What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization is a method to get your site higher in rankings with all of the search engines. There are two parts of SEO – there is “on page” which accounts for between 20-30% and then we have “off page” which is the other 70-80%.

What benefits do we derive by increasing the ranking of our site? The higher ranking you achieve allows you to get higher in Google and what we are aiming for is page one in our niche. This gives you organic traffic and the more traffic you receive the more product that you can sell.

Some of the “on page” factors for you to consider:

Do some Keyword research

Chose your Domain name and have your main keyword in the domain name

Page title- include your keywords in your page title

Use H1-H6 Header tags

Use Meta tags

Give a Meta description

Content – any content you put on your site has to be original. Google does allow duplicate content but you can only benefit once from that content. This means if the first time you used it on a site and that site has a higher ranking, Google will not take notice of it on the lower ranking site.

Use a Site Map

Use Anchor text.

As I said remember this is only 20-30%. Increasing your ranking with SEO can be very time consuming if you are doing it for yourself. However, it can also be rewarding. All pages on the internet are created equal, but if you know how to use SEO, you have an advantage of getting noticed and ranked by the search engines. Many people think that Google is the only search engine but there are hundreds of them.

The main objective of “off page “SEO” is to get links pointing to your site. The search engines are unaware that you are creating these links and each link acts as a popularity vote for your site in the eyes of the search engine.

Some elements of “off page” SEO are:

Blogging – there are several free platforms that you can use like Blogger, Hub Pages, Squidoo.

Blog commenting – go and check out other peoples blogs and leave a relevant comment.

Forums – find forums in your niche and sign up and ensure that if you are permitted you add a signature block including your site. Each time when you write a post or thread, people see your site and it is possible they will visit.

Free classified – US free ads and Craigs lists are two well know ones

Articles – write articles and post them to various directories like Ezine. Each article should be unique content

Pinging – each time you add to you site or blog, ping it using pingoat.com or something similar

Press Releases –One of the best ways to increase your traffic

Now you can see that this can be time consuming but all of these methods are free. You could pay for advertising but this can be expensive. If you know how to do SEO and put it into practice, every day just doing a little more, you will be able to get your site up in the rankings.

To YOUR success

Sue McDonald

One of the biggest challenges that all internet marketers face is getting targeted traffic to their site. There are several ways to drive traffic to your website.

One of the most popular ways is through Search Engine Optimization. There is two parts to SEO – on page SEO and off page SEO.

A few things you should know about “on page”. Always start with keyword research. Google provide an excellent free tool for this – Google Keyword Tool. When you are purchasing a domain name, ensure that your main keyword is in that domain. When you are posting on your blog, use the keyword in the title of your blog. Keyword density must also be considered. It should be between 3-5%. Anymore many make the blog or article appear to be spam.  Make sure you use header tags and meta tags. You can use internal links from one of your pages to another. Always only use unique content. If you use the same content that you have used before, Google will only rank this content once and that is where it is ranking the highest. These are some of the “on page” factors that Google loves and will increase your ranking and help get you traffic.

Some of the “off page” factors include writing articles and blogs and linking them to your site. You can also go and find blogs about similar topic as your own and add a comment. This too will give you another link and more traffic.

Another way to get people is to advertise your site. If you go to Google and type in ” free ads” you will see how many sites are available.

To get traffic to your site or blog, make sure that the content is relevant to your URL. In saying this, when people come to your site, they are looking for information that is related to their keyword search.  Your site or blog should help the person with their problem by answering any questions they may have. If someone leaves a question in your comment box, always give them an answer.

If you are using a blog, it is advisable to add regular posts to your site. Not only is this good in the eyes of Google but you will find that you will get a good following who are interested in what you have to say. Give people a free book or article when they visit your site. This then will help you foster a relationship with your visitors.

Encourage people to come and leave a comment on your blog and take the time to answer them and reply accordingly.

To YOUR success

Sue McDonald
P.S. Leave me a comment and as long as it is in good taste – I will approve it.