Build Quality Backlinks

The most difficult problem SEO experts are facing after the changes Google’s search algorithm has gone through in the past few years are low quality backlinks. You can no longer trust random people to build links for you, as it can come back to bite you in form of a ranking penalty (courtesy of Google Panda and Penguin). Personally writing and submitting guest posts alleviates that problem, because you know exactly where your links will appear and what content will be on the page. Find a blog in the same niche as your website, contact its owner with a friendly proposal to write a guest post for it and ask them to include a ‘dofollow’ link to your web page as thanks. Repeat this several times and you could generate dozens of backlinks that are worth thousands of comment spam and wiki links.

Expand Online Presence

Your website can’t be the only way for Internet users to find you online. Any successful business relies on the ability of potential customers to find it while browsing for related information or products. The same thing applies for blogs and their readers. If you are selling eBooks about promoting yourself on social media sites, your brand has to be mentioned through guest post on as many Internet marketing and social networking blogs online as possible. It will increase the likelihood of new users finding your website, as well as present them with some introductory information about your product before they even enter your website.

Connect With Bloggers

It’s not unusual for writers to keep in touch with blog owners who have published their guest posts for. Connections and networking are as important today as they were in the past. Your ability as an individual or business to reach out to other people in the same niche has increased many times since the dawn of the Internet and social media. There can be no excuses to miss out on the opportunity to connect with bloggers who are interested in covering the same niche as your website. Submitting guest posts to blogs is one of the best ways of doing so.

Generate Targeted Traffic

While SEO link building might be considered an indirect way of building your website’s traffic, guest posts have a much more valuable potential of bringing interested visitors directly from the blog in question. People who have just read an article highlighting the benefits of your product or the impotence to use the techniques it teaches are much more likely to end up as your short-term or long-term customers. This is only made stronger by the fact they come from a blog in the same niche as your website. That’s why it’s essential to publish only high quality guest posts, include an enticing call to action to make them visit your site and choose blogs that fit your particular niche.

One of the major roles of content in the eyes of Google is that it helps to set quality standards. This is explained by the fact that Google expects site owners to come up with content that is grammatically correct, well edited and factual. Above all, it must be readable and also be able to add value to the readers. This is why Google will often chastise content that has been mass produced without paying attention to quality. Therefore, it is the value of the content that matters the most and the best way to gauge the quality of your content is by asking can the same content be published by a magazine? Thus, Google considers content to be valuable as well as important therefore; time and effort must be dedicated in the production of quality content.

Secondly, Google also considers content to be a source of authority in that particular niche. This means, the your website must have a measure of credibility and this is tested through the kind of content that is presented here. Consequently, you will do well to specialize in producing content within your area of expertise. As such, it important to vet the kind of content that you are presenting on your side and determine its relevance to your site. You will do well to even narrow it down to content on a specific subject as opposed to mere generalizations because this will demonstrate your credibility as an authority in this area. Moreover, this goes a long way in contributing to your website’s ranking on the Google search engine.

Thirdly, Google considers content to be material that provides insight as opposed to mere information. That is, while it is great to have informative articles, it is even better to have content that is interesting and insightful. For instance if you are debating on an issue, the article should be well balanced. This is usually achieved by ensuring that you have a reason for creating the content. Consequently, you will do well to avoid writing on topics that have been done by just about everyone unless you are introducing a new point of view to it so that the content presented is fresh in its own right. Finally, content is also important because it contributes towards the keyword density of your website, it provides room to target just about every keyword and content will always be on your site once published. In summary, the role of content to the Google search engine is irreplaceable.

Although unethical, the black hat SEO techniques usually generate quick results in terms of rankings. However, the consequences that you will face when found to have used them is massive. In fact, you stand to be penalized by the search engines that is not good for your site. This is mainly because this kind of SEO does not provide a lasting solution that entails provision of a worthwhile user experience.

There are a number of black hat SEO practices that every serious website owner must be on the lookout for in order to avoid using them on their sites because this will amount to manipulation of the search engine results. The first black hat SEO technique that you need to avoid is keyword stuffing. This basically entails including lengthy lists of keywords as opposed to having real content on your site. When discovered, this attracts a penalty from the search engines. This can be avoided by learning how to identify as well as rightly place keywords on your site in the form of content. The second unethical SEO technique is the use of invisible text where a list of keywords is placed on a white background in white so that the page attracts the search engine spiders even though the text is unseen.

Doorway pages is also another search engine optimization technique that does not meet the search engine threshold because it entails having a fake page that cannot be seen by users rather it is only visible to search engine spiders that will pick it up and index the site. Buying backlinks or offering compensation in form of money for backlinks is also considered to be unethical. Other unethical search engine optimization practices include creating numerous sites with the aim of providing backlinks, generating numerous IP addresses that will give an impression of many sites to eventually increase backlinks, having content that is duplicated from other sites and code swapping among others.

While you may achieve your aim of having your site rank highly within a short period, there are a number of dangers that are associated with black hat SEO. First, Google often changes their algorithm in order to curb such practices and when this happens, your website’s rankings will definitely go down. Secondly, when Google discovers that you have violated the webmaster guidelines by engaging in this unethical practice, a radical punishment may be meted on you by delisting your site completely or lowering your rankings. Delisting your site means that it will not show up in the rankings at all. Ultimately, it is important to concentrate on white hat SEO in order to boost your website’s search engine rankings, as this is more rewarding.

The bad reputation of software that mass-submits low quality articles to hundreds of article directories at a time has caused many new website owners to overlook the obvious benefits of manual article submission. Despite the conflicting opinions, it still works even after Panda and Penguin updates to Google’s search algorithm.

The only trick is to do it exactly as described in the following five steps. Missing even one step will result in a subpar performance of your submission campaign and end up causing very minor effect on your website’s search engine rankings.

Keyword Research and Analysis

In the competitive environment of search engine rankings, you need to figure out exactly what topics to cover in order to compete for them effectively. The first step towards a successful article submission campaign will take you to use a variety of methods to figure out what keywords people are using to search for the kind of content, product or service that your website offers.

Once you’ve done that, you need to analyze the popularity of each keyword. After all, you wouldn’t want to waste time trying to rank for a keyword nobody searches for anyway. Google AdWords keyword tool provides a great way to acquire this data, but it gives you no edge as everyone else is already using it.

Be sure to devote extra time manually mining for niche keywords to rise above your competition

Learning From Your Competition

The results of your article submission depend on how your search engine optimization efforts relate to those of your competition. It’s important to know who you’re up against whenever you attempt to move a particular page or website up in search rankings.

Instead of despising everyone that stands between you and the first spot on Google, try learn the techniques they use and surpass them. Their weaknesses can become your strengths. If they have a suboptimal on-page SEO strategy, be sure to focus on that. If they haven’t generated plenty of backlinks, use article submission to beat them to it.

If their content is useless to potential readers in your niche, trump them with articles that will prove informative to Internet users.

Relevant and Quality Content

This step speaks for itself. Don’t listen to the people who say article submission is all about quantity. As Google’s algorithms become more advance, quality becomes an increasingly more important factor in determining their value in search engine rankings.

The only way to keep up with your competition and surpass it is to bring something new and original to the table. Make sure to write about issues that actually matter in your given niche or hire someone who can do it for you.

Manual Article Submission

Eventually, you will come to the point where all your hard work has to pay off with a multitude of backlinks positioned in the most important places all around the web. Don’t rush into it. Take your time with this step, as it will determine the results of your whole campaign.

For your article submission to appear as natural as possible (which it is, after all) don’t dump everything on article submission sites and web 2.0 properties simultaneously. Submit only a couple of articles every day and be make sure that you only use article submission.

The downside of this development is the fact that anyone can write and publish anything the see fit online for all people to see. This creates lot of irrelevant content being mixed in with press releases that might actually be useful. Rising above the crowd can be a challenge for legitimate businesses who are just starting on building their web presence.

The benefits of successfully posting your company’s or website’s latest news, however, are still plentiful. After all, a good release will boost your positive image, bring targeted and improve search engine optimization. This article outlines the basic principles of writing good press releases that are visible to the public through quality writing, relevant content, building of trust and SEO.

Focus on the News

Many first time writers unfamiliar with the rules of creating press releases feel compelled to overcrowd them with every little piece of news about their company or business. Another common mistake is to become distracted and sway away from the main news angle.

When writing the news piece, make sure it’s newsworthy. Hold back your opinions and only present facts. Once your press releases are picked up by news publications and blogs, they can add their unique spin to them, but your role in this case is to merely announce the most important developments, statistics and data pertaining to your business.

Release Responses

Publishing your official reactions to the actions of your direct competitors or industry leaders is a good way to attract attention from news publications. When they cover big companies in their writing, they might catch your press releases for a quote to reflect the general opinion about recent developments.

This is quite common for marketing companies and small businesses that comment on Google’s search algorithm changes, product launches and important decisions.

Targeted Distribution

Your business occupies one or several specific niches. It’s very important that your press releases reaches the people that are meant to see them. To ensure that, you can’t just publish your copy online and hope for the best. Targeting news publications and bloggers in your specific niche plays an important role in covering a wider and more relevant audience.

Follow Up

Journalists are always looking for news and there’s never enough time to hunt down all the possible sources. With so much work on their hands and so little time, they would be happy to have some of the news come to them instead of having to look for it.

Unfortunately, they can’t always keep up with the flow of emails they receive in their inbox and could easily miss yours. Try to follow up with another email or even a friendly call after sending out your most important press releases. Write what journalists want and your business could be making the news.

Similarly to the way search engine optimization works, optimizing your social media presence requires you keep an eye on both your on-page and off-page factors. This article will list the most important tips that will help your website or business stand out from the crowd in the modern world of social networking.

Benefits of Social Media Optimization

SMO helps to promote your brand through personal interactions, speeds up the distribution of your published content among potential customers, lets you monitor the way certain changes affect public opinion in real-time and has an added value on perceived search engine authority rankings.

The most basic principles of SMO are so simple there could not be any possible justification for not doing it. Now that even the largest companies in the world employ people specifically to represent their company on social media sites, you know that your website must be involved with it too.

Main SMO Objectives

The main objectives of your social media optimization efforts are to prompt Internet users to show their support for your pages on social networking sites, get them to follow your latest news through a user-friendly environment, get to know specific participants and content creators, share that content with the rest of the world and help it get discovered by first-time visitors. All of that directly influences visitor traffic, coverage, popularity, search engine standings and conversion rates of your website, business or blog.

Step-By-Step Social Media Optimization Guide

• Display social media icons. They      should be in a visible location, such as the top-right corner or other      spots visitors frequently look at. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest seem to      be the most prominent social media sites at the moment, but you can add any      other relevant accounts to the mix.
• Add subscription buttons. RSS,      email newsletters, podcasts and mobile apps are all important facets of      SMO, and important ones at that.
• Put social networking widgets in the      sidebar. Most social media sites offer official dynamic widgets to be      displayed on your website. It’s a good idea to sneak them onto your      sidebar to showcase your interaction with site customers, fans and regular      readers.
• Include an ‘author box’. Readers      will benefit from seeing some short information alongside the author’s      photo at the end of each blog post and article on your website. Some social      media usernames should be thrown in as well. It helps them connect, follow      their future content and even increase your website’s standings in      Google’s search results.
• Write a good title. This might      seem like a no brainer, but it’s the most effective method when it comes      to producing content people would actually like to share on social media      sites like Facebook and Twitter. The same goes for including a good description.

Additional SMO Advice

• Feature      trending blog posts in the sidebar.
• Display      your Twitter username.
• Show      the number of social media shares, comments and votes.
• Provide      snippets, instead of full articles.
• Include      a call to action (Ex. “Read More”, “Continue Reading”).
• Show      links to recent articles by the same author.
• Use an      attention-grabbing article thumbnail to be displayed on social media      sites.
• Allow      commenters to add a link to their website.
• Add      comment voting and rating options to rank them by user opinion.
• Display      a releated Twitter feed alongside comments.

There are plenty of methods to build quality backlinks online. Writing great content that people will want to link to from their blogs and share with their friends on social media sites is one way to do that.

However, new webmasters have a hard time competing with established websites for traffic. That’s where web 2.0 properties come in to save the day!

What Are Web 2.0 Properties?

Web 2.0 is a term used to mark the websites that are optimized for the ‘new age’ of the Internet. Instead of a one-way conversation where users consumed content generated by creators, they represent the ability of anyone to publish their own articles, images, videos, blogs and websites online.

This can be seen by the example of blogs, wikis and social media sites that have turned Internet users from consumers of information into contributors on a mass scale unlike anything before.

Web 2.0 Benefits for SEO

Internet marketers have taken advantage of this phenomenon and started using web 2.0 properties for the purpose of building backlinks to reflect positively on their rankings in search results for Google, Yahoo and Bing. It’s a very simple and quick method of performing SEO for your website. It’s also effective when you know what you’re doing. To start submitting articles, you need to have a list of the most prominent blogging and article submission websites out there, chosen for their convenience, quality and speed of search engine indexing.

A List of High PR Web 2.0 Properties

HubPages

With a high Google page rank, quick account creation process and ‘dofollow’ tagged links and HubPages proves to be one of the most effective web 2.0 properties for SEO purposes. Natively known as ‘hubs’, the articles submitted to this website are subjected to automatic quality rating. If it falls before a certain amount, your ‘hub’ will add ‘nofollow’ tags to any outbound links.

However, this is also good news, which means that the site is not crowded by low quality content and Google and other search engines recognize its authority in rankings. It can even bring you some initial traffic from its ‘hub hopping’ feature.

WordPress.com

Built on the world’s most popular CMS platform, WordPress.com is one of the web 2.0 properties that require some care to be put in them before they give you any results. The familiar WordPress user interface will make that task easier, and the SEO rewards are always well worth the effort.

Squidoo

Founded by a known writer, entrepreneur and Internet marketer Seth Godin, Squidoo is cut out as the perfect embodiment of web 2.0 properties for SEO backlinking. It’s in good standings with Google, has a reputation in Internet marketing circles and has a built-in system that ensures only the best quality pages (or ‘lenses’, as they are known on the site) make it to Google’s search results.

The only disadvantage is the cumbersome ‘lens’ creation that require you slowly build your page content, section by section, instead of letting you publish the whole article online straight away like on most other web 2.0 properties.

One of the areas of SEO that is influenced by social media is social bookmarking of the search results. Search engines can benefit by keeping an eye on social bookmarking, allowing faster indexing of the sites. In addition, the quality of these sites is also captured while allowing for deeper indexing of the sites. This is because humans have the ability to bookmark new sites better and faster than the search engine spiders. Consequently, search engines are able to index the sites faster. It is also important to mention that people often bookmark sites they consider to be important. However, irrelevant bookmarking always degrades the quality of the site in the eyes of the search engines therefore bookmarking should be done on relevant sites to make it a more powerful link.

Social media is also important to SEO when it comes to voting as well as getting user views on the first page of Google. This is particularly attributed to Google’s Universal Search, it is designed to blend results from blogs, videos and images.  User views and social media voting are becoming a very important component when it comes to getting content on the first page of search results. In fact, comments play an important role in the ranking of videos because they are considered to be reviews. This explains why many companies as well as individuals are serious about putting out viral videos because the comments the videos attract will definitely improve the site’s ranking on search engines.

The other area that demonstrates the importance of social media in SEO is a search engine marketing campaign or link building. One of the leading social media sites in this particular area is Netscape.  It is therefore advisable that local business owners generate reviews as well as ratings that will improve their visibility through sites like City Search, Google+ and Yahoo local, among others. In summary, there is no doubt that social media has a great influence on search engine optimization however, it is important to understand how social media can work for websites in the most beneficial way.

A good keyword research will go a long way in enabling you to earn money from the content developed on your website. Therefore, you will first need to identify highly searched keywords with the least amount of competition. One of the tools that you can use to find profitable keywords is Google Adwords. You will also need to use a Firefox browser that has the SEO for Firefox add-on installed. You will then begin by selecting a topic or area of interest that you will then include in the Google Adwords in order to get a list of keywords that are suitable. Since settling on a specific topic may be difficult, you can always begin with a broader topic and narrow it down.

The second important stage after selecting a topic is narrowing down the keywords. Open the Google Adwords tool where you will enter your topic to initiate a search. The tool will return a list of possible keywords that you may want narrow down by changing the options from match type to exact while un-checking the broad check box. This is important in establishing the number of people that are searching for the exact keywords both locally and internationally. You can also establish the average cost per click for the individual keywords.

You will then need to sort the keywords according to monthly searches while giving priority to the highest searched words. From here, you can then focus on the keywords that receive less traffic than the other keywords. This is because it may be impossible to outrank some of the leading sites, with the same keyword phrases that they are using. Therefore, obscure keyword phrases offer a great chance of reaching more internet users. Next, you will need to analyze the keyword competition by determining whether the keywords are easy to outrank, moderately easy or difficult to outrank. Most importantly, you also need to consider the degree of optimization of the articles in order to outrank some of the highest ranking keywords. You can then finally settle on the keywords that you are certain will rank well in search engine results. In summary, selecting profitable keywords is best done with the help of tools like Google Adwords that show you the ranking of the keywords before you even use them.

One of the ways to avoid an SEO pitfall is by eliminating the use of flash in presenting information on your site. This is because while it is a great presentation tool, it is more likely to damage your SEO efforts because the search engine spiders do not have the capability of detecting the content that is presented in this manner. Your site will not be indexed when your content is embedded in flash. The other way to avoid SEO pitfalls is by avoiding the use of a splash page. For starters, a splash page refers to the initial page that visitors coming to your site will first land on. It may be in the form of a large company logo, graphic or flash animation that carries the link to the actual site. A splash page is discouraged in the SEO world because it substitutes the home page as well as other external links to your site. Secondly, the splash page usually carries a single link and splash pages are capable of turning some visitors away because some people might get impatient.

Using invisible text is also not recommended. This is because spam filters have improved over the years and applying this technique may not be rewarding. The consequences may be very harsh and harm the website’s ranking. Using a simple and short URL is another way of avoiding SEO pitfalls. This is because long URLs usually get indexed meaning that your site may never get the ranking that you’re looking for.

Generating your own original content is also a good way of avoiding any copyright violations. Copying someone else’s content can give the website a bad name. Moreover, it also contributes to losing traffic because people who have been visiting your site will lose faith in the credibility of the content presented. Having relevant titles for your pages is another great way increase the ranking of a website. This is attributed to the fact that the search engines consider headings of web pages as a factor when determining the site’s rankings especially when there is a search or related keywords. In conclusion, there are many SEO techniques that you can use to boost your site’s rankings but you must be cautious in order to be on the safe side especially when you are not sure about their implications that they could have on your website’s ranking.