SEO Tips – What You Need To Know Beforehand

Welcome to Quality SEO Tips.com! If you already know what SEO is, feel free to look around. For those of you who are new to the internet marketing scheme, make sure to read from the start and do not skip any sections as you need to understand every part to fully grasp the concept of SEO.

These are only brief explanations. I will be adding more pages for you to understand in details each part, so make sure to bookmark this site.

• Introduction To SEO
• So What Is Search Engine Optimization?
• SEO Tips About Keyword Research
  • Finding The Right Niche
  • Finding The Right Keywords
  • Analyzing The Competition
• SEO Tips About On-Page Optimization
  • Domain Name
  • Content Is King
  • Keyword Density
  • H1 – H2 – H3 Tags
  • Title Tag
  • META Tags
  • Canonical URL
  • Interlinking
  • Sitemap
  • WP Plugins
• SEO Tips About Off-Page Optimization
  • What is a Backlink?
  • How To Get Backlinks?
  • Where To Get Backlinks?
  • Tools
• A Final Word

 

Introduction To SEO

I’m sure you’ve already heard about search engine optimization (SEO).  Since we’re talking about search engines, we’ll only focus on Google because it is the largest one. Even though Yahoo and Bing are also search engines, they’re not as big and important as Google’s. It is also because Google’s algorithm for ranking is more understandable than the other search engine’s algorithms.

 

So What Is Search Engine Optimization?

To make things simpler, I’ll give you an example. Imagine you search on Google for “dog training”. A bunch of results come out, 45 800 000 to be specific. How do you think the top 10 results that you see on the first page ranked so high for the term “dog training”? The answer is kind of obvious. It is because of the power of SEO. Amazing, huh? Now, think of how many people search for that key phrase, and how many visitors the top 10 websites will get. And the great thing about this traffic is that it’s all free.

Now you may ask what is exactly a keyword? A keyword, or key phrase, may contain more than one word. Just look at our previous example, “dog training” was our keyword. Keywords are the most important aspect of search engines. It is how Google knows what you’re looking for, and therefore what to show you as a result. If you search for “chairs”, Google will return you websites about chairs. If you search about “real estate”, you’ll get results about real estate.

When we talk about SEO, we have to consider each page as being a different website. Lost? Let me explain how Google works. Google’s algorithm is made to rank each page separately. For instance, your homepage might be #2 for keyword A, but one of your other page is instead ranked #6 for keyword B. What this means is that you can rank each of your pages of your website for different keywords. This is why it’s recommended to target one keyword per page.

It begins to make more sense, doesn’t it? SEO is meant to optimize your page for a certain keyword so that Google will return your page high in the search engine results page (SERP) when someone searches for that keyword. The real question is HOW?

There are three main aspects for optimizing your website for search engines.

1. Keyword Research
2. On-Page Optimization
3. Off-Page Optimization

 

SEO Tips About Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of SEO, as keywords are the foundation of your website. Selecting the right keywords will decide the future outcome of your website, whether it’ll have success or not. Since your website will be optimized for the chosen keywords, we might as well make sure we got this step perfectly mastered. To execute a proper research, we must first find a niche — if you don’t already have one — then find the keywords, and finally analyze the competition of those keywords.

 

Finding The Right Niche

Finding a niche is finding an idea to base your keyword research on. I would recommend starting with a specific niche, i.e. “how to lose weight” in contrary to only “Health”. That way, it’ll be easier later when you’ll be researching keywords.

How to find a niche? Personally, I find my niches while browsing my affiliate networks’ products.  Only when I find a potential product that I start researching keywords. This is done to avoid finding those perfect keywords only to find out there are no products affiliated with them — this is of course if you’re into affiliate marketing. Nevertheless, you can browse eBay trends, Amazon, Yahoo Answers, or any forums by just looking at what people are talking about.

However, if you have a passion for a certain niche, then by all means choose that one as it’ll be easier on your soul later on because you’ll be working on a website that you truly have interest in.

 

Finding The Right Keywords

When you find your niche, your next action will be researching keywords. Brainstorm and write down on a piece of paper, or in notepad (yay! for technology) all possible keywords that a person might type in the search bar to locate your niche.

I recommend Google’s Adword Keyword tool which is available for free for further researching the keywords as it’ll pull out more suggestions, and at the same time give you data on them. Search each of your brainstormed keywords and check for EXACT searches. This is done to give you a better estimation of the search volume as an EXACT search is a search done for the exactly same keyword, in the same order without anything added or removed.

Now look if the keywords are profitable or not by looking at the global searches per month and local searches per month. A good keyword will have at least 3k global searches per month — it is not always the case.

 

Analyzing The Competition

Analyzing the competition means simply analyzing the top 10 results for your keywords. We don’t care about the rest, as what’s important is your top 10 competitors that are fighting for your keyword.

Install SEOQuake, or better yet install Traffic Travis and look at each of your competitors PageRank, age, number of backlinks directed only to the page and their on-page optimization.

PageRank is a rank given by Google to a specific page. When you hear that a domain is PR4, it doesn’t necessarily mean that every page located on that domain will be PR4. This will be good to know later when you’ll be building backlinks.

 

SEO Tips About On-Page Optimization

On-Page Optimization is sometimes forgotten by most internet marketers. Its field is limited as you can achieve a perfect on-page optimization, so why not take the most out of it while you can? The difference between your #2 spot and that #1 might just be a small on-page factor.

Now when you have selected those 4-6 keywords, it is time to optimize your website for them. Your homepage should be optimized for the most popular keyword, which is the main keyword of the site. Then you can create other pages each optimized for its respective keyword.

Do not forget that each page should be optimized.

 

Domain Name

The domain name of your website is just like the address of your house. For best results, you should try to include your main keyword in your domain name. Only choose .com, .org and .net extensions as they are the ones that would get your domain most noticed. If the exact domain name match isn’t available for your keyword, you can add an extra letter or word. Dogtraining.com might not be available, but DogtrainingX.com or DogTrainingExpress.com might be.

 

Content Is King

The most crucial aspect of on-page optimization is content. Make sure to write unique quality content that will provide your readers with useful information. Also, make sure it is more than 400 words. A lengthy article of around 1,000 words is the most recommended. If your content is legibly interesting, the bounce rate (% of visitors who click the “back” button”) will be low and the average time spent on your page will be high. Since the Panda update, Google is serious about quality content. Fortunately for you, there are some SEO tips and tricks that can help you in this field.

 

Keyword Density

Keyword density is the percentage of your keyword in your content. Even though nowadays content is the most important thing, you should still watch out for this. It is recommended to have a keyword density of around 2-5% for optimal results. However, do not forcefully insert keywords in your content as it will look unnatural and awkward. Write for your visitors, and not for the search engines.

 

H1 – H2 – H3 Tags

The header tags should be implemented in your content. Also make sure your keyword is present in these tags.It is recommended to have one H1 tag, and several H2, H3 tags throughout your content.

 

Title Tag

The title tag is the title of your page (RED). It should, in most cases, begin with your keyword. Also, try to add an supplemental information to it. “Your Keyword – Some Information”

META Tags

Fill out properly your description/keywords tags. The description tag is the description of the page (BLUE). It description should contain your keyword. As for the keywords tags, insert your target keyword plus two latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords. LSI Keywords are keywords related to your main topic.

 

Canonical URL

Ever saw URLs like www.site.com/?p=2832? This is an absolutely NO NO in the SEO book. You should change the permalink structure of your pages to include your keyword such as www.site.com/keyword-bla-bla-bla.

 

Interlinking

Interlinking your inner pages and vice-versa renders the Google spiders’ jobs easier, thus giving your pages more rank because of easier accessibility.

 

Optimizing Images

Since Google isn’t advanced yet to analyze pictures, it is recommended to optimize them. Add an alt and title tag to them containing your target keyword. The image’s filename should also contain the keyword.

 

Sitemap

A sitemap is necessary for the Google’s bots to easily navigate through the pages of your website. By having one, you’re telling Google how organized your site is, and that is a plus for SEO.

 

WP Plugins

If you’re using WordPress as your platform, you should install some plugins that favor SEO. If you’re just beginning with SEO, I would suggest All-In-One SEO Pack. However, if you already have experience on optimizing your site, then you should maybe consider Platinium SEO.

Moreover, a ping plugin such as cbnet Ping Optimizer is handy to have. SEO Friendly Images is a good plugin for optimizing your images, and Google XML Sitemaps does the job of creating a sitemap for your site.

 

SEO Tips About Off-Page Optimization

Link building is known everywhere. It consists of building backlinks to increase your page’s reputation. This is Google’s way of evaluating a website’s popularity. If someone links back to your page, Google sees your website useful since someone is referencing your website. It adds in more credibility, thus having your page high in the SERP.

 

What is a Backlink?

A backlink is a link placed on another website that links back to one of your pages. It consists of an anchor text and an anchor URL. It can also be dofollow or nofollow. As a rule of thumb, the higher PR a page has, the higher a backlink from this page will be evaluated. Also, the higher OBLs — outbound links, the number of external links — a page has, the lesser a backlink from this page will be evaluated.

 

Anchor Text

It is the text seen by the users on their screen. For example, you may see a link, but instead of seeing the actual URL, you’ll see some text.  This is an example. You should use your target keyword as anchor text when creating backlinks to your target page. To make it look more natural, try also to vary your anchor texts, i.e. 70% target keyword, 30% lsi keywords.

 

Anchor URL

It is the destination URL of the link. A link may be just some text, but in reality there’s an URL behind it, an anchor URL. In the previous example, the anchor URL was http://www.example.com.

 

Dofollow

A dofollow link is a link that Google’s robots are allowed to go through, meaning they will recognize the anchor URL’s destination page.

 

Nofollow

A nofollow link is a link that Google’s robots aren’t allowed to follow it, thus they ignore it. However, there are many debates on this matter whether nofollow backlinks are effective or not. Nonetheless, you must have them for your website to seem more naturally popular. A nofollow link can be recognized in the source when there’s a rel=”nofollow” added to the html link code.

 

How To Get Backlinks?

You must understand there exists two different kinds of backlinks — low quality and high quality. It is practically impossible to only have high quality backlinks, so it is recommended to get the best of both worlds. It’ll seem anyways more natural to Google because all websites have low quality backlinks, right? Take in mind that one high quality backlink is worth much more than several low quality backlinks.

 

High Quality Backlinks

They are mainly created on high PR pages on authority websites. There is a special way of getting them as you can’t create them by yourself. It is called link baiting. To bait links, you need really attractive content. By providing interesting information, people are bound to talk about it, and thus linking back to your page. You can achieve this with article syndication. Other webmasters will copy/paste your article onto their website and they will usually keep your link (from the resource box).

 

Low Quality Backlinks

They are links created by oneself for the whole purpose of creating backlinks, and that is why they are considered low quality. They can be created manually or via automated tools.

 

Where To Get Backlinks?

There are several ways from where you can get them. I will try to list them from highest value to lowest value, it doesn’t necessarily mean that one method is better than another. Remember that you need backlinks from every source that you can get for diversity.

1. Link Baiting (getting other people to link to your page)
2. Article Syndication (getting other webmasters to publish your article with a link to your page)
3. Guest Blogging (you post on other blogs as a guest blogger and leave a backlink)
4. Blog Networks (BuildMyRank, SEOLinkVine, etc.)
5. Press Releases
6. Blog Commenting (no spam)
7. Forum Posting (no spam)
8. Competitors’ Backlinks (obtaining the same backlinks as your competitors)
9. Social Networking* (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
10. Social Media Marketing* (YouTube, or any other video sites)
11. Web 2.0 Properties (lens, hubs, etc.)
12. Article Directory Marketing (Ezine, GoArticles, etc.)
13. Docs Sharing (pdf sharing sites)
14. Social Bookmarks (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.)
15. RSS Feeds (usually to backlink your backlinks)
16. Mass Article Directory Marketing (mass submission – backlink your backlinks)
17. Forum Profiles (low quality – backlink your backlinks)

* These are mainly created if you want more targeted traffic.

 

Tools

To make an internet marketer’s life easier, there are tools available to download (free and paid) to get extra information or automate your link building process, which saves considerably a lot of time. Magic Submitter is a good choice since it’s less expensive than SENukeX and it delivers just as much. And what it does is that it opens its own browsers and automates account creation, confirmation of emails, and submission. It can automate article directory submission, social bookmarking, press release submission, Web 2.0 properties creation, rss submission, video submission, pdf sharing, etc. It’s a sophisticated tool, and what I like about it is that its process looks natural as everything is done in its own browsers.

 

A Final Word

Combined with affiliate marketing, adsense or any other monetization technique, SEO can sure help you produce a nice revenue. Remember that to make money in Internet marketing, you need two things: traffic + conversion. When you achieve to receive a sustainable amount of traffic, and learn how to repeat the process, you’ll be just a few steps away from success. That’s all for now folks.

I will be adding more content to the blog, so make sure to visit us again!