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

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