SEO – On Page Optimization Tips

There are two parts to SEO: on page optimization and off page optimization. Off page optimization involves all the things that happen off your website (like link building) that affect your search engine rankings, while the on page optimization is what happens on your website. Both are very important to your visibility on the search engines. We are going to look at a few great tips to ensure that your website is as search engine friendly as possible.

SEO On Page Optimization Tip #1: Your title tags are THE tags. Thats right, your title tag is the most important META tag on your website. You need to make sure you get your primary keyword in there first. So many times you will see a website put the name of the company first in the title tag. Big mistake. Remember, people are not necessarily searching for the NAME of your company, they are looking for a product or service, i.e. SEO. Another mistake is to try and put too MANY keywords in your title. You will not rank for much this way as you are diluting the main keyword phrase. Lastly, don’t duplicate your title tags across your website. You have a great opportunity here to rank for many keywords over many pages.

SEO On Page Optimization Tip #2: Use your image alt tags. This is overlooked too often. When ever you place an image on your page you have the chance to tell search engines exactly what that image is about. As you know search engines can’t read pictures, so if you use the alt tag smartly you can get a few more vital keywords into your webpage. NOTE: Don’t use this excessively! If you have lots of pictures on your page there is no need to label every single one, it may be seen as spamming.

SEO On Page Optimization Tip #3: Take advantage of your header tags. You header tags (H1, H2, H3) are an awesome way to put extra weight on your most important keywords. Many websites that I take a look at choose to ignore this for some reason. A good way to use you H1 tag is use the main keyword you are going for on that particular page. And where do you find that? Well is should be the first few words of your title tag, right?

SEO On Page Optimization Tip #4: Interlinking your webpages is like link building, on page style! The idea is to link to your main pages within the body of your text. Sounds easy enough, well too many people don’t do this. If you have a fairly large website and interlink properly, you will see your rankings drastically improve. Two things to remember:

1. Put more weight on your ‘money’ pages. So link to the pages that you actually want to rank for.

2. Use the correct anchor text. If you are going for the keyword SEO Online Specialists then use that as your anchor text.

Those are four excellent SEO on page optimization tips that you can apply to your website to help increase its visability on the web!

Getting A High Quality Score With PPC

Pay per click is not exactly SEO but it can be very beneficial to know how to use it properly. A savvy marketer/webmaster should at least understand both “free” and paid search marketing. Over the past few months we have taken a look at some excellent SEO tips and tricks and today I would like to a few great PPC tips that will save you money on clicks and (hopefully) increase your CTR (click thru rate).

What is QS (Quality Score)?

As stated in the search engine watch SEM glossary :”A score assigned by search engines that is calculated by measuring an ad’s clickthrough rate, analyzing the relevance of the landing page, and considering other factors used to determine the quality of a site and reward those of higher quality with top placement and lower bid requirements. Some factors that make up a quality score are historical keyword performance, the quality of an ad’s landing page, and other undisclosed attributes. All of the major search engines now use some form of quality score in their search ad algorithm.”

In a nut shell, it’s all about being relevant. If your ad and landing page are relevant you will(should) get a better click thru rate and then you will be rewarded by higher advert positioning.

How To Get A High Quality Score.

At the beginning of your PPC campaign it is all about one thing – relevance. How relevant your ad is and how relevant your landing page is( the page where the person goes to after they click on your ad). You see it time and time again – you are looking for something to buy. Let’s say for example you are looking for a dog collar.

You go to Google and type in dog collar. On the right hand side (where the ads are displayed) you will see all types of ads ranging from dog food to puppy clothes. These are highly irrelevant to what the person is search for. Many of the pages that have dog collar on the will take you to the main page of their website and you actually have to find where their dog collar section is. This is not good advertising practice. I know that if I am looking for a dog collar and click on an advert telling me that I can find one there to buy and it takes me elsewhere, I probably will lose interest fast and leave. This is why it is extremely important to keep your keywords and ad groups as tightly knit as possible.

What does that mean?

Let’s say we are selling dog collars. I will do some quick search engine keyword research and come up with a few keywords (note: you should be far more thorough with your keyword research, but for this example I am just going to do this quickly) Using the Google Keyword Tool I typed in dog collar and got the top 10 traffic keywords:

dog collar
dog collars
dog training collar
dogs collars
dog training collars
dog bark collar
leather dog collar
dog collars leashes
dog collars leather
dogs collar

OK so now we need to group these keywords and make sure that they are as relevant as possible. I will group them like this:

Dog Collar
dog collar
dog collars
dogs collars
dogs collar

Dog Training Collar
dog training collar
dog training collars

Leather Dog Collar
leather dog collar
dog collars leather

dog bark collar

dog collars leashes

As you can see I have grouped these perfectly so that each group contains almost identical keywords. Now it is time to write ads for the various groups.

TIP: A really nice little trick is to try and make sure you put your keyword in the title of your ad AS WELL as in the body somewhere.

Keep in mind that you only have alimited amount of space for your ads.

Just as an example, for the keyword group Dog Collar my ad might look something like this:

Awesome Dog Collars
Pick The Perfect Dog Collar
From Our Huge Selection Now!
http://www.awesomedogcollars.com

Can you see how I have put the keywords in twice?

Now that the keyword and ad has been taken care of, you need to make sure that when someone clicks on this they are not taken to the dog food section of your website.

Keeping everything relevant will definately help hugely with your quality score. Do a little research in your niche and you will be surprised at how bad some of the advertising is.

Google Webmaster Chat

At 9 am Pacific Time Google will be doing their third Google webmaster chat. Webmasters will be able to ask Google questions, obviously through a moderator, and Google will answer the ones they want to via audio and in text. If you want to join click here.

Build Reciprocal Links – Is It Worth It?

Link building is an extremely important part of the SEO process. Incoming links to your website are seen as a vote to search engines. This means that you have something good and so worthwhile on your website that someone else is willing to link to you. There are a few different types of linking strategies that you can use.

You can build reciprocal links which we will get to in a moment.

You can build one way links, meaning that someone links to you and you don’t link back to them.

Or you can build three way links. This can be done if: site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site C links to site A.

Out of those three techniques the winner is one way linking. You get maximum PageRank from quality, anchor text targeted one way links. That begs the question: when you build reciprocal links, is it worth it?

Well it’s actually quite a difficult question to answer. I know some people that swear by it, and others that wouldn’t touch them with a stick. My personal opinion is that, like with everything in life, use them in moderation. Obviously first prize are quality, one way links. However, they are a lot harder to get than reciprocal links. So if you are looking to build reciprocal links, here are a few tips to help you out:

1. Place a link on your site to the other site before you approach the webmaster. This is a must do. Before you ask anyone to trade links with you, you should always first place a link on your website to them.

2. See how many links are on their “link” page. You really dont want to be at the bottom of a list of 200 links. See how many links the website has on the page where you are likely to be linked to from. Rule of thumb: if there are already 20+ links on that page, move on.

Building reciprocal links can be worth it, however for a more effective link building campaign, go for one way links. This way you can take full advantage of the link juice that is passed from the other website.

Interlinking – The Great Link Opportunity

Oh boy, this is an oldie, but a goodie. I see this time and time again on websites. Webmasters are missing out on the ideal opportunity to channel their PageRank and funnel it to the most important pages on their website. It still amazes me how many websites miss out on this opportunity.

Great Link Opportunity #1: Your Logo

Many websites these days are built from CMS systems. Two popular ones that come to mind are WordPress and Joomla. The reason being it makes it very easy for the average Joe to have their own website without having any real technical skills. For these types of websites you might notice that the name of your blog or your logo will directly link to the homepage. The thing is, many pages that are not made from CMS systems like this forget to link the logo to the home page. This is a great interlinking chance gone astray.

Great Link Opportunity #2: Use your menus.

If you do use a CMS, you have little say on the structure of your menus. WordPress for example, will automatically add links to the pages in the horizontal menu and posts to the vertical menu on your site. While this may work you could also try and make links on the footer. Create a footer menu and you can channel your PageRank to the most important pages on your site. Remember, it is not completely necessary to link to EVERY page on your website from the footer menu, only the most important pages on your site, i.e. your money pages.

Great Link Opportunity #3: In content linking.

Within your pages you should have your main targeted keywords sprinkled around your content. These keywords are awesome anchor text opportunities. What what you need to to do is link these keywords to the relevant page they are related too (i.e. if you are trying to rank for the term link building, then use that as anchor text to link to the page that you are trying to rank for.)

These are some great ways to take full advantage of internal linking on your website.