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Jun 19 2008

Never Ending SEO

Published by under Search Engine Optimization

You can be the best Search Engine Optimizer in the business but one thing is for sure, no matter how much SEO you do, it never ends. I have 8 blogs now and I spend more time getting traffic and optimizing my blogs for the search engine than I do posting.

It is a never ending process because there are many factors that affect your results. If you build tons of links pointing to your site, Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines will find you. However, you may loss links because a site removes them, they shut down, or one of the search engines gives that link less value. That is the main reason you must constantly be adding more links, submitting to more directories and tweaking your websites to make sure you do not lose your rankings.

I swore that after I started my seventh blog that I was finished. Now I have taken on my eighth blog. A few days ago, I released Your Review. This is a blog that will be reviewing all kinds of products and services. I have been working hard to  get the site optimized for the search engine.  Google has been slow to list it unlike my other blogs. Oh well, as always, I will be plugging away at my Search Engine Optimization.

I always tell everyone, “SEO is a slow tedious process but the results will be amazing if you stick around for the a while.” OK, back to work on the never ending SEO!

Drop me a comment so I know real life people are still there!

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May 22 2008

Finding the Right Keywords

When advertising your website or blog, one of the most important things is to choice the right keywords to place in the anchors. Choosing the right keywords will affect where you rank in the major Search Engines. These should be related directly to the content of your website. For example, I often use SEO for the Common Webmaster or Search Engine Optimization when advertising this blog.

Sometimes you have a website or family blog and you have no idea what to use as a keyword. At this point, it is smart to seek some help. You can spend money and buy the latest greatest software or you can use many of the free online keyword tools to find out the best words to target. You can easily find such tools by searching Google or other top search engines with the term “keyword tracker” or “finding keywords.”

One of the best tools I use that is quite handy because it shows you the competition for certain words is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool is designed for use when you are planning to advertise through Adwords but you can use it to find the keywords relevant to your website or blog. There is two ways to search, one is by placing a keyword or key term in the box and see what relevant terms are related and what the search volume and competition is. The other way, the one I prefer, is to put in your URL of the website and let the tool extract keywords for you. Once the keywords are extracted, the tool list all of them with search volume and competition.

There are several other tools that are handy and useful and can be easily found by searching. Keep in mind that when entering a niche market that has high competition, it will be much harder to rank in the search engines for those keywords or terms. It is best to find words related to your topic that have a good search volume and low competition and focus on those terms.

If you have some additional advice about choosing keywords, please leave a comment for the benefit of all the readers of this blog.

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Feb 15 2008

Quality Content is Key

Published by under Website Creation

You can build the best looking website on the Internet and do your best at SEO but it means nothing without the filling inside. The number one key when building a good website or blog is to have quality content.

When you build a website, it should not be built for Google or any other search engine, it should be built for the people you want to visit your site. It does not matter if you are looking to sale a product or to entertain people or just provide information, quality is what you should have inside your website.

If you have the ability to write everything yourself, I highly suggest doing it. However, if you are not a good writer, I recommend you hire someone to write articles for you. Make sure you look at some samples of their writing and do not accept garbage for your website. I personally write many articles for people and I am available to hire to write articles if you find the need arises.

If you decide to write for yourself, make sure to use a good spell checker and if needed a good grammar checker. I love to write and I think I am good at it but I can not spell worth a darn. Luckily, all of the major web browsers have add on spell checkers and if you use blogging software, those also include spell checkers. You could also write all your articles in Word and then copy and paste it to your website. This will both correct many grammar mistakes and spelling mistakes. Just remember quality is key.  You do not want a bunch of mistakes that make it difficult for your readers to follow.

When writing content for your site, know your audience. This means write in a way that is best suited to attract who you would like to read your content. If you site is geared towards the teen population, it is OK to have some slang in your content. However, if you are looking to sell business cards to professionals, it would be best to make sure you use correct terms and good grammar. A good example is this blog. I want to attract webmaster but I want the articles basic so that even the common hobby webmaster can understand what I am saying. My information is good for all webmasters but I do not try to talk over the new webmasters who are just starting out.

Another point is to know how much content you need. If your site is a sales page, you want to provide enough information to get your customer interested but not so much that they will get bored and leave your site. If you are an information site, you need to have a lot of content for your readers so they will keep coming back. Again, you need to know your audience and you need to know what they are looking for.

Updating your content and keeping it fresh and new is super important. If you have a blog, make sure to add content as often as you can. This also applies to information sites, people want new and fresh articles to read or they will visit once and never come back. If you own sales sites, make sure you keep the descriptions up to date and the prices. Nothing is more annoying for a customer than to visit a website and trying to buy something only to find out you no longer sell it or the price advertised is lower than the real price.

In the push to fill your blog or website with content, do not take short cuts. Duplicated content is frowned on by both the search engines and your readers. It is OK to repost a great article if you have permission to do so and you give a link back to the original source. Many webmaster take the easy route and just try to rewrite someone else work and pass it off as their own, this is a bad way to run your blog or site. Remember how we started this article, quality is key.

Quality content will not only make you look good for the search engines, it will also build a following of visitors and customers that could make your website the next biggest hit on the Internet.

I hope this article has helped you focus on content for your website and if you have a suggestion or question, please feel free to leave me a comment and I will reply. Please keep checking back for more articles for the common webmaster.

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Jan 28 2008

What is SEO?

Published by under Search Engine Optimization

OK this article was suppose to be the first real post and I did this yesterday but my host changed servers and I lost everything I did yesterday. I did not have a back up of this post so I have to rewrite from memory.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is basically in layman terms, preparing your site to get the quickest and highest ranking in the Search Engines. This means making it as friendly as possible for the search engines so they index your sites.

SEO involves many things, but one of the most important elements is targeted keywords. You want to figure out what words you will be targeting and focus you efforts on those words to get the highest ranking on Google and the other top search engines. For example, I will focus this site on three main ones SEO, Search Engine Optimization, and webmaster.

SEO also involves the website owner or webmaster building quality back links to their site. The focus should be on the related topic sites. I have a post already posted about back links so i will not dwell on that.

Title and meta tags are very important for both the main page and all additional pages for your website. It is important that both these match the content of your site. Other things include the HTML code of your site and all the other coding.

To me, the most important is to have unique and original content on your site. It is always best to write the articles yourself; however, if not possible, make sure you hire a quality writer who knows what they are talking about. Avoid coping other articles from around the Internet and rewritten articles are almost as bad.

Do not stuff your site with loads of keywords in hope that they will help you gain ranking. Many search engines will penalize sites that try to do these little black hat tricks. If the words flow with the content and are not out of place, you can include your keywords on your site and in your articles.

There is so much more to SEO and I will get into them in future posts. This just gives you a broad overview of what Search Engine optimization is. There are many ways to market your site and I will get deeper into those ways in future post.

Feel free to leave a hint or comment if you have something you want to add or just like my articles.

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