Friday, April 29, 2011

Search Engine Optimization - A Headstart

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing your website to ensure that it ranks highly on search engines, this obviously gives you greater exposure to more traffic and ultimately will lead to more visits to your website. There is no secret technique to get on the first page, the same fundamentals apply today just as they did in previous years, good keyword research, onsite SEO, fast loading, quality link building, and unique content.


SEO has two major factors to consider: On Page SEO and off Page SEO.


In On Page SEO the content of the website is most important and it should be quality assured and original. Always write unique and original content for your website. If you are not efficient in content writing then hire somebody who is. Keywords are extremely important as well, ideally your domain name should be relevant and include a keyword or keyphrase. If possible make sure that you include keywords in your individual page titles and on every page (ideally in the first and last sentence). Understand that you must not simply stuff in as many keywords as you can, the content needs to remain relevant and make sense. Videos, particularly those from YouTube sit very favourably with search engines, particularly Google. (After all Google own YouTube.) You should have at least one relevant video, ideally on your home page.


Off Page SEO takes a long time to complete and it is an ongoing process. Perhaps the most important off page factor is acquiring back links for the website. As with the keywords the links must be relevant and to reputable sites that the search engines view favorably. If your site has thousands of links to poor quality sites just for the sake of it, this will count against you. As Google always says, write for visitors not for the search engines. Submit the website in search engine friendly directories, social bookmarking, classified ads submissions, submitting websites in engines, article submissions etc. etc. Something to definitely stay away from is buying links through link market sites. These domains have a bad record with search engines and have been penalized seeing as their services are seen as a threat to Google's policy about natural, relevant inbound links.


Link building: One direction links have a stronger SEO value because they are considered more natural. Acquiring one gateway website links to your blog from pages which display relevant text and also have extreme specific webpage rank are certain to give you a boost in search engine rankings.


You have to get involved with social sites and the various methods that make it quicker to share. Place icons, or utilize plugins, offering links for sharing to Facebook, YouTube and also Twitter. Create Facebook, YouTube and Twitter pages that link directly to your site. Social networking has now become a major factor in SEO.


Search engine optimization these days is very challenging. There's a lot of competition to consider and you have to also be more prepared when it comes to changing your content. Good content is the foundation of good SEO. You might use the right keywords. You may follow the correct keyword density. But if you end up making irrelevant, awkward content, you just might have readers slowly pulling away from your site. Make sure that what you write is not just good but also highly relevant among your audience. Keep it simple and understandable as well. These are clearly just the basics, good SEO is a science in itself and it takes time, so be patient and keep at it, the benefits of a highly ranking website are obvious and well worth the extra effort.


A fantastic tool I use to take all the guesswork out of it (Seopressor basically guides you step by step, analyses your website, and tells you what key components of your SEO strategy are missing.)

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