On-Site SEO that Works

There is a ton of misinformation on the web about which SEO techniques work and which don’t.  As always, you should read with caution and test for yourself.

The #1 rule for on-site is SEO is relevance.  Make sure that the site or page you are trying to rank is relevant and useful for the visitors that click on your primary keyword.  A clean, straight to the point site will be appreciated by your visitors.  Use custom web design techniques which enhance the subject matter, don’t go over-the-top with flash, moving graphics, or anything distracting.

Start at the top.  The title of your page should feature your primary keywords and tell visitors and search engines what the focus of your page/site is.  Once you have attracted traffic to your site, they should instantly be able to see content which directly addresses the keywords you’ve placed in your title.  Article, video, or post headers should feature the keywords.

You can’t cram a ton of info onto your homepage, so include excepts with links to back pages that expand on the subject matter of the keywords.  According to Web Design Richmond you should keep the focus of the page simple and concise.  Function over form.

You want to make your site as clean and crisp as possible.  Even though most people have fast connections such as cable or satellite internet you don’t want to miss out on vital new consumers that are still kick’n it old school with dial-up.

Finally, make sure your link structure is easy to follow and intutive for finding information on your site.

For most legitimate web sites, the above steps will be all the on-site SEO necessary.  If you have a particularly large site, consider a site map.  For most though, they are unnecessary.  Keep it simple, stay focused, and above all – be useful!

How To Write A Blog Post Like A Pro

Everyone has a blog these days. My dad (just turned sixty last month) has three. He has his business blog, his personal blog and he’s got a twitter blog where he’s writing a novel at 140 character installments six days a week. ??So what makes your blog special, and how do you write a snappy, eye-catching, engaging blog post every time?

Journalism 101

Seriously, if you want to write a blog and you’ve not taken a basic course in journalistic writing, do so. You’ll discover ‘The Inverted Pyramid’ and a semester’s worth of other concepts that can be applied directly to your blog. A creative writing course would be nice, too, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Most important are the 5 W’s: Who, What, When, Where and Why. Here’s a crash course.

Who are you Writing For?

It’s a simple question, sure, but it can have a difficult answer. Who will be reading your blog post? Are you writing for ten year olds or twenty-something’s? Do you intend to be read by colleagues, fans, friends, employers, locals, internationals, or bi-lingual’s?

Having a targeted demographic will help you to picture your audience while you’re writing your blog. It will help you to choose a tone, vocabulary, and topic that will appeal to them, as well as be understood by them. More important than knowing what you’ll be saying is knowing who you’ll be saying it to.

What Will You Be Writing About?

This one is pretty simple, really: “What is this blog post about?” If your blog is designed to share your adventures with friends and family while you’re teaching English in South Korea, your topic is already decided. If it’s more of a soap-box upon which you champion a political stance and ideology, you might have a little more work cut out for you in coming up with a topic.

When Will This Be Posted?

It’s at this point that I have to confess that I’ve modified the journalistic “5 W’s,” in order to better meet my own needs. The original ‘When’ refers to “When did the event happen?” That doesn’t work well in an overall guide for writing blogs. So instead I’ve chosen “When Will This Be Posted.”

You need to decide whether or not you’ll be posting immediately, delaying the publishing date, or even implying that it has been posted weeks prior to the day you actually wrote it. Knowing this while you’re writing allows you to maintain continuity with other posts you may have written. If it’s an article about Halloween posted in April, you might want to explain why.

Where Will This Be Seen?

You know your audience, your topic and your time, now know your stage. Does your blog have any recurring themes, concepts or standards you have to adhere to? Is it moderated by an outside censor or is it governed by your own good judgment?

Second to deciding who will be reading it, knowing where it will be read will help you to craft an appropriate tone and vocabulary. These are key components of the ‘voice’ of your piece.

Why Are You Writing?

I’m not getting metaphysical on you. If you’re an artist, poet, or novelist, you could be writing to express yourself, or gain exposure. If you’re an activist you could be writing this blog to engender awareness and provide a voice to the voiceless. If you’re a fan you could simply be pointing out why United is better than City (over and over and over again), or if you’re a freelance writer you could simply be trying to build a good name and reputation for yourself while sharing useful and hard-earned knowledge as a guest poster on quality websites.

Having an honest answer for this final ‘W’ enables you to write your post with purpose and drive. Your readers’ time is too precious to waste with unclear thoughts and ramblings. Make sure you always know why you’re writing, and why it matters to your reader.

and “How.”

Like the five vowels ending in ‘and sometimes Y,’ our 5 W’s end with a “How.”

The concepts above aren’t a magic key to always writing good blog posts, but it’s how you start. It’s an easy to remember mnemonic device for building a foundation before you type every blog post. I take the time before I sit down to actually write out the five W’s and then build my article on top of them. That’s how I do it.

Jake Walker is a freelance writer and has been working on the web on and off for the last 10 years. An avid blogger he has had many posts featured on major social networks and other news portal websites. He currently works as a search engine optimization consultant with the other smart people at SEOP.com

Think big by targeting small in your SEO

It has been of my own experience, when you ask most companies which main keywords they are going to be targeting for their new flagship startup company, they will tell you that they want to rank for very competitive keywords in an unbelievable time frame. While yes it is true that ranking for mortgage, debt, dating, or banking will bring you a plethora of high quality traffic that will convert into leads and sales, getting those rankings without years of work or lots of money is impossible.

Most search engine optimizers do not realize there is a better solution. All you need to do is to start thinking big by targeting small. It does not matter what niche your company or website is in, every single niche has a more targeted keyword that you can be targeting. You will be able to rank higher for this keyword, in a shorter time frame. When you start ranking for this niche keyword, you will start receiving a representative sample of the traffic you will be seeing for the big keyword you are targeting for the long term. You will be able to build up sales, leads, customer contact information, and most importantly cash while you are slowly building up to your long term keyword goal. It is often easier to rank for the number one spot for five to ten niche keywords with a high volume traffic than it is to rank for one mega keyword as it is often called. For those of you who learn by example, imagine you own an affiliate company that sells supplements. Ranking for for a term like weight loss will result in potentially hundreds of thousands of sales because so many people search for it every day, however the traffic is only semi targeted. Instead of trying to target a term like weight loss, a company that sells bottles containing maqui berry could target a term like weight loss pills, which is a slightly more targeted and less competitive keyword. Depending on the size and competition of the niche, you could keep going smaller and smaller in your niche search. Instead of targeting weight loss pills, you could target a very longtail term like how to lose weight fast. The more longtail and smaller the niche, the faster you will be able to rank. You can then easily rank number one for a niche term which you can then shift the focus to a bigger keyword, ultimately moving closer and closer to ranking for your ultimate keyword in the long term. If its going to take two years to rank for a term like weight loss which will let your company make ten thousand dollars per day… wouldn’t it be smarter to rank for ten niche keywords earning you a thousand dollars a day and then have an entire year of that to rank for your big term and have the benefits of 11 income earning keywords, 10 of which have been earning you money every day for an entire year? I think you are finally now seeing the benefits of targeting small, so go out and search google for your favorite keyword tool and start doing keyword research to find the niches you can rank for in a lot shorter timeframe than trying to stick it out with your main keyword.

SEO Expert Tips

One thing that most people forget about when they’re working with SEO is what kind of hosting their site has. That’s one of the most important things, though, and if a person doesn’t stop and think about it they might have a real problem when it comes to getting people to their site effectively.

The bandwidth that the host is giving you is vital. If your site starts to get a lot of traffic and you don’t have much bandwidth your site will start to go down frequently and you’ll lose customers.

Another consideration is reliability. If the host frequently shuts down for maintenance, because of server issues, or for any other reason, people won’t be able to get to your site. They might not bother to try again later.

How much disk space you have is also important. You don’t need more than around 20MB for most sites, though, so don’t buy into a huge disk space package unless it just comes along with the original price. There’s no point in paying for a bunch of space that you aren’t using now and won’t be using in the future.

What Does SEO Stand For?

SEO is a term that’s very common today, but if you don’t spend a lot of time working with the Internet you might not know what it means. It’s short for Search Engine Optimization, and it refers to the process of organizing your website content and links in order rank for the most relevant and valuable search terms.

One method to optimize your site is to tailor the articles and blog posts that you write toward the terms that people will be searching for.  When someone puts terms that have to do with your website into a search engine, you want your site to come up in the results. If you don’t have the right search terms, though, that won’t take place. You might have the greatest and most helpful site in the world but no one will be going there because their searches don’t send them to where you are.

It can take a while to build up search engine ranking, but the better you are at SEO the higher your chances of getting noticed. Once you start to be noticed and people are going to your website, that will also help boost your rankings. You don’t want to stop the SEO, though, because you want to keep more people finding your website. If you can do that, your business will continue to grow.