I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not my website’s code is valid or not.  And by valid, I mean if it conforms to the W3C standards or not.

Sure, I try to always use the proper markup when creating sites, but even if I slip up a time or two, it probably won’t make a difference in the final product.  And if it does, then it is quickly fixed and I move on.

I have met people who are pretty fanatical about insisting that their website contain no validation errors.  I have heard some of them say that websites rank better in the search engine if they validate properly.  I partially disagree.

Having a 100% W3C compliant website will not improve your search rankings.  And most of the time having a website with validation errors will not hurt your search rankings either.  The only time a validation error will harm your website is if that error keeps the search engines from indexing your content.

Let me say that again, because it is a point worth driving home:

The only time a validation error will harm your website is if that error keeps the search engines from indexing your content.

Most coding errors in a website are really minor things.  You never notice them because most modern browsers are able to auto-correct most of them.  Search engines will not penalize your site because of these minor mistakes; they drop the hammer only on more serious slip-ups.

Let me provide a good example of what I’m talking about.  Two of the top websites relating to SEO are seomoz.org and seobook.com.  You can search Google for “SEO” and you will find both sites in the top 10 results.  Now let’s check to see how compliant they are (according to the W3C Validator):

• Seomoz.org contains 40 errors and 5 warnings
• Seobook.com contains 183 errors and 67 warnings

If W3C validation was crucial to search engine ranking, don’t you think these titans of the SEO industry would be on the forefront of perfection?

My suggestion would be to worry less on things that really don’t matter and focus more of your time on things that do.

The following information uses a newly created Adsense site I created on Burkitt lymphoma as an example. While the information is sound, your mileage may vary.

Building a website that is designed to bring in revenue from the Adsense ads you place on it can be a worthwhile project that can bring you a seemingly endless supply of extra revenue.  But if you go about this process in the wrong way, you’ll find that the results you were after may never materialize.

I separate this process of creating sites designed for Adsense into three steps, and I will focus on the first and most important step in this post.

Keyword Research and Competitiveness

Choosing the right keyword or niche is of vital importance.  There is no point in launching a brand new site within a highly competitive and broad market because the chance of your new site ever attracting any attention is slim to none.  No, you have to target narrowly defined niches with little to moderate competition if you want to stand a chance.

I like to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to help find a profitable niche to build a website on.  You use this online tool by entering in a keyword or phrase, and Google lists that term and related terms along with other information such as the number of monthly search queries (guage the traffic) and the average cost per click that advertisers pay.

The key to finding a good niche to develop on is to find the keyword phrase that receives at least moderate traffic while not being overly competitive.  Results to avoid look like this:

The Google information listed for my example site on Burkitt’s lymphoma is:

Now you probably noticed that the competition level for my site is high, but a high competition level isn’t always a bad thing; they can be overcome in the right situations.  If you run a Google search for “burkitt lymphoma” there are only about 500,000 pages listed.  That’s a little more than I would have liked to see, but not enough to stop my efforts.

In contrast, the keyword “attorney” in the first image has about 150 million listings related to that keyword.  I wouldn’t even think about trying to get a brand new Adsense site ranked in that mess.

After you discover a search term or multiple terms that are reachable, check into the average CPC (Cost per click) for the term.  Obviously, the higher the monetary amount the better.  I wouldn’t even mess with a term that had an average CPC of 5 cents; I’m looking for terms that pay a few dollars or more per click.

After doing this research you should hopefully have at least a few terms chosen that would be ideal to create an Adsense site for.  Now you need a domain for them.

Go to whoever you register websites with (I currently switched to NameCheap instead of Godaddy) and search for a domain based on your keywords.  For example, if your chosen keyword phrase is “camera surveillance equipment”, then you ideally would want the domain “camerasurveillancequipment.com”.  If the .com domain is not available, then try for .net or .org.  You could maybe even go with a .us domain name, but that’s as far as I would take it.  I don’t recommend other extensions such as .biz or .info for our purposes in this.

So if all goes well, you will have narrowed down a niche to target and have now acquired the keyword rich domain names to go along with them.  What’s next, you ask?  That will be the topic of the next post!

SEO can be a difficult and tedious process at times.  But thankfully that is not always the case.  Here are 14 quick and easy tips that can easily help your site rank better in the search engines.

1. Image file names.  You can use the file name to give a tiny boost to your overall SEO efforts.  For example, let’s say you have a website about sports cars and you’re wanting to put an image of a hot rod on a page.  You snap a picture of one with your digital camera and then you plan on uploading the image to your website.  You end up having an image with a file name something like “DSC001.jpg” which isn’t really very descriptive of what the image is about.  It would be better to rename the image file to something relative to the keywords of your website, such as “sports-car.jpg” or “hot-rod.jpg”.  Giving image files a descriptive file name helps the search engines get a better idea of what your images are about.
2. Image alt tags.  Along with providing descriptive file names for your image files, the alt tag is an element that shouldn’t be ignored.  Use your desired keywords in the alt tag, but try to make it relevant without getting spammy about it.  Good alt tag descriptions will also help you get more image search traffic.
3. Bold text.  It’s always a good idea to highlight your targeted keywords on a webpage with bold text.  Search engines consider bolded text to have more importance than regular text.  Don’t go overboard with this though; limit your keyword bolding to no more than a few times on a page.
4. Addresses & phone numbers.  Inserting your address or phone number into your webpage is vital if you’re a business, as this greatly enhances your localized search prospects.  Whether you do this in the header or footer, putting your info between the html <address> tag is not something you should overlook.
5. Keyword placement.  It is always a good idea to insert the keyword you want to be ranked for close to the beginning of your body text.  When indexing your site, search engines pay attention to the prominence of words on your page and tend to give more weight to the words that are closer to the top.
6. Breadcrumb navigation.  You’ve seen breadcrumb navigation before, haven’t you?  Many websites place this right above their page content to let visitors know where they are at within the website.  Not only does this help with the overall navigation through the website, it strengthens the internal linking of your website.
7. Title tags in links.  Inserting a title tag to the links in your website is a good habit to get into as it gives the search engines a little more info on what is being linked to.  I admit that I have not been an avid practitioner of this, but it is a good practice nonetheless.
8. Videos and text.  When you embed a video on your website, the user can view the video and know what it is about but the search engines have a hard time with that.  Many SEO professionals recommend placing relevant text around the video, believing that the search engines think that the text immediately before or after the video describes the content of said video.
9. Unique title tags.  Some websites have multiple pages that have identical title tags.  This is never a good thing, as the title tag is one of the first things the search engines look at to get an idea of what the webpage is about.  If multiple pages are given the same title, it doesn’t help your efforts in getting your site ranked as well as it could.
10. Keywords in the domain or URL.  Having the keyword you want to get ranked well for in your domain name or URL is a huge help in your SEO efforts.  I can think of no better example illustrating this than a website I have about wholesale sunglasses.  The domain name is xsportzsunglasses.com and nowhere on that website will you find the phrase “xsportz sunglasses” (a brand of knockoff sunglasses).  It is not mentioned in any post or page, but if you search Google for that term you’ll see my site is ranked 3^rd or 4^th in the listings.  Not bad for never mentioning that term once on that website.
11. Sitemaps.  It is always a good practice to have a sitemap with your website that lists all the pages of your site.  This gives the search engines a nice little reference file to spider all the content of your site.
12. Don’t be stingy with the links.  When you are adding content to your site, be generous with the links.  Linking to other relevant websites enhances the content your are providing to your visitors.  And it never fails that the more often you link to others, more and more people will  link to you.
13. Acquire deep links.  If you are working on building backlinks to your site, don’t try to get all your links to just point to your home page.  If all the external links you have point solely to your home page, it gives the impression to search engines that either your backlinks are not natural or all the rest of the pages of your site contain worthless content.
14. Get SEO information from more than one source.  Search engine optimization can be a tricky science at times.  The honest truth is that unless you are the person who programmed the search engine algorithms you cannot say with 100% certainty what exactly it takes to get ranked well.  Sure, there are many universally accepted truths out there on search engine theory, but there is also a lot of misinformation floating around as well.  If you’re looking for SEO tips or advice, seek out multiple sources for the answers to your questions.  If you get the same response from multiple reputable sources, chances are very good that you’re getting good information.

I was approached by Mohammed from msafi.com and he thought that this article he wrote might be of use to readers of this blog. I agreed with him and decided to republish it here. You can find the original publication here

Most people just accept the default, out-of-box layout of blogs even though they know it is not optimal for the nature of their blog. I’m not the first to say that blog navigation is a nightmare.

Why is that?

The main problem with blog navigation is that the content is not interlinked properly. That’s especially true for generic blogs that aren’t about one single topic.

When a visitor lands on your generic blog, they’re probably interested in only one of the topics that you cover. Say that topic is dogs. Even though all of your dog posts are grouped by “tags” and “categories”, your blog sidebar is probably distracting the visitor with links to other unrelated content about cycling, rock climbing or whatever else you write about.

Don’t distract your readers.

Give your readers only what they’re interested in at that moment and help them find more of it. Doing that will make your visitors stick around longer, browse more pages, and even improve your SEO!

Here’s how you can achieve that.

Clean Up Your Sidebars

On your post pages, you don’t have to tell the reader about all the categories and tags that you write about. Why would you clutter your sidebar with such information?

A list of categories and a tag cloud are useful information on the homepage because they give your reader an overview of the things that you write about. So, you can put those on the sidebar of the homepage, but not the sidebar of posts pages.

The problem is that most WordPress themes don’t separate the site-wide sidebar from the post sidebar. It is, however, essential to have a separate sidebar for posts if you’re serious about improving the navigation and layout of your blog. If your theme has a single sidebar for everything, read this post to learn how to give your posts their own sidebar.

Ideas for Relevant Content to Put on Your Posts Sidebar

The more a Web page is focused on a single topic and the more links to other related Web pages it has, the more search engine optimization weight it’ll carry for that topic. Making your sidebar relevant to the topic of the post itself will have huge benefits for your blog. Here are some ideas of the relevant content put on your sidebar:

• Related links to other posts on the same topic on your blog
• A list of categories that the post belongs to
• A list of tags that the post belongs to
• RSS feed for the categories and tags that the post belongs to

Use a Related Posts Plugin

Perhaps the best thing you could do to improve the navigation of your blog is to use a related posts plugin. The most popular plugin for this function is Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP).

Read this post to learn how you can put links to related posts on your sidebar using YARPP.

I hope you found these tips helpful. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions on what else can be done to improve navigation, post them below!

Are you putting all your eggs in the search engine basket when it comes to building your blog?  Focusing your efforts on search engines to bring in visitors and build a reader base is a good way to build up your blog, but if it is the only method you are using then you are literally placing the life of your blog in the hands of Google et al.

Is pandering to the search engines a bad thing? No, not at all.  Search engine traffic is a great source of residual traffic that can work for you 24 hours a day.  Ranking high for popular keywords means you are going to have a steady flow of visitors streaming to your site.

You are one bad day away from obscurity

If your blogging model solely focuses on referrals from search engines, what happens to you if your rankings were to plummet or simply disappear?  This is something you should consider as it happens more often than you may think.

Maybe you inadvertently do something to your blog that angers the search engine gods.  Maybe your blog gets hacked and some nefarious links are placed within your site that you are unaware of.  Or maybe you link out to the wrong kind of site.  The point is that it isn’t too hard for your site to be penalized by the search engines, with penalties ranging from reduced rankings to delisting.

It is a horrible situation when your site is delisted from Google through no fault on your part.  Getting back in to Google’s good graces can take a long time, even after requesting reconsideration.

The road to recovery can be long and grueling

I was hired a year ago by a wholesale sunglasses company that wanted to improve their search engine rankings.  They had previously tried to save a few bucks by outsourcing their SEO needs to an unknown individual from a foreign country.  Shortly after this individual started working for them, their site vanished from Google under their main keyword “wholesale sunglasses”.

I came into the picture 6 months after the penalties were imposed.  Among other things, I cleaned up the code on their website and removed all the blackhat techniques my predecessor used.  I then contacted Google and requested reconsideration for their website.

After requesting reconsideration it took several months before Google relented with their penalty and my client’s site once again appeared in the search listings, however they were listed lower than where they were previously ranked.  Today they are ranked where they used to be, but it took nearly a year and a half to get back to that point.  Could you last this long with your site being invisible in the search engines?

The good guys aren’t always safe

Even if you don’t do anything wrong, your site can arbitrarily drop in the rankings and your traffic will suffer.  It has happened multiple times to even some of the best blogs.  That’s why it is important to not put all your eggs in one basket and diversify how you drive traffic to your website.

It’s always better to implement a plan of diversity now when the sun is shining than to wait for a rainy day to begin.  Are you doing anything to help drive traffic to your blog, such as promoting it with social media, newsletters or email marketing?  If not, there’s no better time than the present!

To get a competitive edge in this world it can really help to have a solid educational background. It is no coincidence that the people who are most successful in their fields also have an extraordinary amount of knowledge and insight in their respective areas of expertise.  Anyone wishing to become a savvy internet guru should quickly add the following sites to their RSS reader if they haven’t already.

Blogging

Problogger

Without question, Problogger should be the first blog you visit to learn everything about effective blogging. Darren Rowse has been publishing blogging gold for several years now, and has helped countless others succeed with their blogs. A virtual wealth of information can be found here, and no topic related to blogging has been left uncovered. A recent post on 7 questions to ask on your blog to encourage more reader engagement is a good example of the finer techniques that bloggers should learn and incorporate into their own blogs.

Daily Blog Tips

It is always good to balance your intake of knowledge through multiple sources, and Daily Blog Tips is an excellent source for just that.  Daniel Scocco covers everything about blogging, from the basics of blogging for beginners all the way to more advanced topics such as design and monetization.  Be sure to check out the top 5 blogging misconceptions to get a taste of what you’ll find at this gold mine of blogging information.  The longer you dive into this site, the smarter you’ll become.

Copywriting

Copyblogger

Great blogging and great writing go hand in hand, and one of the best places to get a handle on writing brilliant copy is at Copyblogger.  A cornucopia of some of the best minds on the internet contribute their time and wisdom to this blog and this has resulted into becoming one of the most visited copywriting blogs on the internet.  Everything even remotely related to copy is discussed on this blog, and the amount of information freely given here is overwhelming.  With gems like this, this blog is not one you can afford to miss!

Angie’s Copywriting

Angie’s Copywriting is a hidden treasure trove of information on copywriting with a specific angle on the business side of it.  Angie Haggstrom is a successful copywriter with a track record of satisfied clients.  On her blog (as well as on others) you’ll find her dishing out platters of wisdom that are yours for the taking.  Besides her focus on the business side of copywriting, you’ll notice that she doesn’t just offer bite-sized pieces of information, she gives you the whole plate.

Marketing

Jim’s Marketing Blog

Jim Connolly has produced one of the best marketing blogs through the use of clear and structured writing that is chock full of some of the best marketing advice you can find.  At his site you can find detailed information on marketing tips that work as well as techniques that don’t.  Jim freely offers his expertise on a variety of topics, from how to boost your profits to successful blog marketing and much, much more.  You can get a rock solid foundation in marketing by bookmarking and visiting this site.

KnowThis.com

KnowThis.com is a virtual encyclopedia of marketing and marketing concepts.  Anyone wanting to expand their knowledge of the principles of marketing would do well from becoming a frequent visitor to this site.  Everything from the pure basics of marketing all the way to more advanced and detailed concepts are thoroughly covered.  If you only had the option of visiting one marketing site, then this one would be a worthy candidate and should be high on everybody’s list.

SEO

SEOmozBlog

SEOmozBlog is truly a reference guide for all things related to search engine optimization.  Even the most minute details of getting a website to rank higher in Google, Yahoo and the rest can be found within these pages.  A variety of authors contribute to the information pool, and there is plenty of input from visitors as well.  Check out a recent posting on solving crawl priority & indexation issues to get an idea of what you can expect.  This blog can easily turn anyone into a SEO wizard in a short amount of time!

SEO Book

This is probably a favorite SEO site for many people, and Aaron Wall has created quite a following with his ability to dish out valuable tips and advice relating to the search industry.  SEO Book also has multiple authors who provide lengthy discourses on how to tame those beastly search engines.  This blog alone could provide you with 100% of your USDA daily SEO requirements, as their recent posting on information pollution demonstrates, so this is one blog you can’t forget to include in your RSS reader.

Technology

TechCrunch

TechCrunch is one of the most popular sites on the internet and the frequent originator of breaking news related to the tech industry.  When you need to learn more about the latest gadget or what’s happening in Silicon Valley, this site should be your destination.  TechCrunch is frequently updated throughout the day and you’ll never be out of the tech loop by being a frequent visitor to this site.  You’ll always stay informed with TechCrunch, one of the most shared and tweeted sites online.

Technology Review

One of the titans in the tech field is MIT, and they don’t disappoint with Technology Review.  Between the site and their blogs, everything related to science and technology is touched upon.  The combination of TechCrunch and Technology Review will provide a person with an overwhelming amount of information and keep their knowledge current in all circles of technology.  Their recent posting on ocean mixing provides a good example of what to expect from this site.

Social Media

Mashable

Can you even imagine trying to gather information on social media without including Mashable?  Mashable also has numerous contributors to their site and a highly involved base of visitors.  If anything is happening in the social web you can be guaranteed that Mashable will be reporting on it.  Anything you ever wanted to know about any social or web service can be found here and this site has quickly become the haven for any and all social media experts.  Check out a recent posting on Gmail postcards to get a taste of this popular site.

Social Media Today

Social Media Today is another site that will provide you with your daily allotted requirements of social media news, tips and information.  No social media diet is complete without digging into the articles here, as their recent posting on 20 questions to start a social media discussion will attest to.  Highly readable and easily digestible, Social Media Today should be a target for anyone involved with or related to social media.  Try it and I think you’ll agree.

Photo credit:http://www.flickr.com/photos/willhale/ / CC BY 2.0

SEO has been thought of by many people as a bit of a mystery, and that only a handful of knowledgeable people employing unknown magical methods actually understand it.  For the past several years I have fought to understand the ins and outs of effective SEO, and have since become adept at it.  But SEO doesn’t have to be a mystery; thanks to Glenn Murray anyone can quickly become a SEO ninja!

Glenn Murray, owner of Divine Write, has parlayed his expertise in SEO into one of the best written SEO books I’ve ever come across.  His book, “SEO Secrets” truly lives up to it’s tagline as a “DIY guide to topping Google”.  Starting from a base foundation by explaining exactly what SEO is, Glenn guides you through keyword analysis, proper website development, WordPress optimization and much, much more.

I obtained a copy of “SEO Secrets” right after Glenn released it into the wild.  At the time I considered myself to have an above average knowledge of SEO, and I figured getting some insight from one of the best SEO copywriters would help boost my skills to the next level.  I wasn’t disappointed.

The first thing I noticed was that this wasn’t your normal ebook.  It is 212 pages full of information, explanations, and tips and tricks that people from all SEO levels can benefit from.  The book masterfully covers the aspects that relate to “onsite” SEO, and also covers “offsite” SEO topics, such as link building and leveraging social media to aid in your efforts.

In the years that I have been working to better the search engine rankings of websites, there have been techniques that I have used without any understanding as to why I was doing it other than the fact that I knew it “worked”.  It was a nice feeling to read through Glenn’s book and have a few of those “aha!” moments when having the knowledge behind some techniques I employed was explained to me.

What I like most about this book is how clear and laid out the information is.  The reader doesn’t need any kind of SEO background to fully understand what is being presented.  The structure is sound and formatted very well; every budding site owner will walk away with a concrete game plan on how to dominate the search engines.

As much as I enjoyed this book, my only complaint is that it doesn’t touch much on the dark side of SEO techniques, often labelled “black hat” SEO.  While black hat methods can give quick results, these results are often short-lived and incur severe penalties from the search engines.  I would have liked a section discussing some of these ulterior methods and why you should avoid them.

Are you wanting to dominate the rankings in Google with your website or blog?  Then you have a choice of either doing it yourself, paying some SEO firm to do it for you, or a combination of both.  With the rates from some of these firms starting at $100/hr or more, it can be a hugely expensive endeavor.  And for most of us, it’s not necessary especially when you can acquire several year’s worth of SEO experience for  just $40.

For more information on this fantastic resource, click here to read about the background of this book and even download the table of contents and sample chapter.

This was a glowing review for a product that I am an affiliate of. Please understand that while this review and recommendation are overwhelming positive, it is also honest.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is often thought of as some mysterious and magical form of voodoo that only the highly gifted can accomplish. Well, it’s not really that but you do have to have knowledge of how search engines work and how they rank websites.

One of the best ways to get a high ranking website is to have many other sites linking to yours and that is why links are so important. There are “good” links and there are “bad” links so you have to be careful in that department. Proper link building really is an art form, and if you’re going to hire someone for that you better be sure of their methods.

A little over a week ago I received a comment on a different blog that I manage. That in itself was kind of odd, as the blog receives very little traffic. When I logged into the admin area of the blog, this was the comment waiting for me:

Click image for full size view

Now the blog and post that this person commented on is totally unrelated to SEO or marketing, yet this spammer commenter felt compelled to plug his site and insert no less than 20 links in it, with the lion’s share directed to verifiedfile.com (I am not linking to them at all, even with a “nofollow” link).

If you read some of what this commenter said, you’ll see that they claim their “service” isn’t spam; they say that they are penetrating online established communities relative to your website, product or services. I’m sorry, but I fail to see how an article about a sale on wholesale fashion accessories is relevant to a mass commenting service.

After seeing this comment I just had to visit the website of this obviously elite SEO service. While I was there, I used their contact form to briefly express my displeasure with their methods. This morning I received a reply.

Click image for full size view

Did you notice the little smiley at the end of Daniel’s response? I take that to mean that they feel spamming blogs and forums has fantastic SEO benefits, when it really doesn’t. Do people or companies seriously think that blog comment spamming is an effective method to achieve higher rankings in the search engines?

First of all, blog comments like these are very unlikely to ever get published. Most blog owners have some form of spam protection enabled (like Akismet) which catches comments like this. Therefore, this kind of commenting would have to pass a human review in order to be published. Do you think it would pass?

Secondly, if a spam comment is somehow published, you can be assured that the links in it are all “nofollow” links. Nofollow links are the red-headed step children of regular links and are practically worthless for ranking purposes.

Lastly, what do you think this kind of “marketing” says about you, your business or your product? This is perhaps the most important thing to consider. If you are a legitimate business with a legitimate product or service, then resorting to spamming websites with your message will just destroy your chances of any positive branding. On the other hand, if you’re just one of the many people trying to operate a “cheap viagra” business from some obscure forum post, then by all means, keep up with the spamming. Your reputation can’t be tarnished anymore than it already is.

Real SEO results are obtained through hard work and ethical means. Don’t let anyone tell you any different; spamming is not a form of SEO.

A common question I have been asked by some people is why their prized blog posts receive little to no traffic. After reviewing their article and their blog I saw that everything looked good, and their article was of high quality and informative. The problem wasn’t on their end, it had to do with things outside their control.

When you publish a new blog post, you are adding another article to the information pool that is the internet. Unless you have a loyal reader base that visits your blog, you are at the mercy of the search engines. And there’s something you should keep in mind about information pools if you don’t want to be shocked by a lack of attention.

Some “information pools” are bigger than others and some are quite small. The smaller the “pool”, the easier it is to get noticed. This ties directly into what I mentioned in a previous post about targeting keywords.

For example, the information available online about cats is astronomical. Every possible facet has been covered and recovered and covered multiple times more. So let’s say you just wrote and published a fantastic article on the care and feeding of newborn kittens. It’s a fantastic piece of work worthy of a Pulitzer Prize, yet months go by and you’ve noticed that hardly anyone has read it. Why is that?

It is because of the size of the pool. Your fantastic article, as great as it is, is like dumping a cup of milk into the ocean; it quickly becomes invisible inside the enormous volume surrounding it. The ocean is every other blog post or web site with information on cats and your cup of milk stands a very slim chance of ever getting noticed.

The next time you find yourself wondering why your really good content fails to attract attention, think about the amount of similar information available and see if that explains it.

This is the final article in the “WordPress SEO For Beginners” series. This ends the basics of onsite SEO. If you missed the previous articles on permalinks, meta tags, or blog layouts I recommend reading them as well.

The content on web pages is of critical importance in how it ranks in search engines for keywords. And I should mention up front that when I say “content” I am also implying the overall text, images, media, etc. on a web page, not just the article you are writing. Search engines take into account everything on your site, not just the main article.

Right after a search bot leaves the head section of a web page it begins to gather as much information on your site as it can. This includes visible text, hyperlinks and images and their corresponding alt tags. They take all this information and combine it together to get an idea on what your web page is about. All the above factors play a role in how Google or any other search engine eventually ranks your site.

Search engines use algorithms

Search engines have what is known as an “algorithm” in how they determine where to rank a web site for any particular keyword or search phrase. Numerous individual factors in your web page are analyzed through this algorithm and a web site’s ranking is determined through these calculations.

It should be noted that the calculation methods used by search engines are a highly guarded secret. In regards to Google, no one outside of Google knows for 100% certain how their algorithm works or precisely what a person should do to their website to ensure high rankings. SEO experts have gained their knowledge through trial and error, noting what brings positive results and what things to avoid.

I should also disclose that what I am about to state shouldn’t be considered set in stone. I will give some guidelines to go by, but every web page or niche is different so some flexibility should be kept in mind.

Choose the right keywords

If your desire is to publish content that stands a better shot at ranking higher in the search engines, then you should consider a few things while you’re crafting your articles. First, what keyword or phrase are you targeting with your article? Let’s say that you’re writing a piece on divorce attorneys. When Google rates your web page, what term or terms do you want to rank highest on?

Second, is your desired keyword worth anything? Keyword value can generally be defined as its search volume i.e. the average amount of searches made for that term a month. It’s relatively easy to be ranked #1 for many keywords or phrases, but if being ranked #1 doesn’t equate into search engine visitors, then that keyword is worthless.

Lastly, how competitive is your desired keyword? I can tell you from experience that competitive keywords will take more than stellar content on your blog to get ranked high. It will also necessitate offsite SEO as well, but that’s a subject for another day. If you want an easy way to get a ballpark idea of how competitive a keyword is just type it into Google and pay attention to the total results found number. The higher the number, the more competitive that keyword market is.

One way to increase the likelihood of high search engine rankings is to narrowly define your targeted keyword. In the previously mentioned article on divorce attorneys, you’ve got two chances of getting ranked high on Google: slim and none (and I think slim left town!). That’s because “divorce attorneys” is a very highly contested keyword. But what if you change your keyword goal to “Chicago divorce attorneys”? While in this example it’s still a competitive keyword, you’ve greatly reduced the keyword competition into something much more manageable. You could even put a variation on your keyword with options such as “Chicago family law attorneys”. The point is that in order to succeed with competitive keywords you have to narrow your focus.

Onsite SEO techniques to use

Now that you have your keyword or key phrase in mind, it’s time to get your article written and online. A basic rule of thumb for optimized content would be 500-600 words of text with a 1.5% – 2.5% keyword frequency rate. In a 500 word article that would mean using your keyword about 8 to 12 times. This is generally a pretty good rule of thumb for a single keyword. I would double the word count if the term you are aiming for is actually a two word phrase such as “divorce attorneys”. In some cases where the key phrase I’m targeting is three words, I will aim for a total of 1800-2000 total words of text on the page, but that’s about as far as I’ll go as it relates to the word count.

Other things to take into consideration on your blog pages are the headings. The title of your blog articles should be utilizing heading tags, either an H1 tag or H2 tag. You can check to see what headings your blog is using by right clicking and viewing the source of your page. Look for where the title is and you should see either <h1> or possibly <h2> enclosing your title. H1 tags are preferred, as search engines value the text between H1 tags a little more than text between an H2 tag. If your blog theme is using H2 tags for blog post titles, do what you can to switch them to H1.

Image alt tags also help the overall SEO of your pages. Alt tags are short descriptions of images that you use on web sites. A search engine bot can tell that you have images on your site, but cannot “read” them. Providing relevant text that describes what the image is in the alt tag gives your page a little boost to help your overall SEO efforts (provided that the image relates to your keyword). If I’m writing about little red wagons and I place a picture of one in my blog article, you better believe that I’m going to use the term “little red wagon” in the image alt tag.

WordPress makes it easy to enter in the alt tag information. When you upload a picture to use in a post through the editor, immediately after it uploads you are presented with text boxes to add the desired descriptions. Make it a habit to always utilize them.

There are many other things that can be done to optimize your copy for SEO purposes, but many of them get a little technical and go beyond the scope of this article. By starting with the foundation I outlined here you should see improvements in your search engine rankings.

One thing I should point out is that your overall writing style shouldn’t change by doing this, or at least only change a minimal amount. If you spend your time “writing for Google” as opposed to “writing for your audience” it is only too easy to alienate your readers. Copy that is formatted strictly for search engine spiders doesn’t always translate well when actual humans read it, so try to keep that in mind as well.

Final thoughts on content

Knowing which keywords to target and which ones to leave alone is important. If you’re goal is to rank high for certain terms, aim for the terms that are attainable. The overall SEO optimization of a web encompasses several things; try to cover them all for best results.