BWMagic’s Internet Marketing News
Getting Your Site’s SEO Right
Getting Your Site’s SEO Right
Titus Hoskins Copyright 2010.
While probably every webmaster or online marketer knows in order
to get top rankings in the search engines you have to have quality
one-way backlinks from other high ranked keyword-related sites.
This will more than likely be the main determining ranking factor
for most search engines, especially the all important Google.
You simply need good quality one-way links and plenty of them to rank high.
However, there are many more SEO factors which come into play, especially
if you’re in a very competitive niche and targeting highly cherished lucrative
keyword phrases that bring in the big bucks. Then in these competitive
situations, you must get all your SEO ducks lined up proper if you want to
be a player.
Some of these SEO factors may be minor but in very tight keyword races, it
could possibly mean you get ranked above your competitor. Believe me, for
some very lucrative keywords, just moving up a few notches can make a
significant difference in your traffic and sales. The number one spot is
what you’re aiming for, but even landing or moving up to the top five
can make a big difference.
But you probably already know the significance of getting top rankings for
your site and marketing, it can simply make or break your online endeavors.
So here are some SEO on-page or on-site factors which you should have in
place if you truly want to compete in the ranking wars.
Search Engine Optimization
1. Place your main keyword phrase in your Domain Name and over time you will
see higher rankings for that phrase and keywords related to it. With Google
going to Instant Search, I believe you will see these keyworded domains playing
a much greater role in what is listed first. You still have to get those quality
back-links but having a good keyworded domain will be half your battle.
2. Place your keyword phrase in the URL for your webpage. Place it in the title,
description and in the HI tags on your page. Also place this keyword phrase and
variations of it throughout your page, including at the very bottom. As for
keyword density, try to keep it under 6%, this is the limit that Ezinearticles
puts on their contributed content, go above this percentage and they won’t take
it. I usually aim for around 2% to 4% but don’t get too hung up on this issue,
just write helpful easy to read content for your visitors.
3. Place related keyworded interior links on your page. That is, keep all your
content and links keyword-related to one another. This makes it easy for the
search engines to index your pages and content. I like building keyword-related
traffic hubs or sections on my sites, for example I could have a whole sub-directory
just on all the “affiliate marketing” info pages on my site. These would be all
linked together and back to the homepage.
4. Make sure you have an XML Sitemap which the search engines can use to quickly
index your new pages. I also like adding an HTML sitemap which goes into more
detail and lists all the pages and their content. This is not only for the search
engines but to help your visitors more easily navigate your site; never leave
a visitor stranded.
5. Make sure all your pages load quickly. Reduce down any large images which
you have and break content/articles up into different pages to reduce load times.
6. Make sure your site handles 404 mistakes and your visitors are directed to
your sitemap or another page on your site. If you don’t know how to correct
this problem just do a Google search for “how to set up a custom 404 file
not found page”.
7. Don’t have duplicate content on your site. Do a proper 301 redirect for
the www and non-www versions of your site, as this may fool some of the search engines into believing you have two versions of your site, one with www and one
without the www in the URL. For Apache servers, I simply place this bit of code
in the .htaccess file on my server.
Code example from non www to www:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule .? http://www.example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
8. Link out to other high-quality keyword related sites. I don’t believe
webmasters use this very much, but linking out to high-quality sites have
helped my rankings. Search engines, especially Google, want to see you’re
connected to quality content and besides, pleasing your visitor is what
it’s really all about.
9. Keep all your interior site navigation as simple as possible. Make it
extremely easy for your visitors to find their way around your site. I usually
don’t have any pages more than three clicks away from my homepage. All main
categories or sub-categories of my site are not only listed on my home/index
page but also on every page of my site. Again, never leave your visitors or
the search engines stranded.
10. Don’t know if this is a ranking factor or not, but I like placing my YouTube
videos on my content pages, sure you will lose some visitors to YouTube but it
also connects your content with this very popular site which is owned by Google.
We all know Google says it doesn’t promote its own interests, but what publicly
traded company doesn’t? In that same light, I like using many Google products
such as Google Analytics, Google URL Shorter, Google Profiles… and the list
goes on. Completely inter-connecting all your pages and content with the countless
Google programs will insure your content won’t be missed.
There are probably many more on-page factors but these are the major ones which
I can think of at the moment. If you want to check the SEO quality of your site
or page, here is a handy site which will check some common SEO factors:
www.pearanalytics.com
and for checking out your keyword density try this one:
www.webuildpages.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/
Helping You Succeed Online Since 2002!
Kind Regards,
Titus
http://www.bizwaremagic.com
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