These 10 SEO Tactics Bring Me Over 2000 Visitors Daily
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008
No matter how hard some people try to mystify SEO, it is
not as complicated as many would lead you to believe.
Despite all the techno jargon that many in the field will
throw at you: SERPs, SEM, PageRank, Keyword Density,
Vertical Search, Algorithms... SEO is really simple to do
if you understand some basic concepts and follow some easy
steps.
Search Engine Optimization is getting your content listed
in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your
targeted keywords. When someone does a keyword search in a
search engine for your particular subject or niche - you
want your site or content to be at the top of the list.
Here are 10 SEO tactics that have worked and are working
for me at this moment in time.
1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one
factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must
understand search engines are simply businesses that supply
a product like any other company. That product is
information. They must offer quality results to anyone
using their service to solve a problem, answer a question
or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted
the search solution they return, the higher the overall
quality of their product and the more popular their search
engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for
SEO success.
2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high
rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on
the web. You must know how many searches are made each day
for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and
Seobook will give you a rudimentary number of searches.
Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don't
forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site.
Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages
and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking
keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well
for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher
converting "long-tail" keywords been very beneficial for me.
3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in
the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure
all your pages are SEO friendly, make sure all your pages
can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be
more than three levels away from it - keeping a sitemap
listing of all your major pages makes the search engines
happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title,
description, keywords... optimized (Title = around
65 characters, Description = around 160 characters).
Remember, your title and description should be keyword
targeted and are the first contact/impression anyone will
have of your site - make sure you use them to draw and
entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also
make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for
maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain
Name also helps, using a pike | to separate different
elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does
having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your
pages.
4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so
concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google.
Don't ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so
give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser,
Google's influence will only grow stronger so you must
optimize your pages for Google. Use Google's Webmaster
Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content.
I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my niche keywords
and for comment link-building on the newly created pages
Google is indexing.
5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost
your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from
relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure
the 'anchor text' is related to your keywords but don't
ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking
to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion
of a link. Don't forget linking is a two-way street, make
sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant
sites in your niche.
6. Article Marketing is a well established method of
getting quality backlinks and it still works. Writing short
500 - 700 word informative helpful articles with your
backlinks in the resource box is still very effective for
getting targeted traffic and backlinks. Longer articles
have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of
distribution, including SubmitYourArticle, Isnare,
Thephantomwriters... plus other major online sites. Don't
forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your
article distribution. And always remember you're also using
these articles to pre-sell your content or products. Don't
forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages... to
increase your rankings and traffic.
7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me.
These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted
to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if
you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a
separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with
extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding
gifts - a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site
on wedding gifts. Works similar as a sub-domain, but I
prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as
yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always
using a hyphen in your urls, but underscores have worked
fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content
rich hubs but keep in mind you're creating content to first
satisfy your visitors.
8. WordPress blog software is extremely effective for SEO
purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your
site even if you have no experience with installing
server-side scripts. Besides, search engines love these
highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured
content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these
on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my
content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by
Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute
my content.
9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important
on the web. These include a whole range of social sites
like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter... media news sites like
Digg, SlashDot, Technorati... you must get your content
into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage
of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and
using them. It's time consuming, but it will keep you in the
swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put
social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your
visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can
use a WordPress plug-in. I like using the simple free
site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple
button to put on all my content.
10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to
develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it
comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is
and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly,
you just don't want SEO - you want effective SEO. In order
to achieve effective SEO you must have three things:
Relevance, Authority and Conversions.
First, your content/site must be relevant to the topic or
niche area you're pursuing - your content must fit in and
be related to all the other sites in your niche. That's why
closely themed sites do so well in the search engines. They
give only relevant content to what's been searched for or
discussed.
Second, your content/site must be perceived as an authority
site on your subject or niche. Establish this authority
position and the search engines will love you and your
content. One way to develop this authority, besides
offering superior content, is to form links/partnerships
with other perceived authority sites in your field. Always
strive to make your site an authority site - tops in your
niche - the one site everyone has to check before drawing
or forming a conclusion.
Third, conversions should be your main goal of any SEO
efforts because you want to convert your targeted traffic
into site members, subscribers, buyers or just repeat
visitors. If you're into online marketing, conversions will
be the most important element of the whole SEO process
because you want buyers, not just visitors coming to your
site.
Most of all, you must convince yourself Search Engine
Optimization is not difficult, nor is it the equivalent of
the online bogeyman as many would like you to believe. Used
effectively, SEO can give you the targeted traffic you're
seeking. Just follow some of the outlined steps/tactics
listed above and you will have SEO working for you and your
site in no time at all.
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The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous
websites. For the latest web marketing tools try:
http://www.bizwaremagic.com . If you liked the SEO tips
above, why not try this Free 7 Day Traffic Course:
http://www.marketingtoolguide.com .
2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed
if this resource box stays attached.
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