Latest SEO Trends, You must keep up!

Search engine optimization is not too hard, it is just tedious. Every year there are changes to the search engines which are in with the new seo techniques and out with the old. So you need to keep up with what is happening on the Latest SEO Trends so that you can be successful and achieving desired rank.

If you remember sometime ago, you used to be able to stuff your keywords into meta tags hundreds of times over to get yourself top ranking for those keywords. How about the yellow pages trick where you could put A1 into the front of your company name and be on top. Search engines have advanced since then and if you are caught doing so your site will be analyzed for such a thing.

Now a days the best way to achieve desired page ranking is by the number of inbound links to your website that are relative to your sites niche. This is done so by using anchor text in which these links are keywords that relate to your niche in which you are trying to rank for.

Be careful on how fast you build links when you begin a site because search engines are now able to detect how fast you are building links from high page rank websites and will think that you are buying links or doing something similar and won’t give you full credit.

Another trick not to do is having all of your websites on one host then linking them all together. Search engines are penalizing pages now by looking at the class C IP Address which determines whether your sites are hosted all on the same server and are trying to manipulate the search engines into gaining more rank weight.

Introduction To SEO

Learn SEO – Introduction

SEO means Search Engine Optimization. What all of this means is the study of optimizing your website to rank higher and get to the top of search engines. It is pretty self explanitory. SEO is usually considered a crucial role in web marketing. This helps in promoting websites and getting them to the top.

One well known fact in Search Engine Optimization is that even if you do everything correctly and execute all of the seo techniques properly, this does not gaurantee you a top rating in the search engines. This takes time and patience for down the road you will be successful in achieving your goals.

Search Engines

So how how do these things work? These search engines work by crawling websites and placing them into their search in the fit category and ranking. A lot of people that do SEO end up making their pages for the search engine spiders but not for the users. Keep this in mind, you want to make your pages well rounded for both users and spiders. A search engine spider does not navigate through your pages, read articles, click ads and even buy products.

When optimizing, yes you want to rank for Google because it is the most popular engine out there but you want to carefully optimize your website for other engines also. Each one of these engines have their own algorithms in which decide a websites placement and ranking within. So the fact of the matter is, different search engines like different stuff so you want to conquer all of these.

Planning Ahead

When you decide that you are going to build a new website or blog, you want to always plan ahead. Begin brainstorming different idea’s for your website, even draw your layout’s rough draft down on paper. Write out all of your idea’s down to help you figure out what you want to do. Before doing this you want to of course, figure out what you want your website to be about.

Try to customize yourself a layout that is going to be search engine friendly but then again be user friendly. Take image/flash navigation menu’s into consideration also. You can always make a dazzling menu using text with some images behind it or even css menu’s. Using text for your categories helps spiders better define your site and what it is about.

Choosing Your Niche

Now you got your design and your idea’s but what is your niche? Try focusing on something that isn’t too popular, think up different domain names that would have your niche in them. What keywords are you going to base your website off of? This can be very hard for some but simply use this main factor, choose something that is popular but isn’t at the top of the list, something you could rank for easier than others.

This is where Keyword research comes in. There are many tools out there that you can use to see which keywords you would like to try and rank for. Again if you are starting a website, let’s say it is about “Video Games”. You aren’t going to try and rank for the keyword video games, if you have cheats on your website try to rank for maybe GTA cheat codes.

Next we will be discussing Design & Structure so stick around for I will be writing a whole tutorial to using SEO and giving you a better understanding!

Things you should always do with SEO

So what are the do’s when it comes to Search Engine Optimization? In our last discussion we talked about things that you shouldn’t do when optimizing your blog / site for search engines. To follow up please read our other topic “Things Never To Do With SEO” before you get started reading this.

Let’s get started shall we?

Don’t optimize once then quit.

When you are going to optimize for search engines, never quit after a day or two. SEO is not a one time thing. You have to stay on top of it everyday, with every new addition you make to your site, every new page. With search engines, they are always changing their algorithms so the methods and techniques that we use now might not work down the road.

When applying SEO Techniques to your site you will never see results instantly. Keep in mind that patience is the key and the seo methods that you use on your site now will benefit you down the road.

For beginners.

If you are new to SEO the few tips that you learn are not going to be enough. Always look around the net to learn new SEO techniques. Look around for new articles and tutorials that are recent also.

Using web analytics.

This is crucial when you are applying these methods to your website. This can help you see what and what isn’t working so you can switch it up. Also keep track on all of your content and see what is most popular, what the readers like to see. That way you can base new content off of those things.

Using a site map

Site Maps are crucial to getting a higher ranking in search engines. A site map helps spiders find all of the important pages or the pages that you want to be shown on search engines. With every new page you add be sure to keep your map updated. if you have navigation menu’s that are hard for spiders to crawl this will also direct them down the right path. I have explained this in other articles about using text in your navigation menu’s. If your site is fairly big, use a few different site maps.

Using SEO in your URLs

Don’t use basic names in your urls. Don’t use a bunch of numbers or letters either. You want to make your urls have keywords in them spaced out by hyphens. Don’t use underscores, hyphens mean the same thing as a space between the words as underscores do not.Don’t over do it with the hyphens though because it will make your page look like it is a spam to users. I’d say when doing this have a limit of about 3 or 4. For example yoursite.com/seo-tips-and-tricks.html

Keyword Research

When you begin a website or a project you should do this from the start. This way you can figure out what keywords you want to rank for and what not to. Look at the volume of one keyword to the next. Try opening up a PPC account also. I prefer Google Ad Words. This helps you find out the volume of your keywords.

Title and Meta Tags

Search engines don’t care much for Meta Tags anymore because of the abuse in the past but again it does not hurt to do this. Titles are one of the most important factors. With your titles simply use the keywords that you are building your page and article around. This helps your ranking. Meta keywords won’t help you rank but when you have a Meta Description it will show up on search engines under your link and explains the page a little bit. When using Meta Keywords limit it to 600-700 characters. In the Meta Keywords only put keywords in there that don’t appear on your page.

Writing

Don’t just write for search engines and stuff all of your pages. This makes them looks spammy and your readers will not stick around. Write pages for your readers, the search engines have bots but has a bot read your article and stuck around? Has a bot bought anything or even signed up for a mailing list? You need keywords and such in your articles but don’t stuff the hell out of it.

Unique Content

As I have explained in other articles, unique content is the number one thing to do. This can be hard depending on what your niche is but if you have content that isn’t anywhere else, your readers will be intrigued. Make sure your content is interesting also, just because it is unique doesn’t mean it is great. Combine intriguing with unique and you got your self something nice.

Anchor Text – Internal Linking

As I have explained in my other article “Building Page Rank“, Anchor Text is also a must. Anchor Text helps spiders know what the page you linked to is about. Using keywords in the text helps your ranking but also tells them what the page is about when listing it in the search engines. If your anchor just says “Here”, it doesn’t help much for search engine visibility.

Building Links

Submit your site to directories that are popular, high ranked and trusted. Try and get links from popular sites in your niche and category. If you are running a site that is for your local area you can try to find trusted sites that are in your area geographically. Analyze your inbound links also to find what you may be looking for when linking and back linking. You can read more on back linking in our previous article “SEO Techniques all websites should use” along with many other techniques.

Social Media & Networks

Using social media websites like digg.com , propeller.com and many others gets your articles and sites exposed better. Also using social networks like twitter also can do the same thing. This helps you connect with many others directly to better promote your website. You can also use twitter to post new updates to your followers automatically. For more information, read the latest article I wrote for “Increasing site traffic with twitter on auto-pilot“.

And there you have it. These are some of the main things you should always do and use when optimizing your website or blog for search engines. If you have any questions please comment below or ask and discuss it in there forum. If you would like one on one training feel free to contact me.

craigygee@therantandrave.net

SEO Techniques all websites should use

In this article I am going to discuss ten SEO Techniques that all websites should use. These are the basic fundamentals to successful website Search Engine Optimization.

1. Title Tag

Near the very top of a web site’s source code you’ll find various meta tags — the standard ones being the Title, Description and Keyword tags. The title tag is technically not a meta tag, though it is commonly associated with them. The title tag plays such a large role in the indexing of your web site, that it is considered the most important of the three.

A page title is the first thing a search engine will look at when determining just what the particular page is about. It is also the first thing potential visitors will see when looking at your search engine listing.

It’s important to include a keyword or two in the title tag — but don’t go overboard – you don’t want to do what’s known as “keyword stuffing” which does nothing but make your web site look like spam. Most people will include either the company name, or title of the particular page here, as well.

2. Meta Tags

There are two primary meta tags in terms of SEO — the description and the keyword tag. It’s debatable whether the search engines use the description tag as far as ranking your results. However it is one of the more important tags because it is listed in your search result — it is what users read when your link comes up and what makes them decide whether or not to click on your link.

Be sure to include a few relevant keywords in this tag, but don’t stuff it with keywords either. The description tag should read like a sentence — not a keyword list.

Due to “keyword stuffing” many search engines now completely disregard the keyword tag. It is no longer nearly as important as it was years ago, however it doesn’t hurt to include them in your source code.

When creating your keyword list, you’ll want to think of the specific terms people will type in when searching for a site like yours. Just don’t go overboard — too many duplicates are not a good thing (as in “web designer” “web designers” “custom web designer” “html web designer” “your state here web designer” – you get the idea). Those are all basically the same, so pick one or two variations at the most and move onto the next keyword.

3. Proper Use of Heading Tags

This is a very important element to consider when writing out your site copy. Use of heading tags helps users, web browsers and search engines alike know where the major key points of your copy are.

Your main page title should use the <h1> tag — this shows what your page is about. Use of additional tags, such as <h2> and <h3> are equally important by helping to break down your copy. For one, you’ll see a visual break in the text. But as far as the search engines are concerned, it will automatically know what your topics are on a page. The various heading tags give a priority to the content and help index your site properly.

4. Alt Attributes on Images

Putting alt attributes on your images actually serves two purposes. In terms of SEO, putting a brief yet descriptive alt attribute along with your image, places additional relevant text to your source code that the search engines can see when indexing your site. The more relevant text on your page the better chance you have of achieving higher search engine rankings.

In addition, including image alt attributes help the visually impaired who access web sites using a screen reader. They can’t see the image, but with a descriptive alt attribute, they will be able to know what your image is.

5. Title Attributes on Links

Including title attributes on links is another important step that any good web site will have. That’s the little “tool tip” that pops up when you place your mouse over a link. These are especially important for image links, but equally useful for text links.

As a note, you should use descriptive text for your links. “Click here” doesn’t really tell a person – or more importantly, the search engines — what the link is. At the very least put a title tag that will explain that “Click Here” really means “Web Design Portfolio” for example. Better yet – make the main link text something like “View my web design portfolio” — this will give some value to the link showing that the resulting page is relevant to searches for portfolio’s.

6. XML Sitemap

XML sitemaps are used by the search engines in order to index through your site, as well.

This list of ALL pages / posts / etc. of your site also includes information such as the date the page was last modified, as well as a priority number of what you feel the most important pages of your sites are. All elements that help the search engines properly find and link to all content of your site.

7. Relevant Content

Having content relevant to your main page or site topic is perhaps the most important SEO aspect of a page. You can put all the keywords you want in the meta tags and alt image tags, etc — but if the actual readable text on the page is not relevant to the target keywords, it ends up basically being a futile attempt.

While it is important to include as many keywords in your page copy as possible, it is equally as important for it to read well and make sense. I’m sure we’ve all seen keyword stuffed pages written by SEO companies that honestly don’t make much sense from the reader’s point of view.

When creating your site copy, just write naturally, explaining whatever information you’re discussing. The key is to make it relevant, and to have it make sense to the reader. Even if you trick the search engines into thinking your page is great — when a potential customer arrives at the site and can’t make heads or tails of your information and it just feels spammy to them — you can bet they’ll be clicking on the next web site within a matter of seconds.

8. Link Building

We’ve probably all heard of Google Page Rank — it seems to be every web site owner’s dream to have as high a page rank as possible. While the algorithm for determining page rank encompasses many elements, and is constantly changing, one item is the number of links pointing to your web site.

Now, you’ll want to steer clear of link farms and other spammy attempts at getting links to your site. However there are many reputable and niche directory sites that you can use to submit your web site, or specific blog articles to.

With genuine content — especially if you have a blog — you’ll be able to generate links with other web sites and blogs, as well. It’s somewhat of a give and take, in that if you link out to other sites, you’ll find sites linking back to you — and hopefully see your page rank going up, as well!

9. Social Media

Although technically not SEO, Social Media is such a growing factor in getting your web site noticed, that it’s an important element to include in your plan.

Social media ranges from social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn — to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon and many more. There is a lot of relationship building involved, but as you build your own networks and build quality content on your web site or blog, you’ll see traffic to your web site increasing, as well.

As with any relationship, it is a give and take. Don’t just expect to join a site like Twitter for the pure sake of pushing your content. That just won’t fly — your true intentions will stick out like a sore thumb and do nothing but turn people off.

Even if you are on the site purely for networking reasons, the key is to make friends. Help out members of your network if they ask for a “retweet” or Digg, give helpful advice if asked, etc. You’ll see the same in return.

If you write a great post and have built meaningful relationships with peers in your niche, you’ll often find that friends will submit your posts and give you votes on the social bookmarking sites. The more votes you receive, the more likely your post is to be noticed by others and shared around, often resulting in additional link backs from other blogs, etc.

10. A Few SEO Don’ts — Flash and Splash

Along with any list of Do’s come the Don’ts. As far as SEO is concerned, two of these items are splash pages (often consisting of a flash animation) and all flash web sites.

Yes, flash is pretty! Full flash web sites can actually be amazing to look at — their own bit of interactive artwork. But unfortunately the search engines don’t get along well with Flash. Although there is talk of possible advancement in this area, for the most part the search engines cannot read Flash.

All that great content that you wrote for your site will not be seen by the search engines if it’s embedded into a Flash web site. As far as the search engines are concerned, your all flash web site might as well be invisible. And if the search engines can’t see your site content, a good chunk of potential customers will miss out on what you have to offer, too.

Equally as “pointless” are splash pages. Once very popular, the splash page should no longer be an important feature of any site. While splash pages used to serve as an introduction into a web site (often with a flash animation), it is no longer seen as helpful, and often times might actually annoy visitors.

For one — it’s an extra click to get into your content. Worse is when you don’t give a “skip intro” option or set of links into your main site content — because you’re essentially forcing your visitors to sit through the full animation. If you’re lucky, this will only annoy them… if not — they’ll just leave without giving your main web site a shot. And without an html link pointing into your site, the search engines have no way to continue either (unless you made use of a sitemap.xml file — but still…)

A good alternative to both issues is to make use of a flash header. There’s no problem to include a flash animation at the top of your main site, or as a feature within the content area, etc. Because this is an addition to your web site, as opposed to a full separate element.

Article Submitted by Giaza

Getting indexed in Google fast

Here are some simple SEO Tips.

A great way of getting known in search engines for certain keywords is backlinking. How you ask? This is simple, make sure you are getting links from a quality site with unique content and a good page ranking. But what we are going to discuss is anchor text and what is anchor text. You can use this in guest blogging.

What is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is just some basic HTML. Basically you are linking back to your website (back linking) and using keywords in your link. these keywords should be ones that you are trying to rank for in which this is a great SEO method on ranking higher.

Here is an example of what anchor text is.

< a href=”linktoyoursite.com” > Your Keyword here </a>

And you would get Your Keyword Here

Here is my example that I actually did in this article.

SEO Tips

Now you see that it links back to my website but is using a keyword that I am trying to rank for. Now here is something else I want to discuss. It is called “Alt Text” / “Title” . Alternative text / Title is a description of your link when someone hovers over it. If you hover over the link above it will say “SEO Tricks“. This also helps.

Why isn’t the alt text/link title the same as the keyword?

I am doing this because you want a keyword density of about 6%. So you don’t want to use the same keywords more than once or twice in an article. So if you plan on using it 5 times make sure to change the keywords up to maybe instead of SEO Techniques to SEO Technique or something similar.

So here are two examples of how to do this using alt and title.

<a title=”SEO Technique” href=”http://www.therantandrave.net/”>SEO Techniques</a>

<a href=”http://www.therantandrave.net/” alt=”SEO Technique”>SEO Techniques</a>

And these are just some basic SEO Tips on how to get indexed in Google fast.

Any questions?

Read/Discuss more here

Keywords:

SEO , Seo Tips, anchor text, black-links, backlinking, backlinks, keywords, get indexed in google fast, getting indexed in google fast