What Is Website Flipping Anyway?

Google, the internet giant based in California, has had a strangle hold on much of the online market for the past decade. Most would struggle to find a single person in the Western World who is not yet familiar with the Google Search Engine. In fact the search engine is so popular that the phrase ‘Google it’ has been adopted by many Gen-Yers.

In addition to their massive presence in the search marketplace, Google also commands a large percentage of the online advertising industry, generating revenues in the region of US$35 billion per annum.

Facebook, a relatively new comer to the internet, and center of popular film The Social Network, is quickly closing on Google’s market. Currently Facebook ranks as the 2nd most visited website online globally and holds over 750 million member accounts. Facebook is beginning to threaten Google’s market dominance in online advertising due to the huge volume of data that the social network holds about its members. While Google’s advertising model focuses around what people are looking for, specifically using search queries, Facebook’s model allows advertisers to utilize behavioural targeting. A Facebook advertiser can select very precise advertising audiences by focusing on:

- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Employment Type
- Education Level
- Likes and Dislikes

By selecting a narrow cross section of the global audience by one or all of the above variables, an advertiser can see significant improvement in their ROI when compared with search or conventional marketing.

This is where Google Plus enters the scene. In May Google released a limited Beta of their new social network, to approximately 10 Million users. Google Plus, similar to Facebook, allows users to create profiles, enter personal details, connect with friends and join a global community online. The Google +1 button is the equivalent of Facebook’s Like button – allowing users to show their approval of an idea, concept, website or product and broadcast this to their network.

It’s not a new concept that Google uses a number of user specific factors to influence their search results. These have historically included the user’s location, past search history, bounce rate from certain sites, browser setting and a host of other signals to indicate whether or not a search result is likely to fit the user’s specific requirements or reason for search.

While not officially announced as yet, the Google +1 button will affect the manner in which search results are returned to users. The very nature of a social network suggests that people who are connected will share similar likes, beliefs and ideas, and consequently are likely to be interested in the same websites, resources and search results.

It follows then, that the connections of a user who have historically +1ed any given search result will have these sites promoted up the list of future search results due to perceived validity and relevance of that result.

So, when will this new ranking factor, or as Google now refers to them signal, start influencing search results?

That’s a tough question, and it’s likely only to be once the Google Plus and +1 button programs reach a critical mass. That is where the number of +1s reaches a volume and velocity that indicates considerable adoption by the searching public.

You can already see the impact of +1 within your own search results, i.e. complete a search; navigate to page 3 of the results and +1 a single result Google returned. Now complete the same search again, it’s likely that the result you +1ed will be elevated within the new set of results. This is exactly the same behaviour we expect to see once Google brings +1 and Plus into full swing.

We expect that this will become a ranking factor around the end of the year, likely in time for Christmas shopping season.

What can you do to gain the maximum benefit from +1?

At present the +1 signal is only being used to influence a user’s personal search results, but this is likely to change late this year so it’s time to get started on a strategy to make the most of this opportunity. This way when Google flicks the switch you will receive all the benefits of being +1ed and you will surge ahead of your competitors within specific market segments.

By now your web developer or SEO firm should have already contacted you offering +1 integration; it’s a good idea to get Facebook Like done at the same time. If not, get in touch with the team that manages your website and request them to place the +1 button prominently on your site. The button is pretty funky and modern and is not likely to do any damage to your branding or design. Make sure you are communicating with your clients, visitors and connections to ensure they +1 your site. The earlier you start work the sooner you will see results.

Rich is head of SEO Perth for Zen Net Solutions, who are a leading Online Marketing Strategy agency.

When you are aiming to build your business part time, you are required to pick and choose what to think about to get the most targeted visitors to your site. Do you spend your time on Facebook and Twitter or do you spend your time with SEO? Is one of these marketing tools more valuable than the other? Which one of these marketing tools will
get you where you should be the fastest? Will utilizing only one of these tools help you make more money?

Let’s dive into both of these tools to work out what would be best.

SEO – What Should This Marketing Tactic do for Your Business?

SEO or Search Engine Marketing, when done properly, could possibly get you the number one spot on Google, Yahoo and Bing. How important is this to your website and your bottom line? – absolutely huge! A number one ranking, even a page one ranking will bring you a large amount of traffic.

However, how easy is this for you to accomplish? Do you possess the expertise to get your site on the first page of Google? Just how much time will that take? When you are working on your business part time, you may not have enough time and energy to make SEO give you the results you want. If you have the money, you can have an SEO expert do that part for you.

SEO is a long-term strategy for your business. It also takes a lot more effort than social media and you don’t know if it will work. There are so many different keyword phrases to focus on, and so much content to get written.

Social Media – Would This Strategy Work for Your Business?

Social Media/Facebook/Twitter will bring you faster results. It will be much easier for you to manage and it won’t take so very long for you to receive the kind of traffic that you are looking for. Another vote for social media is the fact that it truly is free. You don’t need to pay anyone to create your Facebook page or your group. You can do that yourself and it won’t take that long.

However, even though you could get a lot of traffic faster from social media, it isn’t precisely the same kind of traffic. Social media prominence is not identical to a #1 listing on Google. If you are concentrating on social media, you really are actually building your reputation.

Social media will benefit your business when you can provide something that your fans will want on a consistent basis. If they’re in need of how-to information, you need to provide that on a daily or weekly basis. If you provide video type products, you have to provide videos on a consistent basis. The key to social media is consistently communicating with your audience.

So which is the best route, social media or SEO?

For me personally, you should employ the two tactics together. As you can see from Google results, many of the top results come from Facebook likes and material you post on your Facebook page. The search engines are using SEO along with what is going on in the social media arena.

And when you really examine the two, social media and SEO, you will see how you actually need to do precisely the same things for both. If you want high rankings in the search engines, provide great content on your Facebook page on a consistent basis based on what people are looking for and you will cover both at the same time. So, is social media more powerful than SEO? No, they’re both powerful. Consider using them together and you will have success with both.

If you want to learn more about using Facebook for your business, download Cathy’s free Facebook Guide here

Have you ever tried to hammer a nail with the heel of your shoe? I did once, when I was a kid and didn’t have a hammer handy. It can be done, but I can assure you, it’s difficult – very, very difficult. So too is trying to build a business without branding yourself.

So, what exactly is personal branding?

In essence, personal branding is the process by which business people differentiate themselves by identifying and effectively articulating what makes them different or unique from their competitors – what makes them stand out from the crowd – a sort of personal USP (Unique Selling Proposition), if you will. This is especially important if you’re a service provider in a competitive field.

Why is personal branding so important?

Because if you don’t stand out from the crowd, that means you’re just like everyone else – a white jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. And if you’re just like everyone else, why should customers or clients choose you over your competitors? Answer: They shouldn’t, and they probably won’t!

Using myself as a real-life example, let me illustrate the importance of personal branding, and how it can make you stand out in a crowded field.

My name, “David Jackson” is a relatively common name. To make matters worse, there are many other David Jackson’s with business websites who have been online a lot longer than I have and are far more established.

But if you type “david jackson marketing” into Google without the quotation marks, I rank at the #1 position out of nearly 3 million pages. And if you just type in the name “david jackson” without the quotation marks. I rank #4 out of over 42 million pages. That didn’t happen by accident. That happened because I was relentless in establishing my personal brand.

When I created my website 3 years ago, my #1 objective was to have people associate my name with marketing – consistently solid marketing advice and quality marketing articles. And I was relentless in pursing that objective. Mission accomplished, but I’m not resting on my laurels.

Today, I’m just as relentless in trying to hold on to my top Google ranking. The numerous published articles on my site, as well as top authority sites keeps me highly visible, as well as provide the search engine spiders with plenty of fresh, quality, relevant nourishment.

And what are the overall results of all my hard work? Well, because of my personal branding efforts, I’m so busy with my consulting business, I’m actually turning clients away. Such is the power of personal branding and relentless execution.

Following are 5 profitable reasons why you should establish your personal brand:

1. Gain Expert Status

Without branding yourself, people will not perceive you as an expert. You will simply be another carnival barker in a sea full of carnival barkers. Branding yourself will give you expert status (provided, of course, you really are an expert) – and a much bigger megaphone.

2. Credibility and Trust

With the advent of the Internet and the world-wide dominance of Google, nowadays, as a business person, you are pretty much your Google search results. Let’s face it, any responsible person considering doing business with you is going to do their due diligence and search for information about you online to see if you’re legitimate and trustworthy. And if they can’t find you, or have a hard time finding you in Google’s universe, guess who’s going to get their business?

That’s right, if your competitors are more visible than you are in the search results, the perception will be, they’re more professional and trustworthy than you are. That means they’re going to get the business you could be getting. The best way to prevent that from happening is to effectively establish your personal brand – stand out in the crowd.

3. Gain An Edge On Your Competition

Earlier, I described personal branding as “the process by which business people differentiate themselves by identifying and effectively articulating what makes them different or unique from their competitors – what makes them stand out from the crowd – sort of a personal USP (Unique Selling Proposition).”

I also said, “If you don’t stand out from the crowd, that means you’re just like everyone else – a white jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. And if you’re just like everyone else, why should customers or clients choose you over your competitors?”

Well, by effectively establishing your personal brand, you automatically become a black jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. You stand out!

4. Increase Your Value

Establishing your personal brand will increase your perceived value and give you the ability to charge higher fees – provided, of course, you’re good at what you do. This will automatically increase your income. And if you are really good at what you do and your clients are satisfied, they will refer you to other clients. Higher fees, satisfied clients and referrals…This personal branding thing is sounding better all the time, isn’t it?

5. Gain Confidence

As you become more and more successful because of your personal branding efforts, you will also become more confident. This confidence will be obvious to everyone who comes into contact with you, including potential clients who will be magnetically attracted to you because of your confidence.

In closing, I didn’t write this article to teach you “how” to brand yourself. I wrote it to educate you on “why” you should brand yourself. If you want to learn how to brand yourself, there are personal branding experts far more qualified than I who can teach you about personal branding. One of the absolute best is Dan Schwabel (PersonalBrandingBlog.com).

There are also some excellent books on the subject. Two of my favorites are You Are a Brand!: How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success by Catherine Kaputa and The 10Ks of Personal Branding: Create a Better You by Kaplan Mobray.

David Jackson is a marketing consultant and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com – Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! http://free-marketing-tips-blog.com

There are plenty of SEO companies and consultants on the Internet that can help you out and plenty of free forums and guides that will give you the basics. Even if you do decide to use the skills and expertise of an SEO firm, it is still important that you at least know the basics of SEO so that you can also work with the company to make the results even better.

There are loads of things that you need to be doing within an SEO campaign, but there are also some things that you REALLY must avoid and we take a look at some of these below with our top ten things to avoid when running an SEO campaign.

Waiting Too Long - One of the biggest mistakes most people make is waiting too long to even begin an SEO campaign. If you have a website you should be running some kind of SEO, no matter how young the site is because a good campaign can help to get a higher ranking in the early days.

Targeting Competitive Keywords - If you sell houses then the chances of you getting to the top of Google for the keyword “houses” are going to be slim, to say the least. If you are working in an extremely competitive market, then you need to look outside of the box and start looking at easier keywords that you can rank for, because realistically, it is going to take a lot of time, effort and a little bit of luck to top the charts for the most competitive search terms.

Ignoring Long tail Keywords - Many people think that they should always go for the most popular keywords, but these often tend to be the most competitive, so you need to look at the long tail keywords. If you targeted 5 long tail keywords that all attracted 200 searches a month but were less competitive than one that attracted 1000 searches a month, you stand more chance of getting the traffic you want in a much shorter time.

Writing Rubbish Content - Content is king for Google and the search engine is so advanced and sophisticated these days that it can easily spot duplicate content and also poor quality content. The main aim is to write high quality content that is useful, informative and offers the user a good experience; else you will just be wasting your time and hindering your progress.

Publishing Poor Articles - Content on your own site is very powerful, but you should also look at writing articles and releasing them on some of the more powerful article directories like EzineArticles. If you are going to do this, then make sure you only publish good quality articles, otherwise they will be rejected and once again you will have wasted your time.

Spammy Blog Comments - Although blog commenting can be a good way to get relevant links back to your site, if you go around adding poor and unrelated comments, then this is only going to backfire on you in the long run. If you are going to comment on blogs, then make sure that you post quality comments on quality sites and check out the link follow status and the page rank / authority before you even begin.

Reciprocal Linking - Swapping links used to be one of the methods used for acquiring links until like most link practices it was abused and Google started to shy away from the weight it carried in rankings. Although it can be a good idea to swap links with local businesses or related businesses, do not waste your time swapping links and also limit the number of outbound links you have on your site.

Bad Link Neighbourhoods - Always avoid linking to or getting links from “bad neighbourhoods” – sites like gambling, adult and other sites that might be considered a little bit risque. If you are found to have loads of links on these types of sites, then you are going to be in trouble, so always make sure you are careful about where links are added to your site.

Ignoring Your Own Website - SEO begins at home in our opinion because if your website is rubbish, any extra traffic you generate will be a waste of time. Add to this the fact that if your meta titles and content are really poor, you are also going to lose out on ranking because two of the biggest factors when it comes to onsite SEO are meta titles and quality content.

Running Out Of Patience - SEO takes time – fact! You cannot expect to start an SEO campaign and get overnight results; it will take weeks, if not months, before you really start to get the results that you deserve if you run a good campaign. SEO should be an ongoing thing, running for as long as you decide to keep your website alive, because SEO is one of those things that goes on forever and is a constant effort.

Ian Spencer works for Clear Web Services, a SEO Web Optimization and Web Design company serving the Forest Of Dean, Gloucestershire and South Wales.

WordPress is one of the most robust and extremely versatile content management systems available. It might be used to make a basic blog site, or it can be used as the robust support driving your ecommerce business. What is really special about WordPress is that you are able to effortlessly design both kinds of websites without any help; even if you do not know anything on the subject of creating a web site or Html code. Still the greatest thing about WordPress is that it is amazingly Search engine optimization friendly. Here are some reasons why WordPress is one of the best content management systems for SEO.

1. Search Engine Optimization Friendly Permalinks: Permalinks are in essence links or URLs to your article. When you generate a post or article in WordPress, a URL is immediately created. WordPress lets you make URLs or permalinks that are made up of key words which search engines are attracted to. This allows for search engine crawlers to rank your site for the word of your choice.

2. SEO Compatible Article Titles: WordPress can be set up to automatically make the article titles a permalink. A keyword rich title utilized as a permalink to your internet site will make it simpler for you to achieve greater rankings in Google along with other search engines when people are searching for data or products that you are offering.

3. Allows You to Create Tags: Tags are similar to labels. Tags are found at the end of a article on any WordPress blog site and enable you to use keyword phrases to describe your post. At the end of this article you will likely see several words or tags at the bottom of the post such as “Word Press”, “WordPress for beginners”, or “WordPress for SEO”. These tags or key words will let the search engines web spiders better index your blog post which actually will assist surfers who are searching for information like “WordPress” or “WordPress for SEO” to find your website.

4. Lets You Cross Link Content: WordPress allows you to easily link associated content which helps with search engine optimization. Cross linking is where you create a link from one of your articles or blog posts to another relevant article on your website. Using this article as an illustration, I could create a link within this article that when clicked would bring you to a different WordPress article which you might find insightful. The link would be a keyword, or keyword phrase such as “learn WordPress”. This is another WordPress tool to help with your search engine optimization.

5. You Can Ping New Articles or Posts: Each time you post or edit either a posting or a blog page your WordPress web site can alert a range of different web sites that you have updated your web site. This is known as pinging and it is another very valuable aid that you can use to help your web site with getting ranked in the search engines.

6. Effortless Install of Google Sitemaps: Google Sitemaps has two important advantages for site owners. Not only can it help site visitors see a outline of exactly what they can find on your web site, but it helps Google to further index and rank your website by letting Google know exactly which blog pages are the most important.

7. Ability to Create Categories: Categories enable you to automatically arrange your content on your website. Think of categories like folders or maybe, a directory. A visitor to your internet site can find any article that you have ever published on your website, or any product that you want to sell easily because WordPress lets you assign a category. If you have visited websites where you can easily choose a list of subjects or products based on type, that website has set up categories. As you’ve probably suspected, search engines like it when website information is well organized and this will also help with the indexing of your internet site on Google, or any of the search engines. Quick tip: Use keywords that your audience is searching for as categories to make it simpler for people to discover you. Building a website that is SEO friendly is a snap because of the tools built in to WordPress.

If you want to make it easier to be discovered on the web, WordPress is definitely a powerful search engine optimization tool that you absolutely cannot do without.

Taylor Jordan writes for Tools For Social Media, http://www.ToolsForSocialMedia.com and Social Media For Business: http://socialmediaforbusiness.tumblr.com/ Check out more search engine marketing tips.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of those things that can make or break an online business. It is so important to find ways to get your message out and motivate others to visit your website to get more information. It is very unlikely you will ever have much success if you don’t learn how to effectively market your sites.

Internet Marketing involves learning about and keeping up with the best marketing techniques and practices. It is not unusual to find little changes that can increase your traffic and sales. Learning to test your sales materials, landing pages, and other factors will ensure you have constant results and you’ll build upon your success.

It is highly recommended you avoid any techniques or shortcuts you may come across often referred to as ‘Black Hat’. These tactics might provide some quick results, however, if you wish to have a long-lasting presence and reputation, it will be better to avoid the temptation to use them. Learn from those that have employed successful practices and principles, it will be worth it in the long run.

Not only will marketing methods change, so will the algorithms that search engines use. Their goal is simply to provide their users with the most relevant search results for any given term. Changes and updates they make may affect your rankings at times. However, if you are using sound and proven techniques, you should be able to recover quite quickly with some minor tweaks.

One practice that goes a long way in helping you get that valuable traffic, so you make more sales, is learning how to find potentially profitable keywords. The key is to find those words that a lot of people use, yet there are less websites in place that you will be competing against. Many different approaches to doing this are offered online.

Once you find those high-value keywords, you can use them in domain names, or just start posting on your site, using them in the most effective ways. You’ll also use them for link building. The idea is to use them as anchor text so you start getting links that point to your website, or the page where there is more information. You can also use them when commenting on blogs and forums related to those items you’re marketing.

To increase the value of the posts and articles you write, it is important to learn how to effectively use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). These are words that are directly related to your keywords and when included will add relevance to what you have written. You’ll also will want to learn the best ways to make the most of all the social media sites to increase your exposure and find those interested in your offers. You’ll also get more valuable backlinks that will increase the importance of your website. All of these are things you will want to do so that over time your website will show up higher in search results for the terms you want to rank for.

The biggest advantage is that these are SEO practices that will give you long-term results. How much success you attain with your marketing efforts will depend a lot on how effectively you learn to apply these principles. At the same time, if you try to cheat the system, you’re very likely to see a loss of visitors, sales, and perhaps see your site disappear from any search engine results.

Consult the top search and social media marketing firm in Canada for more advice on Montreal SEO, as well as other web-based processes. Offering a wide array of search engine optimization London strategies, contact the experts today. http://www.searchenginepeople.com/

Good blog writing is an art. It requires attention to detail, good grammar, good punctuation, correct spelling and great content. So what is the single biggest mistake a blogger can make when writing a blog post that is supposed to be optimized for search engines?

Basically, it is to sacrifice any of these requirements in order to use what they think are high paying, low competition and high inquiry keywords or keyword phrases that simply do not fit into the content of their post under the misconception that they believe this is a good website search optimization strategy.

Examples are deliberate misspellings, phrases that are questions and cannot be contextualized as answers, abbreviated phrases and so on.

The flaw in focusing on keywords of this type rather than content is that the search engine operators actually look for and value good content i.e. the content that flows nicely, has correct spelling, good punctuation etc. etc.

They do not value nonsensical paragraphs that are clearly written to attract search engine attention rather than to meet the requirements of visitors to the website that have arrived there for a specific purpose and that is to find great content and information on their topic of choice.

You only have to think about what happens when someone arrives on your website and either cannot make sense of what you have written or, equally as important, cannot find the information they are looking for. They simply leave again and go and look for a different website or blog that does provide the information they want in a format they enjoy and in a place they can find it.

The technical term for what I am discussing is the bounce rate, the time a visitor spends on your website and how many pages they visit. If they only look at the first page or leave almost as soon as they arrive then you will register a high bounce rate. 100% basically says that they have not found what they came for and left immediately. A more acceptable level is 50%, but should be lower if possible, and that should be the minimum target any webmaster or blogger aspires to achieve.

Writing your blogs or websites with the objective of providing useful information that is well written and with appropriate keywords that describe the actual content of your site will result in far better search engine optimization than selecting keywords that are inappropriate or cannot be converted into sensible paragraphs of written text that can be understood and enjoyed by your visitors.

If you do your keyword research thoroughly and with this view in mind, there is a high probability that you will find keywords that are high paying, low competition, with sufficient numbers of inquiries and that do fit with your content in a sensible and coherent fashion. The extra effort required to do this will ultimately reward you with the associated benefit of attracting more people who in turn will become loyal visitors that come back to revisit your site and who are likely to recommend it to others.

Remember it can take a very long time to build a loyal fan base for a blog but all the work put into achieving that can be lost in moments by placing rubbish in your blog posts. You need to consider both the human elements and the search engine algorithm elements.

Building an Online Business offers information and advice on how to create and promote a small business on the Internet.

Some people say the mysterious Google TrustRank is what really determines SERP positions on result pages. It was obviously created to decide how trusted a website is by looking at various factors including security and the length of time a domain has been around on the web. They have never made an official explanation on this and have never spoken of it. However, there is no doubt that there are two elements that determine trust; user perception and trust ranking.

If you’re serious about website design or online business then this should be your number one priority. If not, you shouldn’t be looking too far into the future of your empire because you won’t be able to build up good relationships with leads or customers.

Why is It Important to Build Trusted Relationships?

Well first of all, you’re probably going to lose more than 80% of your potential buyers because the internet is well known for scams and spam. People don’t like to take a chance, especially when the online market is so competitive. The other reason is your best mate Google – if Google doesn’t trust you, people won’t find you, and if people can’t find you then there’s no point in running an internet business at all. Becoming a trusted site in their eyes will not only make you more visible to the online world, but to many others too.

How to Build Trust with Search Engines and Visitors

As mentioned earlier in this article, there are two main factors that will affect your business relationships, user perception and trust ranking. User perception is how a visitor understands a site in their eyes so doing the following will help gain trust quickly:-

Blogging – Shows visitors that you are posting quality content on a regular basis and talking about relevant subjects to keep them interested.

Tweeting – Shows that you are active, especially if you post tweets every couple of hours which is what you should be doing with Twitter anyway.

Quality – People will trust you if it looks like you put time and effort into making your site look stunning as well as professional. It should be tested by humans for humans and have a good user experience. Make sure everyone gets a great first impression.

Being Real – Make sure you have a telephone number along with other contact details including an address if there is one so people know your business is real.

Simply put, people who have had bad experiences with dodgy sites are careful about the sites they trust and purchase from.

The second element is TrustRank, the unofficial set of factors that determine how trusted a site is by using sophisticated algorithms affecting the Search Engine Ranking Process (SERP) rankings:-

Legal Issues – In the EU, you must have a Privacy Policy explaining how cookies are used and handled if they are collected. People have seen better positions in search results by placing the policy link in their footer.

SSL Certificates – This is a definite factor for online businesses. Major search engines can tell how trusted a site is by a Trust Authority. Companies such as VeriSign provide secure and trusted certificates with EV (Extended Validation – the green bar that appears with the HTTPS in the URL) features which is instantly recognized by visitors, spiders or crawlers.

Domain Age – Even if you use paid services to hide WHOIS data, its been said that Google can see the actual data anyway so the data should only be hidden if really needed. The age of a domain name can show that you’ve been around a while and it can be a good idea to have at least 10 years registered on it.

Links - The sites that link to you and the sites you link to yourself can tell a lot about an organization. It not only determines your PageRank, but if you have links to sites Google may consider spam or junk, it can affect your authority too. Make sure all your links are of good quality and are completely relevant.

There are other factors, but Google will probably never tell us. An interesting fact is that TrustRank was actually registered by the corporate giant in 2005 along with a patent to go with it. So it’s definitely real and it could mean more to the SERP than PageRank. Give it a try and see if it makes any difference because it’s definitely worth it.

West London based freelance web designer Sohail Amir, providing bespoke web design and development solutions.

Getting website traffic from search engines like Google and Yahoo has to be part of your Internet marketing plan mainly for three reasons:

1. It is high quality traffic. (After all, these visitors searched using your best keywords!)

2. With good ranking you can get a lot of this traffic passively.

3. It’s free! I’ve received literally millions of visitors from search engines over the years.

This article will show you how to start your own flow of traffic from Google, Yahoo, and Bing. It all starts with a little SEO.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It consists of strategies to help your web pages rank better in the search engine results pages (serps) for a particular search word or phrase.

SEO can be a complicated subject which is why there are so many freelance consultants and internet marketing companies offering SEO services. Some of them are quite expensive, charging thousands of dollars to get a site ranked in the top ten for your particular niche keywords.

However, if you are running on a tight budget and can’t afford to hire a professional, you can do SEO yourself. Just follow the nine SEO strategies below. Most of it is fairly simple, it just takes time.

(When building new sites, I like to do everything myself except steps 7 & 8 below which I prefer to outsource.)

1. Choose Your Keywords Wisely

When you are planning your website’s content, you should do some research about which keywords to use. Keywords are the search terms that people use to find websites in search engines. Think carefully about your target audience and consider what they might type into a search engine when they are looking for websites like yours.

You can use tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to help you with your research. When you are starting out, aim to have a list of five keyword phrases that you will optimize your website for. Once you are ranking well for these five, you can add more keywords to the list.

When using the Google Keyword tool, use the “exact match” option so you know how many people are searching for the exact terms you’re researching. The best keyword phrases to optimize for are keyword phrases with 1500 – 5000 monthly searches. Those keywords usually have just enough searches to be profitable, but not so many that the competition is too stiff to outrank.

2. Use Your Keywords in the Title Tags of Your Web Pages

A web page’s title tag is one of the most important factors for how that page will rank in the search engines. Each page at your site should use a title tag that matches the search term you’re trying to get the page ranked for. This is especially important at your main page. The title tag should also describe the content of the page in a concise and accurate manner. This helps the search engines decide how relevant the page is to a particular search term. The more relevant a page is, the higher it will rank in the results for that search term.

3. Use Your Keywords in Your Domain Name

I’ve done a lot of research on this and even though not everyone agrees, I have found clear evidence that websites with exact match domains get top ranking easier than non-keyword domain sites. In other words, once you know your best keyword phrase for your niche, see if you can get the domain name that matches that phrase exactly. Go for .com then .net, then .org. If none of them are available, use a hyphen (-) between your best keywords.

4. Use Your Keywords in the HTML Heading Tags

Heading tags (e.g. H1, H2, H3, etc.) give the search engines more info about how relevant the web page is to certain search terms. Make sure to use heading tags containing your keywords at each page of your site. As a bare minimum, every web page should have one H1 tag that includes the same keywords that are in your title tag.

5. Check the Keyword Density in Your Website Text

The number of times your keywords appear in the text on your web page or blog helps search engines match the content to the appropriate search terms. This is known as keyword density. How often keywords should be used is often debated among SEO experts. Some believe that stuffing a page with keywords is beneficial to search engine rankings, while others think that ‘keyword stuffing’ is viewed as a form of spam by the search engines. As a general rule, for a web page that has about 400-600 words of body content, use the main keyword once in the first paragraph, once in second paragraph, once in the last paragraph, and once somewhere in between.

6. Setup Your Website’s Internal Linking Structure Properly

When you are planning your website or blog, make sure you have at least one text link on every page that links to your main URL. The text link should contain your best keyword or keyword phrase. As your site grows in size, so will the number of web pages that point to your main page, increasing the popularity for that page based on your best keywords. Also, when adding blog posts at your blog, be sure to hyperlink to other posts on your blog when appropriate. (Each time you do this, be sure to use the keywords you’re working at getting ranked!)

7. Grow the Number of Incoming Links from a Wide Variety of External Sites

Of all the factors in SEO, one of the most important is the number of web pages that link to the target page you are trying to get ranked well. In other words, if site A and site B are virtually identical, site A will outrank site B if there are more web pages linking to site A.

Other factors that help are having a variety of links and multiple links from high PR sites. (PR stands for page rank, a weighted value Google gives to pages based on their authority.) If site A has links from a wide variety of places such as social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Digg, niche blogs, web 2.0 sites like Squidoo and Hubpages, article directories, etc., it will outrank site B with the same number of links all from one source.

Of course getting lots of links to a site can be time consuming. That’s why you may want to outsource this task. You can do so at odesk.com, guru.com, elance.com and many other places. Just be sure to hire link builders with a good track record and lots of positive feedback. Also be sure to instruct them properly and let them know you need links from a wide variety of sources, and have them apply
strategies 8 and 9 below.

8. Grow the Number of Incoming Links From External Sites Slowly and Consistently

Don’t go too fast with your link building campaign. Getting a few dozen links a week or even 10 a day is OK, but if Google sees 1000 new incoming links to your site the next time they update their database, you’ll likely move down the serps, not up.

9. Use Your Keywords in as Many Incoming Links as Possible

While you don’t want all the links to your site to use the same keyword or keyword phrase, you do want to focus on using your best keyword or keyword phrase for most of your links. Remember, SEO is all about proper site setup and link building. If the top ranked web page at Google for your best search term has say, 200 incoming links, you can outrank that page when you get 201, provided you have all or most of the other strategies explained today in place as well.

In closing…

Internet marketing can be inexpensive if you do things like SEO and email marketing yourself.

If you use all of the SEO strategies shared in this article, you will improve your ranking in the search engines. Depending on the niche you’re in, you could go right to the top of the serps within a matter of months!

Get more do-it-yourself strategies like these from Jim Daniels at http://www.bizweb2000.com – he’s been making a living online since 1996 and can show you how to do it too.