, if your primary keyword is “inexpensive destination wedding” then you’d want to get InexpensiveDestinationWedding.com or InexpensiveWeddingDestination.com as your Web site address.

Remember to use your primary keyword if possible, if not, then use one of your best secondary keywords. Some other alternatives are:

• Use hyphens, for example, I could use Inexpensive-Wedding-Destination.com
• Use other top level domains. Those are the letters after the period like .com or .net or .co, etc.
• Add words to your primary keyword if applicable. For example, if your primary keyword is Harley Davidson Motorcycle but you can’t use HarleyDavidsonMotorcycle.com because someone else has it then try BestHarleyDavidsonMotorcycle.com, GetHarleyDavidsonMotorcycle.com, HarleyDavidsonMotorcycleGuide.com or whatever makes sense in your situation (look at your secondary keywords or even broader keywords that are related).

One reason why the search engines like this is because a domain name is static, that is, it can’t be changed. Therefore they assume that the name is very representative of what the Web site and Web pages are about.

It will help you get rank a little faster and a little higher but it is just one of many factors; remember each thing earns “points” so you want to have as many of them as possible.

Web Page “Tags”

Tags are internal Web page programming that your Web browser — Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc. — uses to display a Web page.

There are lots of different tags but only some of them are used by the search engines when calculating your on-page SEO score, let’s look at them.

Title Tag

The title tag is a special tag used to display the “name” of the page up in the Web browser’s title bar. Here’s an example of the name of a Web page that was in a title tag.

Using the title tag in on-page SEO

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<title>Marketing Graphics Monthly | Free Marketing Graphics with a Bronze Membership</title>

This is a important tag when getting traffic for two reasons: (1) because the search engines use the words in the title to help it decide what the page is about (you get points for they keywords in your title) and (2) because this is main thing people will see in the search engine results.

Based on the title tag it could be assumed, if they are doing good on-page SEO, that they are using “Marketing Graphics” or “Marketing Graphics Monthly” as a primary keyword and it looks like “Free Marketing Graphics” is a secondary keyword.

When I do a search for that I see these results:

Matching On Page SEO to Search Engine Results

You can see that the title as defined by the title tag is shown in the search results.

As an aside, since I have an involvement in the above Web site I know a bit about what’s being done and those are indeed keywords that are being targeted.

You’ll also note that multiple keyword phrases are being used that were separated by what’s called the vertical bar or pipe symbol; this is usually used to save characters and make the phrases visually separate – I’ve heard some people say that some search engines stop if you use the word “and” but I don’t know if that’s true.

Meta Tags

There are 3 primary meta tags you’ll want to use in your Web pages: the description tag, the keywords tag, and the robots tag.

The description tag is used to describe, in 2 or 3 sentences, what the page is about.

Put the keywords in the description if you can, although the search engines don’t really use the meta tag much anymore except to display in the search results underneath the title and the Web address.

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<meta name=”description” content=”[*Describe your page in a couple of sentences*]”>

Usually, if you don’t enter a description, the search engine will take the first words it thinks are text on the Web page; this may or may not be right and usually isn’t as you can see from the examples above.

Keep it simple and make the meta description tag be different and specific to each Web page.

The keywords tag was originally meant to provide the search engine with keywords that describe the page but it was so abused by marketers (including but not limited to spam marketers) that the search engines generally ignore them in most cases particularly is you use a lot of keywords.

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”[*Put in your list of main keywords*]”>

Use just your most important keywords (both the singular and plural) so that if they are used they will carry a lot of weight.

One caveat, if you use words that are not related to the Web page (really they should be on the Web page also) then the search engines will think you’re trying to trick them and, at best, ignore them and will certainly deduct “points” and maybe even not index your page or ban your site.

The robots tag is really a tag to tell the search engine to look at a file that is not part of the Web page and see if you want to Web page indexed or not.

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<meta name=”robots” content=”[*Either the word index or noindex*]”>

Use “index” inside the content= part if want the page indexed and use “noindex” if you don’t want it indexed; the default is index so you generally don’t need to use it, just use noindex for pages you don’t want indexed.

This is good to stop the indexing of pages like maybe your disclaimers or a page where you let someone fill our a form to contact you or any other page that really doesn’t help you by being in the search engine results – hey, why compete with your own non-content pages!

Other On-Page Tags

There are other tags you should use to help your on page SEO: heading tags, alt tags, and some formatting tags.

There are actually 6 different heading tags (1 through 6) but the best ones are the first 3. They are used to be like chapter title in a book or section title in an article or other document.

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<h1>Best Inexpensive Wedding Destinations on Each Continent</h1>

<h2>Best European Wedding Destination: Tallinn, Estonia</h2>

<h3>Best Wedding Hotel to Stay At: Domina Inn Ilmarine</h3>

Here’s an example of a heading 1 tag in use:

Example of Using a Heading 1 for On Page SEO

Here’s an example of a heading 2 tag in use:

Example of Using a Heading 2 for On Page SEO

Each greater number in a heading means the words are smaller, so heading 1 is bigger than heading 2 which is bigger than heading 3 and so on.

There is something called alt tags but they really aren’t tags at all, just attributes of the image tags that let a Web page show an images, pictures and graphics.

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<img alt=”Get all the marketing graphics you’ll ever need” height=”250″ src=”http://marketinggraphicsmonthly.com/images/Banner-250×250.gif” title=”Be a Gold Member” width=”250″ />

That is the programming code I took from the above graphic image that says “Never Buy Graphics Again”, note the alt attribute inside the tag it says “Get all the marketing graphics you’ll ever need” and has the marketing graphics keyword in it.

Put your important keywords in the alt attribute of your images but don’t always use the same keyword and don’t use in the same way.

The above usage is a good usage because other images on the page are unlikely to say exactly “Get all the marketing graphics you’ll ever need” but the keyword is naturally placed in the sentence; that’s what you want to strive for, using your keywords in a natural way.

Formatting tags are tags specifically designed to modify the look of the text on the Web page: these are the bold or strong tags, the italics or emphasis tags, and the underline tag.

Internally in the Web page programming code it would look something like:

<b>This is bold text</b> — here’s an example

<strong>This is bold text also</strong> — here’s an example

<i>This text is italicized</i> — here’s an example

<em>This text is italicized also</em> — here’s an example

<u>This text is underlined</u> — here’s an example

Put your important keyword phrase inside this formatting to tell the search engines that the phrase is special or, in fact, important; the search engines will use this in their scoring.

Wait… There’s More

This is quite long already so I’ll end here and continue in part 2 but here’s a summary of doing proper on-page SEO.

Web Page Address

For best SEO optimization, put your primary keyword phrase in your Web address or at least one of your most important keyword phrases.

One tip though when you select this, be sure to check that nobody has had the domain name previous and had it blacklisted — maybe because it for spam or illegal purposes; check it out at Archive.org.

Title Tag

For best SEO optimization, you want your keywords in your title tags but stay in the 40-50 character range and anything over 60 is too much.

Description Meta Tag

For best SEO optimization, you want to write a short meaningful description for the searcher that includes your keywords but stay in the 150-200 characters range, many people recommend no more than 160 characters.

Keywords Meta Tag

For best SEO optimization, list your main keywords (make sure they are in the content as well) but you want no more than about 100 characters.

Robots Meta Tag

For best SEO optimization, use the “noindex” content value on every page that you don’t want the search engines to index.

Heading Tags

For best SEO optimization, you should have at least 2 or 3 heading tags with your keywords in the tags, also don’t just use all the same tags.

Interestingly enough, in my research and testing I found the heading 2 and 3 tags to be the best followed by the heading 1 tag

Alt Tags

For best SEO optimization, put SEO-optimized alt tags on all applicable images, that is, images that mean something to the content or like above in the ad. Don’t put them on little arrows, navigation, or other things that don’t have to do with the topic of the Web page.

Also, use different keywords (not always your primary keyword) and vary the text of the alt tags while keeping the keyword phrase the same.

Formatting Tags

For best SEO optimization, put your keyword phrases inside the formatting tags but do this sparingly. If you format every keyword not only will it look (and rather amateurish) bad to the reader but the search engines will see that and take away points.

This should help you understand how to do on-page SEO that actually helps you, don’t miss part 2 of Optimizing Your On Page SEO.

If you have thoughts, ideas and your own on-page SEO suggestions, please leave them in the comments below.

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This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Optimizing Your On Page SEO, Part 1

Congratulations, you’re WAY ahead of the game because the vast majority of people don’t do video at all.

It’s “scary” and there is time and expense involved.

Anyway, your video is a probably a great video that will certainly catch the attention of lots of people to checkout your product.

Obviously, though, the video can only do this if those people actually get to view your video.

How do you do that? Well, there are many ways but here is one of the best and most important ones.

Search Engine Optimization

First of all, the video should be thoroughly optimized for the search engines in the same way any Web site would be optimized.

This way, you will capitalize on the potential for getting the good search engine results that the video is supposed to produce.

Here are some very helpful strategies to help you do that.

It really is best to upload all your videos to the various platforms that are very effective for getting traffic from video.

Social networking websites and video sharing internet sites are ideal for this.

You’re probably saying, “duh, what could be a more suitable venue for videos than Internet sites like MySpace and YouTube?”

Than again, there isn’t anything wrong with putting a video on your own Web site or your blog; go right ahead and do that.

However, you will definitively want to reach your audience easily, and to do that, it is better to use world-class Web sites.

When you do distribute your videos to these Web sites, it’s always fundamental to prepare a good, solid text description to accompany the videos.

Bear in mind, the Web page which hosts the video will always be found by the search engine bots but if your written description is short, it will not be very helpful when it comes to its ability to attract lots of targeted traffic.

However, if the video includes a compelling, written description that’s optimized with the correct keyword phrases, it is going to unquestionably attract the interest of customers because its position within the search engines is going to be improved.

Also be sure to put the Web address of your squeeze page, sales page, blog or other Web property as the “author”, don’t put you own name. Hey, every link helps!

If you host your video on your own Web site or blog, be sure that your Web site and blog are properly optimized for the search engines in all ways.

This will mean that you’ll have to do link building, keyword and key phrase optimization, Web site index optimization, etc.

Don’t forget, when the video is put on a Web page which is not effectively optimized for the search engines, then the video won’t be seen by very many.

That will mean it will not yield the large number of visitors you’d hoped for and that is the principal reason of the video in the first place.

Additionally, it is quite important to use a decent RSS feed, actually, you can submit the URL where the video is hosted to a variety of RSS feeds.

These feeds can normally reach the eyes of an astonishing number of customers and prospects, and, naturally, when these people see a something of interest in your RSS feed description they are going to follow it to the host location for the video.

This, consequently, increases the potential of the video to offer the expected (and hoped for) gains.

Submit the Web address (URL) of where the video is located to as many feeds and directories as feasible.

Without a doubt, the really key ones are the most essential, but those other “smaller” ones can be a good supply of site visitors as well.

Frequently, there are free services which will submit your Web address to hundreds of directories for free, although, in my opinion, the absolute best place to submit to is Traffic Geyser, it will take care of all the submission for you.

Conclusion

Using video is a proven technique to driving lots of free traffic but you need to make sure your videos are properly optimized and submitted to various directories, etc.

Of course, putting your videos on your own Web properties is good too but do not miss the fantastic opportunity that the video and content sharing sites give you.

So, why don’t you benefit from them given that they will get you lots of traffic over time?

Before I finish I want to let you know that if you don’t know how to, can’t or don’t hae the time to create your own videos a good friend of mine Jason Anderson has a service that will make them for you.

He used to charge $400 for those videos but he expanded his studio and videographer/video editor capacity and now can do them for about 88% off that price. Don’t know how he does it but I use him and you should too!

Check it out now!

How do you use video?

Why don’t you use video if you don’t?

Leave me a comment and let me know.

Talk soon,

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian

.

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Getting a Grip on Video Search Engines

(Note: I really would prefer the questions as comments on the blog rather than direct e-mails so that it saves me and you time; but I’d rather you ask via e-mail than not ask at all)

Links are of critical importance when trying to get free traffic. Really, I can’t emphasize enough how powerful having quality links are to free traffic; in my opinion it is the best thing you can do to get a steady stream of willing buyers.

I did a little research for this and was appalled by some of the bad information out there, no wonder I get these questions. To be fair, there is also a lot of good information out there but obviously there is still massive confusion.

I’m going to answer these “burning questions” I’ve received as truthfully as I can.

Do I know everything?

Of course not, who does, but I’ve studied and implemented and get tell you what I’ve found to be the truth and what the current generally accepted “best practices” are.

You’ll need to try them and test them to see if they work in your specific situation but they work in most situations so they are good places to start if nothing else.

How Do I Get Thousands of Links?

This isn’t the right question to ask.
The point is you should much prefer quality links over quantity.

At one point in time, the more links you had the better it was but that time has come and gone. What matters now is the quality of your links not the quantity of them.

Look at it this way, say you wanted to get into real estate investing and you went looking for help.

You could walk out your door and ask your neighbor and walk around asking everyone who lived in your city and when you were done you’d have talked to thousands or millions of people, most of whom no nothing about real estate investing, and gotten a lot of answers and opinions.

But if you had Donald Trump’s personal cellular telephone number and could just call him and talk to him.

Which do you think would help you the most? Donald Trump, of course, because it isn’t the quantity of information but the quality.

The search engines care about quality links and consider them tremendously more important then links from other places.

I can tell you that links from places like Squidoo, Hub Pages, universities and other sites that are considered “authority sites” are worth hundreds or thousands of links from other unknown places; just like a recommendation from Donald Trump will be much more valuable than a recommendation by lots of strangers.

So don’t ask how you can get thousands of links, ask how you can get quality links. Of course, getting thousands of quality is the Holy Grail

Isn’t It Hard to Get Links?

Absolutely not!

Well wait, it depends upon what you mean by hard.

There are lots of ways to do it and those ways are really hard but they do take some work (all of which you can outsource so you don’t actually have to do it yourself.

Remember what I said above about the importance of quality links, well, most of them you can easily get links from.

Here’s some ways to get quality links, the more you do the better it is but doing any of them are better than not:

1. Create Squidoo Lenses
2. Create Hub Pages
3. Do Social Bookmarking (like Digg, Propeller, etc.)
4. Create articles for submission to article directories
5. Create press release and submit them
6. Create videos and submit them to YouTube, Viddler and video directories
7. Create and submit podcasts
8. Go to forums and other groups and submit questions, comments and answers
9. Go to other people’s blogs and post comments (you could even post one below!)
10. Enable your RSS feeds and submit to places like Feedburner where are sort of clearinghouses from RSS feeds
11. Use trackback services (I use http://rpc.pingomatic.com/, http://api.moreover.com/ping, and http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2)
12. Use a Social Media Domination Machine like I do

These are all good ways of getting links, most of the high value links.

They do require some work but it isn’t hard and, like I said, you can pay others to do it.

Won’t Google Slap Me If I Try to Get Links?

Really, people are concerned about this.

There are not many successful Internet Marketers who don’t try to get links; successful being the key word here.

Google LOVES links but they don’t like it when people try to scam the system so you’re more a risk if your use “black hat” techniques.

If you stick to the ways above then you’ll be okay.

Also, the search engines like “normalcy” so if you, all of a sudden, have hundreds or thousands of articles, bookmarks and things pointing to your site this is unnatural and they will notice it and likely devalue the site.

What are “Bad Links”?

I got questions about whether this type of link or that type of link was bad.

There are virtually no “bad links” but some are better than others and some ways of using links are better than others.

Let’s look at a few examples.

Internal Links

For some reason, internal links have a bad reputation.

In fact, Google at least, seems to subtract points if you do not have internal links; so links to your privacy policy and disclaimers are easy ways to do this.

But if you reference one page from another, not uncommon, like I did above when I referenced previous blog posts, that is fine and can even be very helpful.

Excessive cross-linking though can be bad depending upon how it is done; for example, if every pages links to every other page,

Links to External Sites

Link internal links, search engines actually like links out to external sites.

Remember, they like natural and normal and it is very natural and normal to link out to other sites so doing this is okay.

What is not okay, and not natural and normal, is LOTS of links out to other sites, so don’t be excessive about it.

Also, there is some evidence that where you link to has a small effect on the value of your page so if you link to spammer, links farms, etc. you may get hurt; these are bad links.

Finally, as I talked about in my blog post, Google has decided it doesn’t like external links that are raw affiliate links so they would be (sort of) bad also.

Spammer Links

There is some logic to thinking that the search engines would consider links to your site from people like spammers and link farms would be bad links.

But, there is also logic to thinking that since you can’t control where links come from it isn’t your fault. After all, if you wanted to destroy your competitors you’d just get a lot of links to them from these bad sites if that worked. They certainly won’t help you though.

I have not seen any indications, nor have I heard any true experts say, that these are bad links so I wouldn’t worry about them.

Conclusion

There you have it, the truth about links.

Remember, it’s more important to get quality, high value links than thousands of just any old links.

You can get those links by: creating Squidoo Lenses, creating Hub Pages, doing Social Bookmarking, creating articles for article directories, creating press releases, creating videos, creating podcasts, commenting at forums and other groups, commenting at other people’s blogs, enabling your RSS feeds, using trackback services, use a Social Media Domination Machine

Remember that Google and the other search engines love links but they like them to be “natural” and don’t like it when people try to scam the system.

So while there are virtually no “bad links”, internal links and links out from your Web sites are good things because they fit in the normal and natural category.

Do you have any link advice?

Do you have any link questions?

If so, leave a comment and get a link!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this, particularly because the purpose of links it to get traffic and build a list.

You’ve probably seen lots of e-mail about the Tellman & Shawn from free, $1,997 List Pros list building course they’re giving away (well for $7.95 shipping and handling).

There is an exit pop that let’s you get a digital version for 99 cents so I did and, just so far, my opinion is you SHOULD get this, it is definitely worth $1 (well, it’s worth more actually!).

You can find it at http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/Recommends/ListPros

Note: you are automatically enrolled in Tellman’s List Building Club, free for 30 days, if you don’t want to continue just call them or submit a support ticket. It’s worth trying out, I’ve gotten a lot out of it.

Talk soon,

David
The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. Don’t forget to pick up your free list building course from Tellman & Shawn. Go to http://www.StreetGuideToWebTraffic.com/Recommends/ListPros

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

The Truth About Links: Your Questions Answered

A somewhat spammy comment to that post got me to thinking beyond my reply. I decided we should talk more about “true” link building which I am saying is one of the few things your really need to concern yourself with for SEO purposes.

If you don’t think this is critically important to getting a flood of free traffic I really don’t know what to say; the evidence shows otherwise. It truly is a “must do” for getting free traffic particularly from Google.

But links ARE NOT created equal.

Some links are gold and many are basically worthless, as in, don’t even bother.

Google has become too sophisticated to fall for all the old tricks and the rules have changed.

Here are 5 myths about link building that are, well, myths. Don’t fall for them.

Myth 1: Links Raise Your Search Results Position

Actually, this isn’t a myth but many people make it seem like quantity is all important and that is most definitely a myth; it hasn’t been true for quite a while.

You’d think by now that nobody would believe this anymore but it persists more due to marketing skills than true value.

There are even ads, you’ve seen them, about buying lots of one-way links for some ridiculously low price; this is a case on not even getting what you pay for.

Yes, one-way links are great and the more the better but this is only true if the quality of the link is good.

Google looks at the source of the link and weights it accordingly so lots of low value links doesn’t buy you very much in terms of search engine positioning but a few well placed links can make all the difference.

I’ve seen just a few links on places like YouTube, Squidoo and Hub Pages bring a Google page one listing in hours, for a long tail keyword.

Think of this as deciding if you’d rather have 1,000 pennies or just one $100 bill.

Myth 2: Reciprocal Linking is Bad

This isn’t a myth either, yet it is.

What isn’t a myth is reciprocal links that are obviously spam links. Mostly these are links on pages that have a lot of links, particularly advertising links.

What you want are links within the body of articles, blog posts or other Web content and have the reciprocal link be the same.

This type of two-way linking is considered more “natural” and, if not abused, won’t be penalized.

Do avoid though sites that may be considered questionable like gambling, adult, hate and link farms.

Myth 3: Three-Way Linking is Good

Like the previous myths this both true and untrue.

Three-way linking, that is, page A links to page B that links to page C that links back to page A, is a way that marketers try to fool Google.

It worked for about a New York minute and then Google basically said “do you think we’re stupid” and devalued those links.

Now, if you have some sophisticated multi-linking strategy where the links are within the Web content then this can be an excellent strategy, assuming the links are high value, but otherwise mostly they aren’t worth the effort.

Myth 4: Get Links to Every Page or Only Get Links to Your Home Page

These two myths are both untrue.

In fact, they can be harmful.

Remember the ultimate purpose of these links is to make more money.

So links to pages that aren’t selling don’t really provide much value. Is there a slight chance that someone may buy something from you after going to your earnings disclaimer page? It is possible but the time and effort spent would be better used elsewhere; and how many people would even click on the link in the first place?

The same is true of your home page. Sending every one to it isn’t going to optimize sales.

The best tactic is to have some links go to your home page and other deeper into your site, to those pages that make money for you.

Myth5 : Links Are All You Need

I think you can see by now that this is a big myth.

I’m not talking about just the need for great content I am talking about your need links for high converting keywords and you need to optimize those.

Come on, does being number 1 in Google for “dog training” help you if you sell “weight loss” products.

Of course not (although if you got that ranking you probably should be selling “dog training” products too!)

You need to make sure you do the research and optimize for those keywords that can send you buying traffic and aren’t too competitive.

Doing some pay-per-click advertising, like Google AdWords, can help you do this relatively quickly.

Also doing some competitive analysis will help; that is, find out what keywords your main competitors are using and “steal” them by getting quality links for them.

Finally, do not discount the value of having your keywords in the “anchor text” of the links. This is the text of the link, that is, the text that is usually blue and underlined.

Find your best keywords for that page, the ones converting the best, and use them as anchor text, although don’t use the same text for every link, put some variety in so Google doesn’t think you’re trying to trick them.

Conclusion

Don’t fall for the link building myths that are prevalent. Mostly these are based on old or bad information and while they may have some truth to them beware:

1. Links Raise Your Search Results Position: they can but lots of worthless links will do little for you, focus of getting high quality links
2. Reciprocal Linking is Bad: it is unless you do it right and then it can be a valuable tool
3. Three-Way Linking is Good: in general, this is not really true any more although more sophisticated multi-way linking is still very good
4. Get Links to Every Page or Only Get Links to Your Home Page: don’t do either, link to your home page and to your pages that earn you money
5. Links Are All You Need: links are just the first step, get the right links and optimize them; even “steal” your competitors links and be sure to use your keywords in the anchor text

Link building is tremendously valuable but unless you do it right it can be wasted effort and can hurt you.

Do you have any link building tips or myths to bust? Leave a comment about it and about what you think of these myths.

Talk soon,

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. I mentioned using Google AdWords as a way to quickly research and optimize your keywords. I recently found that Google provides some decent basic training on AdWords, go to http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/index.html

O.O.Y. If you are looking for more on really using AdWords to get massive amounts of traffic then one of my favorites is Adwords List Building

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

5 Link Building Myths… Busted

Sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Squidoo and many other social networking sites are great for helping get traffic either directly and also, more importantly, from Google.

But fewer people talk about the importance of social bookmarking sites to get traffic and they can be just as good as social networking sites when done properly.

Social bookmarking should be one of your main strategies for maximizing your exposure, ranking higher in the search engines and making more money online.

And don’t just go with one or two sites like Delicious or Digg go for a good number of sites, at least 20-25, and that is for each account you setup. You can and should have multiple accounts but that is a topic for another day.

So here is what you need to do to get more traffic…

Traffic Strategy

First, come up with a general traffic strategy that lets you quickly get Google’s attention.

As I have talked about before, you should be using content and links in Web 2.0 properties, particularly authority sites, to let Google know and remember you exist.

Then consistently post content to those Web 2.0 sites which will create one way back links to your Web properties (like your blog and Web site).

The key word there is “consistently” because you need to continuously be creating content and creating back links, without that consistency you’ll just be continuously defeating yourself. Sort of like people who go on fad diets, lose some weight, gain it back and have to start again.

Make a publishing calendar, that’s what I do and it really helps be consistent and continuous.

Also part of your strategy is making proper use of “anchor text”, account user names and your titles, all of which should include your keywords.

When do you stop?

Only when you don’t want to make any more money with the Web site. Otherwise you keep doing it. Nobody ever said it would be easy to make money on the Internet but following the 3 Pillars anybody can but it takes work; fortunately, virtually all of it can be outsourced so you don’t have to do that work.

Dominating with Social Bookmarking

It’s all well and good to create Hub Pages, Squidoo Lens, Facebook Pages and all of that to get some good content and back links but that isn’t the only thing you need to do because just making them doesn’t mean Google will rank you on page one.

This is where social bookmarking comes into play.

You need to be promoting those social networking sites by bookmarking them. That will then get you valuable back links to your social networking pages.

Because you can bookmark any Web page be it a Squidoo Lens or a blog post it should be one of the core strategies for you traffic generation.

What to Do

First thing to do is find every important page you have, whether it is a blog post, a Squidoo Lens, a YouTube video or even a product sales page; note I said EVERY important page because Google ranks pages not Web sites so you need to find the important pages you want Google to rank.

Then create accounts on the social bookmarking sites.

Then you need to create a bookmarking schedule and bookmark those pages. You don’t want to do it once and you don’t want to do it all at once so you need a schedule, just like, and coordinated with, your publishing schedule.

This way Google will see a nice “natural” progression of bookmarking and give you that Google Love you want so much.

Then, every time you add a new page or post or sales page you add it to the bookmarking schedule so it gets it share of your bookmarks.

One thing to do though is that you don’t just want to be bookmarking your own sites. You need to be bookmarking other sites also otherwise it will just look like you are trying to scam the system.

A good percentage of bookmarks should be other people’s Lenses and blog posts and such. In fact, “traffic guru” John Reese recommends that 80% of you bookmarking should be other people’s sites, that’s how important he things it is.

What are Some Bookmarking Sites

Here are some of the sites I use to bookmark:

1. 1-webmarks.com
2. bookmarktracker.com
3. clipclip.org
4. clipmarks.com
5. del.icio.us
6. digg.com
7. diigo.com
8. esnips.com
9. fa.vorites.com
10. faves.com
11. jumptags.com
12. leenks.com
13. linkagogo.com
14. mylinkvault.com
15. mystuff.ask.com
16. myvmarks.com
17. propeller.com
18. spurl.net
19. tedigo.net
20. trailfire.com
21. wink.com
22. yattle.com

Go there and sign up and put those sites in your bookmarking schedule

Isn’t It a Lot of Work?

Yes, it can be quite a lot of work, particularly at the beginning, but again it is an important part of running an online business.

Fortunately, you can outsource it or use some tools to make it much easier. Here is a list of tools I us, they will help you automate bookmarking of the best bookmarking sites:

1. Howie Schwartz’s Bookmark Generation
2. Ross Goldberg’s Internet Marketing Revolution
3. SENuke

They each have their strengths and weaknesses so try one or all; they all have a 100% money back guarantees or free trials.

Conclusion

Social bookmarking should be a core strategy in your traffic generation plans. Google will show you more love as will your bank account!

Just sign up for accounts, find all your important Web pages and start bookmarking; don’t forget though to bookmark a lot of other sites also. Just remember to use a continuous and consistent approach.

You can use some tools or outsource the job so you aren’t taking the time away from more important things; hmm, I should have said “you SHOULD use some tools…” instead of “you CAN use some tools…”

Are you doing bookmarking? Leave a comment and let me know what you’re doing and how it has helped you.

Talk soon,

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Why You Must Do Social Bookmarking

Are there other ways, sure. And you should use them but ultimately you need to play Google’s game.

How do you play?

While not earth shattering, there is still one thing that Google prizes highly, being GREAT for its customers; that is, they strongly believe if they are exceeding their customers expectations then their customers will continue to come back and they will continue to get more.

Standard business practice really but they embrace it with a vengeance and it obviously is working.

Now the question becomes, what does Google, and the other search engines but particularly Google, think help them exceed those expectation.

That, too, is one primary thing; make sure that when someone is searching they are finding what they want; that is, give the customers what they are asking for

Again, a simple strategy and one that all business should follow (if they want to be successful at least

That brings up another question: how does Google decide if something – your Web site, sales page, blog, etc. – is something they want to promote to their customers.

Promote you say?

Well, think about it, isn’t that what the search engine results are, Google “promoting” various Web sites; the higher you are in the results the more they are promoting.

And isn’t that why you want to be high in the results because you want Google to be promoting you more than your competitors.

There are 2 proven things that Google has shown and continues to show that they value highly:

Content, or rather great content, and incoming links from “valuable” Web sites. Valuable meaning ones that Google believes provides great content, particularly “authority sites”.

Again, not revolutionary information.

This is what Google has wanted for years and looks to be what they will want for years to come. Their definitions of great content and valuable incoming links may alter but the principles remain.

Great Content

What makes great content would be a complete blog post or three in itself and so I won’t focus on that here but here is a good general guideline…

Google defines great content as content that provides good value to their customers, it must be very informational – remember Google wants to make sure they are giving their customer what they want or more than what they want so the better the information the better Google likes it and the better Google likes the person who provided the content – that’s you!

Incoming Links

What Google wants for links now isn’t what they wanted in the past. For the last couple of years they have been putting a lot more weight on social media networking and content sharing sites.

These are sites like Facebook, YouTube and Squidoo.

They have dedicated computers that constantly, 24/7, index those sites for new content.

The content sharing sites Google likes are exactly what you need to help you because they let you provide both things that Google loves, great content and valuable links.

Since you can publish content on these sites and their links are so valuable this provides you with more “Google Love”

Ultimately there are 2 primary ways you can get targeted traffic from these sites:

1. The most obvious way is you’ll get better position in Google’s search results
2. Your great content will entice a certain percentage of people to click on links you have put in your content to your Web sites.

Powerhouse Sites – Use These!

Out of all the possible content sharing sites I have 3 absolute favorite sites that like to use: Squidoo, Hub Pages and EzineArticles.

Sure I use some of the other ones sometimes but I’ve found those 3 to be so much better in getting the results I want that 90-95% of my great content goes to those sites.

Yet again, this isn’t an “amazing secret” being released, as lots of people like and use those sites, hopefully you already do, but it is worth emphasizing them and making sure you are using them to get the best impact on your business.

Squidoo

Squidoo was created by famous marketing genius Seth Godin – read some of his books if you haven’t – and to publish content on Squidoo you create a Lens.

While Squidoo has other tools and even a revenue sharing plan, we’re interested in the content creation here.

With Squidoo it seems like the longer the Lens the better, that is, the more content in each Lens the better Google likes it. I try to have at least 750 words for each Lens but most are much longer.

Take a twofold strategy when creating Lenses.

First, create lots of Lens over time, one a day is my goal.

Second, periodically update previous Lens’ so that they have “fresh content”, this keeps those Lens important in the eyes of Google.

Don’t put too many other modules (like eBay, Amazon, etc.) into your Lens. It distracts from your content and do you really want people to go away from your Lens to somewhere else for a few cents, unless it is your Web site.

I’ve also recently found that having graphic images on a Lens is helpful, so try to include them whenever possible; even just a simple chart or picture helps.

One thing though that isn’t a question though is the importance of tagging your Lenses with good keywords.

Make sure you tag each of your Lenses with relevant and good keywords (use the keyword research you did before writing to guide you here).

The final, and most important, thing to remember to do though is to make sure the Lens has great, informative content and it is all on the same topic. Don’t talk about your primary topic and then throw in one or two other unrelated topics; create new Lens if those other topics are so good.

Finally, (didn’t I say the last one was the final thing) make sure you have links for your Web site and a way that they can contact.

For those who want a quick introduction to creating a Lens, I found this YouTube video:

Hub Pages

Hub Pages is another content sharing site that Google loves and it has some great tools to help you create great content.

I’ve found that, like Squidoo, the more content on a Hub the better and I go for at least 1,500 words for my Hub Pages.

There also looks to be a “reward” for having graphics and video on your Hubs so be sure to include them.

Good Hub Pages are built similarly to good Squidoo Lens but Hub Pages are much stricter in what you can and cannot do so it may take you a while to resolve a flagged Hub.

Remember to create new Hub Pages and modify existing ones to help keep them fresh.

Basically, don’t do these things and you shouldn’t have many problems:

1. Have great informational content, this isn’t MySpace where you put lots of personal stuff. Have personality, but don’t create a Hub for just your personal likes and dislikes, for example
2. Do NOT have a lot of links, particularly promotional links and links to the same sites. More than 2 links to the same domain will get you immediately flagged
3. Have good tags, not only does this help you but you won’t get flagged
4. Don’t plagiarize or have duplicate content on your Hub. This will get you flagged and certainly lower your HubScore
5. Having a commercial Hub without setting your ad level to High

Follow those rules and you’ll have few problems with creating Hub Pages; I recommend doing one per day.

Ezine Articles

EzineArticles started as an article directory and, of course, it still is.

Today though, Google has bestowed upon I such authority that it has become a powerful content sharing site although it still looks and acts like an article directory.

This is where the real value to you is.

Creating an article is easy but you need to follow certain rules to make sure your article gets published:

1. It must be original content, they’ve very specific (picky!) about only having one copy of an article on their site so if you have PLR articles you’ll need to rewrite them (always a good thing anyway)
2. Like Hub Pages, they must provide good information not just be promotional
3. They must use good English, both spelling and grammar. They aren’t as strict as your old English teacher but they want it to be well written; after all, it does reflect upon them and the quality of their articles is why Google likes them so much
4. Don’t put too many links in, particularly links to your Web sites

Things you should do are:

1. Have a keyword rich title (you should do that for Squidoo and Hub Pages also)
2. Make your article about 500 words. Unlike Squidoo and Hub Pages don’t make them too long; no more than 750 or 1,000 words
3. a great resource box where you have links to your applicable Web site
4. Like all online marketing content, it should have lots of related keyword to maximize your search engine results. Of course, don’t put to many
5. Tag the article with your keywords

Create at least one per day and submit it to Ezine articles.

Conclusion

Use the 2 ways, great content and valuable back links, to achieve a higher search engine results position.

The best ways I’ve found have been to use Squidoo, Hub Pages and EzineArticles and try to create new content on each of them every day.

You should begin a consistent and systematic approach to creating great content to submitted to the content sharing sites.

As part of that content be sure and include graphics and video.

If you do that you’ll find that your SERP improves from all the incoming links to your Web properties and the great content you’ve created.

The more you do this, the faster your rankings will improve and the more targeted traffic you’ll get.

Leave a comment and tell me what you think and I’d love to hear how you are using social media to improve your rankings.

Talk soon,

David
The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. If you want a good tool to help you with your SEO, I use SEO Elite and if you need to have some high quality content written for you, I use Need An Article and ArticleZ; they do a good job although they aren’t as swift as I would like – you know, I want great articles written instantly

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

2 Proven Ways to SERP Victory

Last time we talked about pay-per-click advertising and how quick and effective it can be when done properly.

But… that doesn’t mean you should stop there, not by a long shot. There is still money to be made using other tools in your traffic tool box.

One of those tools is search engine optimization, or SEO.

If there is an online marketing topic that causes more fights and arguments from people swearing by completely opposite methods and techniques I don’t know it is.

There are many aspects of SEO but one of the, if not the, most important ones is…
…the content of your site. It is a fact that having good quality content that is added frequently is a great way to appear higher in the search engine results.

Keyword Density

One thing that people tend to think of when talking about SEO is keywords and keyword density.

What keywords are is the specific words or phrases that you are targeting with an article, blog post or other text content.

You do this because when the search engine they create an index of your Web page or blog (like the index in the back of a book). Then when people search for a word or phrase they return those pages that have those words and phrases in their index for the page.

The simple definition of keyword density is the percentage of keywords in the entire page. That is, they divide the number of keywords found by the total number of words found and the answer, as a percentage, is the keyword density.

For example, in the last paragraph these are some keyword densities:

1. The word “keyword” or derivatives like “keywords” has a density of 10.26% (it appears 4 times out of a total of 39 words)
2. The word “density” has a keyword density of 5.13% (it appears 2 times out of a total of 39 words)

A more complex definition includes title, keywords, alt text, description, and comments.

There is some controversy over the proper percentage or even if keyword density is important anymore but, in general, I see people quoting in the 1.5-8% range.

The rationale behind it is that it helps the search engines understand the page and if the keyword density is too low they don’t understand it as well and, therefore, don’t rank the site as highly for that and related terms.

In truth, nobody really knows and you have a lot of people taking all the different sides because some been successful not using keyword density and others have been successful with double digit density.

To me, this just means that there are lots of other things being considered and it depends upon the combination and interaction of all those different things.

I figure, it can’t hurt to have some keyword density 2-5% but you should test to see if more or less works best in your situation.

Bottom line, there is no absolute best density to strive for and I believe there are a lot of factors so each case is different.

Links

Links are another major factor in having good SEO. In fact, they are probably the most important factor because getting some high quality links may be all you need to rank highly.

When I talk about links I mean other Web sites and blogs linking TO your site (inbound or back links) NOT linking from your site somewhere else (outbound links). A third type of link are links that are internal links, those that link from various pages of your Web site or blog to other pages of the same Web site or blog; these can have value also if you don’t just go wild – as is true will all links, have them be natural and make sense.

Google, in particular, uses inbound links as an important indicator to how good your site is. Originally, they were all about the quantity of links but then they changed and the quality of links is a more important factor.

Some good links from “authority sites” places like YouTube, Squidoo, and .edu sites ares worth far more than hundreds of links from the personal home pages of your family and friends.

If you look at the traffic plan I show in the previous post, The Traffic Pillar: 1 of the 3 Cornerstones of Guaranteed Success, you’ll see the network of links and the hierarchy being used.

It shows getting links from a variety of places, particularly a number of high quality sites.

The advantage of this is the search engines see a lot of links from those high quality sites and this helps raise the search engine results position (SERP) of your sites and blogs. You also get an addition advantage of those direct links from those high quality sites.

One note, lots of links from “link farms” and places with the same IP address range are generally considered to be bad and hurt your search rankings. Also, two way links where you link to a Web site and they directly link back to you doesn’t work well any more and can be damaging if over used.

So, don’t get one or two hosting accounts, put lots of domains on them and links them all together.

What Else Is There to SEO?

There are literally hundreds of different things different people do and insist are important. Go to a bookstore or look online and you will, similarly, find hundreds of books on the topic.

Instead of adding another voice to the confusion I want to just list many of the common factors I’ve heard.

I don’t necessarily endorse any of them and some of them I don’t even believe in but, like keyword density, I believe that successful SEO is a combination of numerous factors and you can make up for a lack of one thing but doing other things.

How else do you explain people having success with such a wide variety of different things some of which actually conflict with each other?

Okay, now to the list…

Content Related

1. Have lots of new, unique and valuable content
2. Keep the content focused on one topic
3. Don’t have a lot of duplicate content
4. Create a sitemap to help the search engines find all your important pages; create a Google XML sitemap also.
5. Start as early as possible, older sites and content are valuable

Keyword Related

1. Focus each Web page or blog post on one specific topic and keyword phrase.
2. Optimize for a primary keyword phrases but you can also optimize for one or two secondary, but related, phrases
3. Use the keyword tools (see my pay-per-click blog post http://streetguidetowebtraffic.com/blog/ppc/get-tons-of-traffic-with-ppc) to find popular keyword phrases; if you are selling something then make sure it is buyers that are doing those searches.
4. Use plurals, various verb forms, various spellings, synonyms
5. Keep related keywords together
6. Use keywords and keywords phrases in:
   • your title tag
   • your domain name
   • your page name or other parts of your Web address (use hyphens between words)
   • in your headlines
   • the keyword and description meta tags
   • the “alt” attribute of images on your site
   • the text of your internal and external links
   • the first paragraph and the top of your pages
7. Format your keywords to standout with font size and emphasis.
8. Don’t hide keywords by making them invisible
9. Keep keyword density within acceptable ranges, don’t “spam” the keyword phrases on your page (don’t create pages that are mostly links)

Link Related

1. Get links from authority sites and other high value sites
2. Get links from .edu sites as well as .gov sites (Google loves them)
3. Get linked in content specific directories like DMOZ and Yahoo!
4. Get links from other Web sites (just ask them!)
5. Get links from sites that focus on the same topic
6. Link naturally between pages in your site; don’t just link every page to every other page, have a natural flow.
7. Don’t use invisible links

Design Related

1. Try to use strictly HTML with little use of frames, Flash and content created with JavaScript
2. Have a broad, not deep link structure
3. Don’t have incorrect/bad HTML on your pages

There you have a good list of most of the important things to do or don’t do to achieve success in your SEO efforts.

As I said, nobody knows exactly how the search engines rank Web pages and I believe it is a combination

Always Test!

Think of all the different SEO things you can do as weights on a scale. You want the scale to be perfectly balanced so if you add to one place then you need to remove something else to keep the balance.

How do you find that out?

Test.

Add content, see what it does.

Add links, see what they do. Add different types of links, see what they do.

Play will all the factors and find which ones are optimal for your Web page or blog.

Always try find out why Google and the other search engines aren’t linking to you or ranking you highly, then fix it.

Conclusion

Search engine optimization can be a complex, ever-changing and frustrating task but if you have lots of good, fresh content and links from high quality sites then you are well on your way to being ranked on the first page.

Try out some of the many other factors and see how they impact your ranking and test and refine until you’ve got it perfect. Just remember that the rules change frequently so you’ll need to stay on top of it.

Just remember that this is area of online marketing that has lots of disagreements into what is the best way so keep skeptical of any claims but also open-minded enough to consider different ways.

What are your favorite SEO tips and tricks? Post them in a comment! Thanks.

Talk soon,

The “Shameless” (but “Ethical”) Marketer

http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

How to Profit from SEO