BWMagic’s Internet Marketing News


How Much Do You Know About SEO? Some SEO Basics

One of my biggest problems in trying to help other webmasters or marketers
– I naturally and wrongly assume they know all about SEO. I forget these
webmasters have not spent the last 10 years battling it out with other
online webmasters and marketers for some very popular and lucrative keywords,
in the process, homing their SEO skills with other like-minded individuals.

I forget that many beginning webmasters may not be familiar with all the
SEO jargon and SEO techniques which I mention in my small online marketing
emails or newsletters. Now, I don’t get much direct feedback on this but
in a lot of questions I get from webmasters, I can tell they are missing
or misunderstanding some basic SEO tactics.

There’s nothing wrong with that if I were to take up a new hobby or explore
a new subject, I am sure I would be just as clueless. For instance, I think
I have played around one or two rounds of golf in my life… someone asked
if we should play Ball Four Golf and I didn’t know what the heck they were
talking about, nor did I realize it shouldn’t be confused with Ball Fore
which nearly took my head off!

So every sport, hobby or subject comes with a lot of terms/phrases which are
unique to that subject. SEO is the same way so maybe a little background or
warm-up is needed in regards to understanding the basics of SEO.

First, you must understand that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization…
which means you optimize your website and content so that it ranks high in
the major search engines such as Google and Bing/Yahoo. This optimization
can take the form of following a strict formula or layout of your website
content with the proper meta tags, keyword density, linking structures and
so on. It can also mean off-site optimization with link building, right
anchor text, keyword positioning and so on.

SEO has become a major industry simply because getting top rankings for
lucrative keywords means big bucks for companies or individuals. We are
talking about billions, if not trillions of dollars, exchanging hands with
the sale of products, services and business transactions. Get a top ranking
for your chosen keyword phrase and it means a flood of targeted prospects/buyers
coming to your website or company, ready to do business.

Now, because there is so much money involved, a whole SEO industry has
sprung up with consultants, experts and companies offering their services
to get you or your company into those top rankings in the search engines.
These SEO services could include link building, link buying, social media
positioning, onpage optimization, pay-per-click management… all with the
goal of bringing targeted traffic/customers to your site or business.


White Hat vs Black Hat SEO


You may also have heard other webmasters talking about White Hat SEO as
opposed to Black Hat SEO. And as the names suggests, White Hat is strictly
above board proper site optimization, while Black hat is using underhand devious
cloaking methods and system to raise your rankings. For obvious reasons,
always go the White Hat route and you won’t be disappointed and you will
feel better knowing you’re doing the right thing in regards to your site.

Perhaps the next concept or term you should know is Algorithm. Search engines
create complicated algorithms or list of rules which determines not only how
web pages are listed but also which web pages are listed first in their index
or SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). These rules or ranking factors are
used by SEO experts and webmasters to help move their keyword rankings up
in the search engines. You open a web browser, go to a search engine such
as Google, type in a search query for “top corporate lawyers” and the search
engine returns a list of organic results along with a list of paid listings.
Now, getting to that top spot means a lot of potential traffic/clients would be coming your way.

This is just one example, but most people would quickly realize how lucrative
getting to those top spots would be for any individual or company. They would
also realize that understanding how the search engine algorithms work and how
to manipulate them would be a valuable skill which many clients would pay big
bucks to have on their side. This SEO industry also consists of SEO software
which help webmasters/marketers get their sites into the top positions in
the search engines.


Most SEO experts break up your search engine optimization into TWO TYPES:


On-Page and Off-Page Optimization


On-Page Optimization means getting right all the factors which influence your
rankings in the search engines. Keep in mind, the whole web is “keyword based
and keyword driven” which means you must optimize your domain and site for your
chosen keywords. Your main keyword should be in your Domain Name, in the title
of the page, in the main heading for that page, in the URL and it should appear
(with variations) throughout the page. Try to keep the keyword density to around
2%-5%, although like many things to do with SEO… there are varying opinions on the
exact percentage. But what most experts agree on: the layout or structure of your
web site or pages must be easily reached not only by your visitors but also by
the search engine spiders which crawl your site. Keep it simple, have no links
more than three clicks away from your homepage and many webmasters include a
link back to your homepage on EVERY page of your site.

Off-Page Optimization means building backlinks flowing back to your web site or
web pages. Regardless of what anyone will tell you, getting quality keyworded
links from other high-quality keyword related sites is the most important factor
in achieving top rankings in the search engines. So link building should be a
major part of your SEO efforts and something which will bring the fastest results.
These links must appear natural and organic so varying the anchor text (underlined part)
in your links is important. Also, the web is quickly changing, links from social
media sites such as FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter are becoming more helpful to getting
top rankings. So too, are links from blogs especially those from Blogger and WordPress
because these are optimized for keywords. Don’t forget other media forms such
as videos since links from sites such as YouTube can also boost your rankings.

Tip: SEO experts sometimes like to complicate matters, one easy and simple way
to get hundreds, if not thousands, of links from the different social media sites
is to add the Free Addthis.com bookmark to all your pages/content. Let your visitors
bookmark your content for you. Simple, yet effective SEO technique that doesn’t
cost you anything. Other webmasters simply place bookmark logos for Twitter, FaceBook,
Google Buzz… on their sites. If a page goes viral in one of those networks, you
can get hundreds/thousands of backlinks flowing traffic and SEO link juice back to
your site.

Along those same lines, the key to SEO has been and always will be quality content.
Never forget the web is a very smart place, remember it holds all our collective knowledge,
users will find your quality content and promote it. Produce quality articles and
webmasters will place them on their sites with backlinks to your site. Produce
quality blog posts and bloggers will link back to your posts. Produce quality
videos and viewers will recommend them to their friends.

Now that’s not to say you shouldn’t do any SEO promotion or work. One of the best
ways to succeed is to constantly promote your site or links: do press releases,
write articles, make videos, create quality blog posts… get involved in online
forums related to your topic and leave your sig links at the end of your comments,
do the same for all your email messages by including your signature tag.

Many webmasters make the mistake that just because they have created a well-optimized site – it will automatically rank high in the search engines and you
will get plenty of quality traffic. Now if you’re extremely, extremely, extremely
lucky and by word of mouth your site catches on and becomes popular you will get
that traffic. However, in my experience, you can build an excellent site and have
it indexed in all the search engines but unless you do some SEO promotions it
will go nowhere.

With one of my nine or ten sites, I have done very little in regards to SEO and it has
done exactly that; it gets very little traffic and is nowhere to be seen in the
rankings. This is a site that I have not worked mainly because of lack of time
and it’s not closely related in theme to my other sites. Now if I wanted to promote
this site and build up my rankings… I would do all of the above… write articles,
do press releases, do viral videos, join related forums and get involved, do blog posts,
and so on. Now, from past experiences, I know if I work/promote this site for two or
three months consistently, the rankings would go up and the SEO would improve. Give
it six months to a year and this site would be highly ranked in the search engines
and bringing in a lot of quality traffic.

SEO is not some mysterious process that only a few skilled individuals know how to do,
rather it is a simple process of consistently promoting your site and content by
building quality backlinks from related sites on the web. It is the simple process
of connecting your content with the steady flow of traffic on the web by becoming
involved in forums, blogs, social networks and like-minded communities. SEO is simply
placing your site/content into the whole mix of things so that the search engines
can’t ignore your site. By consistently using SEO you will make your site an authority
on your chosen subject and you won’t look back.

…..

Helping You Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
Titus

http://www.bizwaremagic.com

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