Six SEO Top Tips

Are you giving your website the best chance to climb the search engines and rank well?

Here are six simple SEO tips that can have a big impact on your website. Try them today.

1) Make sure all of your pages have a unique title and description meta tag. Also make sure that the keywords for the page are included in both of these tags. This is one simple change that can really make a big difference on your search engine placement.

2) Use consistent keyword focused links between your own web pages. When linking from one page to another within your site make sure that the link text contains the keywords for the page you are linking to. If you can use the title for that page then that is ideal. Don't use words like "Click here".

3) Go for quality links to your website. Avoid the temptation to list your site on every directory you can find. Concentrate on getting links from quality sites that already have a good standing with the search engines. Also avoid link farms or link partnering schemes. Ultimately the value of these links is usually low and the search engines don't like it.

4) Write some articles about your type of business and submit then to the article submission sites. Make sure you include your website address in the "About the Author" section of your article. People are always looking for content for their websites, so your article (if it's interesting and relevant) will get picked up and published on other sites ensuring you links back to your site.

5) Join newsgroups and forums for your business community. Participate actively in these groups and offer valuable input. People will soon see you as an authority and they may well link to your website. If you include your website address in your signature text for your posts then you will also get links from all your posts.

6) Check your site frequently for broken links. The search engines hate sites with broken links. Not only can they not index your site properly but it also suggests that the website is not being properly maintained and so they might not want to send traffic to you. There is lots of software on the market for checking your site. Google's Webmaster free service will tell you if it finds any broken links.

40-40-20 of SEO

SEO, as we all know, is Search Engine Optimization. There are so many factors of SEO that it is impossible to fulfill all the factors and achieve a 100% in SEO. There is no such thing as "perfect" SEO. Regardless, what we can do is take note of the more important factors, and achieve that as best as we can. And a major part of it is the "40:40:20 ".

According to the analysis of numerous sites, the "40:40:20 " seems to be rather accurate across major search engines like Google and Yahoo!. So what exactly is the "40:40:20"? The "40:40:20" is actually a ratio between "on-page" factors, "off-page" factors and page URLs, with 40% of search engine rankings dependent on on-page factors, 40% on off-page factors and the final 20% on page URLs. However, do note that the exact percentage ratio varies between search engines, though only slightly.

Keywords belong in on-page factors. You will need to have keywords, for every main page in your website, in the right places and with the right density. There should be keywords in the title, description and META keywords. An acceptable keyword density is about 2% to 5%. Some sites use a density as high as 7%, which is not advisable. An overly high keyword density is known as "keyword stuffing". Keyword stuffing might have a negative effect on a website's ranking with the search engines.

Off-page factors center mainly on links; links from within your site's pages and backlinks, which are links from other sites, that link to yours. It is a rule of thumb that to rank well, backlinks are a must. It is however, probably the most difficult to achieve. It is necessary to constantly get new backlinks, or your ranking might drop! One of the methods most used would be article marketing.

Your website and its pages' URL take up the last 20% of the ratio. Webpages with keywords in the URL rank better on search engines. Try putting your key search terms in the page's URL. This will have a significant effect on ranking.

Website Design, Off Page Optimization

The following is the important elements to off page web SEO and you should not just sit up and take notice but actively find the right link partners to create the best web structure. The off page factors include:-

Which Websites Link to you
The number of websites linking to you
The Google page rank of the websites linking to you
The page title of the website linking to you
The anchor text used in the link to you
The number and type of links linking to the website linking to you
The number of outbound links
The total number of links on the website that is linking to you
If the website is deemed and authority website

To understand how this is all done you need to analyze the top ten websites on the net for your keywords and this is not done easily. You need the right tools and to that unfortunately you need to spend money. One of the tools I use is SEO Elite but there are others and you should always not take any body's word that a package is good or bad in this game you need to find out for yourself.

I use it and I have found that it has a great deal of good information and training that comes with it, I can only suggest that you look at the training website and then decide on the investment or not.

When you have a package like that it enables you to do a number of interesting things with this tool. The first part is to analyze your competition on the web. Some people out there are very good sites and will not yield there number one spot without a severe amount of effort. You need to understand what degree of competition you are up against.

The main idea is that if you are trying to compete for a very competitive set of keywords you are going to have to put a lot of effort in and therefore you need to balance effort against reward. The competition for some keywords is a much closed area. If however you find that your competition has only around 2000 links in then you can probably consider that site and keywords within range of a good marketer with a good plan and strategy.

You can firstly understand that one of the best ways to outdo your competitor's sites in the top ten is to produce more unique content than them, this is the first thing to consider make or have more pages than them as this is a key factor. With some of the SEO packages on the market it can be possible to find out the keyword density for the main h1 and h2 tags this will give you the edge as you need to make your individual website content have just slightly more keyword density or prominence that your competitors.

Find the number of high ranking websites in that field and try to get them to give you a link write to them. Produce articles on that subject and submit them to high PR websites. Look at all the links that your competitors have and adjust the strategy to enhance your sites standing.

If you are new to this seek out the SEO Elite Training as this is free and gives you the best idea of what is needed to stay at number one for your keyword search terms. I wish you the best of luck with your website design and optimization.

Search Engine Optimization Gone Askew

It's painful... to have a website and be sitting there waiting for people to find you and consider the stuff you have to offer there. The process of waiting can be shortened with extensive search engine optimization done to the website. This process involves working some articles into the website, tweaking the META tags of each and every one of the pages, researching on the keywords related to your industry that you think your potential customers or clients will or might use to find your website, exchanging links with others in the industry and doing some social networking.

SEO is essential to every website on the Internet

Sounds like a lot of work? Well, I won't kid you. It's a lot of work and some people give up simply because it takes too long. But this is the way internet marketing works. If you're expecting a magical climb towards the top, you're in for a sordid find. SEO is good and it's essential to every single website; and it's a constant thing too. You don't stop when you get to the top. There's monitoring work to do, researching, and changing the pages and home page time and again to make sure it appears 'active'. Spiders don't like 'dead' things, you see.

Who are you targeting?

Anyway, sometimes some people take online marketing to the extreme and this is when things get skewed. Search engine marketing has to be combined with many other things too because let me ask you something. What's the use of millions of traffic if the people coming in are not coming back or buying anything from you? There are many other types of marketing you can use on the web to bring your potential buyers back - stuff like newsletters and mailing lists have been helping a lot of people earn a whole chunk of the cyber pie for many years now and that's something I reckon you should do as well.

Tap into the usefulness of your blog as much and often as you can

But with the unavoidable rise in popularity of blogs, I think you, as a website owner, should think about working the blog a little bit more, pump it up, make it interesting, make it interactive or maybe find someone reliable to keep it going so that your readers and site visitors will WANT to come back for more information. Remember, the more times they come back, the more chances you get at hitting them with a quick and subtle sales pitch! And ultimately, isn't that what we want? When we start a website, painfully build one, was it 'traffic' we wanted or was it 'sales'?

Think about it.

Marsha Maung is a freelance writer who has been writing for the Internet for the past 8+ years (and counting!). She is best known as a writer with scrupulous principles as to originality and creativity and she hates nothing more than boring old articles pasted into pages and worse... they make absolutely no sense. She spends her time writing for and updating her clients' blogs and working the SEO of their websites AND mothering her kids.

Search Engine Optimisation - 8 Common Mistakes!

Search Engine Optimization is a powerful tool that can be used to increase the level of relevant traffic to your website. Used correctly, optimisation is a fantastic way to boost your business. However there are some pitfalls to watch out for.

Take a look at a few of the reasons why SEO campaigns have failed and make sure you learn from their mistakes.

1. Bad Keywords - Make sure the text on your website is uncomplicated and reflects what your company is about. You need to be sure that people searching for your website will use your terminology, and more importantly, know what it means. Common mistakes include making keywords too specific, using technical jargon which only fellow professionals can understand and generalising terms so they become generic and bring in the wrong type of person.

2. Page format - Good optimisation takes into account the format of your webpage. Make sure your sections are placed in a logical way which draws customers in. It's also important to have enough page content. As a rule of thumb look to write a minimum 200-300 words on each page of your site. Don't forget that websites are for humans not search engine spiders.

3. Don't forget to build links - Part of a good optimisation campaign includes building links from other websites into yours. In simplistic terms the more people who link to you without you offering a reciprocal link, the better your rating will become. Link building is perhaps the most important aspect of Google optimisation and can help to push you to the top of the page.

4. Work with a reliable internet marketing company - Some SEO consultants will use illegitimate means to boost your website and give the impression that you are receiving more hits. This can be done by using multiple names, owning shadow domains or by guaranteeing rankings with obscure keyword phrases which are not relevant to your business. Make sure the company you use explains how they will be getting more hits on your site. The concepts relating to SEO are fairly simple. If the company you use is being secretive about their methods make sure you find out why.

5. Consult a professional - Unless you are a specialist in SEO you should consider consulting with a reputable company. A professional internet marketing consultant who cares about his or her work and is dedicated to making your site a success can easily save you from the blunders that could cost you time, resources and money.

6. Do some market research - Make sure the words you use are relevant to the business you want to receive. Several proprietary keyword research tools are available. Wordtracker, for example, is an extensive tool that allows you to find popular search terms, the frequency with which they are entered into search engines, as well as the amount of indexed sites that are competing.

7. Monitor and maintain your internet marketing campaign - After successfully optimising your site, check back and make sure your rankings are being maintained. This is also a good method of checking who your competition is. If you don't want to check all your keywords manually there is automatic software available such as Google's web API.

8. Keep up to date - The most effective SEO campaigns are changing all the time. Make you sure you, or your internet marketing specialist, are continually keeping up to date with progressions in the marketplace. This can include staying abreast of blog pages, newsletters, forum postings or case studies.

This article is free to republish provided this resource box remains intact.