Five SEO tips for improving your Organic Ranking

1. Identify Target Keywords
Conduct keyword research using tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner, WordStream or Wordtracker to determine which keywords are most relevant to your target audience. Including keywords that are meaningful to your target audience is fundamental to optimizing your visibility in search engine results.





2. Perfect Your On-Page Optimization
Once you’ve identified your target keywords, ensure that they are included, whenever possible, throughout each of your site’s pages – particularly, in the URLs, title tag, body text, meta description, header tags and image ALT attributes. Using an on-page grading plugin, such as WordPress SEO by Yoast, HubSpot’s Marketing Grader or Moz On-Page Grader, is a great way to see how your on-page optimization stacks up. Then, you can adjust your site’s pages accordingly to further improve your ranking.

3. Develop a Content Strategy
Search engines favor websites that are regularly updated with fresh, high-quality content. One way to do this is by ensuring your website contains a blog. Develop content that provides meaningful value to your end user, and then promote the content via social media. This will help drive more traffic back to your website.

4. Attract Quality Links
Another way to optimize your website is by attracting high-quality links through methods such as guest blogging, creation of useful or interesting content, infographic distribution or promotion of an event. Focus on the quality, rather than quantity, of links you’re attracting from sites that are relevant to your business or industry.

5. Monitor Your Site’s Performance
Once you’ve optimized your site for improved search engine ranking, you’ll need to continuously monitor your site’s performance using an analytics tool, such as Google Analytics, to determine which keywords and traffic sources are producing the most conversions. This data will help identify the best keywords to target and which keywords aren’t generating results. You can also utilize this free website auditing tool to help increase conversions on your website and generate more sales leads.

Article source: roopco

Top Blogging SEO Tips

Focus on Long-Tail Keywords – Not Generic Ones.

When writing content for your blog or corporate site, it is very important not to jam a ton of keywords into a single blog post. Instead, focus on 1-2 keywords for each ariticle. It’s best to limit your amount of keywords to this number because 1) search engines like google and bing will actually penalize your post if it looks like you are jamming tons of keywords, and 2) it will keep you focused on a goal for your article or post. Of course more than one keyword may appear in your post; but the overall goal of the post should be focused enough to allow you to spend more time optimizing for just one or two targeted keywords.

Long-tail keywords may also be more efficient to use since your website visitors searching long-tail terms will often be more qualified then users searching for a generic term.
Where are the most SEO juicy parts of your posts to include these terms so you rank high in google? There are 4 important places where you should try to include your keywords:

a) Page Title

The title of your blog post should for sure include your keywords, but try to keep your long-tail keyword under 80 characters. The title of your article will be a search engine’s and reader’s first step in determining how relevant and important your content is, so including a keyword here is imperative.

b) Body

Mention your keywords at a normal pace throughout your post — don’t jam it in as many times as you possible can. Search engines like google will penalize any post they believe is using keyword mentions too many times for a particular keyword, so this requires close attention in your writing process.

c) URL

Search engines also look at your URL to figure out what your post is about. Your URL should reflect your title and content, so make sure the keywords you use are relevant to the article. If you have to trim your article URL down, make sure you keep your keywords in it.

d) Meta Description
Later in this blog article, we will get deeper into explaining meta descriptions. Your meta description is there to give search engines and your website users information about your blog post’s content. So be sure to use your long-tail term clearly here so Google and your website audience are well aware of the post’s content, but also keep in mind that how engaging the content matters for your conversion rates.

Include Meta Optimizations.

Meta optimization is not limited just to meta descriptions. Your page meta description is the additional text that appears on the search results that lets the user know what the link is all about.

meta-description
The meta description is important because it gives your readers information they need to decide whether or not your content is what they are looking for.

Your meta description should include the long-tail keyword you are trying to rank on google for, because if you are doing blogging right, it’s representative of the contents of your article.

Optimize your Images.

Your blog posts should not only contain text for SEO targeting – you should also have images that help explain your page content. Search engines don’t just look for images they look for images with alt text embedded in them.

You can figure out an image’s alt text by placing your cursor over an image and a small box will appear that describes your image

Don’t use too many Headings.

Headings can help organize your blog content but you can overuse them and then they can actually be harmful to your rankings. If you have too many similar headings you will be penalized by search engines for having duplicate content.

Use URL structures that help your visitors.

The URL structure of your website should make it very simple for your visitors to understand the structure of your site and what content they are trying to find. Search engines love URL structures that make it simple for them and your website users to understand the content of that page.

For exmaple: “forcefive.ca/blog/ottawa-seo-tips-for-website-owners” makes much more sense then “forcefive.ca/blog?=askjfnejnferiuf87yr4r”

Author: Ryan Grassie

Source: forcefive.ca

Google Maps Revamps Quality Guidelines For Local Pages

What has changed with the new Google local page quality guidelines?

1. Descriptors of any sort are NOT allowed
2. Categories should be the more specific category and NOT the overarching, general category
3. Increased name and category consistency amongst multi location chains
4. Two or more brands at the same location must pick one name
5. If Different departments are to have their own page they must have unique categories
6. Practitioner’s pages, in multi location practices should have their name only and not the name of the practice
7. Solo Practitioners only can use the format of Practice: Practitioner
8. Virtual Offices are NOT allowed unless staffed.

6 WordPress Tips and Tricks for SEO

SEO Experts in Mumbai - India - Vickeemore

Start With Keyword Research

Use the Right Permalink Structure

Use Plugins for WordPress SEO

Optimize Your Images

Make Sure Your Blog Loads Quickly

Use Internal Linking on Your Blog

7 SEO tips and tricks

 1. Internal Link Building

SEO Experts in Mumbai - Vickeemore

Linking new content to old content
When you write content on your website, find relevant articles that you have already published on your site to link to.  As the value of the new post goes up, the value of the link goes up too.  Also, if anyone does copy/republish your content then at least you’ll have at least one link back to your site.

Linking old content to new content

It’s great to link to older articles, but what about linking older articles to your new content?  This is just as important to consider.  You have some older articles that Google has probably already indexed and, if it’s a good article, you will have got links to it.  This means their value has gone up.

You can now link from these older articles to your newer posts.

This gives your new article a little boost and it also helps Google to find it.  As Google is re-indexing your content, it will follow links within your posts.

2. Resolve Errors in Google Webmaster Tools

Imagine if Google crawled your site and, when it found any issues or problems, it told you about them.

“Hey Guys, I’ve just found some problems on your site and if you don’t fix them it will mean that I’m not going to send you as much traffic as I was going to!”

Of course, you don’t get that personal email from Google, but Google does put any errors/problems into Google Webmaster Tools.

3.  Review content that is not ranking

What about content you’ve written recently that is not ranking?

Perhaps you thought that you would get a ton of links and you could rank in Google for a competitive term, but then this didn’t happen.

Well, maybe you could go back and tweak the post to try to rank for different keywords?  Or you could write a guest post on a high-profile site and link to this content?  Or add links from existing content on your website?

4.  Consider Related Keywords

When you write a blog post and try to optimize it for keywords, it’s great when you start to get regular ongoing traffic for those keywords.  But what also normally happens is that you end up getting even more traffic for keywords that are similar to the ones you tried to rank for.

So, it’s important to consider these related keywords in your posts.  I’m not talking about adding keywords for the sake of it, but if Google thinks they are related to your main keyword targets, then consider adding them if they add value to your content.

5.  Leverage tools to help with SEO

There are many tools that can help you with different aspects of the optimization of your content, so you really need to have a small collection of them.  Here are some examples of tools I use on a regular basis.

SEMRush – This shows the terms your competitor is ranking for, what you are ranking for, helps you with keyword research and much more.

Google Keyword Planner – When you want to do keyword research, this is essential to review.  Google will give you an estimate of traffic for the keywords you search for and for associated keywords.

Yoast SEO Plugin –  If you’re on WordPress, you need this plugin.  It’s the best plugin for optimizing your content for Google.  It’s simple to use and very effective.

Opensite Explorer –  It’s important to understand about the proprietary website and web page ranking system implemented by Moz.  Your website is ranked out of 100 using a domain authority ranking and your pages are ranked out of 100 also. This tool shows you this data so that you can consider it when trying to compete against other websites.

Moz Toolbar – When you do a Google search, this toolbar adds the domain and page authority onto each search result.  Consider using two browsers: one for normal searching and one that has Moz toolbar installed. You can use this one when you are doing your SEO work.

Ahrefs – I use this mainly for analyzing the link profiles of our site and our competitors’ sites.

6. Strategic guest posting

If you have a post that is ranking well and getting some traffic, this may be a post that you want to keep topping up with new links.

The new links to the post will help it maintain its standing in Google search results, but you may also push it up the search results if it’s not currently in the number one position.

One way of doing this is through guest posting.  Write an article that is relevant to the content you have, and include a link to the article you want to promote.  This helps drive traffic to the post but it will also help with the ranking of the post.  Because the link is relevant and adds value to the content that you are guest posting about, you’ll generally get away with adding the link!

7. Write long content

Is this really about optimizing content for SEO?  Yes, absolutely.  So, why write long content?

If you can write super high-quality short articles, then write them.  But typically it’s very difficult to provide a lot of value in a short article, so they don’t tend to get many links or shares.  Without these, you won’t have much of a chance of ranking for this content.

I read a recent post from the wonderful Andy Crestodina on the importance of the length of blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates etc.  In his article he presented research on the average content length for search results in the top 10.

Article Source: Razor Social
By Ian Cleary

7 Tips for Better Social Media Time Management

One of the biggest complaints I hear from business owners is that they struggle with social media time management. Managing your social media marketing looks overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Use these tips to keep your time spent on social media under control.

1. Before you launch any kind of marketing campaign, figure out your goal for it. Do you want to increase your visibility? Have people contact you for a consultation? Position yourself as an expert? Decide what you want out of the campaign then tailor your actions to achieve that goal.

2. Know where your people are. Spend your time on the networking sites that your audience is using. It’s tempting to assume that they are on Facebook because everyone is on Facebook, but that may not be the case for your ideal clients. Some business owners find Twitter to be a better fit for their audiences. Your audience may be on LinkedIn. It may take some time up front to find out where your clients are, but it’s worth the effort.

3. Don’t try to be on every network out there. Pick social media networks to fit your goal. Quora, for example, will showcase expertise while LinkedIn presents you as a buttoned-up professional. Pinterest is a good choice if there is a visual component to your work. Focus your time on one or two networks. Remember that you can’t be everywhere at once.

4. Schedule updates in advance whenever possible. Use a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule your Tweets or status updates. Facebook also allows you to schedule updates in advance. You can post multiple times a day, but you only have to login once a day to look for replies or comments.

5. Create an editorial calendar. Invest the time once a quarter to plan your social media activities. Choose a topic for the month or week and base your activities around that topic. Planning ahead will ensure that your social media time is focused strategically on meeting your goals. This is especially important if you are using content marketing (which you should be doing as an important part of your online marketing strategy and SEO). It will also help you to avoid having to figure out each day what you will post on your Facebook page or what you will tweet about.

6. Set a time limit. It’s amazing how time can disappear when you’re on social media… you may log into your Facebook account with the intent of updating your business Facebook page only to find, 20 minutes later, that you still haven’t done so. If you find yourself getting sucked into social media, reading every tweet and following every link, you may find it helpful to set a limit on your social media time. Decide how much time you have and focus on activities that bring you closer to your goal. Just because you are logged in to a networking site, it doesn’t mean you are doing things to bring you closer to your goals.

7. Use alerts, lists and other tools to stay in the loop. Set up a Google alert so you know when someone talks about you, your business, or a topic of interest to you. (Google alerts is a service that allows you to identify a search query and then receive an email that notifies you when new content is published online about that term.) Twitter allows you to create lists so you can see what the people you are most interested in are saying. Use the interests option on Facebook to watch people and pages that are important to you.

Social media doesn’t have to be draining. Set a goal for your marketing efforts and make sure your activities are targeted toward that goal. Use the tools available to you to optimize the time you spend, and limit your time when necessary.

Article source: Ccmarketingonline

Author: Carolina 

SEO Experts in Mumbai - Vickeemore

SEO Optimization Quick Tips and Resources

Tactics used by B2B Content Marketers

Tactics used by B2B Content Marketers

Looking Ahead to the SEO Challenges of 2014 

2013 has been a tumultuous year for content marketers and SEO whizzes. The expansion of Penguin and Panda coupled with the launch of Hummingbird has shaken up much of the conventional wisdom regarding SEO marketing and shattered many of the shortcuts and tricks used in years past. With 2014 right around the corner, take a moment to assess the previous year’s efforts and reflect on what changes may still be in the works:

Mobile Technology vs. Massive Content

Google’s constant SEO updates do more than toy with SEO marketers. Ultimately, Google wants to provide the best return link for a user’s question. This goal means that more detailed data reaches the upper echelons of search engine returns. A study done by QuickSprout founder Neil Patel found that copy that ran around 2,000 words consistently landed on the first page of search results and, anecdotally, longer copy generated better leads and more response.

In many ways, the emerging importance of mobile content runs contrary to quality, in-depth content production. Mobile users need short, snappy content that can easily be navigated on a small screen. While full blown recreation of content into smaller bites for mobile users seems time consuming and like unnecessary work, bridging the gap between emerging technology and full screen marketing is a challenge marketers will face in the coming year. SEO marketers in 2014 will need to balance the importance of in-depth content with the short attention span and small screen size of mobile users.




Embrace Google+

While Google has chosen not to disclose the exact system for ranking webpages, the importance of Google+ and Google Authorship became ever more obvious in 2013. The unique URL provided to content published on Google+ creates more backlinks to work with, and the respectability of Google Authorship increases the amount of clicks produced from a search.

Climb of Visual Media

The way Internet users are gathering and sharing information has shifted slightly in the past few years. No longer is straight content enough; instead, sites like Pinterest and Instagram deal in visual content. While this, at first, seems outside the realm of content production, marketers need to continue developing links between content and pictorials.

Topic over Keyword

Hummingbird’s release also coincided with Google’s switch to a 100 percent secure search. SEO marketers who hadn’t responded to the increasing return of “keywords (not provided)” seemed blind-sided as a longer start date was expected. Still, the launch of Hummingbird fully switched all successful SEO marketers into thinking about organic keywords and informative topics rather than trying to punch a keyword into an article 20 times.

In this new year, this switch will only become more prevalent and important. No longer will information-scarce but keyword-rich content be highly regarded. Instead, marketers will need to provide quality content that fully explores the topic without a focus on a specific word.

Guest Blogging Still Rules

Guest blogging has grown from a sometimes hobby of niche blogs to a verified SEO marketing strategy. Despite the time and effort it takes to form relationships and seek out willing participants, guest blogging will continue to grow in 2014. The importance of links for rankings and the positive results seen from expanding an audience makes guest blogging the most straightforward route to search engine success.

While the catch up game has been extensive in 2013, SEO marketers in 2014 can at least rest assured that all search engine updates are moving in a specific, easily defined direction. While past years have required marketers to relearn the game, 2014 should be a year of gentle transitions to get content more in line with the ultimate goal of providing quality information to specific user questions.

Article from: sitepronews

SEO Tips and Best Practices to Generate External Awareness

 
1. Identify Your Core Keyword Phrases

Start by identifying your top 10-15 keywords by thinking about the phrases you wish you would show up for when people look for your company. Think beyond your company name to specific products and services prospective clients might be trying to find. You can use tools like Google Free Keywords and Hubspot to help you brainstorm ideas.
For example, we specialize in event and trade show registration, but people who don’t know us would not know to search for “Expo Logic”. Instead, we identified opportunities to rank for services and products people are searching for like “trade show registration” and “lead retrieval scanner.” Focusing on service and product specific phrases has provided a significant jump in our keyword rankings, with 24 of our main keywords ranked in the top three, and 42 ranked in the top 10.

2. Create Compelling Content

To get the most from your SEO strategy, it’s important to know the difference between paid and organic results. Paid ads are a good tactic for a time sensitive campaign when you want to create quick awareness. New product launches, holiday promotions and specials work well with paid placement. For the long haul, it’s best to focus on organic results.
The most effective way to improve your organic SEO is to create compelling content around the keywords you identified in step one. Publish regular blog posts on your site, keep your social media profiles updated with relevant information that leads back to your site, and develop fresh site content focused on your target phrases.

From our organic SEO efforts, we’ve doubled our Twitter followers and steadily increased the number of site visitors each month.



 3. Stay Organized

The best way to stay on top of your different SEO efforts is to create an editorial calendar for your content.

Look for topic ideas by monitoring news about your industry through Google alerts.  Subscribe to your competitor’s RSS feeds to stay on top of trending topics.  Ask your sales team the top questions they hear from prospective clients and plan to answer them in your blog.  Schedule your content out about a month in advance.

4. Monitor Your Rankings

Lastly, make sure you have a good stats system set up to monitor your SEO success. A tool like Google Analytics or Hubspot can help you review keyword rankings, site traffic, social media leads and other important measures to see what SEO efforts are generating the most awareness.

Article Source: By Jeff Cooper, an EO Philadelphia member and president and CEO of Expo Logic

7 Basic SEO Techniques All Webmasters Must Know

Technique #1 – Optimize your title tags

Every page on your website should have its own unique title tag. However, not all title tags are created equally!

From an SEO perspective, a good title tag should:

Be no more than 70 characters (including spaces)
Include both product- or service-related keywords and your company’s brand name
Be both intriguing and informative enough to prompt search engine users to click through to your page (as title tags are typically used in the snipped displayed in the natural search results)
To see what this all looks like in real life, let’s look at a hypothetical example of how this and the following SEO techniques could be put into practice…

Suppose you run an auto body shop in San Francisco, CA. You’ve recently launched a new website which includes a page on your current specials. After conducting your keyword research, you’ve decided to target the phrase “auto body coupon,” along with location modifiers that put your website in front of consumers in your city.

In this case, a good title tag could be:

“Auto Body Coupons and Discounts | Frank's Auto - San Francisco, CA”
In addition, as you’re crafting your title tags, avoid “keyword stuffing” these important fields. Title tags that are no more than a string of all your website’s target keywords (in this example, something like “Auto Body Coupons, Auto Body Discounts, Auto Body Savings”) frustrate visitors and can lead to over-optimization penalties by the search engines.

Technique #2 – Create compelling meta descriptions
Along with your title tags, the section of every page on your website should contain a customized meta description. These brief page summaries should be no more than 150-160 characters long and should include at least one mention of your page’s target keyword phrase.

Following our previous example, your meta description could read something like this:

“Need quality auto body repair work done at a discount price? Check out the latest auto body coupon codes from Frank's Auto of San Francisco, CA.”
While meta descriptions don’t hold nearly the SEO weight that they used to, their presence in the snippets found on search engine results pages plays an important role in your site’s overall click-through rate (CTR). By writing your meta descriptions in a way that captures search users’ attention, you’ll increase the number of visitors who choose to click on your listing compared to your competitors’.


Technique #3 – Utilize keyword-rich headings
Both the title tag and meta description should be included in the section of every page on your website – but what about the rest of your page’s content?

When it comes to your pages’ body text, one of the best things you can do to improve your overall SEO value is to include <h2> and heading tags containing your target keyword phrases in your content. Not only do the search engines place added weight on the words found in these particular tags, the visual relief they provide to your website’s readers will help them to move more efficiently through your site’s content.

Technique #4 – Add ALT tags to your images
If you choose to add images to your web pages, make sure to add ALT tags to them as well.

ALT tags originally came about to provide visually impaired website visitors using text-to-speech devises with additional information about the content on their screens. And though this initial purpose is still valid, the content found in these fields is also important when it comes to SEO.

Again, you shouldn’t “stuff” your ALT tag full of target keywords and keyword variations. Instead, use your ALT tags to clearly and accurately describe your website’s images, working in keyword phrases as they occur naturally.

Technique #5 – Create a sitemap
In the world of SEO, the search engines’ indexing programs – commonly referred to as “spiders” – play the important role of analyzing new websites (or new content added to existing websites) and adding their content to the lists of pages that can be displayed in response to user queries.

As a result, facilitating the easy movement of these spider programs throughout your own site is an important part of optimizing your content for natural search traffic.

One of the best things you can do to help the spiders index your website is to create a sitemap – a page listing links to all the other pages on your site. There are plenty of different automated tools that can generate these important pages for you, though you can always create a sitemap by hand if your site is small.

Technique #6 – Build internal links between pages

Another way to help the search engine spiders to catalogue all of your site’s pages is to create internal links that connect your different pieces of content.

As an example, instead of simply linking to your “Contact” or “About Us” page from your navigation bar, consider adding text links to these pages from within the body content found on your home page. Doing so is a great way to help your visitors find the information they’re looking for, in addition to providing a major SEO boost to your site’s content.

Technique #7 – Update your site regularly
One final SEO technique you’ll want to implement is to update your site periodically. Because the search engines’ top priority is serving up the results that will best meet their users’ needs, they prefer to share websites that contain the latest, most up-to-date information. In addition, the more content you post to your site, the more keywords your website will include – increasing your odds of generating search engine traffic.

The easiest way to make regular updating a part of your SEO strategy is to create a company blog or news section. Either one of these tools will help you to connect with your readers, while also appeasing the search engines’ desire for fresh content.

Unfortunately, implementing these seven basic SEO techniques on your website alone isn’t enough to guarantee that your site will reach the coveted top spot in the search engine results pages for your chosen keyword phrases overnight. Realistically, SEO is a process that takes time to deliver results – though many new webmasters find this frustrating.

Instead of getting overwhelmed by the number of different SEO techniques out there, start with these seven basics. Over time and with continued commitment to pleasing both your readers and the search engines, you will start to see results!

Top 10 SEO tips

The purpose of having a website, I am sure you’ll agree is so that people can actually find you on the internet. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the way you help search engines find your site and serve it in the results to people entering keywords for whatever your site is about. With these Top 10 SEO tips your website’s ranking on search engines should improve with certain keywords which are crucial for driving more traffic to your site.

In this article we will cover the basic Top 10 SEO tips that will help your site do better when it comes to SEO as far as content and traffic are concerned. I have written this article in plain English so it can help as many people as possible without going into the small details that wouldn’t be of any good for somebody who is just trying to run a business and needs their site to do better.

1. Website Content

Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Content is king’ when you are searching for any information about SEO on the net? It just happens that it’s an important strategy when it comes to any site that’s trying to do better in the search engine results. With the continuing trend in Google’s algorithms to look for original, original quality content, this should never be underestimated or ignored. Quality content does not mean good spelling or grammar either, it means content which is as informative to the visitor as possible.
The basic rule about writing high quality content is to always think of what the page you are creating is about and stay focused on the topic. Let’s say you are a hotelier and you are writing a page about one of your new services which your hotel will offer for example, a new online booking service. In this case you should stay as close to the topic of ‘online booking service’ as possible and concentrating your content on just that. Staying focused on the topic means, you do not start talking about how wonderful your hotel is and how it has wonderful views from the rooms in a thousand words and only mention the ‘online hotel booking service’ once or twice in content.
You can write about how this new online booking service to explain how it works, the benefits of using it to stay at your hotel and so on. You can of course briefly talk about what the guests will enjoy at your hotel when they book online and provide hyperlinks to pages which specifically talk about the hotel itself.
The above example and content writing tips can be applied to almost any other type of business or topic that your site is focusing on. Writing original quality content is not hard to do if you start with the right frame of mind which targets people not search engines. Always compile your content with a human reader in mind and never write to manipulate Google’s algorithms or signals because it simply doesn’t work any more, even when it did it didn’t work very well in your favour
Just think if your site contains low-quality content and just so happens to have made it to the 1st position in the Google search results. Visitors find it, click on the link in the results to visit it, they arrive to find nothing informative enough on your site or content that grabs them . The chances are, they will simply hit the back button and surf away from your site, never to return. What’s happened back there? for one thing you’ve lost a potential sale and will add another bounce to your site’s bounce rate.
In brief, always write good quality content that is written for a human to read and when writing, ask yourself, would you bookmark the page? does it contain what you were looking for? would you need to hit the back button to look for a better result. It’s hard work but once you start getting more sales or traffic, you will be glad you’ve spent the extra time on content writing.

2. Keywords & Keyphrases
Keywords For Seo When choosing the keywords for a particular page on your site, always do your research first. This means finding out what your competitors are appearing in the search results with and not what you think is the ‘magic’ keyword. The easy way to do this without spending money on software or using any online services is to run a search on Google itself. Once you have found the keyword/keyphrase that is mostly used, focus on it and include it in the content at least 3-4 times. You need to also include it in your page’s Meta title, Meta description and Meta keywords if you still want to use them.

3. Website Design
Web Design SeoAny website design is crucial to SEO as it will determine how visitors will behave and feel like once they land on your site. A badly designed site that is cluttered, has a bad colour scheme and hard to navigate around is more likely to make the visitor hit the back button to get out of there as soon as possible. Good quality website design is also important when it comes to SEO as far as the size of the pages. Filling your site with none-optimized images and an excessive number of them will only make your site bring up red flags for the Google bot. As a rule, heavy and slow loading sites are considered to be a bad user experience when it comes to how Google views your website. With much of the emphasis being based on user experience when it comes to the Google’s algorithms, a badly designed site will do less better in the results.
Here is a good free online tool called Pingdom which will help you analyze your site’s loading time and content.
Always think how a user would feel when they are made to wait a whole minute or close for your site to load and only to find they’ve been waiting for a cluttered site. Make your site’s navigation as simple and clear as possible. Avoid forcing the visitor to make an excessive amount of clicks to reach the information they were looking for in the first place. It’s fair to say that if you frustrate your visitors with navigation that’s intentionally designed to force them to pass by content they were not looking for, they will leave your site.
 
4. Text & Styling
Website Text SEOInclude the important keywords and keyphrases you are targeting as close as possible to the beginning of your articles and make them bold maybe two or three times. The use of heading tags is also important because they are a way that a search engine spider checks to see if your keyword is included in a page’s heading for example. This is how a search engine will verify the relevancy of what your title is about and if your keyword is included in the page’s Meta title, Meta description and in the h1 tag, it would consider your page as being a successful match and yield it in the results.
There are of course other h tags which go down to h6 with the h1 being the most important and h6 the least important. It’s worth mentioning that when using the tags, use them on your content in the same order they come without skipping any. So if you have a heading and you’ve wrapped it in the h1 tag, your next use of the tags should be the h2 and so on. This is a sign that your page’s content is well structured and organized for the visitor.
Keep your site nice and uncluttered avoiding the use of too many colours and the point for this is that once the visitor comes to your site, you want them to feel like staying. The last thing you want is for a larger percentage of your visitors to hit the back button, this is bad news for your SEO. Sites with a high bounce rate will be considered as a bad result served in the search and will suffer when they are served less in the results. A badly designed site will basically loose you traffic.
 
5. Hyperlinks
Anchor Text  SEOThe importance of good linking methods will prove invaluable when it comes to SEO and this means traffic. A site that has good hyperlinks that points its visitors to the correct page in the least number of links will keep the visitor for longer. Anchor links as they are also known as are great for SEO when you include your keyword in them too for example, ‘Book Limousine Online’ as the hyperlink which will take the visitor to your ‘Book Limousine Online’ page. Include hyper links of your most important pages somewhere on the frontpage of your site and preferably with the exact keyword as it appears elsewhere for example in the Meta title, Meta description and of course the content of that page you are linking to.
 
6. Tools & Analytics
Website Analytics ToolsInstall Google Analytics to track how your site’s traffic is performing in the search results. This will help you optimize your site further if you are seeing keywords you had hoped to achieve better results with aren’t doing as well as you had hoped they would. Google Analytics will also help you find out a lot of information about how well your site’s keywords are being found and it will also give you some idea about what keywords people are finding you under.
Get yourself an account with Google Webmaster Tools which will help assess how your site is doing and help you to be informed of any trouble areas on the site. Having a Google Webmaster Tools account is also important for submitting sitemaps as you can analyze how Google is seeing your sitemap and you can also resubmit a sitemap for faster indexing after changes. Another great thing about having this account with Google is that let’s say your site is focused on serving the UK, you can actually tell Google that your site is mainly for people in the UK. The next time you run a search on google.uk for a keyword on your site, you will see the results are better than if you had searched for the same on google.com.
For more control over your SEO, I recommend you install the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin which is one of the best tools for helping you improve your SEO. The Yoast plugin will also allow you to test how your page will be assessed by Google and point you in the right direction of how to fix wrong things.
 
7. Social media
Social Media And SEOAs social media sites are widely used by a huge number of people around the world, it’s crucial your business website has a profile on as many of them as possible. It’s not a must to have an account with every social media site out there but you could of course focus your efforts on the top 3 main players which are Facebook, Twitter and Google plus. By actively using these sites, not only will you be getting more traffic to your site through your online presence, you will also achieve better SEO results when it comes to the social signals.
 
8. Meta Tags
Social Media And SEOMeta Tags are important because they tell Google and other search engines what your site is about in a few short words or sentences. You have the Title and Description Meta tags which are the two important ones you should concentrate on. Try to place your keyword/phrase in both of those Meta tags as this will help your pages being found in the results. Be careful not to put the keyword in those tags when it’s not also included in your content, it will not work and may actually be harmful to your site’s ranking. The keywords Meta Tag is not considered to hold any value when it comes to Google but some search engines still use it and it wouldn’t do your site any harm if you do.
 
9. Video content
Video content and SEOTry to produce short, good quality and informative videos about your business products or services which would help drive you traffic back to your site. As you may have noticed, you will sometimes see some videos from Youtube in the Google search results. This will improve your SEO for sure as more people visit your site.
 
10. Engaging visitors
Engage Site Visitors SEOOnce you have done all the SEO in the world to be found in the search results, what happens when a visitors comes to your site? When a person makes it to your site, is your content good enough to keep them engaged? Is your site offering them something they were looking for? Would they come back to your site?
The above may not sound much to do with SEO but it has a lot to do with it because good content is where we started at the top of this article. So once you get a visitor, do your best to offer them content that would engage them and make them stay longer on your site. Provide good quality content which can include, videos, a blog, a forum, competitions, surveys or basically anything that they would find interesting and informative or entertaining.

Article Source: templatic

Author: Motaz

Facebook Likes are good, but Shares are better. That's because a Share means your content is being passed around social networks and creating buzz for your business.

But getting your Facebook content shared isn't as simple as throwing something onto your Wall and expecting the Shares to just happen. You need to create share-worthy content.

To do just that, Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith offers 14 ways to boost your content's visibility and viral sharing on Facebook—all in the following infographic by ShortStack.

Among the tips shared are the following:

Use eye-catching images. Rather than just putting text boxes galore on your Facebook Wall, vary the content by posting infographics, photos, and artwork.
Keep it short. Increase likes, comments, and shares by keeping posts between 100 and 150 characters long.


Offer value. Consider your audience when sharing content on Facebook. Ask yourself, "Will this entertain or inform my audience?"

Read more: http://www.seodailyupdates.com/2012/01/blogspotcom-is-redirecting-to.html#ixzz1n6ogqo7t

Websites that utilize databases which can insert content into a webpage by way of a dynamic script like PHP or JavaScript are increasingly popular. This type of site is considered dynamic. Many websites choose dynamic content over static content. This is because if a website has thousands of products or pages, writing or updating each static by hand is a monumental task.

There are two types of URLs: dynamic and static. A dynamic URL is a page address that results from the search of a database-driven web site or the URL of a web site that runs a script. In contrast to static URLs, in which the contents of the web page stay the same unless the changes are hard-coded into the HTML, dynamic URLs are generated from specific queries to a site's database. The dynamic page is basically only a template in which to display the results of the database query. Instead of changing information in the HTML code, the data is changed in the database.

But there is a risk when using dynamic URLs: search engines don't like them. For those at most risk of losing search engine positioning due to dynamic URLs are e-commerce stores, forums, sites utilizing content management systems and blogs like Mambo or WordPress, or any other database-driven website. Many times the URL that is generated for the content in a dynamic site looks something like this:

http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date

A static URL on the other hand, is a URL that doesn't change, and doesn't have variable strings. It looks like this:

http://www.somesites.com/forums/the-challenges-of-dynamic-urls.htm

Static URLs are typically ranked better in search engine results pages, and they are indexed more quickly than dynamic URLs, if dynamic URLs get indexed at all. Static URLs are also easier for the end-user to view and understand what the page is about. If a user sees a URL in a search engine query that matches the title and description, they are more likely to click on that URL than one that doesn't make sense to them.

A search engine wants to only list pages its index that are unique. Search engines decide to combat this issue by cutting off the URLs after a specific number of variable strings (e.g.: ? & =).

For example, let's look at three URLs:

http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date


http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=13579&sort=date

All three of these URLs point to three different pages. But if the search engine purges the information after the first offending character, the question mark (?), now all three pages look the same:


http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php

http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php

Now, you don't have unique pages, and consequently, the duplicate URLs won't be indexed.


The study involved taking hundreds of highly competitive keyword queries, like travel, cars, and computer software, and comparing factors involving the top ten results. The statistics show that of those top ten, Google has 40-50% of those with the keyword either in the URL or the domain; Yahoo shows 60%; and MSN has an astonishing 85%! What that means is that to these search engines, having your keywords in your URL or domain name could mean the difference between a top ten ranking, and a ranking far down in the results pages.

The Solution


If you are hosted on a Linux server, then you will want to make the most of the Apache Mod Rewrite Rule, which is gives you the ability to inconspicuously redirect one URL to another, without the user's (or a search engine's) knowledge. You will need to have this module installed in Apache; for more information, you can view the documentation for this module here. This module saves you from having to rewrite your static URLs manually.

How does this module work? When a request comes in to a server for the new static URL, the Apache module redirects the URL internally to the old, dynamic URL, while still looking like the new static URL. The web server compares the URL requested by the client with the search pattern in the individual rules.

For example, when someone requests this URL:





It then converts the static URL to the old dynamic URL that looks like this, with no one the wiser:

http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345


You now have a URL that only will rank better in the search engines, but your end-users can definitely understand by glancing at the URL what the page will be about, while allowing Apache's Mod Rewrite Rule to handle to conversion for you, and still keeping the dynamic URL.


With the URL Rewriting Tool, you can opt to rewrite single pages or entire directories. Simply enter the URL into the box, press submit, and copy and paste the generated code into your .htaccess file on the root of your website. You must remember to place any additional rewrite commands in your .htaccess file for each dynamic URL you want Apache to rewrite. Now, you can give out the static URL links on your website without having to alter all of your dynamic URLs manually because you are letting the Mod Rewrite Rule do the conversion for you, without JavaScript, cloaking, or any sneaky tactics.

Another thing you must remember to do is to change all of your links in your website to the static URLs in order to avoid penalties by search engines due to having duplicate URLs. You could even add your dynamic URLs to your Robots Exclusion Standard File (robots.txt) to keep the search engines from spidering the duplicate URLs. Regardless of your methods, after using the URL Rewrite Tool, you should ideally have no links pointing to any of your old dynamic URLs.

You have multiple reasons to utilize static URLs in your website whenever possible. When it's not possible, and you need to keep your database-driven content as those old dynamic URLs, you can still give end-users and search engine a static URL to navigate, and all the while, they are still your dynamic URLs in disguise. When a search engine engineer was asked if this method was considered "cloaking", he responded that it indeed was not, and that in fact, search engines prefer you do it this way. The URL Rewrite Tool not only saves you time and energy by helping you use static URLs by converting them transparently to your dynamic URLs, but it will also save your rankings in the search engines.