Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most effective ways to market online, but most people either don’t know how to do it (properly) or they just flat out do it wrong. Which, in retrospect, is essentially the same thing.
Why is Search Engine Optimization Important?
For starters, you have to first understand why search engine optimization is important. Whether you’re a blogger, or you have an online e-commerce store, or a traditional brick and mortar store, there are 2 main components that are required in order to build a successful online business:
- Having a website of your own that will be able to generate money
- Getting traffic to that website.
Obviously it’s a lot more complex than just that, but for simplicity sake that’s really what it boils down to. Let’s break it down a little further to give you a better example of what I mean. If you’re a blogger, the website of your own is made up of content and articles that you have written and you have most likely placed advertising or other income generating revenue on your site. If you have an e-commerce store (a strictly online only store), obviously you make money with your website when people come to your site and purchase an item. If you have an offline store (traditional brick and mortar) you probably (and really should) have a website that you can either refer people to, or gain more customers who have just found you online by searching for either your brand or a product that you offer. No matter what business model you’re going after, you have to have traffic (visitors) to your website in order to make any money.
The most amazing website that does not get seen will not make money. Period.
The more traffic a website has, the more money it makes. Period.
In order for any of the above examples to happen, the key ingredient to all of them is one thing : search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is important because it allows your website to be found by people searching for what your website has to offer. And then traffic is generated for your website.
There are two different types of search engine optimization. There is onsite optimization and offsite optimization. In order to have a successful and effective SEO campaign you must do both.
Onsite Search Engine Optimization Tips
Getting ranked with the search engines means your website (or a page of your website) will show up in the search results when someone searches for particular keywords. Your website must be optimized for the search engines in order for them to know exactly what your site is about and what keywords (more about keywords in a later post) to rank you for.
I’ll use this particular post to give you an example of this. The keyword phrase I am trying to rank for is “search engine optimization tips”. I want people who type those exact keywords into the search bar to find my site, because that’s what my post is about. So if you are one of those people who typed those keywords in and you found my site using a search engine, then my goal has been accomplished. I targeted the exact phrase “search engine optimization tips” and the search engines took notice. Note : search engines will also rank you for keywords that you haven’t optimized for (or that you don’t realize you are optimized for). So if you happened to have found this page through a different keyword, then yay!
Below are some very general but very effective tips you should be using when doing onsite optimization for your website.
- Make sure that the title of your post or page has the main keyword(s) that you want to be ranked for. BUT…make sure that your title is enticing and written for humans. Not only does nobody wants to read an article that has a boring title, but the search engines will see right through that and end up ranking another site that has been optimized for a real person, not just for ranking purposes. I added “for the average Joe” to my title, because my article is written for beginners who don’t have much experience in the SEO world. It’s enticing to readers, my keyword is there, and it actually reads like a real title.
- Make sure that the article or post has the actual keywords you want to be ranked for in it, somewhere in the beginning of the article and near the end. But again…write only for real people. The keywords should appear naturally in your article, and the article should flow when read. If you can’t put it in naturally, don’t.
- You may have heard the phrase keyword stuffing. This is old school, and is NOT the way to do proper SEO. I’m here to tell you, if you stuff your keywords in your article, your site will not get ranked. (Keyword stuffing is what marketers used to do in the beginning of the internet – it means just what it sounds like – it meant that they would “stuff” their page with an over abundant amount of their intended keywords, and then the search engines would rank them. It doesn’t work like that anymore. If you do it, your site will actually suffer penalties from the search engines, rather than any kind of benefit.
- Don’t put too much thought into keyword density. Keyword density is also old school, and it was once thought that there was a percentage of how many times a keyword was mentioned had something to do with getting ranked. Back then, it did. In this day in age, the search engines are smarter and geared more toward unique, engaging and great content. The moral is – write for real people and you will be rewarded. (Are you seeing a trend yet?)
- Put your keywords in H1 and H2 tags. If you use WordPress, you can install a plug in for this, and/or you should enter your keywords into the “tags” section on the right when you’re writing a new post.
- If you use WordPress, install All in One SEO pack. It’s a great plug in, and I personally use it on all of my sites. You can choose the title, description and keywords for each individual post.
- If you have images in your post, make sure you use the alt tag to put your keywords in. This really helps when it’s a keyword that is clearly not “reader friendly”. Example: your targeted keyword is “make money how to now” (if you’ve done keyword research and you find that this keyword phrase actually gets searched a lot, then you’ll naturally want to get ranked for it.) But it obviously doesn’t make sense to use in article, or as a title…so using the alt tags can help with this. FYI – that was just an example. That phrase doesn’t get searched at the time of this post. If you use WordPress, adding the alt tag is easy. You just click on the image and add the tag right there.
- Rather than linking the image to the location of the image, link the image to the actual post or page it’s on.
- If you have links in the post, use the title tag. WordPress automatically gives you the option when you add the link, there is also the option to add the title tag. Put your keyword there.
- Add social media icons to your post so that your readers can share your posts. This is a new SEO technique that is becoming more and more important. With social networking becoming bigger and bigger, the search engines are looking more and more for content that is being shared. It tells them your content is important and popular, and people want to read it. So make it easy for your readers to share your content.
- Make sure you have enough content on your page. Search engines don’t like thin or flimsy content. Ever hear the phrase “content is King?” Make your articles or posts unique and informative, and give them some backbone! Give your readers what they want…good information on whatever topic they’ve searched for.
- Don’t use “scraped” or copied articles. Search engines want unique and original articles. Gone are the days when you could use an article that had already been published multiple times and just throw some backlinks at it and “out link” the original article. Unique and original content will always win the race in this day in age of SEO.
- Do some internal linking within your site to other pages or posts of your site. Link to other relevant posts internally so that your readers can easily find other articles that relate to the one they just read. It’s good SEO practice too.
- Continually add new content to your website. Search engines love new and fresh content, so if you are updating your site frequently, they’ll thank you for it. A good rule of thumb is if the site is new, try to post something new at least once a day. Once it’s more of an established site, you can slow it down. At least add one new article a week.
One of the most important tips for onsite optimization is something I’ve covered many times so far, but must not be ignored : No matter what, write for people. If you write for people and do SEO as the secondary priority, your efforts will pay off. If you can’t figure out how to make a keyword work, then don’t worry too much about it. Write quality articles, make sure the title makes sense, and that your article is about your keyword in general, your article will find it’s way. There is such a thing as over optimization. Don’t fall victim to it.
Offsite Search Engine Optimization Tips
Now you’ve optimized your website for SEO, the next step is to optimize outside of your website. This in and of itself is pretty straight forward. To optimize offsite, you need to get backlinks to your site. The theory behind backlinks is that they show the search engines how much “authority” your site has. If a website is linking to your site, then you must have a pretty good site. Unfortunately though, backlinking has become tainted and tarnished, due to the overwhelming amount of link spamming that has occurred over the years. Buying links or participating in link farms or other non-legit ways of getting links back to your site is not going to cut it. In fact…you guessed it…it will get you penalized.
Building links back to your site doesn’t happen overnight. It’s an ongoing process, and eventually, it will catch up to you. Continue building good links back to your site and you’ll see the benefits, and eventually, others will link back to your site (providing you have valuable and good content). Some quick ways to get links back to your site and to get your website indexed are:
- Post your page on social media sites, like Stumbleupon, Facebook, Digg and Twitter. These will give you quick backlinks, but also give you some quick traffic. They’re not necessarily the highest or strongest since they’re so easy to get, but they definitely help with the getting started process.
- Post articles to different article directories. Make sure the articles are unique and original and contain the link back to your site. (You can read a previous post I wrote about effective article marketing here.) <—-See? Internal linking :).
- Leave comments on other peoples blogs. DO NOT LEAVE GENERIC COMMENTS, AND DO NOT USE A COMMENT SOFTWARE. Read the article, and post a genuine comment that tells the author you actually READ their article. I can tell when it’s a robot leaving a comment, and I do not approve those comments.
- Guest post on other blogs.
There literally thousands of different ways you can get backlinks to your site. It’s just a matter of doing it. Here you can read a previous post I wrote about backlinking and SEO, which may also give you a better understanding of backlinks. For now, hopefully these search engine optimization tips (<—— see what I did there? Used my keyword phrase at the end of my article…) have given you an idea on where to start and what to do to effectively start your SEO campaign.
If you’re just starting out and this whole making money online thing still seems kinda fuzzy to you, check out my mini course: Lesson #1 – How do People Really Make an Income Online?
Did you find this post useful or informative? Can I add to it or change it in anyway to make it better? Or how ’bout better yet…do you have any SEO tips to add? Let me know – leave a comment! Also, if you liked this post, please share it with the buttons so others can enjoy it as well!
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