4+1 TLC Of Your SEO Strategy

You have control over 5 things when it comes down to optimizing a website in order to get indexed and ranked high in the search engines.

-Keywords

-Content

-Links

-Page Optimization

They are the foundation of your search engine strategy.With keywords you target searchers.You place keywords in your pages and in links pointing to other pages or categories within your site. Picking the right keywords is essential in order to attract the right people to your web page.The more targeted your audience is the more business you'll get.

Tips

-Brainstorm all the keywords related to the main keyword you want to rank for.Analyze your list for a minute than add additional words to your list (words that were not as obvious).What terms come to mind? Jot them down!

-Analyze your competitors website and make notes of keywords they use.You may right click on their site when the window pops up, click on "View Page Source". Then look for <META NAME="keywords"> tag for any useful results.

-Ask your friends and/or family members for help. Have them brainstorm their ideas for keywords related to your niche.

-Include spelling mistakes. For instance the word "calendar" is frequently misspelled by searchers.( calender, calander...etc). You can rank high for those misspelled keywords.

From a search engine's point of view content is nothing but plain text. Engines crawl through the source code of your site, looking for relevant words. You want them to index the particular keywords on your website.The more content you have (the more blog posts or web pages) the more words you have. And the more words you have the more keywords you can sprinkle all over your content. (General rule is 1 link/200-300 word ; It's ok to skip putting links every now and then.

It explains why having a huge amount of content is the main reason that usually older web sites are ranked high in the search engines.( especially in a competitive field such as SEO).

Implementing SEO strategies is like gardening. You always have to water your plants and remove the weeds. It's a constant loving care :)

The more competitive your niche the more important to have links pointing to your website. In fact, incoming links (links pointing to your site from other sites) alone can be a determining factor to your site to rank number one in an engine.

Where Do I Get Links From?

-Directory Submissions

These directories are the yellow pages of the internet. They have listing of the websites of the net. They are great way to get those links pointing to your website.

Pros and Cons

Some of them are free some aren't.It takes (it could take up to several months for your site to be accepted). There are a ton of directories out there. They usually want high quality web site and not one with full of silly affiliate links. They want content. Do you own research to find the best.

Some of the biggest names: Yahoo, DMOZ, Business.com, Gimpsy, Best Of The Web.

-Article Submissions

This is the place where you post free content. Your article is a free content (your “give”) and in exchange you get to leave a link (your “take” which can be a deep link, yay!) to your website.

Try: Ezine@rticles, Articlecity, Articleclick.

-Social Media Sites

Write and submit quality content to site such as HubPages, Squidoo and you get to leave a link or two behind pointing to your website. Once you have an article post it on sites like Twitter, Facebook...etc where they can go easily go viral.

-Social Bookmarking

Use sites like Digg, Sumbleupon (there many of them out there) to bookmark the best site on the net. You may bookmark your sites as well but don't over do it. :)

-Link Exchange

Talk to other websites owners in your niche about exchanging links. Here is how it works. You write some unique content for their website, have them post it on their site and you got a link back to your site. He provides (using your post) some good information to his readers but you take credit for it.It's a win wind but be ready to be turned down. Try to find a site with the same Alexa Rank as your website in order to be successful at this.

You need to make sure that you send a loud and clear message to the search engines saying: This is what my website is about. Make your website very focused. For instance if you are selling organic shampoo, don't write about your neighbor's barking dog. Your job is to write about health, organic and shampoo related stuff. I think you get the picture.

Your domain (URL), the title of your site or blog and your categories should be including the main keywords of your niche.

-Interlinking

You want your blog post to link to your blog category. This is super important! With almost every ( don't over do this technique either!) post that you write you constantly reminding the search engines: "Look, this is what's important on my site; this category is what my site is about! Give authority to it over everything else!" And the engines are going to pic up on it saying: "Wait, This MUST be important!" And that's how Google will rank you higher and higher.

Tip

If your blog is on Wordpress, I highly recommend installing the " All In One SEO" plugin.

SEO is a slow burn. If you are serious about optimizing your page you are going to put time and effort into it.

The more competitive the niche you are in the harder is to establish high rankings. Choose a special field like dog vitamins (instead of dogs) and provide the hottest information and products in that niche.

Or even better be a lookout for a new product or service that has NOT been launched yet. If it is not out yet chances are that much SEO has been done. You can create a page about it and capitalize on the buzz. If you rank high in the engine you will have an enormous amount of traffic.

This run down on SEO is just the tip of the iceberg. If you are hungry for more feel free to drop by my blog to get free SEO tips, training and strategies.