SEO Tips

So You Want To Learn SEO

Many years ago, John Patrick came out with a series of books entitled "So You Want To Be A Gambler" which did very well. It would have been wonderful if it all was as easy as he claimed, but you can't have everything. The same can be said about search engine optimization, or SEO for short. Everybody wants to be able to do it so that they can get their web pages climbing up the search engines in a hurry. Problem is, SEO isn't as easy as the "how to" books make it sound. This article is going to explain some of the difficulties of SEO without actually getting into the "how to" of the process. Hopefully, after reading this, you will have a pretty good idea if SEO is something you want to tackle on your own.

The first problem with SEO in itself is that it isn't just one thing, or even a few things. SEO is a complex process that involves many steps. Leaving out even just one of those steps could mean the difference between a page one listing and a page 101 listing. Yes, things can get that tricky. And because SEO is a complex process, it is also a very time consuming process. Most people simply don't have the hours in the day to do their own SEO. If they tried, they'd end up neglecting the actual running of their business. This is why most people outsource this process to those who know what they're doing, do it for a living, and can do it a lot faster.

Another problem with SEO is that it is an ever changing and ever evolving beast. An SEO tactic that worked a year ago may not be so effective today. You have to constantly keep your eye out on your search engine rankings to see if they are going up or down. This is not an easy thing to do as sometimes your rankings will go up and down like a yo-yo. When this happens, it is hard to know what to fix, if anything. Many times, you are left throwing your arms up in the air and just leaving things to chance. It can be very frustrating.

Another problem with SEO is that the search engines themselves are constantly changing their algorithms. Most of the time, this is done to penalize cheaters. And trust me, there are plenty of cheaters out there, which of course brings up another problem with SEO. If you're not sure of what you're doing, you may inadvertently do something that will get your site flagged and booted out of the directory listings. And trust me, it only takes one thing. Writing to them and saying, "Sorry, I didn't know" isn't going to matter with them. When you're banned, you're usually banned for life.

So before you decide that SEO is something that you really want to learn and do yourself, just remember, it can turn out to be real ugly if you don't understand it completely.

Some SEO Basic Tips - Inbound Links

A course on SEO, or search engine optimization, could fill up a book. Actually, several books. So obviously, it is beyond the scope of this article to teach you everything there is to know about SEO. Instead, we're going to focus on one part of SEO and hopefully give you some tips that will be of use to you and improve your SEO strategy over the long haul.

One of the things that people seem to forget is that SEO is not just what you do on your web page. Yes, you have to make sure your meta tags are optimized and that you use header tags and format your links properly, making sure you have links from each page of your site going to other pages, but SEO is more than just what you do to the pages of your site. SEO is also about what we call off page SEO. These are things that you do that have nothing to do with making changes to your web pages themselves. We're going to point out what some of these things are.

One of these things is getting inbound links. These are links that are on other people's pages that point to your page. The more inbound links you have, the higher up the search engines you go, especially if these inbound links are on pages with high PR numbers. Okay, we should probably go over what a PR number is, at least briefly, so you understand why this is important.

A PR number is a number that Google assigns to a web page. This number is a relative indication of how important that page is to the keywords it is targeting. A page with no relevance will have a PR of 0. A page with the highest relevance will have a PR of 10. So ideally, you want as many links as you can on these higher PR pages. Now, getting them is not so easy. The more relevant pages are going to want something in return for putting your link on their page. They're either going to want you to link to their site and be an equally ranked page, or if you're not, they're going to want you to pay through the nose for the privilege of linking to your site. So, like I said, it isn't easy.

The best way to go about getting inbound links is to write articles. Some of the top article directories on the Internet have pretty high PR numbers. E-zine Articles is one site that comes to mind. Their PR number is somewhere around 7. So, if you submit your articles to their site and get links pointing back to yours, you should start to see a gradual rise in your rankings. Of course, you are going to need more inbound links than just E-zine Articles to really move your site up.

Getting inbound links is a very time consuming but important practice. If you take the time to do it properly, you will definitely see your site climbing up the search engine rankings.

Some SEO Basic Tips - Keyword Density

There are so many things involved in SEO, or search engine optimization, that it would be impossible to cover them all in one article. Books can be written on the subject. So, in this particular article, we're going to discuss the concept of keyword density and try to explain it in simple to understand terms, although doing this correctly is anything but simple. It is the hopes of this author that after reading this, you will have a decent idea of what keyword density is and how to optimize yours correctly.

First thing you need to understand is what a keyword is. A keyword is a word, or could also be a phrase, that describes what your site is about. For example, let's say that you had a site on bowling and bowling tips. Some of your keywords might be bowling, bowling tips, bowling etiquette, bowling balls, bowling shoes, and so on. Whatever your site talks about, in regard to bowling, you want to have a keyword to designate this. Why? Well, the search engines base their rankings of your site largely upon the relevancy of your site.

If you have a site on bowling, the search engines are going to want to see that you are in fact speaking about bowling and not golf. So they will look for keywords relevant to bowling. Now, these keywords need to appear in two places. The first place, which has nothing to do with density, is in your keyword meta tag. This is where you would list the keywords, separated by comas, for each keyword your site related to. The second place these keywords need to be, and this is where keyword density comes in, is in the content of your site itself. By content, I mean any articles that you may have written that appear on your site.

What keyword density is, is how often those keywords appear on each page. This is where people get into trouble. They think that is they simply stuff their page with these keywords, repeating them over and over, that this will get your page moved up the search engines quickly. This is not the case, unfortunately. The search engines have gotten a lot smarter since the old days and now look out for these keyword stuffed pages. If they find that your page is keyword stuffed, they will simply ban your page.

So, then what is a good keyword density? Everybody has a different view on this. Some say 10%, some say 5%. I say, write how you naturally write. If you're writing an article on how to do the 3 step delivery for bowling, then write it the way you would if you were writing a book. Don't try to appease the search engines because you'll end up writing something that real people won't want to read. Be natural and be yourself and if you're writing on the topic, trust me, your keywords will appear more than enough to get your site moved up the search engines.

Some SEO Basic Tips - Keyword Research

This article may be the most important one that you ever read when it comes to SEO, or search engine optimization. Getting the right keywords for your target market, or for that matter just researching keywords in order to find a target market is literally the make or break of every business. I don't care if you have the greatest idea in the world. If you're not targeting the right keywords, you're not going to have the success that you want. In this article, we're going to take a look at keyword research and hopefully give you some basic tips on how to get the most out of it.

Unfortunately, SEO keyword research is not a plug and play operation. You do need a little brain power to do it successfully, especially if you're looking for a niche to get into. A niche is an area of the marketplace that you are intending to monetize. The absolute worst place to start is from scratch. This is where I recommend to simply write down your interests and skills. Certainly you are interested in something other than just making money. Okay, if that's your only interest, fine. Then start with "making money" as your keyword starting spot. If, however, you do have other interests, like music, sports, art, welding, or even underwater volleyball, then I suggest starting with those first. Making money is a tough niche to crack.

Okay, the next step is to go to your keyword research tool of choice. There are plenty of free ones out there and most are the same, getting their results from Overture. Once you've found a tool you're happy with, plug in your initial keyword and see how many monthly searches there are. Got 'em? Great! Now we're going to go to Google and see how many web sites have that keyword. Type the same keyword into the Google search engine, with quotes, and see how many competing sites. This will give you an idea of what your competition is.

Ultimately, what we want to do is find a keyword where we have a decent number of monthly searches but not too many competing sites. The reason for this is because we want to be able to break into the niche we are targeting as easily as possible. This is where we have to really dig into our keyword research. See, the first keyword we pick will probably be very general and thus give many searches but also many competing sites. So, what we have to do is narrow things down. So let's say we started with "making money" and found that there were too many competing sites. What we may have to do is expand that phrase. Maybe try something like "make money online" next. That should bring us fewer searches but also fewer competing sites. We may still have to narrow it down even more. So maybe we'll try "make money online with membership sites" and see how many searches and sites we get.

Eventually, we will find a combination of searches and sites that is good enough to go after. Or maybe not. Maybe there are no sub niches in that main niche worth going after. Maybe we may have to move onto another niche altogether. Point is, that is the basic procedure. Find a starting point and then narrow it down.

Now, there are some tools that will make this job easier, such as Keyword Elite, but the procedure is still the same. Find a keyword phrase, or hopefully several phrases, where you can monetize that phrase easily.

Keyword research, as I said, is not an easy chore, but it is one that has to be tackled in order to know where you are going with the business that you choose to pursue.

Keyword density is not rocket science. It's just common sense. Use some and you'll be just fine.

Some SEO Basic Tips - Article Submission

This may very well be one of the hottest debated topics when it comes to SEO, or search engine optimization. Not whether or not you submit articles to directories in order to get inbound links to your site. Everybody agrees that this is one of the most important things to do. What people can't seem to agree on is the duplicate content penalty. Some say that it is quite real and others say that it is just a load of horse manure. Well, this article is going to explore by sides of the argument but will ultimately leave it up to you to decide who you think is right.

First let's discuss exactly what we mean by duplicate content penalty. Let's say you wrote and article on acne cures and you submitted that article to E-Zine Articles. You then took that same article and submitted it to Go Articles. And you kept on doing this, submitting that same article to different article directories in order to maximize your web site's exposure. What you end up having is what they call duplicate content. The same article is located in more than one place. The question is, is there a penalty for this content, as some people claim, or is it really just a scare tactic? We're going to present both sides of the argument.

Those who say that there is a duplicate content penalty for doing this insist that the search engines look to see that the same article is on more than one web site and because it is the same article, they will either not list it in their search engine directory for all sites, or, if they do, they will penalize the site that the article is pointing to by dropping them in the search engine ranks. This is what is referred to as duplicate content penalty and those who swear by it insist that it is very real.

Those who say that there is no duplicate content penalty offer this as their argument. Because the article directories are there for other people to read these articles and even put them on their own web sites, even if you were to submit your site to just one article directory, eventually, that article would be on a number of other sites. If the duplicate content penalty did indeed exist, then even just submitting to one article directory would bring about this penalty when other sites started posting the same article. Plus, they say that by having your article at more places, you get more real people to see your site, so the penalty doesn't matter, if it even exists. You have to admit, it's an interesting argument.

This leaves us with an interesting dilemma. Certainly there is validity to both sides of the argument, and since nobody but the search engines really no for certain, what do you do? Well, this is what I do. Figuring that if there really is a duplicate content penalty, I want to minimize my chances of having it happen to me. So I only submit to one article directory. If other sites pick the article up and I get penalized, well, at least I tried.

Am I right? Who knows? Maybe someday I'll throw caution to the wind and submit my one article to a hundred directories. What are YOU going to do? Inquiring minds want to know.

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