Prepare Your Site for SEO

 

Your web site looks good. You’ve given it all the things you’ve been told it needs: great titles; H1-H3 tags, meta tags, good quality unique content, and easy navigation. But you’re still not getting the traffic you deserve. What should you do next?

Perhaps your site isn’t quite as ready to fully benefit from your SEO efforts as you thought. Just as you need a good foundation in place before you build a house, there are certain basic things you need to have in place if you want to get the most out of your SEO efforts. This article will walk you through that preparation.

First, let me give credit where it’s due. This advice comes from Gary Beal, also known as GarytheScubaGuy in the SEO Chat forums. Every year for the past three years, he’s been giving out sets of tips for improving web site optimization. This article is adapted from his latest set, which actually forms a step-by-step strategy “that most anyone with a bit of knowledge can implement,” according to Beal. I’m going to cover as many as I can here, in some depth (I may only get through a few this time, but you can be sure I’ll cover the rest in future articles). 

The first step really involves planning, and making sure your site is ready for SEO. You’ve heard the phrase “Content is king,” but you might not have thought through all the implications of it. It means getting good, fresh content on your site regularly enough for the search engines to sit up and take notice. And that means setting up your site so that it’s easy to get all that content up there.

In all likelihood, this means getting some kind of content management system working with your site. You’ll want something along the lines of WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or some similar application. If you don’t set something like that up early on, you could end up with various pages all over the place and tons of internal navigation issues. Those kinds of issues can confuse the Googlebot and other search engine spiders when they come crawling…and that’s a problem you don’t need.

How do you know whether your internal navigation is an issue? Beal recommends running Xenu (a free tool) on your website. The tool will give you a detailed overview of your website’s navigation and tell you if there are any problems with its internal linking structure. You’ll learn all about your site’s 302s and 404s, and  knowing about these problems is the first step toward fixing them. Once you fix all of your issues, be sure to create a new XML sitemap and submit it to Google through Webmaster Central.

Read Full Post »

Identifying Keywords and Identifying the Subject in search engine

Identifying Keywords

Keywords! Search engines! If you try to create a Web page, your entire life suddenly revolves around these highly-important search terms. But what is a keyword? What keywords should you use? And how do you know what will work? Keep reading for the answers.

You know you’ve got to use the keywords often to create good keyword density. You know you’ve got to feature these words in your headlines, subtitles and throughout your Web-based content. If you can build links around them, the more the better, and if these words are searched by many then you’re in great shape.

But what are the keywords you’re going to use in your text? If you aren’t identifying keywords for proper use within your content, you aren’t doing yourself any good when it comes to creating Web pages.

Identifying keywords is the first step in Web writing — and it’s something you’ll need to do before you ever start to type. But what makes a keyword a keyword?

Identifying the Subject

If you’re thinking about keywords, you’re probably writing content for the Web (where everything revolves around search terms). What is the piece you’re creating about? If you’re writing on the subject of bank loans for teens, then bank loans and teens will be some of the keywords you’ll want to focus on for your piece.

The subject, topic or main theme of any piece of content is always going to make up some of the keywords, or search terms, as well. It stands to reason that if you’re writing about bank loans for teens, you’ll repeat this four-word phrase several times throughout your piece. You’ll probably even use it in the heading.

The subject of your content is always going to be the main keyword focus. This is what you’ll want to emphasize to make content optimized for search engines. When you know what you’re going to write about, some of the keyword work is already done. Now, you know where to start with your keyword creation.

This makes identifying keywords sound easy, but it can actually be a bit of a pain. When your subject is also your main keyword focus, you have to think very carefully about how you will present that subject. You’re not just writing on a topic you enjoy, have some knowledge of, or think will be great for the Internet. You’re presenting keywords, and this is what makes writing for the Web unique.

source:  search engine

Read Full Post »

How To Get Google Sitelinks

by Daniel Scocco

This post is part of the Friday Q&A section. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question.

Kang Yudiono asks:

I am very happy because my blog got Google Sitelinks. For your information, the blog is 5 months old and written in Indonesian laguage.

My question: what is the benefits of sitelinks for a blog?

First things first, what are the Google sitelinks? They are those links that appear below the first result when you search for the name of a website or blog. Google implemented the sitelinks to help users find the information or section inside a particular website more easily. That is what the links only appear when you search for the exact name of a website, because those are considered “navigational queries.” Here is a screenshot of the sitelinks for Daily Blog Tips:

One could say that the sitelinks are nothing more than shortcuts in the search results to help users navigate to a website more efficiently.

The next question is how you can get sitelinks for your website or blog. Unfortunately there is no switch that you need to turn on to enable sitelinks for your site. Google handles sitelinks automatically through an algorithm, and usually you get sitelinks when your website is perceived as an authority. Practically speaking, this means that your website needs to have a good amount of backlinks, people searching for its name on Google and so on.

Personally I have never worried too much about sitelinks on my new websites. If you keep publishing quality content and promoting it, eventually you will get the sitelinks.

The last question is: what are the benefits of having Google sitelinks? I believe there are two, one tangible and one intangible. The tangible benefit is an increase in traffic for your website, because the sitelinks will give you more exposure in the search results, increasing the CTR you will get on search queries.

The intangible benefit is the credibility that you get from having sitelinks. Only established and authority sites have sitelinks, so when users come across them after searching for the name of your website or blog they will get a reassurance from Google itself that your content or products must be good.
source: dailyblogtips

Read Full Post »