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3 Simple SEO Tips

February 12, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is tossed around the web like no body’s business. The problem is a lot of the people talking about it really do not know much about it. SEO is complicated in many ways and really does require a lot of time, research and consistency. However, there are a few simple things to get you started if you are a newbie to SEO, cannot afford to hire an SEO expert or time is limited for you.

Simple SEO Tips to get you Started

Keywords

You really need to do research and find out what niche works best for your website. Once you do that focus on two no more than three keyword/phrases. Once you know what they are, make sure you have them through out your page. Do not over use them though. It must be well balanced.

Make sure you have some bold, italicized and/or underlined. Not all…just a few here and there. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Coaching, Featured, SEO/Traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin to Help Your Readers

December 1, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin is a handy little plug in that I use on one of my other sites. I tested it out there and plan to incorporate it onto all of my other blogs soon. You can visit plug in site here.

What exactly does it do?

Simply put, it detects other posts on your blog that relate to the one being posted. It uses key words, phrases, titles, etc to help it find related posts. It shows up at the bottom of the posts and says; “Related Posts.” Under the title is a list of posts and their links that relate to what you just wrote.

Another interesting thing about this plug in is that next to each “related posts” link, it has a percentage. This percentage tells the reader just how related the topics are. Very helpful for someone researching a specific topic.

It is a great tool to help readers browse your site about specific topics. It also encourages them to read more of what your site has to offer. As a website owner, my goal is not only traffic, it is continual traffic, return traffic and quality traffic. I believe this plug in helps facilitate that goal.

Plus internal link to other pages on your website are very good for SEO.

You can see it in action on my Mom site. Simply scroll down any post. At the bottom you will see the plug in at work. Here is a link to one of our recent posts: http://momsoffaith.com/blog/faith-and-business-101-the-nitty-gritty-part-2

Let me know what you think. Have you used this plug in or one like it? What was your experience?

Copyright © Lara Velez, All Rights Reserved

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, Links, SEO/Traffic Tagged With: , , ,

SEO and Active Links

July 16, 2009 By admin 1 Comment

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an art. If you own a website or blog and want it to grow and be a great site with lots of traffic, SEO must become a regular part of y our life. Webmasters, successful ones anyway, never stop optimizing their sites. There is always something that can be tweaked or new idea surfacing to help site owners have better SEO.

Active Link Factor and SEO

You must be very careful how many outgoing active links (that are not a part of your actual domain) on your site. If you have too many, search engines will think you are a link farm and punish you for it. If you research and look for successful, high ranking and high traffic sites, you will see that they are not an ocean of outgoing links…especially on their main page.

If you have a lot of resource links, consider just putting them up as a reference and not making them active. That way visitors can still access the resource, but you are not hurting your SEO with a sea of active links.

Link Exchanges should be made only with good ranking sites and or quality niche sites. Be very picky. Also, make a separate page for link exchanges. Better yet, place link exchanges around your internal pages in places they will be most appreciated by visitors and encourage the same for those you exchange with. Remember, a quality link coming IN does not necessarily need to e a high ranking page. A page within your NICHE is the best.

Good SEO requires commitment and regular attention. Take the time to optimize your site regularly and you will reap the benefits for years to come.

Copyright © Lara Velez, All Rights Reserved

Filed Under: Featured, Keyword Usage, Keywords, Links Tagged With: , , , ,

Promoting Content is an Important Part of Increasing Traffic

July 9, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Writing original content is vital for designing a successful website or blog. New content must be added on a regular basis to keep it active. If a site is neglected, PR ranking and traffic will be lost and hard to get back.

One thing to remember: writing and posting the content is only part of the work involved in promoting a website. The content itself needs to be promoted.

10 Tips to Promote Content for Free

  • Start a Newsletter. A mailing list is extremely helpful. It allows the owner of the list to send out weekly or monthly updates about website, specials and new content. It also keeps business owners in touch with their readers and clients. Note: Only including partial articles in the newsletter will encourage readers to keep reading the piece on site. They may wind up reading more than the article that got them there!
  • Tweet about it. Twitter is growing in popularity every day. Business owners, bloggers and webmasters should jump on this lucrative social networking bandwagon while they have the chance. Who knows what the next “in thing” will be! Read more about promoting on Twitter here.
  • Digg It and Others like it. These types of sites are designed to get the word out about new and top notch content. Joining these free sites and using them to promote content is a must for getting the word out about a website and it’s content. A few of the good ones are; digg.com, plurk.com, buzz.yahoo.com, delicious.com, reddit.com and stumbleupon.com.
  • Facebook. Another great place to network and connect with other business owners is to have a facebook account. It should be used for more than just connecting with old highschool friends. Using it to connect with others in business is very savvy. Starting a fan page is also a great way to get the word out about new content. Posting regular updates on facebook will bring in more traffic and new readers.
  • Submit Content to Article Directories. It is important to have a good authors box with 1-2 links back to writers websites. After 30 days, sending original content to article directories, makes it available for others in the same niche. It is a great tool to get free back links.
  • Install Social Plug Ins. WordPress is by far the best blogging platform in this writers opinion. They have fabulous plug ins to help readers promote what they read. Every blog owner should have social links in the footer of their articles. It gives readers the ability to tweet about great posts they read, or at the very least give it a thumbs up on sites like digg!
  • SEO. Always make sure articles have good titles, meta tags, h1 & h2 headings, proper key word usage and tags. This helps search engines promote the articles, and index them properly so potential readers can find them! Proper SEO is a vital key for increasing traffic. Tip for WordPress Bloggers: Install All In one SEO plug in.
  • Encourage and Respond to Comments. If an article receives a comment, respond to the comment. Encouraging conversation is the site owners job. Asking colleagues and friends to read and comment on articles is a great way to get conversations going. If a site is intriguing to readers they will come back, tell their friends and maybe even post about it on their site/blog!
  • Link to Articles. Visit other blogs and leave NON spam comments. Instead of linking back to home page of site, linking to actual articles on site will help get the word out about the content. This is also a great tip for forum signatures. Using the title of article with link is also a good way to intrigue potential readers and make them want to click and follow.
  • Guest Blog. Being a guest blogger is another free way to promote a website. In the authors box can be a couple links back to articles that are popular or new. Guest blogging for website with high ranking and same niche is the key to making the most of this tip.

Promoting a website is an ongoing task. There are no “quick fixes” to increase traffic. It takes hard work and determination to create popular websites.

Copyright © Lara Velez, All Rights Reserved

Filed Under: Article Marketing, Blog, Blogging, Featured, Marketing, SEO/Traffic, Social Networking Tagged With: , , , ,

One Change to WordPress Blog Can Help You Rank Better with Google

June 24, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

There are many things that must be done in order to obtain a better ranking with the top search engines like Google. However, one change can make a world of difference.

First, if you do not have WordPress self hosted already, I highly recommend it. I have done it all…builders, html, blogger, you name it. In the end a self hosted WordPress blog is the best all around. Period. (Click Here if you want some help with hosting or design)

A WordPress blog allows you to do so many things easily. One of them is to optimize your site for search engines.

One Change for Better SEO on WordPress

Simple…USE the SEO tools that are provided and available!

What are they and How?

1. Download the all in one SEO plugin. Follow the simple directions and you will be in a much better position.

2. Use categories to the fullest. When you create a new category, add proper keywords to description area. Just keywords separated by commas.

3. Repeat above with post tags.

4. Have good titles for posts. Make them at LEAST five words long.

5. Permalinks. Change them to custom or at least so they have actual names and not the default numbers.

Seriously, this one area of attention will make a world of difference. SEO is not the all in all of having a successful website or blog. However, it is one very important piece of the puzzle and this part of SEO is vital.

I have implemented them on all of my sites and am already seeing the fruits of my labor.

A website or blog is like a baby. It needs attention and care. If you give it those two things, you will be well on your way to success, and with success comes profit!

Copyright © Lara Velez, All Rights Reserved

Filed Under: Blogging, Business Coaching, Featured, Google, SEO/Traffic, Web Design Tagged With: , , , , ,

5 Key Elements to the Value of a Back Link

April 4, 2009 By admin

By: Anthony Kristovich III

Back links are an often-discussed, but rarely fully understood topic. Your site’s reputation and Page Rank depend very greatly on backlinks, so knowing what makes your back link reputation for your site more important and have more value is the next logical step.

So, you might ask then what things affect how much a given backlink is worth towards your reputation, and what can you do to maximize your backlink value.

While there are many things that affect how much a backlink is worth to your website, many are unknown to the world that search engines, especially Google, take into account.

5 main things that make up most of your backlink score

Page Rank. The page rank, or reputation, of the webpage that links to you giving you a backlink is the biggest factor. Page is ranked per page, not per website, and page rank is spread through outgoing links.

Anchor text. This is the text showing as the link text, the underlined text you click on (not always underlined, but you get the point). This text can have a very large impact on your backlinks. Google expects to see varied link texts in a normal situation, and it has been said that Google will only count a certain number of backlinks with the same exact text. Optimally, you want your keywords are you aiming for on your website to be in your backlink text if you can help it.

Relevant sites. It’s Especially with Google’s Jagger update, back links from relevant-themed websites is worth more than from unrelated websites. This means if you have a website about cars, backlinks from other car-type sites will give you more value than backlinks from a cooking website. This makes sense, as each backlink is a recommendation or a vote, and related recommendations have more authority or hold more importance.

Location. The location of the back link to your website also makes a difference. The farther towards the top of the page, the more the backlink is weighed.

Age. The age of a backlink makes a difference. It may take up to 6 months to see the full effect of a back link. This makes it a great reason to exchange backlinks with sites whose PR has not yet gotten to where it will, as you will get even greater advantage once they do reach that level.

So, the question of the day is what stuff can you help in reality.

Page Rank may or may not be an issue, as getting in a backlink while a website is newer will gain you a good advantage in the age category once they have grown to their potential. The main to remember here is to make sure they are a website that you would want to trade links with regardless of page rank.

Location you usually do not have much of a say in, and the age is out of your hands. So, the best concept is to concentrate on trading with websites whose content compliments your own, or is at least similar in theme for the best gain. If you can, try to get your target keywords into the anchor text if at all possible. Google definitely looks at the anchor text and takes this into consideration. Varied link text has been proven to give an added edge to a website and put it over the top into the lead.

Article Source: http://www.homebusinessresourcedirectory.com

About the Author: Tony Kristovich is the owner of http://www.EZLinkSystem.com a link exchange website where you can register for free to exchange links with other webmasters like you.

NOTE: You may use this article for reprint ONLY if you DO NOT change the article in ANY way, AND you keep the source and bio IN TACT with ALL links ACTIVE!

Filed Under: Links Tagged With: ,

Search Engine Optimization Made Simple

April 4, 2009 By admin

By: Anthony Samuel

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is one of those fancy terms that tech people throw around to make themselves seem smarter than you. While it’s true that the deepest intricacies of SEO are mind-bogglingly complex, few if any human beings actually understand them. The basic tenants of SEO, however, are fairly straightforward, so you probably don’t need to pay an SEO Specialist to optimize your site. You can do it yourself!

What is Search Engine Optimization?

SEO is a strategy for getting your web site to rank highly in search engine results. The crudest element is keyword usage. Determine what words potential customers are likely to search for on Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, and incorporate those words into the text of your pages as frequently as possible – within limits. Make sure that each keyword doesn’t account for more than 4.5 percent of your entire text, or search engines might think that you’re trying to cheat, and classify your page as spam. A good keyword density target is 3-4 percent. Bolding, italicizing, and using your keywords in title headings and hyperlinks can also be helpful.

Search engines rank pages based on their usefulness, or at least, their best guesses as to a site’s usefulness. In addition to keyword usage, search engines estimate a site’s merit by the number (and quality) of other sites that link to it. Knowing this, you should try to get as many other sites as possible to link to yours. Many webmasters will trade links with you, but don’t expect a big league blog to simply give you a link. Establish your web presence, build a useful site, and it’s much easier to find link partners. After all, other webmasters want to link to sites that their visitors will find useful.

One strategy for increasing the number of sites linking to yours is to become a frequent poster on other people’s blogs. Don’t spam the sites – add credible, worthwhile comments to existing posts. Most blogs allow you to input your site’s URL, and your name is then hyperlinked to your site. While these aren’t official links from another site to yours, search engines don’t distinguish between links posted by site administrators, and links posted by bloggers.

Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid

First, it is important that your page has plenty of text. Some web designers insist on using graphical images of text, but this data is indecipherable to search engines. You need to have actual text using keywords that web surfers are likely to search for. Flash animations and other fanciful gimmicks don’t help your SEO case, and should be avoided whenever possible.

Secondly, try to keep your site programming as simple as possible. You can do amazing things with PHP and MySQL, but if you get carried away, search engines have a hard time reading your pages. If at all possible, try to stick to generic old .html page extensions.

Most important of all, don’t be fooled by charlatans in the SEO “industry.” For the most part, they are conmen. A typical ploy is to promise you thousands of sites linking to yours. These so-called “link farms” are well known to the major search engines, who consider any sites linked from them to be spam.

The #1 Rule of SEO – Make Your Site Useful
Textual tricks and creative link sharing strategies can only take you so far. The truth is that a legitimately useful site is most likely to do well in search engine placement. As they say, content is king. So the best way to ensure a higher ranking among Google, Yahoo!, and MSN is rather low tech – create good content that people actually want to read, and update it frequently. In no time, links will start coming your way, and you will move your way up the search engine page ranks.

Article Source: http://www.homebusinessresourcedirectory.com

About the Author: Anthony Samuel is a successful home based business entrepreneur with over 10 years experience in, Internet Information Marketing, Real Estate, & Stocks. He reviews home based business opportunities and shares his views on the industry at www.find-a-home-based-business-opportunity.com

NOTE: You may use this article for reprint ONLY if you DO NOT change the article in ANY way, AND you keep the source and bio IN TACT with ALL links ACTIVE!

Filed Under: SEO/Traffic Tagged With: ,

Want Return Visitors To Your Site? Invite Them Back!

April 4, 2009 By admin

By: Charlene Polanosky

You just launched the most amazing web site you could have imagined, you’ve let everyone you know all about it, and you submitted it to the search engines – now what? Ultimately, you want your visitors to come by, look around, purchase a product or call you for a service. But you also want them to come back and do it all over again. Here are few tips to help bring back visitors over and over.

1. Content is key. Fresh, interesting content, that is. Dedicate an area on your home page that you can use to alert visitors of something new on the site, whether it is news, a product, a promotion or what not.

2. Give them a reason to come back. Provide a tool, resource, or product that visitors will want to get from you. Make it easy for them to get to it as well. Don’t hide resources three-layers down or ask for a ridiculous amount of personal information first.

3. Invite them to bookmark your site. If your site is on their list of favorite sites, people are more likely to come back.

4. Personally invite them back! Add a Subscribe button to your site. Use an e-mail marketing tool like Constant Contact to build your mailing list. You can send subscribers email newsletters, product offers, announcements, and other site updates on a regular basis. As long as you don’t over do it, this can really help you keep your site in front of your customers.

Article Source: http://www.homebusinessresourcedirectory.com

About the Author: Charlene Polanosky is a mother of three who has been making the 30 Second Commute since 1996 as the owner of Keystrokes Design Marketing and has recently launched Essential Keystrokes – a blog full of tips, resources, product reviews and general information relating to web design, web marketing, the latest trends and random thoughts .

NOTE: You may use this article for reprint ONLY if you DO NOT change the article in ANY way, AND you keep the source and bio IN TACT with ALL links ACTIVE!

Filed Under: SEO/Traffic Tagged With: ,

10 Ways to Get Incoming Links to your Site

April 4, 2009 By admin

By: James Woolley

Obtaining incoming links to your website fulfills two main objectives. Firstly it increases the traffic you could potentially receive to your site because the more links you have the more traffic you should receive, and secondly, by obtaining links from pages with a good page rank you can increase your own page rank which, although not the deciding factor, will help boost your ranking in the search engines.

Listed below are ten ways in which you can obtain these sought-after links.

1. Exchange Links With Other Websites

This process, known as reciprocal linking, is common place on the internet, and is something most webmasters do. However, while it’s something you should do, it’s important to note that search engines place more importance on one-way links than two-way or reciprocal links.

2. Submit Your Website To Directories

This is a good way of getting one-way links to your site (if a reciprocal link is not required). There are numerous directories you can submit to, offering both free and paid submissions. When deciding on whether paid submissions are worth it, you should look at the page where your link is expected to appear and see if it has a reasonable page rank, and the number of other links that appear on that page, with the fewer the better.

3. Build A Network Of Websites And Interlink Them

When building multiple websites it makes sense to interlink them, preferably from a home page link for maximum benefit. This can be very beneficial if each of your websites is on a different server, but be careful if they are hosted on the same server, as the search engines will think you’re deliberately manipulating their results, and will most likely prevent you from achieving higher rankings.

4. Write Articles

This is a very powerful method of obtaining a lot of incoming one-way links to your site. By submitting your articles, which include the all important resource box with the link to your site, to multiple article directories you can pick up back links from not only these article directories but from other websites who pick up your articles and include them on their website or blog.

5. Write Press Releases

Writing a compelling news-worthy press release about your site or related topic, can also result in multiple websites and news sources picking it up and linking to your site. This is a very effective way of obtaining numerous one-way links very quickly, but doesn’t offer the long-term benefits that articles do.

6. Create A Blog

Blogs are very easy to create with multiple websites offering free services, so there is no excuse for not creating a blog related to and linking to your main website. You could post anything – your thoughts, articles, or affiliate program reviews, for example, but make sure you include a link to your site in the links section, and at the end of each post if appropriate.

7. Leave Comments On Blogs And Guestbooks

You’ve got to be careful with this method that you don’t abuse it and start spamming other people’s blogs or guestbooks. Leave legitimate comments, and make it look like you actually have something to contribute. For example, just saying “Great Blog!” and then leaving your link is rightly considered to be spam, and will also damage your reputation in the long run.

8. Post On Forums That Allow Sig Files

Sig files are the line(s) that appear at the bottom of each message and act as a discreet way of advertising your site. You won’t get a great deal of benefit in terms of page rank, as most forums do not have a high page rank for their threads, but you will build up a good number of links, and as forums generally tend to get spidered by the search engines regularly, they will follow the links to your site and subsequently spider your site on a regular basis.

9. Write Testimonials

By writing and submitting testimonials to websites that you have previously purchased products or services from, you can get high-quality links to your site, often from the home pages of the sites in question.

10. Buy Links

The final way to obtain incoming links is by simply buying them. This can have a dramatic effect on your page rank and subsequently your search engine rankings if you can get links from PR6+ sites, however the only problem with this is that most links for sale are often for a set period of time, usually a month, and so you have to keep buying them to maintain your higher page rank and rankings.

Article Source: http://www.homebusinessresourcedirectory.com

About the Author: James Woolley is a full-time marketer who runs a website and newsletter dedicated to helping people make money online through internet marketing. To subscribe to his newsletter send a blank email to jimsmarketing@aweber.com or visit http://www.jimsmarketing.com

NOTE: You may use this article for reprint ONLY if you DO NOT change the article in ANY way, AND you keep the source and bio IN TACT with ALL links ACTIVE!

Filed Under: SEO/Traffic Tagged With:

How to Monetize your Traffic so You Get the Most Out of It

April 3, 2009 By admin

By: John Savage

Establishing your own E-commerce site is not as easy as it used to be. There are thousands of competitors that are trying to get a bigger share of the pie, therefore every scheme and method you can find to augment your sales will be very beneficial.

We have got to admit to ourselves. Most of us are into it for the money. We are not going to waste our time and effort just for the fun of it. Many sites would not wait until hell freezes over just to see their profits. While there are some who take things lightly there are always those who would rather see profit today.

It is common knowledge that without traffic we have no business. Like any business, without any customers you don’t get sales. Traffic represents all the people that gets a chance to see what you have to offer. The more people who see your products the more people there will be to buy them.

Nobody puts up an E-commerce site that doesn’t expect profit. We have startup capital that needs to be regained. With consistent traffic, we at least have a fighting chance to achieve that profitability. Monetizing your traffic would optimize your chances of making the best out of it.

Making Money out of your Traffic

The best and most proven method of making a profit out of your traffic is using advertising. The internet generates hundreds of thousands upon hundred of thousands of traffic everyday. Most of them are searching for something. While some are just looking for information there is also a good percentage that are looking for something that they need.

The internet has proven to be a very reliable source in finding what was deemed to be a very unsearchable product. The internet has made the world a smaller place; you can advertise a product from the depths of Istanbul and still find a buyer from the center of Philadelphia.

Generating traffic is not an easy task. You have to contend with a great number of sites to generate a good amount of traffic flow. But if done successfully this could open up a Pandora’s Box of possibilities. One of the benefits is monetizing your traffic flow.

So, to get to the core of it the more traffic you generate the more likely you are considered as desirable, desirable, in a sense that a good traffic flowing site is easily convertible to profit.

Basically traffic equals profit. Advertising is the name of the game; with a good advertising scheme you can use your traffic flow to your advantage.

When you have good traffic you have a good number of potential customers, customers that are willing to pour money into your coffers. Other than that this is also traffic that can be redirected to sponsored links that are willing to pay you for a sizable portion of the traffic that you have generated.

This scheme is called “pay-per-click”. With every click a visitor of your site makes on an advertised link, you will be paid. The more traffic you generate and the more clicks that happen, means more profits.

Affiliate Programs

Another method of monetizing your traffic is through affiliate programs. You can link up with other tried and tested sites and online companies and monetize your traffic by having a percentage of sales generated by traffic coming from your site.

The basic idea is, traffic generated from your site will go to another site that can offer a product that you do not carry. Many programs can keep track and make records of transactions that was made possible because of site linkage.

When purchases are made by customers that were led by your site to their site you get a percentage of that sale. Affiliate programs would give you the benefit of monetizing your traffic without the actual need of carrying or promoting a certain product.

There are so many ways and methods to make the most of your traffic. All it takes is a bit of hard work and the desire to successfully launch a profit-earning site.

The internet is a veritable source of information, many tips and guides are offered everywhere in how to monetize your traffic and make your site a good profit earner.

Article Source: http://www.homebusinessresourcedirectory.com

About the Author: john savage has a number of successful websites bringing regular traffic. If you would like to learn how to get lots of visitors to your site without paying a dime in advertising go to my Blog at: http://WebSiteHits.blogspot.com

NOTE: You may use this article for reprint ONLY if you DO NOT change the article in ANY way, AND you keep the source and bio IN TACT with ALL links ACTIVE!

Filed Under: SEO/Traffic Tagged With: ,
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