Top 10 SEO tips ( Webmasters must read)

Tip 1: Tag Optimization:

Meta-tag optimization plays an important role on SEO. If you run an ecommerce website, use different Meta -tag, tile and Meta description for different products. Use an understandable name for your products. Describe your products as detail as you can.

Tip 2: Content Optimization:

Make your website’s content as unique as you can. Try your level best avoid the duplicate or copied content. If you run a blog, it is very important for you. Also do not use your targeted keywords too much in your website, it is an old fashion and now it’s completely useless.

Tip 3: Backlinks

Do not build a lot backlinks at a time. SEO needs patience. No more than 30 links from one IP in 24 hours. I am talking about the backlinks. Try to focus on quality, not quantity. Focus on authority websites.

Tip 4: Link quality:

Don’t leave your links only while creating backlinks. Use a decent text to read about your keywords. Try to write 100 to 150 word small paragraph while creating backlinks.

Tip 5: Blog Commenting:

Comment on blogs with relevant texts. While commenting, try to make people read your comment. So summarize your thinking and try to write using points. Do not make an extra-large posting!

Tip 6: Forum Posting:

While posting on forum do NOT spam. Post meaningful threads. Remember, forum is the place for cooperation, not for marketing. If you behave well and cooperate well, your cooperation will increase your market automatically.

Tip 7: Link type:

Use text links instead of direct links. That is making your keyword hyperlinked by your targeted URL. This will increase your link value.

Tip 8: Social networking:

Let’s talk about facebook and twitter. Some guys have 10K+ even 50K+ followers in twitter or a huge number of facebook friends. Having such a number of friends makes it impossible to continue communication. In this case, try updating your status in a periodic manner so that while doing marketing, you will get better response.

Tip 9: Email marketing:

If you want to promote your site using email, use a reliable program for sending bulk emails. Make sure your email passed on spam filter check. Also do not forget to check the email in different email clients before sending. Do not use much images in your email as some of your targeted customers may find this email slow to load. Send your email in both HTML and text form. Many email clients are set to view only text emails.

Tip 10: Local links:

For targeted traffic generation do some local link building also. For example, if your business needs South African clients, it is beneficial to have some links form (dot)co (dot)za domain as well.

7 Steps to Better SEO On Your Drupal Site

Kill Your Splash Page

OK, maybe you can think of some great reason to have a splash page, but it's almost certainly going to hurt your SEO. Search engine crawlers show up at your site to try to find out what it's all about and the typical Flash or multimedia home page doesn't give them a lot to work with.
Splash pages have been steadily losing popularity but they're still out there, particularly on sites for musicians and other artists. Cool or not, Google expects your home page to have important information about your site and a huge Flash file isn't going to cut it when it comes to SEO. The really terrible thing is some splash pages not only can't be read by search engine crawlers, but they also prevent the rest of the site from being indexed.

Understand Keywords for Improved SEO

Keywords are the words or phrases that your users submit as a search query to one of the search engines, and they are one of the most important parts of optimizing for search engines. There are a number of important guidelines to follow with keywords that include a few Dos and a couple of Don'ts.

• DO place keywords in the title. Obviously, search engines pay close attention to the words and phrases placed in your <title> tag. Using thePage Title module can be a big help in setting separate titles for the page and your content. 
• DO place your keywords in h1, h2 and h3 tags.
• DO place important keywords at the top of your content. The keywords that are near the top of your content carry more weight than those lower on the page.
• DO place keywords in your final paragraph. Google understands that important words and phrases are frequently included in a closing paragraph.
• DON'T engage in keyword stuffing. I can't emphasize this enough! It will hurt your ranking if Google thinks you’re cramming extra keywords into your content so you can boost your results. A general rule of thumb is to keep your keyword density to less than 5%.
• DON'T use the wrong keywords. If you're not sure which keywords work best for a particular piece of content there are services that can be of help. Wordtracker is one such service, but there are many others. Also avoid overly general keywords. It can be tough to compete on a keyword as common as say, 'Drupal'.

One final note about using keywords. It's important to write naturally. If your writing sounds stilted or robotic because you’re trying to put too many keywords into the content, you’re on the wrong path. Creating content that works for both people and search engines takes time, but the effort pays off.

Create SEO Friendly URLs

By default Drupal generates URLs that look something like:http://www.example.com/?q=node/77. As far as SEO is concerned, this is a problem. Fortunately, help is at your disposal with clean URLs and the wonderful PathAuto module. Clean URLs is actually a setting in Drupal which can be enabled if your web server has the Apache mod_rewrite module installed.
PathAutho is possibly one of the most powerful Drupal SEO modules and will allow you to leverage the power of the Token module to get your URLs in shape. I would recommend using it to make sure descriptive, keyword-filled URLs are a part of every node you publish.

Nurture Inbound Links

A big factor in search rankings is having inbound links to your website. But this is definitely a case where quality trumps quantity. I've seen people spend a lot of time trading links with low quality sites that seem to specialize in little else. Google is quite good at identifying a link from a reputable site vs. one from a link farm, and if you're spending your time on the latter, it's time wasted.

Create Quality Content

Earlier this year Google released an update to its search algorithm calledPanda. Overnight, many web managers saw their sites disappear from search listings.
Matt Cutts, one of the engineers who worked on the update explained, "This update is designed to reduce rankings for low quality sites - sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high quality sites - sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on."
Creating quality content also helps with the previous point about inbound links. Think about it, if people like your content they'll link to it or share it via social media, and few things get Google's attention more quickly than lots of incoming links from reputable sites.
One last thing to keep in mind when creating content is its length. You don't need to write a novel, but it should be a minimum of 300 words.

Optimize Images

It's become standard to include an ALT attribute on images for accessibility reasons, but it can also help your Drupal SEO. Placing keywords in the ALT and TITLE attributes of images help optimize their search potential. A less well known tip regarding images is to give them keyword-filled file names. Imagine you're selling a great Drupal theme on your site with a high-res screenshot of your handiwork. Instead of 'screenshot.jpg', try naming it with the same type of keyword-filled name you assign to your URLs. A good file name can be as important as the ALT attribute.

Optimize Internal Links

Not everyone realizes that having links to other pages on their site can help search engines notice them. For example, let's say you have a series of posts on module building. To point search engines in the right direction, make sure you create links between the posts in the series. An important aspect of all links is the anchor text. Instead of “click here”, use a more descriptive term to increase the relevance of the link.

Wrapping It Up

SEO is something all site administrators should be familiar with, and although SEO can get quite sophisticated, the basics are within the reach of everyone and can help your site's search rankings significantly. I've written another post that specifically discusses a few of the best Drupal SEO modules that can help you implement these best practices and more.

10 SIMPLE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) IDEAS TO IMPROVE YOUR RANKING

One of the simplest ways to improve your site's worth and ranking is to ensure your site is search engine optimized (SEO). SEO is the process of improving your site so that your content is attractive to major search engines (such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN) and also targeted for the types of keywords you want your site to come up for. Taking the time to improve your site's SEO can increase your inlinks and pagelinks and also help you get more visitors who are searching for the content your site has to offer. Here are some very basic SEO techniques you can apply immediately to improve your site:

1. Clean up your page titles. 

Throughout your site, the titles of your pages should say a lot about the content that page contains. Make sure your titles are clear, contain keywords for your page, and also emphasize the content of that page. Also, remember that search engines use the title you enter as the link when your site comes up in search results. Make sure your title is catchy enough and targeted enough to encourage people to click.

2. Use heading tags the way they were meant to be used. 

In the HTML markup of your pages, you have the option to set several levels of heading such as H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, etc. These tags have a sort of hierarchy to them. H1 is more important than H2 which is more important than H3 etc etc. Use this principal in setting up your page layout. Use H1 for your most important text, such as the heading for your page. Use H2 for the next most popular, and so on. Don't overdo it either, use the heading tags sparingly on only your heading worth content (most likely containing the keywords for your page as well).

3. Take advantage of alt and title tags in your URLs and images. 

When creating an image or link within your HTML, you have the option of including a TITLE attribute in URLs and an ALT attribute to1 images. Use these fields to add additional text about the link/image. This text is picked up by search engine spiders and can add to the keyword content of your pages.

4. Make sure your navigation is available at the top and bottom of all your pages.

If you want search engines and your readers to find their way through your site, you have to make it easy for them. In addition to putting standard navigation at the top of the page, consider also placing it at the bottom in your footer. The more ways Google can find their way through your site, the better chance you have of getting all your pages showing up in their index.

5. Use mod_rewrite to clean up your nasty web addresses. 

Using a tool known as mod_rewrite, you can make a substantial improvement to the URLs of the pages within your site. Instead of a URL that looks like: http://www.mysite.com/goto.php?page=12345 you can change it to http://www.mysite.com/page/how-to-do-somthing.html. This is much easier for search engines to follow and also can contain keywords that can guide them to a better analysis of the content your site contains. You can get details on how mod_rewrite works by checking out this beginners tutorial.

6. Use keywords in the addresses of your pages. 

Closely complimenting point 5 above, adding keywords to the addresses of your pages can make a big difference. When setting up your site structure, keep that in mind. For example, if you have a site about apples, rather than having a URL like: http://www.mysite.com/page/page1.html change it to something like http://www.mysite.com/granny-smith/granny-smith-orchards-in-california.html where the content of the page is somewhat represented by the address of the page.

7. Make sure you take advantage of meta tags like keywords and descriptions. 

Many sites often overlook meta tags. There are a large number of these tags you can add to your html pages to help give search engines a better idea of what's in your site. Two tags in particular, the description and keywords tags, allow you to write a description of each page and also list relevant keywords contained within your site. Use these on every page of your entire site.

8. Create and maintain a sitemap. 

If you want Google or Yahoo to index your entire site, one of the best ways to do that is to tell them what pages are in your site. Sitemaps are a really simple listing of every single page within your site. For more information, check out the sitemap entry in Wikipedia. If you create and maintain a sitemap for your site, the search engines will easily find all your content.

9. Block duplicate content with robots.txt. 

Duplicate content on a site can be really bad when it comes to ranking well within search engines. If the structure of your site results in a lot of duplicated content (for example, having summaries on one page of a blog and full articles on another) you can actually be penalized by Google for it. Using the robots.txt file, you can tell Google and other search spiders what content you want read, and what content you want ignored. For more information on robots.txt, check out this beginners tutorial.

10. Make sure your pages contain the keywords you want to rank highly with. 

While it may seem obvious, you'd be surprised how many people overlook this point. If you have a page about granny smith apples, and you want it to rank highly for the phrase granny smith apples, you have to actually use those words often within the content of your site/page. Don't overdo it, but make sure it's obvious to a computer algorithm reading your site (such as Google's content spider) that the main context of a particular page is granny smith apples.

These are just a few simple ideas on how to optimize your website for search engines. For literally hundreds of other ideas such as these and many others, that you can IMMEDIATELY put to use on your website and start seeing results, learn from those who know it best by picking up the SEOBook at SEOBook.com.  SEO can help you make the most of your existing website and over time drastically improve on the estimated value of your sites worth.

Article Writing: Tips on SEO, Article Marketing, & More

Article writing can be a huge part of your content marketing strategy. Done right, article marketing has a lot of benefits. Article writing can:

• build your expertise and reputation in your industry
• flood your website or blog with traffic
• increase brand awareness and recognition

Article writing can also be an important component in your off-page SEO strategy by pointing quality, one-way links to your site. Because articles focus on the reader, not the link itself, these links are much more valuable, especially when you publish your articles on directories with high PageRank.
To help you make the most of this type of content marketing, we’ve compiled a list of the best article writing tips to get you started.

Article Writing Tip #1: High-Quality Article Directories

Where you publish your articles is just as important as packing them with valuable information. There are hundreds of article directories on the web, some paid and some free, but you want to stick with sites that have a good reputation with search engines, high PageRank, dofollow links, and good traffic.
Some of the top article directories include:

• EzineArticles.com
• GoArticles.com
• IdeaMarketers.com
• ArticleRich.com
• Triond.com

Another option is to publish your articles on web 2.0 platforms. These directories offer rich features to make creating and reading more enjoyable, just as photos, videos, polls, maps, and quizzes. Many of these sites are also profit-sharing platforms, meaning you can insert your own AdSense code or get commissions from text ads.
Some of the top web 2.0 article platforms include:

• Squidoo.com
• HubPages.com
• InfoBarrel.com
• Tumblr.com

While these resources are at the top of the list, there are plenty of others you can use. This article lists high-PageRank article directories, and this article lists web 2.0 sites by PageRank.

Article Writing Tip #2: Writing Guidelines

Writing articles to build your business can be tricky. You want to write them quickly so you can do other profit-generating tasks, but you also want to convince readers that you are a reputable, trustworthy resource.
Use these article writing tips to help you create expertise-building, engagement-promoting articles.

• Keep articles between 400 and 600 words. This length is short enough to be quick and easy to read (and write) but long enough to show readers that you know what you’re writing about. Here are some additional tips on writing articles faster.

• Write about a very specific topic. The more specific the article topic is, the easier it is to write. Narrowing down the topic also helps build expertise in a short article.

• Use data and multimedia. Where possible, support your topic with evidence: tables, charts, and percentages build trust and show expertise. Incorporating photos, videos, infographics and other types of media makes your article more engaging and seem more useful.

• Read and follow the publishing guidelines. These guidelines stipulate the length of an article, disallowed topics, how many links you can include, and more. Not following the rules will get your content unpublished and may get your profile banned.

• Cite your sources. Telling people where you got your information builds trust. It’s also an easy way to link back to an article, blog post, or product on your site.

Article Writing Tip #3: SEO Your Articles

Your articles can do a lot more work than provide backlinks when you make sure they are optimized for search engines. The good news is, making your articles SEO-friendly is easy. Use this simple checklist to optimize your articles.

1      Use the keyword phrase in the title.
2      Use the keyword phrase and synonyms occasionally throughout the article.
3      Use the keyword phrase in the summary, meta tags, and image alt tag.
4      Write naturally and offer as much valuable information as possible.
With these article writing tips, you can create value-packed content that will spread your message and build your expertise in no time.

Top 5 Tips For Improving SEO With Pinterest

Use smart keywords – use accurate descriptions of your Pins which also include keywords relevant to your brand, and you know are successful at driving traffic to you elsewhere (e.g. check your analytics)

Make it easy to share – Make sure you have a ’Pin it’ button to your website and consider embedding the images from your Pinterest account directly into your site – to make it as easy as possible to share

Repin and promote others – Pinterest states in its guidelines that self-promotion is a no-no.  So make sure you are actively promoting others, and consider ways to create campaigns that get audiences to add Pins relevant to your brand – instead of doing it all yourself

Get Connected – make sure you select the settings options to connect your Pinterest account with your other social media accounts I.e. Facebook and Twitter  - this will help make it seamless for users and for you

Create great visual content – make sure your visual content is memorable, instead of bland product pack shots think about how you can dress the scene to be bolder, more creative.  Infographics have finally found a natural home on Pinterest too – so look at how you can make the most out of your data and insights visually

The top SEO tips for social media profiles

SEO (search engine optimisation) and social media have been moving closer together over the past couple of years. Now it seems they’re more integrated than ever, particularly as Google increasingly experiments with bringing in social elements into search results.
You can’t really afford to know one without the other, as you risk doing half a job or missing out on potential traffic. To help with this, we’ve compiled some of the top SEO tips across social media profiles, so you can make sure you have your house in order. Bear in mind that all of the below are recommended as general good practices to stick to – not promises of top positions for your keywords. I would always recommend that you run your social media profiles with your community in mind first and foremost, then consider best practices for SEO after.
These are tips to implement alongside the natural conversations in your community. Many of these tips apply for internal search, such as through Facebook Pages as there will be certain restrictions on the content Google will and can index.

Keywords in Facebook Page updates

It can often be a bit of a push and pull between writing content purely with the user in mind, and writing content that has one eye firmly on SEO. Good practice for SEO copywriting can still apply when you write your updates on your Facebook Page. Since everyone that searches on Facebook has the ability to show results by ‘everyone’, individual posts you write on your Facebook Page could be crucial for getting found by people searching for something current. I wouldn’t advise you let this guide your content strategy overall. Don’t try and write about the royal wedding if it bears no relevance to your brand or community, but when you’re writing updates, think about the keywords that other people might be looking for that could lead them to your Page.

Writing anchor text on your Facebook Page

The same rules of good linking still apply on your Facebook Page, such as linking often and to relevant Pages. In certain places, Facebook also gives you the option to use anchor text in your links, which is a good practice to adhere to. You can do this in the ‘notes’ section of your Page for example. Here you simply write out the code for anchor text as you would normally, replacing the content with your own website and desired anchor text:

<a href="”http://www.thenextweb.com”">Offering creative social media campaigns</a>

When you publish this it will appear as anchor text on your wall. Remember to use relevant keywords in the anchor text, that relate to the page you’re pointing to.

Link often on your Facebook Page

Sending links out from your Facebook Page in general is important in helping to improve your SEO rankings within Facebook search. You should take advantage of the places that Facebook gives you to do this, including the wall and Info text. One of the most important places to link from your Page is in the ‘About’ box on the side of your Page. While you can’t put anchor text here, you can include a standard link, such as in the screenshot below:

Keywords in Facebook photo captions

Even though certain activity within a Facebook page is ‘no follow’ by Google, you should still retain good keyword and linking strategies in all places. This is often overlooked in the ‘photos’ section of your Page, where it can be tempting to stick it up quickly and share it on your wall. The description is on your photo permanently however, so remember to include relevant keywords in the photo description text. Again bear in mind meeting the needs of the user and the search engine. You’re talking to your fans first and foremost so include the keywords naturally in the text, but paying careful attention to those keywords you might want to be found for, both in Facebook and Google search.

Keywords in your Twitter bio

In your Twitter profile, your ‘bio’ is actually the meta description of your Page, making it an incredibly important aspect of SEO on your Twitter profile. Make sure you’re including relevant keywords here that relate both to the general content of your tweets as well as the website you want to promote. This can often be overlooked in terms of keyword optimisation, but should be well-considered, albeit within 160 characters!

Use bit.ly to shorten links on Twitter

Using URL shorteners is often done on Twitter profiles mainly as a way of making links more readable and easily sharable as they reduce the amount of characters used within the tweet. They are also incredibly important in terms of SEO as well. Using url services such as bit.ly or tiny.url use permanent 301 redirects to your content, meaning that your original url benefits from the SEO juice, and not just the tiny url itself.

Keywords early in tweets

In an individual tweet, the first 27-40 characters count as the title tag within a Google search result. It’s important therefore to include your desired keywords early on in the tweet itself to make it more likely to rank in searches. This is what will be indexed by Google so it’s important to keep to this structure as much as possible, while not distracting from the actual conversation in Twitter. Keep these keywords relevant to the rest of the tweet and any URL you include for consideration of the user as well as search engines.

Followers boost your PageRank

This might not be a direct tip, but it’s an important consideration. The more high profile you are judging by the number of Twitter followers you have, the more your PageRank will improve within Google, having a positive effect on your search results. These followers are indexed as ‘inlinks’ to your profile – i.e. Google recognises one Twitter account as linking to yours as a relevant link. Try and attract these followers by tweeting popular, relevant content, which sits very much in line with your natural Twitter strategy.

Use Twitter directories

There are some very easy ways that you can build links to your Twitter profile, while also getting in front of new followers that may be interested in your content: Twitter directories. Through different sites you can link to your Twitter profile, often with the option to add in additional keywords, that should strongly relate to the page you’re linking to. Check out this article from CNET, for a great list of Twitter directories you can add your profile to.

Tweet Often

As much as this is a consideration for your natural Twitter activity, it’s also important for Google search results, now that they integrate tweets into their main search results. If you’re tweeting often about current topics then you can help improve your chances of appearing in Google results. These Twitter links are also contained prominently above the fold in Google search engine result pages, so is a great way to attract new followers, provided the content is in some way related to your core product or service.

Name your Twitter profile picture

A nice little SEO tip to follow here. When uploading your Twitter profile picture, make sure to name it with a relavant keyword that relates to your Twitter profile. The image file name is contained within the link when you click to expand, so avoid just using the file number, as shown in the example above. You can see this yourself by hovering over your profile image in Twitter. Also be sure to use hyphens in between words in the file name, not spaces.

Double keywords in a Youtube video

Obviously, using relevant keywords throughout the title, description and keyword section of your video on Youtube is important. But a good tip to follow is including a keyword twice within a title, such as ‘Facebook Tips: SEO Facebook tips for your business page’. This is good in terms of SEO to get an incredibly important keyword listed twice, but is also good from a usability point of view, as you provide an easy to read format, telling people what your content is about. This is the perfect balance between writing for people and SEO.

Repeat keywords in the video title

Often when it comes to adding in keywords to your Youtube video, you try to add as many relevant keywords that you can think of. While this is good practice, help Youtube out a bit when it comes to displaying your video by repeating words contained in your video title throughout the description and keyword section, as it will help your video to be shown both within Youtube and Google search as this pulls in Youtube video results as standard.

Leave a video reply

Google and Youtube like video pages that have a lot of links built into them, as it shows the relevance of the video content. A great way to do this, which also provides a new organic community around your video content, is by leaving a video reply to related videos within Youtube. You can do this while you’re logged into the correct profile for your Youtube video channel. When you’ve found the video you want to reply to, click on ‘Leave a video reply’ on the right hand side. This will bring up your videos, which you can select and leave as a video response on the page. Use this according to best practice and avoid being too spammy a this could have an adverse effect on your actual content!

Write a full script for your videos

A great way of adding in extra text around your video is to consider writing a full script in the description. Here you can put in additional keywords that are featured in the video and it also allows people to find out more about the content of the video. Next to the title, the description is the second most important thing about your video so make sure it’s well optimised.

Get active on Quora

Google recently announced that they were adding activity on Quora such as asking questions or adding answers into their indexed realtime search results. Quora is a great place to network and build your community anyway, but now that this has such as direct effect on Google search, it should be considered by most marketers and businesses. As these feature in the ‘realtime’ section of a Google SERP (Search Result Position Tool), best practice both for search and your community is to make sure you’re answering and asking questions often.

Top Secret SEO Copywriting Tips?

How To Write a Love Letter to Google (& Other Search Engines)
There aren’t many secrets to SEO Copywriting – but here’s a hint: it is more than knowing how to put two sentences together. A basic understanding of how the search engines determine relevance of a website’s content is a must, that’s no hidden secret. But you must be able to write well. The delicate balance between constructing prose that attracts the attention of the search engines but reads naturally to people, depends on the skill of the writer.
If that’s the secret, and you aren’t a natural writer, don’t despair. Writing is an art, and some people are naturally talented, true. But you can learn to write and the more you do it the better you will get. There are plenty of books to teach you to write. My favorite is Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg.
My not-so-secret, but very important top ten copywriting tips.

1. Don’t confuse SEO copywriting with calls to action and other direct marketing copy techniques. A good copywriter for websites will understand both - but they are two different skills.

2. Focus on Keywords. It starts with keyword research. If there’s an SEO on the project, you’ll be given the keywords for the page. If you’re on your own, do the keyword research first to determine what terms are searched.

3. Look for “long-tailed” keyword phrases. Searchers who type in four to five word query strings know what they are looking for and have qualified themselves in advance. These terms are excellent for conversion.

4. Structure and Heading Tags – Make an outline before you start – I know it feels like high school theme writing all over again. But it works – if your outline is good, your copy will almost write itself, the ideas will flow well for the reader and you’ll know exactly where your h1, h2 and h3 tags belong.

5. Write naturally, write well. Keep your keywords and related terms at the back of your mind in your first draft for the main content. Just let the natural content write itself. When you are happy with this version, return to the copy and see where you may be able to use your keywords without overstuffing the page.

6. Other hot spots for your targeted phrase:

• File names – write keyword rich, logical file names for graphics and page names.
• Anchor text – link away from the page and to the page using your targeted terms
• Numbered and bulleted lists like this one.

7. Look for ways to naturally use your keyword strings in bold, italics, and other styles that bring attention to your targeted copy.
8. Title and Meta Description Tags. Do bring your grasp of direct marketing copywriting to the table with these tags. Your title and description should contain your keyword string, a benefit to the user and a call to action.

9. Don’t ever lose sight of the human visitor. You are writing for both the search engines and the user. Usability must never take a backseat to SEO or you won’t have conversions.
10. Keyword Stuffing – Don’t do it. Hint: find someone you can trust to tell you the truth and ask them to read your copy. They can tell you whether it sounds natural or whether the keywords trip their “stuffing meter.” 

The Best SEO Backlink Strategy: Tips For Success

What SEO backlink strategy do you use for your web sites? Or do you even have a strategy? If not, it’s time that you do. You can no longer just ‘write great content’ and others will magically link to you – that is just not going to happen. Site owners with high PR and authority now know too well how important linking is – and are not likely to link you without something in return.

But others pursue their SEO backlink strategy as a full-time mission, and in the process neglect their site’s content and relevancy for the very terms they are trying rank for – another mistake. So
where do you fall? Are you ignoring the need  to get backlinks in order to improve your search engine placement, or are you so wrapped up in your SEO backlink strategy that you are neglecting your content?
Somewhere in between, of course is where you want to be. Now is the time that you get disciplined; as it is the disciplined marketer who will win the race – and that means setting up a schedule for yourself. Your time is your most precious resource – particularly when you are sitting in front of a computer; with all the data available online, it’s just too easy to get distracted and waste your valuable time.  You need an SEO backlink strategy that is the most effective use of your time and resources.

So don’t get so wrapped up in your backlinking that you neglect other vital aspects of your business. Here are some tips to help you create a manageable, but effective SEO backlink strategy:
1. Outsource – backlink building is grunt work and it’s best to pay someone to do it. You don’t need to spend valuable time creating forum profiles, bookmarking sites or posting blog comments. There are lots of services available on various Internet Marketing forums – and for the most part they are cheap and reliable. Just check feedback on the forums before you buy.

2. Use backlinks software to index your new links – when you get your list of links from your outsource provider, use a program like Backlink Index Express to ‘backlink your backlinks’. This will insure that your links appear quickly in the search engine’s indexes.

3. Choose keywords carefully – don’t waste time trying to rank for terms where the first-page search results are dominated by high PageRank authority domains and root URL’s. A search result with a root url, like this one:
www.mydomain.com/

This is a is more difficult URL to compete against than a search result with a url like this:
www.mydomain.com/deeplinkpage/sudirectory/content.html
A root url means the competing site is ranking well for that term, if there are no root url’s for your keyword – that is good for your chances to rank.

4. Evaluate the backlinks to the top 3 search results for your given search term – this will tell you a lot about the strength of the competition. If the first 3 to 5 results have over 200 links (page links, not domain links) – then it’s going to be hard to rank against those pages without lots of linking. You can rank against them, but do the easier keywords first, get some money coming in, then use the resource to attack the stronger competitors.

Backlinking IS important – but it’s not everything. Use your head when creating your SEO backlink strategy and you’ll have a manageable program that can produce great results.

3 Post-Penguin SEO Tips for Backlink Cleanup

If Google's Penguin update earlier this year proved anything, it was that search giant cares about the quality of the backlinks pointing at a website. Furthermore, it has the tools necessary to detect and penalize low-value links that have been created to manipulate page rankings.
So if you've seen a decline in your site's performance since the Penguin update, or if you'd just like to protect your site from future problems, consider these techniques to remove bad links and avoid penalties:

1. Identify low value links within your backlink profile.

The search engines prefer to look at backlinks as "editorial votes" -- that is, they believe an inbound link pointing at your website represents a vote of confidence from the referring site. In a perfect world, the site with the most links from the best websites would be ranked at the top of the search results.
But of course, we don't live in that perfect world. Today, unscrupulous webmasters have made it their goal to "hack" this valuation system, resulting in linking strategies that artificially inflate a site's backlink profile. Although the search engines haven't always been able to effectively detect and penalize this manipulation, they're getting better at it every day. And the Penguin change has shown conclusively that they're ready to penalize webmasters whose sites use such techniques.
With this in mind, the first step in protecting your site from search engine penalties is to identify any links that could be perceived as low value or intentionally manipulative. You'll need to first get a copy of all the links pointing at your website, using tools such as Majestic SEO($49.99+/month) or the Open Site Explorer ($99/month, following a free trial).
Export your links to a spreadsheet or use your chosen program's internal research tools to identify links that meet any of the following criteria:

• Is hosted on a website that uses a different language than your own
• Is hosted on an adult-oriented website
• Is hosted on a site that offers no value to readers; such sites are often built for the sole purpose of granting links to other websites
• Is hosted on sites that have been hacked or infected with malware
• Uses keyword-optimized anchor text (for example, a link that reads "cheap car insurance quote" rather than "click here")

Search engines won't necessarily penalize you for having some keyword-rich anchor text, but when anchor texts collectively aren't diverse enough, it appears unnatural and can raise red flags, particularly if they're on low-quality sites.

2. Determine which links should be removed.

Although all of the above criteria should be cause for concern, seeing a link that falls in the "low quality" category isn't necessarily a bad thing. If the link is no longer active or has been tagged with the appropriate "no-follow" tags to instruct the search engines to ignore it, you don't need to worry about removing the backlink.
To determine whether or not a link should be removed, take the following steps:
• Click each link within your spreadsheet. If it is no longer active and redirects you to a 404 page, you don't need to pursue removal.
• If you are able to reach an active web page that's hosting your link, right click on the page to open its source code. If you see the tag <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> in the <head> section of the page's code, you do not need to pursue removal. The webmaster has instructed the search engines not to scan this page for links.
• If you do not see this code in the header, navigate through the source code to find the link pointing at your website. If the tag <REL="NOFOLLOW"> has been appended to your link, you do not need to remove it.
In nearly all other cases, the link you're researching is active and is being counted by the search engines. Because these signals may indicate a manipulative or low value backlink, you'll want to move to step 3 for details on how to remove these bad links.

3. Contact website owners to request a change.

Begin by finding the contact information for the website's owner. In most cases, this information is on the "About" or "Contact" page. You also search online for a free "DNS Lookup" tool, which will allow you to enter the URL in question in order to find the webmaster's email address that's on file with the site's domain registrar.
When you contact the webmaster, request:

• The deletion of the link
• A change of anchor text to something that's not keyword-optimized
• The addition of the appropriate no-follow tags so that your links are no longer active

Unfortunately, not all webmasters will respond to your requests. But by documenting the efforts you've made to clean up your backlink profile, you'll be well positioned to respond to any future penalties using the search engines' reconsideration request procedures.
Alternatively, if you used a link building service to create high volume backlinks in the past, try contacting the service directly to see if it will delete or change your links for you.

SEO Tips for Photographers

I am not a photographer. I don’t own an expensive camera, nor do I know much about aperture or depth of field or the difference between a Canon 5D and a Canon 1DX. But I do know that the photo’s I’m seeing people I know who do know about that stuff create are simply amazing!
There are some incredible photos that pop up on my various social network feeds almost daily and I am amazed at how people are able to make a photo of something look completely different or far more beautiful than I can see it with my own eyes.
In summary, I don’t know how to take great photos, but I do know search and SEO. I also think good photography kicks ass! And I love seeing people who have such incredible talents to create these photos get the exposure they deserve.
This post is for all those photographers out there who create amazing works of art but need a little help in how to make a dint in 1,000,000,000+ posts that exist in search engines about photography.

Get a website and build a blog!

Don’t be afraid that your site will just be another drop in the ocean and that nobody will want to read what it is you have to say. If you love what you do then you should talk about it. There is always an audience that is looking for advice, reviews, experiences, case studies or simply want to hear what you have to say about photography.
If you love the subject, don’t be afraid to talk about it. Be as nerdy or as high level as you find interesting. In fact, the nerdier and more technical you are, the more long-tail terms you are likely creating for your site. Long-tail photography terms are absolute gold when it comes to organic search.

Focus on specifics

It’s often the specifics that like-minded people will be searching for. Thinking that a post about the new APS-C CMOS sensor (and yes, I had to Google that) won’t appeal to anyone is silly. There are people on the Internet searching for information on that right this very second! Why shouldn’t your post be the article they get served up by Google?

Don’t be afraid to use big images

Thumbnails and tiny images provide no real benefit to your audience and completely under-sell your skills and the photo.
Using larger images increases the likelihood that people will appreciate and ultimately share your content across the web.
If people using your work without permission is a concern, then consider adding a watermark to your images featuring your URL. Having an image featuring your URL is a great indirect link-building technique too.

Offer snippets that allow sharing of the photo

Include a html snippet for each photo that allows a user to copy the code and paste it directly into their site.
EG: Copy and paste this into your website to share this photo
<a href=”yoursite.com”><img src=”yoursite.com/pic.jpg”></a>
By making sure the code includes a link wrapped around the image you are providing an option for other websites to use your photo without them needing to download and host your image, as well as scoring a link on their site.

Don’t forget the basics

It’s easy to overlook, but when creating a site to host your photos and content don’t forget the simple SEO elements that can enhance your sites authority.
ALT tags on images: use rich keywords that describe your photo. ALT tags compensate for when text cannot be used in a web asset (like images).
Titles: Use titles on pages that contain your images. Make the titles relevant to the post. Try to incorporate keywords too.
Page titles: Be sure you titles are relevant to the images or subject matter. Include your name or domain name too.
Meta Description : You have around 160 characters to provide a summary of why someone should care about this post. Think of your target audience and use terms and sentences that would make them want to click your link.
Sitemap.xml : Be sure you have an image site map uploaded. These tell search engines which images should be crawled and added to the index.

And also the not so basics

Schema mark-up, rich snippets and open graph protocol play a big part in how search results are displayed across social platforms and search engines. When building your site, be sure to include basic rich snippets such as the rel=”author” tag.

Get social. Promote Yourself.

This is a no brainer really. Social Media is probably the greatest promotional tool for photographers ever created. Anyone can set up a Facebook or Twitter account and share photos, the trick however is to do is smart!
Facebook is the largest photo sharing platform on Earth. It offers some amazing groups where you can ask for advice and feedback on your work, find hints and tips and perhaps the most important aspect – network.
Photographers are utilising Google Plus more than any other industry out there in my opinion. It allows you to interact with some of the world’s best photographers and promote your work with a massive like-minded audience. G+ is the ultimate networking tool for photographers while also directly influencing search results.
Pinterest is a photographers social best friend. Photos are the most shared content on this platform. Simply offering users the ability to ‘Pin’ your photos to their Pinterest boards could generate more traffic to your site than any of the other social networks combined.

Top 10 Tips to improving your SEO

1. Keyword Research

It is essential when optimising your site, that the content is keyword rich. However, there is little point in writing keyword dense copy if the keywords are not commonly used in search terms.
It is advisable to keep keywords ambiguous when using any SEO tool, e.g. KeywordDiscovery or Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This will allow the SEO tool to return more suggestions, some of which may be surprising, and ones you had not thought of.
SEO tools will also allow you to see the levels of competition for the most popular keywords. This will allow you to optimise your campaign for the most effective keyword use.

2. Link Building

A high Google PageRank is something most sites aim for, and while the algorithm for determining page rank is constantly changing the number and quality of links into your site always features.
We suggest using reputable sites and niche directories to link back to your site. With genuine, relevant content, links back to your site can really boost your site’s PageRank.
Some SEO tools will also allow you to view the number of links your competitor sites contain, this will enable you to make sure you have more valid links therefore it is likely your page rank will increase.

3. Deep Linking

While it is important to have as many good quality relevant links as possible coming into your site, it is equality important that these go to different pages across your site. This will allow you to target more relevant links to each specific page. This will not only improve users experience more but will allow search engines to see that your site has lots of valid content, boosting PageRank. Sites that only have links going to the homepage are often viewed as shallow by search engines, or that the links are not genuine and generated by automation, reducing the sites value.

4. Sitemaps

The site map is an important tool for increasing the ease of navigation across your site. It allows web crawlers from search engines (and users) to quickly and efficiently search every page of your website. Every page of content is therefore easier to find, reducing the number of clicks, both web crawlers and users have to make before reaching the required content.
There is another version of the sitemap that is also used by search engines. XML sitemaps consist of a list of all pages and include the dates the pages were last modified. XML sitemaps are submitted to search engines to help them find and link to all of the content on your site.

5. Relevant Content

The most important part of SEO is perhaps having content relevant to your main page or site topic. The readable text on the page needs to be relevant to the targeted keywords and information in the meta tags and alt tags.
The content needs to read well, in addition to being keyword dense, in order to be useful to a reader. All information needs to be explained fully so it makes sense to the reader. The site content needs to be relevant in order for the search engine to link it to the search term. However some keyword stuffed copy can appear to be spam and put potential users off.

6. Optimise Meta Tags

The Meta tags are in the code of the site. The two most important meta tags are the description and keywords. Meta tags summarize what the site is about and are still have a role in the search rankings.
The description tag is what users will read when your page comes up in search listings and can make the difference between them clicking on your site or not. The recommended length for the description meta tag is 150 – 200 characters. The description tag should have a few keywords within it but should not be stuffed with keywords, this should read like a sentence, not a list.
Many search engines hold little importance to the keyword meta tags due to “keyword overstuffing”. However all search engines still recommend adding them. When putting your list together, you need to think of the terms people are likely to be searching for (see Keyword Research), so they are led to your site with relevant content. It is not useful to add too many duplicates to your site (e.g. SEO agency, SEO agencies, London SEO agency, etc) as these are essentially the same, it is better to pick one or two variations of each keyword.

 7. Use Alt Tags for Images

The alt tags will help SEO as a brief, descriptive alt tag can add relevant text to your source code, which search engines can see when indexing your site. A higher search ranking can be obtained with more relevant content, making these tags valuable.
The use of alt tags also helps the visually impaired who asses the site using screen reader. Whilst they cannot see the image, the alt tag describes what the image was off, so they do not miss any content from the site.

8. Social media

Not technically SEO, Social Media is a fast growing factor in getting your website noticed, and is an important element to include in plans.
Social Media is a term used to describe a variety of Web-based platforms, applications and technologies that enable people to socially interact with one another online. Some examples of social media sites and applications include Facebook, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Twitter, Digg, blogs and other sites that have content based on user participation and user-generated content (UGC).
To achieve the most form social media it is important to have a give and take relationship. Helping members out with retreats, or digs or giving helpful advice will increase the effectiveness of this media.

9. Ensure Domain Name Contains keywords

You do not need to pack lots of keywords into your domain name, but a few carefully chosen keywords to highlight the topic of the website are useful. Too many keywords in the domain name can make a site look like it is spam based. Avoiding the overuse of hyphens is also a key element in getting the domain name right.

10. Use Headings

The page title will be the first thing a search engine will look at when determining what the page is about. It is also the first thing visitors to your site will see when they get to your page. Therefore it is important that heading contain one or two keywords, they are relevant to the content on the page and provide appropriate targeting.
Headings have an important role in the organisation of information on a website, they are also able to provide aesthetically pleasing aspects to a site. It is recommended to use the appropriate page heading tags through out the site as these enable webcrawlers to access the site easily.

Basic SEO Tips Every Web Developer Should Follow

1. Place Your Keywords In the Title Tag

The title tag is one of the most important things for ranking high for particular keywords. That's why it's very important to think of a title that contains important keywords and grabs the attention of people. Because when people search on search engines like Google, the title of your page will be displayed in the results and people will click on links that are the most attractive to them first. Remember that it's also very important and rewarding to have a unique title, so before you use the title, Google it and see if the title already appears in the top 10 results.
Please keep in mind that Google only displays the first 70 characters(about 8 words) of your page's title. Google does not even index the keywords in your page's title after the 12th or so word. Yahoo and MSN don't even index pages that have a page title that's too long.

2. Optimize Your Robots.txt

Having an optimized robots.txt is important because this file can control which pages of your websites get crawled by the search engine spiders. For those of you who use WordPress, I recommend preventing search engine spiders from crawling wp-admin and plugin folders.

3. Proper Use of the ALT Attribute

The <alt> attribute should be used to describe an image, not to spammed with keywords that have nothing to do with the image.
Why? Because while it's true that search engine spiders cannot read images, they can however read the <alt> attribute, and having it spammed with keywords that are totally irrelevant to the image will make Google aware of what to derank you for.

4. Anchor Text of Links

The anchor text is the text inside your <a> tags that links to other pages. Wether they're incoming or outgoing links, it's important for the anchor text to contain a description of where the link is taking the visitor. This is even more important for search engines because it tells its crawlers where the link is going.
So avoid using words like "Click Here" as an anchor text as it can hurt both your website and the website you're linking to

5. Quality of Inbound and Outbound Links

While most web developers know that having many web sites link to your can boost your rankings, a lot of them don't know that the quality of the websites linking to your websites plays a vital role in your website's page rank. Getting links for random dofollow blogs has a way smaller impact than if a website with a high pagerank links to your website in an article.
Who you link to matters, as Google warned webmasters that they can be penalized if they link to spam websites. Linking to really bad websites (malware injecting websites etc.) can easily get your site removed from Google's search engine results pages(SERPs). One thing to keep in mind is that Google's spiders might not follow all of your links if you have over 100 unique outbound links on a single page.

6. Proper Use of Header Tags

<h1>, <h2> tags etc. should be used when appropriate. Don't be using <h2> tags as a paragraph or using <div> class="title"</div> to display the title of your page or something.
Here's a few things to keep in mind when using header tags:

• only use one <h1> tag per page
• you can use as many <h2> - <h6> tags as you like in your pages
• search engine crawlers only read basic html

7. Importance of the First Paragraph

Your first paragraph is the most important paragraph in your page. This is because it's the first paragraph search engines scan and they assume that it's somewhat of a summary of the page/article. That's why it's essential to have the most important keywords of your page in the first sentence or two.
If you're using the All in One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress, the plugin will automatically take the content from your first paragraph and place it in the meta description, which is the text that search engines display under the title of your page.

8. Ensure Your Site is Accessible

An accessible website should ensure that its content can be successfully delivered as often as possible. The functionality of pages, the uptime of the server, validity of HTML elements are all parts of site accessibility. If these points are either ignored or faulty, both your visitors and search engines will select other websites to visit.
Use tools like:

• Are My Sites Up?
• Link Validation Spider

To know if your site contains broken links or when your site is down.

9. Use SEO Friendly URLs

The URL of a page should be descriptive so both the users and search engines have an idea what the page they're being linked to consists of. SEO Friendly URLs also have the benefit of serving as their own anchor text when copy pasted to forums etc. due to URL having the keywords of the page in its URL. These type of URLs usually rank higher in search engines than pages with a URL like example.com/p=981489894.
Furthermore, when using Dynamic URLs try to keep your dynamic parameters under 2 or else the chance is high than it might not get crawled by search engine spiders unless they're perceived as very important(ie. have a large amount of inbound links).

10. Site Usability

f your website is cluttered with ads and has a terrible layout, accessibility, navigation and low quality of content, chances are that you'll get less people linking back to your site than one that has better usability than yours, thus resulting in lower page ranking.
If your website was designed in the 90s you seriously need consider hiring a web designer to redesign your website.
Take a look at the following example which I took from SeoMOZ.org.

These examples clearly show the impact a decent design has on the way users perceive the website. Users are more likely to buy from Haworth's Furniture because the site just gives a more trustworthy vibe than Workplace Office's website. Furthermore, people are more likely to tell a friend about Haworth's website because it just has better usability and seems more trustworthy than Workplace Office's website.
While a nice design doesn't have a direct impact on the rankings of a page, it will indirectly influence it due to users linking back to the site, trusting it etc.

Top 21 Tips To Increase Page Rank

1. Submit your blog to Web Directories

One of the best way to get High Quality backlinks is to submit your blog in Web Directories. There are millions of Free and Paid Web Directories available.
Some of Good Free Web Directories :

• Jayde
• Dmoz
• Hotfrog
• Somuch
• Searchsight

Some of Good Paid Web Directories :

• Yahoo Directory
• Best of the Web
• UncoverTheNet
• Business
• V7N Web Directory

2. Quality Content

In order to increase Page Rank you must have good quality content on your website. Always check for plagiarism before publishing any Guest Post to make sure that article is genuine.

You may be familiar with the quotation “Content is King” .

3. Guest Posting

One of the most popular way to get backlink from a High Page Ranked blog is to write a guest post, In return you will get two to three backlinks from his blog. Some bloggers don’t allow links to other’s blog in the post so you can only provide the link in Author Bio.
** It’s not as much easy as it seems to write a post and publish.

4. Link Exchange

Link Exchange – One of very common technique used to get backlink from a blog.
Simply what you just have to do is to put a link with proper anchor text to your blog and in return other fellow will also have to do it.
Not only by this way you will get a backlink, but Traffic too  .

5. Domain Age

Google loves aged domains.
So many people register a domain for one year ,Work on it and leave it after one year.
Google trust those domains who are aged and give them a good rank according to their age too.
But unfortunately there is no way to increase domain age . Except to pay before domain expiration date  .

6. Build Link Wheel

Building Link Wheel is one of the most advance and powerful technique to build backlinks.
The basic idea of link wheel is to create a pattern of links which flow from one website to another website which would finally link to a targeted website requiring promotion.
So you get powerful backlinks for your blog which helps to increase Page Rank.

7. Update Your Blog Regularly

Always update your blog regularly. But make sure that what you publish is unique and genuine. Google loves those website which updates regularly with unique content.
8. Direct Advertising
If you want to increase page rank of your blog than always prefer direct advertising because in this way you get a backlink from a website. Your ad can be in the form of image but will provide you a backlink.

9. Article Submission

If you want to get good page rank than always try to submit each of your post to articles submission directories.
Some of good Article Directory Submissions are :

• Ideamarketers
• Articlealley
• GoArticles
• SelfSeo
• EzineArticles
• Amazines
• ArticleDashboard
• AarticlesBase
• Isnare

10. Comment on others blogs

The simplest way to earn backlinks is to comment on others blog. Some blogs provide us Do follow backlinks which are very healthy nutrition for a blog page rank growth.
So keep commenting on blogs which are giving Do-Follow backlinks.

11. Join Forums

If your are using forums for sharing information ,helping others or getting information than must put some links in your threads. But do it safely that they well not consider your threads as spam.
Being fair with your blog, Keep your forum profile complete and provide your blog name in the website field there which makes a Do-Follow backlink from your profile.

12. Keep your blog always up

Google hates those blog which are sometime available and sometime not. So always keeps your blog up. Choose best web hosting to run your business.

13. Use Signatures

Using signatures in your email with your website URL also increase Page Rank. So add signatures in your email to earn a bonus while sending an email  .

14. Special Backlinks

Google loves those website which have backlinks from .Edu, .Gov and from Wikipedia. So considered these backlinks as special backlinks because it’s not easy to get backlinks from these websites.

15. Use Relavent Keywords

Always try to use relevant and commonly searched keywords. It not also boost up your traffic from Google but increase your page rank too.

16. Internal Link

Always try to link your old post in your current post. Google loves those websites who are rich with internal link building. More internal links building gives more traffic to your blog from search engines and increase Page Rank too.

17. Increase Page Load Time

Google hates those websites which open slowly. So you sould optimize MySQL tables usingphpMyAdmin to increase page load time and always use optimized images.

18. Remove Website field from Comment Box

Giving more external links than backlinks you have decreases your blog popularity, Page Rank and SEO of your blog. Whenever someone comments on your blog he puts a link in website field box to earn a backlink along with commenting on your blog. You may know some of blog which have removed website field box because they don’t want to give backlink to blogs.
Removing website field from comment box also causes decrease number of comments because 90% bloggers do comments to gain backlinks.

19. Search Google Your Website

If your blog is popular enough than it may be searched on Google even by placing the whole link. Google consider these blogs as popular blogs and give them a high Page Rank.

20. Social Media sharing

Share your each post to top Social Media Sharing websites like Facebook, Twitter. Make your blogpage in Facebook and share your new posts there which increases interest to your blog.
Some of Social Network Sharing Websites are :

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Myspace
• Google +
• Deviantar
• Livejournal
• Tagged
• Pinterest
• Cafemom
• Ning
• Meetup
• Mylife
• Badoo

21. Stop Palying Tricks with Google

Last thing I want to share to all my readers, Don’t try to cheat Google by playing illegal tactics, Keep in mind you may be smart person but Google is more smarter than you can ever think. Playing illegal tactics not only decrease your traffic but can also remove your URL from Google search results so be fair with your blog and NEVER try to cheat Google.

TOP 10 SEO TIPS FOR BLOGGERS

As president and CEO of Submit Express, I personally oversee the operations of several company blogs and often author industry-related articles. From years of experience in operating mainly WordPress-based blogs, I have learned valuable lessons on how to optimize blogs for search engines and increase traffic to the sites. Here are my Top 10 SEO tips for bloggers; I hope these insightful tips can help improve your blog’s SEO.

1. Conduct proper keyword research and use keywords in your title and content. The title in your home page is the most important place to feature your most important keywords. When you post new articles, keep in mind that most blog platforms will make your article title the HTML title tag as well. Therefore, create your titles with keywords you want to target.

2. Be familiar with your blogging platform to use built-in SEO features. Install additional SEO pluggins. For WordPress, "All in One SEO" or "Platinum SEO" is recommended. They offer many settings that help to create a more SEO-friendly site.

3. Use SEO-friendly URLs. Basically adding keywords in your URLs is a good idea. In WordPress, this is done by turning on a function called "Permalinks."

4. Write original content. Do not copy content from other sites, and if you do, make sure to rewrite it completely to make it your own. More often than not, duplicate content gets filtered by the search engines.

5. Write blog posts on a regular basis and cover the latest topics and trends, which tend to get more traffic while they are hot. Fresh content is part of Google's algorithm.

6. Optimize your image names and alt tags to include keywords for better placement in the image search portion of the search engines.

7. Publish links to your posts on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Also, submit them to social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon and Reddit. Social media involvement and links are good for SEO purposes.

8. Build links to your main page and internal posts. If you own several blogs, try to find similar posts and link them to each other.

9. Write guest blog posts on similar sites for link building purposes. A good way to do this is to ask other bloggers to exchange articles, with guest blog credits. You can also participate in link exchange with other bloggers from blogrolls, but in general try to not have too many outgoing links from your own blogroll, as it may reduce the value of your website.

10. Go easy on importing RSS feeds into your blog. While it could be a good source for additional content, you want the majority of your content to be original. If you’re going to use RSS feeds, I recommend keeping it to less than 10 percent of your overall content. If your regular content does not keep up with that ratio, then remove old RSS posts regularly. There was a time when the "Autobloged" plugin for WordPress was being used by many bloggers, or I should say spammy bloggers, with great success. Sites would receive a massive amount of content in little time and would end up getting hundreds of rankings. However, the Panda update makes this difficult.

Top 10 Directories to List on for SEO

Online directories are online guides that organize websites by subjects. Submitting your website on these online directories can influence your SEO results. The following takes a look at the top 10 directories to be listed on for SEO purposes

What is a Directory?

Online directories systematize websites into subject-based categories and list them in an alphabetical manner in order for easy viewing. Editors evaluate the content of websites and organize them into sub-categories that will then be placed within the directory. The editors that categorize the websites look at various factors before placing them within the directories. Online directories take into consideration the commercial versus non-commercial and geographical components of a selected website. In short, a directory is a database that contains information that has been optimized for reading. These directories also contain search portals for traffic to browse and search for keyword look-ups.

SEO and Directories

The process of SEO involves the evaluation of your existing website. Tweaking of content and text within web pages is carried out in order to make your website more visible on search engines. SEO optimizes your site by using high-quality keywords in your web articles. By doing this, search engines can recognize and trust your website enough to place it in a higher page ranking. By getting your website listed on high ranking directories, your site has a better chance of obtaining high-quality traffic, ultimately leading to more purchases and an increase in your return on investment (ROI). Some directories require payment to list your site.

1. Librarians’ Internet Index (PR9)- A very high-quality free link, but very difficult to get. Websites must go through a thorough review and must contain alot of informative content.

2.DMOZ (PR8)- The Open Directory Project is a great authority link and its free. Unfortunately it can take up to a year to be indexed depending on the editor for the category you are submitting to. Don’t keep resubmitting your site, it only puts you at the end of the line.

3. Yahoo Directory(PR8)- Another great authority link if your site is not commercial inclusion is free but can be slow. Commercial listings are $299 a year.

4. Business.com (PR7)- Great link for business sites submission cost $299 a year make sure to get the standard listing not the PPC which is a redirected link.

5.Best of the Web (PR7)- Free link for non-commercial sites. Otherwise its $69.95 a year or $199.95 for a permanent link. Many of BOTW’s category pages have high Google Page Rank without that many outgoing links making this a solid backlink.

6. JoeAnt.com (PR6)- $39.99 one-time fee, free for editors guaranteed review within two business days.

7. The Hot VS. Not Directory(PR6)- High Page rank directory $60 for a year $200 for a permanent link.

8. Directory World(PR5)- Professional web directory for 24.95 annually.

9. GoGuides (PR5)- Websites are instantly included $69.95 per site.

10. Rubber Stamped(PR4)- Solid link from an up and coming directory $29.95 one time review fee.

Web Directory Facts

• Web directories existed before search engines came into being.
• Online directories contain mass amounts of links to sites, these are arranged alphabetically.
• The directories are edited by humans; therefore URL's are not gathered or spidered. Rather they are submitted by site owners.
• The advantage of the directories being edited manually is that you do not have to worry about being classified under the wrong categories.
• The only disadvantage of directories is that the information available for traffic to browse may be outdated.
• The directories do not have spiders so you will need to submit your URL to a search directory.
• By your site being listed on a directory, you will have backlinks and your site will be visible for spiders to index.
• Dmoz is a very popular directory as it accepts links of all types of sites. It is however extremely difficult to list your website on Dmoz and can take a very long time. Dmoz also only lists sites with noteworthy content.

Conclusion
Online directories help in optimizing your site for visibility within search engines. They also give your site a good starting point in terms of exposure and provide the needed information for traffic to get hold of your business and possibly make purchases of your product or service.

3 Tips For Off Page Optimization Techniques For SEO Success

So today, I’ll discuss 3 tips for Off Page Optimization Techniques For SEO Success:

1) Link Building:

The most important part of Off Page Optimization is Link Building. You should try to get as many backlinks as possible from other websites. The number and quality of backlinks is crucial for your PageRank to increase and ultimately to rank higher in search results. PageRank is directly proportional to the no. of unique pages that are linking to your site. If you have high no. of backlinks from the websites with good PageRank, you will have a high PageRank. So, spend some time in getting those backlinks.


Here are some tips to get backlinks:

- Guest Blogging on sites related to your blog niche.
- Press Releases
- Forum Posting related to your blog niche.
- Article Submission to sites like Ezine, Hubpages, etc.
- Blog Commenting on ‘DoFollow’ Sites
- Image Sharing on sites like photobucket, flickr, etc.
- Video Sharing on sites likes YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
- RSS Feed Creation & Submission
- Directory Submission such as Dmoz.org, Technorati.com, etc.
- Use of Social Media: Share and promote your content on all the major social media sites such as Facebook, twitter, Linkedin, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Tumblr, Google Plus and Pinterest. All these sites can bring a huge amount of traffic to your site and also helps in link building.

2) Anchor Text:

 Now another important factor in Off Page Optimization is Anchor Text. Anchor Text is the text to form a Hyperlink. If you are not choosing the right anchor text, then all of your efforts of getting backlinks will not be much useful.
For example, If I want to link to this page – http://www.youngblah.com/what-is-page-rank/ and the main keyword is Pagerank.
I can use “Click Here(Anchor Text) to know more about PageRank.”
But ‘Click Here’ doesn’t tell Google Bots what the link is pointing to. So, use the link on the keyword.
Right Method(Example), “Click here to know more about PageRank(Anchor Text)”.
So, you should try to get backlinks from other websites using the right Anchor Text to make your site more relevant in Google search results.

3) Best Practices:

- Quality and Natural Links matters.
- Avoid Paid Backlinks.
- Avoid Link Exchange.
- Try to get Backlinks from High Authority Sites or from sites with at least PR 1 or above.
- Try to get Backlinks from sites that are relevant to your content.
- A link in the footer of a website is weighted less by Google than the link appearing on the top or in the main content of the page.

On-Page Optimization Tips

1. Avoid the following things which can get you in trouble with search engines:
2. 
   
   - Don't use hidden text or hidden links.
   - Don't employ cloaking or lightning fast java redirects.
   - Don't load up your pages with irrelevant words.
   - Don't create multiple pages, sub-domains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
   
   
3. Did you know that every page of your website stands on its own?
   
   
   Every page should have a unique title, description, and keyword tag. The description tag should describe ONLY that page. The keyword tag should include keywords for just that page. Include 5-6 keywords, including the main keyword phrase and synonyms of that keyword phrase.
   Don't make the mistake of including every keyword that could possibly describe what your site is about in your keyword tag. Make your keyword meta tag specific for each page.
   The keyword tag holds very little importance anyway, but be sure to make it page specific. FOCUS!
   
   
   
4. Do you have a site map on your website?
   
   
   In Google's Terms of Service, they suggest that you use a site map, so set one up immediately! There are many excellent programs that will create site maps for you. Put a link to your site map on every single page of your site, and link to your other pages using link text that describes those pages. This link building service includes Google Sitemap Generator Setup, absolutely FREE.
   
   
   
5. Stay away from “little” keywords.
   
   
   When you’re looking for terms to optimize for, especially primary key phrases, it is generally a good idea to stay away from “little” keywords, such as the, and, or, for, etc.
   
   
6. Does keyword in domain name make sense?
   
   People often seem to ask how important it is to include keywords that they want to rank for in their domain name. The answer is that it’s not essential, but it helps a lot.
   
   
7. Make title from 3 to 9 words!
   
   Page title elements are normally 3-9 words (60-80 characters) maximum in length, no fluff, straight and to the point. This is what shows up in most search engine results as a link back to your page. Make sure your Page Title Element(title tag) is relevant to the content on the page.
   
   
8. Describe your site in META!
   
   The META description tag usually consists of 25 to 30 words or less using no more than 160 to 180 characters total (including spaces). The META description also shows up in many search engine results as a summary of your site.
   
   Make sure your META Description Tag is relevant to the content on the page.
   
   
9. Insert keywords in META tag.
   
   For those search engines that are META enabled, the META keywords tag used to be one of the most important areas after the page title and page description. It has been abused by both marketers and consumers alike that there is very little weight given to the META keywords tag.
   
   Don't fret over your META keywords tag. Utilize keywords and keyword phrases from your title element, META description tag, heading tag and first one or two paragraphs of visible content. Try to limit it to 15 to 20 words if possible.
   
   
10. Don't forget about heading tag.
    
    At least one heading tag <h1> should appear at the top of your page and be well written using prime keywords and keyword phrases. You can use CSS to control the appearance of the heading tags
    
    
11. Do you know what is Alt?
    
    Alt text is the line of text you see pop up  when you place your cursor over an image. It also displays a text representation of the image when the user has images turned off in their browser (this is the intended behavior). It is highly recommended that you utilize this area as it is required under accessibility laws and, is indexed by the search engines.
    
    
12. Alt in Internet Explorer is different than in other browsers.
    
    Internet Explorer (IE) will display alt text when you hover your cursor over an element that utilizes the alt attribute. This is incorrect behavior as the alt text is designed to be displayed when the user has their images turned off while browsing. Other browsers such as Opera and Mozilla will not display the alt text on hover.
    
    
13. Traits of Alt.
    
    The alt attribute should not to be stuffed with keywords or phrases. The alt text should mirror the content of the image. If it is a graphic header, then your alt attribute should mirror the text in the graphic header.
    
    Alternative text values should not exceed 80 characters in length. If more than 70-80 characters are required one should use the longdesc attribute as an alternative to alt text.
    Make sure your Alt Attribute is relevant to the content for that image.
    
    
14. Avoid graphic links.
    
    Many web sites utilize graphic representations of links. These are visually appealing, but the text in the image cannot be indexed by the spiders.
    
    
15. Content is King.
    
    Content (visible copy) weighs heavily and is considered one of the primary areas of search engine optimization and marketing.
    
    Your content should be written in a way that grabs the users attention, while utilizing your targeted keywords and keyword phrases. There is a method to placement of the keywords and keyword phrases that will help your web site gain better placement in the search engines. Balance is essential and creating that balance takes knowledge and experience.
    
    
16. Add content regularly
    
    You should make it your goal to add at least one new page of content daily if possible. If not, then once a week is acceptable. You want to keep your website content fresh and give your visitors something to come back for on their next visit. Stale website content may not perform as well as fresh website content.
    
    Utilize last modified dates on your pages so that visitors to your site know when the page was last modified and how fresh the content is.
    
    
17. Name files with keywords
    
    Instead of naming your file pagename.asp, you would name it keyword-phrase.asp or page-name.asp. Always use hyphens (-) to separate the words in your file names, use all lower case for file naming, this includes images too.
    
    
18. Name directories appropriately
    Be descriptive with naming directories. Don't get carried away, but make sure at least one keyword or keyword phrase appears in the directory name. Don't forget to use hyphens (-) to separate the words.
    
    
19. Don't stuff keywords in title
    Don't stuff a bunch of keywords in your title separated by commas. It is one of the most unprofessional practices and it doesn't work real well for scan friendliness.
    
    
20. Define which products have the highest profit margin?
    
    A product that is less searched but has a higher profit margin would be easier to obtain a search engine ranking and would yield higher revenues.
    
    
21. Use only one < H1 > tag per page, and use your keyword phrase in the tag. Use it toward the top of the page. Make sure it captures your visitors' attention as soon as they land on your site. Also, make sure your first paragraph or the first words you use are interesting and designed to hold your visitors' attention. If you don't grab their attention and HOLD IT in the very beginning, they'll hit the back button and go back to the search results . . . it's as simple as that.
    
    
    
22. Another tip on freshening up some of your Title Tags.
    Think about this. Turn some of your titles into a question. Asking a question is a great attention getter.
    - Where on earth would you go if you had your pilot license?
    - What would you do if your career was terminated?
    - When should you submit your web pages?
    By asking a question, you create more response because it makes the reader think.
    
    
    
23. Did you know that there is some relevancy advantage in larger sites at the point that you begin to have around 100 pages or more indexed?
    Something seems to happen around the 100 page mark. Remember to focus on building quality content of genuine value to your readers.
    
    
    
24. How fast do your pages load?
    Did you know that if your page loads too slowly, you could be deterring some search engine robots from crawling your website? Try and ensure your page loads within under 30 seconds (or even faster.) If your graphics are too bulky, check out a service calledhttp://www.optiview.com to accelerate your page loading speed.
    
    
25. Prominence is best described as how close to the beginning of a specific area in which the keyword appears.
    A keyword or keyword phrase that appears closer to the top of the page or area may often be considered mildly more relevant.
    
    
    
26. Next time you are working on an important sales letter, remember to spend at least 50% of your time working on that all important headline text.
    This includes both the Title Tag and your main < H1 > Header on the page. Little changes to Heading text can make huge impacts with a little thought.
    Here is a variety of free validators you can use to check your CSS Style Sheets or HTML Validation or several other unique free tools from the W3.org. http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/
    
    
27. How compelling are your Meta descriptions?
    
    - Do you remember to use your important keyword phrase in the description?
    - Are you taking time to write unique descriptions for each of your pages?
    - How about a call to action? Do you remember to include good calls to action in your description?