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!

Yahoo / Bing – What Does it Mean?

Bing is new, new stuff looks shiny for a while.

Google is used as a verb instead of ’searching’. Bing/Yahoo have a long way to go before they steal permanent market share.  At this point I suspect Microsoft will shovel money into marketing for the next few years with no hope of generating anything close to a profit.  They have a big stockpile of money, but at some point shareholders will complain.  When the marketing ends, their product better deliver results as good or better than Google.  I doubt that will be the case.

The search algorithm seems fairly straight forward for Bing.  Unfortunately big company sites with huge budgets and blackhat auto link techniques will be more effective on Bing than Google.

My prediction:  the simple nature of the search algorithm used by Bing will be either exploited and results will look like your email spam folder, or they will look like Forbes 500 list — neither is as useful as Google’s results.

Is More Really Better With SEO?

A lot of people think that more is better when it comes to SEO, but there is a caveat to that. It largely depends on how you’re expanding and whether your sites can be linked to one another.

In other words, the first thing that you need to do with SEO is to have a main, authoritative site. If you haven’t built one, that would be the first thing to do. From that point, you can create niche sites that link back and tie in to the main site. If you don’t create niche sites that are related to the main site, though, you might find that the SEO won’t do you much good. It’s also important to keep in mind that it takes time to build authority, even if you have a good site.

People have to be able to find you and they have to believe that you know what you’re talking about. That means that the site – or sites – that you create should have valid and interesting content on them along with the SEO targeted words and phrases. If the site content isn’t any good, the SEO won’t be nearly as effective as you had hoped.

Design Your Site for SEO Success

Most people in business today have already heard about SEO and how very important it is when it comes to making your business successful on the Internet. However, that doesn’t mean that they’ve taken the time to optimize their Website so that they can be successful where SEO is concerned.

In the past, the Webpage could be hastily put together and it would be just fine that way, but that’s not the case anymore. Now, it’s more important than ever that both visitors and search engines can easily find your site based on keywords and that they get interesting and original content once they get there. That sounds easy, but it’s not. It’s becoming more and more difficult because people are changing the way that the Web is used, and how it evolves from a business standpoint is also changing.

If you don’t really know your target audience you’re going to have a very hard time getting them to your site and keeping them there, so make sure that you know who you’re talking to and what they’re looking for. Optimize your site for SEO with your target audience in mind.

What is Natural SEO?

Natural SEO is a way of using SEO terms in a conversational or helpful style, instead of just writing a lot of garbage and cramming it full of keywords. Probably everyone has been to at least one of those sites where there is nothing at all of substance and where everything you read is pointless and stuffed with a few terms that the site owner thought would get good search engine rankings.

The key to natural SEO is to write articles and other informational content that is good for the search engines and also good for the people who read it. The keywords should come in the body of the article in a natural way. If you are talking about SEO you should talk about SEO instead of rambling and sticking the term in there a couple of times in the hopes that the search engines will go crazy over it.

It’s possible that it will drive traffic to your site, but what will they find when they get there? They probably won’t be back if you don’t tell them anything worth knowing, so choose not only your SEO terms but your phrasing carefully.