Targeting Sites :Off-Page SEO:

Targeting Sites If you want to rank well for a specific keyword, especially a competitive keyword, you can go about it the old-fashioned way and try to get links from anyone you can and slowly move up the rankings ladder. Or, you can use these high-powered techniques to quickly gain authority in the eyes of Google. Research your competitors, and get a link from the top 100 sites that link to them. Search Google for your keywords, and do your best to secure links from those sites in the top 100 for your keywords. Get links from your competitors! Copy Your Competitors When you do a search for your rival's website, competitor.com, you'll find out the most authoritative sites that mention your competitor. Visit these sites and decide if it would be possible for you to get a link from...

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Competitors :Off-Page SEO:

Researching Competitors The internet is a great place for someone to make their fortune, but the secret is out. It is now unlikely that you will be able to get to the top of the search engines without first clawing your way through a crowd of competitors. The trick to making this journey easier to educate yourself on your competitors and taking advantage of any opportunities you uncover. Known Competitors If your website isn't a unique idea, you probably already know of a couple other companies that are doing what you're doing. For example, if you are starting a web design company, you can do a quick Google search and see that there are easily over a million sites, but that doesn't mean it's impossible for you to rank well. If you refine the search down to the city you live in, the number...

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Anchor Text :Off-Page SEO:

Anchor Text      Simply getting links from many other websites is not enough for your website to rank well in the search engines. The quality of your anchor text will play a huge factor in ranking your pages for specific keywords, especially competitive ones. What is Anchor Text? Anchor text refers to the words that make up a link; they are the words that turn your mouse cursor into a finger-pointing hand. For example, in the sentence, "I really like to go to this store," "this store" is anchor text for the link.  Why is Anchor Text Important? Search engines gather data by traveling around the web via links, jumping from page to page. Links are the lifeblood of a search engine and are used as key indicators for identifying the topics of the pages they're...

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SEO Internal Linking Structure :On-Page SEO:

SEO Internal Linking Structure The honest fact is, if company owners knew how important that the internal linking structure of a site was to a site's performance on the search engines, they'd have multiple dedicated staff working just to make sure they had it optimized 100%. This topic is a little advanced, but it's helpful to break the inner linking structure down into three parts: Page depth Quantity of Internal Links Quality of Internal Links Page Depth Page depth refers to the number of required clicks to get to a page from the homepage. Pages that are available in one click are deemed more important than those that are nearly hidden and require more than 3 clicks to reach. It might seem a little strange, but if you can visualize your website in a tree graph, you will easily notice why...

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SEO Keyword Use :On-Page SEO:

SEO Keyword Use So you've researched which keywords you want to target, but just putting the keywords in your <title> and <h1> tags is not enough. If you stop there, you're not going to be able to cover all the bases or pull in as much search traffic as you could. When doing on-page optimization for your selected keywords, there are three things to take into consideration: Keywords Density - How many times is your keyword mentioned on your site? If it's too much, you'll look like a spammer; if it's too little, you won't look like a relevant match and the search engines won't consider your site. Keyword Variation - Altering versions of your keywords will help you capture hidden search engine traffic. Similar Keywords - These are closely related topics to your keywords that will...

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SEO Header and Bold Tags :On-Page SEO:

Although the internet has changed a great deal in the last ten years, one thing that has remained status quo is the way that webmasters designate topics and things of importance. Topics of a page are often set with header tags <h1> though <h6>, while important items are put in bold to make sure that the user noticed them. However, not just the user notices these attention-grabbing tags. Search engines also use these as primary indicators of what a page is about and what content its creator thought was most important. Header Tags - <h1> through <h6> Header tags are a great way to help boost your search engine rankings. If you're creating a page about "free hats" and would like to rank for it, there's nothing shady at all about including a nice big <h1>Free Hats</h1>...

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SEO Title Tag :On-Page SEO:

The first and most important part of your on-page SEO is the title tag (<title></title>). Many people who outsource or create a site in a WYSIWYG editor completely forget about the last of the meta tags that still gives some quality ranking love from search engines. The benefits of using optimized title tags are three fold: A user searching for your keyword will see your site's link highlighted in the search engines if your page's title is the same as the phrase they searched for. This drastically increases click through and can even give you more traffic than those who rank above you if their title tags are not optimized. Increase your rankings on the search engines. Help the engines distinguish between pages that might look similar.  Higher Click through Rates Search...

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Page Rank

What is PageRank ? PageRank is a ranking system that previously was the foundation of the infamous search engine, Google. When search engines were first developed, they ranked all websites equally and would return results based only on the content and meta tags the pages contained. At the time, however, the PageRank system would revolutionize search engine rankings by including one key factor: a site's authority. To determine how important, or authoritative, a site was Google chose several big sites, such as cnn.com, dmoz.org, and espn.com. These sites were clear authorities, and Google figured that if these websites chose to link to another site (let's say site B), then site B would receive a piece of that site's authority. If site B were to link to another site (how about C), then site...

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Keyword Research

 Keyword Research Before you can start optimizing your site for the search engines, you must first know which terms you want to target. A good start would be to choose 3 or 4 keywords you would like your website to rank well for. With these keywords in your mind you can then set a goal to rank in the top 10 results on Google for each of them (we refer to Google because if you can rank well there, you'll rank well on the other search engines). These keywords can be either broad or specific, but you'll want to study our list of pros and cons of each before choosing. Broad Keywords A broad keyword is one that many people search for, because they may only have a vague idea of what they're looking for. Broad keywords tend to be very short and aren't very specific (e.g. "shoes" or "sports")....

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Beginners

You've finished your web design, uploaded your files, and set up your blog, but you're still not getting as many visitors as you hoped for. What gives? Chances are you haven't started working on one of the most important ways to market your site, Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What SEO Is Search Engine Optimization refers to the collection of techniques and practices that allow a site to get more traffic from search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft). SEO can be divided into two main areas: off-page SEO (work that takes place separate from the website) and on-page SEO (website changes to make your website rank better). This tutorial will cover both areas in detail! Remember, a website is not fully optimized for search engines unless it employs both on and off-page SEO. What SEO Is NotSEO...

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10 Blog Traffic Tips

In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else's blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that's about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling. It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what...

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SEO Dictionary

Below is a list of search engine optimization and marketing industry related keywords with their definitions. Algorithm An algorithm is a set of finite, ordered steps for solving a mathematical problem. Each Search Engine uses a proprietary algorithm set to calculate the relevance of its indexed web pages to your particular Query. The result of this process is a list of sites ranked in the order that the search engine deemed most relevant. Search engine algorithms are closely guarded in order to prevent exploitation of algorithmic results. Search algorithms are also changed frequently to incorporate new data and improve relevancy. Algorithmic Results Algorithmic results are the ranked listings search engines provide in response to a Query. They are often referred to as Organic Listings in...

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