On Page SEO

SEO Title Tag

The first and most important part of your on-page SEO is the title tag (<title></title>). Many people who outsource or create a site in a WYSIWYG editor completely forget about the last of the meta tags that still gives some quality ranking love from search engines.

The benefits of using optimized title tags are three fold:

1. A user searching for your keyword will see your site's link highlighted in the search engines if your page's title is the same as the phrase they searched for. This drastically increases click through and can even give you more traffic than those who rank above you if their title tags are not optimized.
2. Increase your rankings on the search engines.
3. Help the engines distinguish between pages that might look similar.

Higher Clickthrough Rates

Search engine optimization isn't just about showing up number one on search engines. Rather, it's about getting the all the traffic that you deserve from the search engines. If you rank #6 for "free hats" and you and your competitors forget to include that in the page's title tag, chances are, the person doing the search won't see much difference between your site and the others.

However, if you were to change your website's title text to target your most important keyword phrase "free hats", then when someone completes the search for "free hats", they'd see your site show up in bold. This technique will greatly increase the user's desire to view your site first, as your site looks much more relevant and targeted.

Better Rankings

All too often, people believe that the title tag is a place to list the business and domain name of the website. This is wrong and is wasting one of the easiest ways you can tell the search engines what the a page is about and how they should categorize it. While humans might not notice the title tag, search engines certainly do.

Use this opportunity to choose the most important keyword that you want to go after and get the free ranking boost that so many websites are missing out on. If you still want to include your domain or name of the company, do it after your keyword, followed by a dash (e.g. "free hats - hatsemporium.com") to show that your keyword is the most important.

Help the Engines Distinguish your Pages

It's not easy being a search engine. They crawl the web day and night, taking the information from the web and trying to categorize it in a useful manner so that users can find what they're looking for. Make their job easier. Post clearly what the topic of each page is, using title tags, and help the search engine to distinguish one page from another.

You may have two pages that are quite similar and it may require a little thought to point out how they different. Don't make the search engines figure out for themselves because they might make a mistake. Instead, make the decision for them. Spell the differences out for them and help your rankings in the process. This is just one strategy in avoiding the duplicate content penalty, which we'll be getting into greater depth later.

Keyword Research

Keyword Research

Before you can start optimizing your site for the search engines, you must first know which terms you want to target. A good start would be to choose 3 or 4 keywords you would like your website to rank well for. With these keywords in your mind you can then set a goal to rank in the top 10 results on Google for each of them (we refer to Google because if you can rank well there, you'll rank well on the other search engines). These keywords can be either broad or specific, but you'll want to study our list of pros and cons of each before choosing.

Broad Keywords

A broad keyword is one that many people search for, because they may only have a vague idea of what they're looking for. Broad keywords tend to be very short and aren't very specific (e.g. "shoes" or "sports"). These keywords are difficult to rank #1 for because so many other websites might have an article or two that mention shoes. However, if you can rank well for a broad keyword, you will be receiving a great deal of traffic.

Summary: Hard to rank for, but worth it in the long run. We recommend that beginners only choose a broad keyword if their industries are not very competitive.

Specific Keywords

A specific keyword is something that contains many adjectives or words that make the search very targeted. The people doing these types of searches know exactly what they want (e.g. "used black high heel shoes"). These keywords are much less competitive and are easier to rank for on search engines. The downside is that they receive a great deal less volume of searches per month. In terms of traffic, you will need to have several #1 rankings for specific keywords to equal one #1 ranking broad keyword.

Summary: Easier to rank for and it's highly targeted traffic. The only downside is that the number of visitors you will receive is relatively low.

Unique or Branded Keywords

These are the words that are specific to only your company. They are one of the most easiest ways to get traffic. However, some companies will release a new product, with a unique name, and then forget to optimize for that keyword on their website. Their SEO savvy competitors can then pick up the slack and take over the top rankings for these terms. If you have a popular brand or product, make sure that you have optimized for these freebie keywords.

Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research tools are 2 parts voodoo magic and 1 part hard statistic. This is partly due to Google not releasing actual numbers and partly due to overeager SEO Tool developers trying to sell their products. Because there is such a sizable uncertainty in all keyword research tools, it is best to use as many different sources as you can,. Even with multiple sources, you should only take the information you gather as a recommendation, rather than a fact.

Yahoo has been releasing their keyword search information for years, and many tools are based off of this specific data. We've collected a wide variety of helpful tools that will give you a general idea of which keywords you should target when making and optimizing your websites.

Picking a Short List

To put the optimizing tactics that we teach to good use, we recommend that you try to target no more than 2 or 3 keyword phrases per page. A common mistake by many SEO beginners is to stuff 500 different keywords on one page and wait for the #1 rankings to roll in. That might have worked 10 years ago, but the algorithms that search engines use these days are much more sophisticated and are not tricked by this. That's why it's best to start small, and be concise with the keywords that you choose. New sites in particular will find it nearly impossible to rank well for many keyword phrases upon first starting out.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for beginners

You've finished your web design, uploaded your files, and set up your blog, but you're still not getting as many visitors as you hoped for. What gives? Chances are you haven't started working on one of the most important ways to market your site, Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Beginners

You've finished your web design, uploaded your files, and set up your blog, but you're still not getting as many visitors as you hoped for. What gives? Chances are you haven't started working on one of the most important ways to market your site, Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

What SEO Is

Search Engine Optimization refers to the collection of techniques and practices that allow a site to get more traffic from search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft). SEO can be divided into two main areas: off-page SEO (work that takes place separate from the website) and on-page SEO (website changes to make your website rank better). This tutorial will cover both areas in detail! Remember, a website is not fully optimized for search engines unless it employs both on and off-page SEO.

What SEO Is Not

SEO is not purchasing the number #1 sponsored link through Google Adwords and proclaiming that you have a #1 ranking on Google. Purchasing paid placements on search engines is a type of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and is not covered in this tutorial.

SEO is not ranking #1 for your company's name. If you're reading this tutorial, you probably already know that ranking for popular terms is darn near impossible, but specific terms, such as a company name, is a freebie. The search engines usually are smart enough to award you that rank by default (unless you are being penalized).

Who Uses SEO

If a website is currently ranked #10 on Google for the search phrase, "how to make egg rolls," but wants to rise to #1, this websites needs to consider SEO. Because search engines have become more and more popular on the web, nearly anyone trying to get seen on the web can benefit from a little SEO loving.

How to Improve SEO Rankings with Google Plus

In our attempts to improve SEO rankings we do miracles and try everything we can think of. Of course, even if we could, it makes no sense to try absolutely everything. What makes the most sense, is to try something that does have great effect on our SEO rankings, yet is not known to everybody and their brother. G+, Google's social network meets these requirements ‐ seems to do miracles for rankings, while most people, (except those who try everything), who do employ social networks for SEO, concentrate their efforts on Facebook because it is more popular than G+. However, it turns out G+ pays more for our efforts than Facebook and the other social networks. Here is why.

Why Google Plus Is Especially Important for SEO

While Google denies any direct relationship between Google Plus content and activity on one hand and SEO rankings on other, very often good ranking sites have good Google Plus activity. While in theory this could be pure coincidence, the results speak for themselves. Here are some reasons why Google Plus is especially important for SEO:

• Google owns it and no matter if they admit it or not, as empirical evidence shows popularity on Google Plus is a huge factor for good rankings.
• Some links are dofollow and they help to improve rankings. Not all links are dofollow but unlike on other sites, at least the so called "shared" links (the links under your post) are dofollow, so take advantage of that. Additionally, when you post something interesting that gets reposted, you earn multiple links to the same page.
• Links from Google Plus get relevant anchor text - the title of the post is the anchor text (which obviously is much better than "Click this", "Here", or other generic anchor texts) and the best is that this anchor text sounds natural and won't hurt your rankings.
• Ultrafast indexing of all pages is another benefit. While it is true that Google is fast to index any site that gets frequently updated, the advantage of Google Plus over Twitter and Facebook where all or most of the content is hidden from search engines is hard to beat.

As you see, the benefits of Google Plus for SEO are really noticeable. So, even if you are skeptical about the whole this social media hysteria, the case with Google Plus is different and it will pay to give it a try, if you haven't already done so.

How to Use Google Plus to Get Better Rankings

Google Plus isn't very different from any other social site, though it certainly has its specifics. Here are some basic tips how to use Google Plus to the fullest.

1 Join Google Plus/Become Active

Obviously, if you aren't on Google Plus yet, the first step is to join it. This is easy to do and we won't bother with details how to do it. Once you join Google Plus, have a look around to see who of your friends and acquaintances is there, join their circles and add them to yours. You can start posting right away but it's better to first read what other users have posted, comment on it, share it, and only after this start posting.

2 Start Using Google Authorship

Google Authorship is another service from Google you will find on Google Plus that helps you stand out from the crowd. In addition to being a valuable tool to protect your content, it also helps with SEO. When you add your articles under your Google Authorship profile, your name appears in search results. This might not bring you traffic per se but it certainly helps to build your online reputation.

3 Post Good Content

It goes without saying but you need to post good content only. Content with low quality will not only damage your reputation but it might not get noticed at all. On social networks, the benefits come when you are noticed because in this case it is more likely for your content to be shared than poor stuff. So, the basic rule with other social networks applies here as well ‐ it's better not to post any content than to post junk.

4 Spice Your About Page

About pages can be very boring and you might want to skip yours but this is a huge mistake. With Google Plus, About pages are very useful because here you can add links to your sites, your profiles on other social networks, or simply links to pages you find interesting. All this effort is not in vain, so do it.

5 Pay Attention to Your Profile

The About page is not the only element to pay attention to. In addition to it, you need to make your Google Plus profile top-notch. As you probably know from your experience on other social networks, your profile and the information in it is vital for your success there. This is why you need to fill all the relevant information and keep it current.

6 Make Yourself Accessible

Social networks are not for people who are afraid or unwilling to communicate. If you are on a social network, this means you don't want to keep your presence there private but you want to expand your circle of friends, coworkers, and acquaintances. In order to achieve this, you need to make yourself accessible, i.e. easy to add to other users' circles and make your posts public. This might not guarantee your success overnight but when you are accessible and your profile and posts are interesting, this seriously increases your chances to get noticed.

Google Plus is a real jewel for SEO. Though many experts, including Google executives themselves, dispute its advantages, Google Plus has helped many sites achieve good rankings in their niches. Certainly, this is not a guarantee that it will work for you as well but it is worth trying. The wisest you can do is try with one site, for example and see how it works. If Google Plus works for you, then you can expand its use to other sites you optimize. And of course, don't expect miracles ‐ if your other SEO efforts are poor, even Google Plus can't compensate for this.