Posts Tagged ‘website marketing’

When it comes to receiving free traffic straight from search engines everyone appears to have an opinion of how to receive page one rankings for a website. Regrettably, search engines like google don’t divulge their algorithm to anyone.

So how do you know where to direct your SEO efforts?

The most important factor in gaining free traffic from search engines involves GETTING BACK TO BASICS!

Sure, all these fresh methods involving social media sites, video and audio possess a role in helping sites receive good rankings. But if a site is inadequately optimized to start with then the effectivness of these techniques will be limited. And the vast majority of sites are badly optimized. Most website owners don’t even bother to do keyword research, or perform only simple research (i.e. how many searches does the preferred keyword get?) Consequently they could end up targeting keywords that are too general or have too much opposition… then they wonder why they’re not receiving traffic from search engines… sheesh!

So what are the fundamentals? The essentials are:

1. Domain name:
2. Website Title:
3. Backlinks:

You might also say that keyword research is essential. But this article assumes that methodical keyword research has been undertaken and potentially profitable keywords selected.

Dealing with each aspect individually:

DOMAIN NAME: Every website page should target particular keywords. With the main domain it is critical to make use of the principal keyphrase within the domain name (unless the domain is used for branding). For example, if a man named Stinkbottom Fartworthy had a site about dog training he wouldn’t dub his site StinkbottomFartworthy.com since it has nothing to do with dog training (despite being unforgettable), unless he specifically wanted his name to be synonymous with dog training. To rank for the keyword ‘dog training’ it’s considerably better to use the domain name dogtrainingtips.com. Even though this keyword has enormous competition, if site content matched the domain it would ultimately obtain a reputation as a dog training site and rank well for the keyword.

You can use sub pages on your site to target much less competitive keywords like, ‘how to train small dogs’, ‘how to teach your dog tricks’ etc. These pages will create traffic for your site. As you draw in more ‘longtail’ keywords (keywords containing more than three words) the site will start to rank for the more competitive keyword in the domain name.

How do you include longtail keywords in URLs? Merely incorporate the keyword in the filename of the html file. So dogtrainingtips.com can have a subpage of how-to-teach-your-dog-tricks.html thus the direct entry url becomes dogtrainingtips.com/how-to-teach-your-dog-tricks.html. If your site is produced in wordpress you can set your permalinks (permanent links) to use the post title as the page id and use the keyword in the post title.

WEBSITE TITLE: Your website title is found in the header section of html code. The title is the text that appears in the colored bar across the top of the browser window. Many sites don’t optimize this section but correct optimization goes a LONG way to persuading search engines that your site ought to be ranked for the keywords contained in this tag… especially when page content matches.

BACKLINKS: Backlinks are the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of SEO. This is where social media sites etc come into play. By definition, a backlink is a link on a different site aiming at your website.

There are two very important things to keep in mind with backlinks.

1. Backlinks on associated sites are far more effective than those on unrelated sites. In the example of Mr Fartworthy’s dog training site. If he has backlinks on sites relating to dogs, those links will be much more valuable in increasing the search engine ranking of his site than having them on a site concerning trucks. In general, one link on a associated site is worth 5-10 links on totally unrelated sites. So don’t squander effort building links on unrelated sites!

2. If you desire your site to rank for a particular keyword, use that keyword as the anchor text for your backlinks. Anchor text is the wording that people click to visit your website. So to rank for the keyword ‘dog training tips’ you would employ that as the anchor text. It is important to note that not all backlinks should use this anchor text as it looks abnormal to search engines. So it’s important to use alternative anchor text as well, like your name or some other keyword.