SEO Tips That Work Now
By
Leon Altman
Good SEO is an
ongoing effort because the search engines keep
changing the rules. While some best practices
remain valid, others no longer work. It's best
to plan for optimization before building web
pages, but website renovations can take care
of many existing problems. Here are some of
the things that are working today, on-site and
off-site.
On-site Optimization
1) Be smart
about the keywords you use
This was important from the beginning and, given
the competition, it's even more critical today.
Unless your niche is very narrow, you'll find
that the competition is intense for main keywords.
And if you decide at some point to also use
pay per click, you'll see that main keywords
can be expensive.
If you want to
eliminate some of the competition, use keyword
phrases of two or three or even more words based
on your main keyword. This let's you take advantage
of the "long-tail" phenomenon, that
is, all the business that can accumulate by
focusing on the margins of a niche.
2) Optimizing
title and description meta tags
Make sure your keywords are in the title and
description meta tags of every page. Remember,
most search engine rank pages, not websites.
Check for good keyword density on each page
- a fancy phrase for the number of times your
keyword is used divided by the number of words
on the page.
Put keywords
in bolded subheads where appropriate. Use h1,
h2 and h3 tags for your subheads, unless they
mess up your format (which they sometimes do).
3) Optimize your
internal linking structure
Pages within your website should not only link
to each other, they should be using strategic
anchor links. That is, use keyword phrases in
the link text itself.
Off-site optimization
For the most
part, off-site strategy are basically about
getting high-quality,relevant links to your
website. The old method of mass link exchange
not only doesn't work any more, it can work
against you.
1) Online press releases are probably the best
method of off-site optimization. With good
press releases, your links have the potential
to appear in highly ranked, highly relevant
media outlets. But make sure your press release
is well optimized for your keywords or else
you waste it's effectiveness. Get your keywords
into the headline of your press release. Also
make sure they are in the first and last paragraphs
of your release.
2) Be smart
about articles
Write articles based on the keywords or phrases
you've chosen. One article should focus on one
main keyword or phrase and maybe a couple of
secondary keywords. That's it. Don't try to
cram keywords into each article.
Be strategic
about the resource box. (The author's box at
the bottom of your articles) If possible, it's
better to use anchor links rather than your
url address.
3) Be smart
about article distribution
For a time, mass submission was hot. Now it
will work against you. Pick about 3-5 of the
best article distribution sites. Submit one
article to one of them, another article to a
different distribution site and so on.
4) Be smart
about directory submissions
Submitting to directories is an important way
to get one-way links. But not all will do you
much good. As much as possible, choose directories
that are either relevant to your site's topic
or at least have a category listing that is
relevant to the topic. You can get more mileage
by submitting your site to search engine directories,
and submitting a blog which is attached to your
site to blog directores. Which brings us to
…
5) Blogging
for better search engine optimization
One
of the main reasons to blog is that google and
other search engines love blogs, and tend to
rank them higher than typical websites. You
can have a blog attached to your site, or make
your whole site a blog. Either method will get
you good results.
Make sure each of your posts are using the keywords
you want. Use different keywords for each post.
Sign up for pingomatic, then after each post,
go to www.pingomatic to ping your post.
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You have permission to publish this article
as long as the resource box below is kept intact,
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Leon Altman is
an Internet marketing consultant. To learn more
about his services, go to www.OnlineMarketingExpress.com
. To inquire about using his services , write
to leon@OnlineMarketingExpress.com
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