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| Web Traffic: 13 Ethical Ways To Increase Your Site's Search Traffic (Mashable) |
Running a business without an ad is like winking at a beautiful girl in the dark, she won't see or notice you. Having an online presence and not getting search or web traffic is even worse. Here are a few search traffic tips to help you get the desired web traffic.
If you have a product you're really proud of, it should speak for itself. But when it comes down to it, you still need to get customers on your website in the first place — especially if you're running an e-commerce operation.
See Also: 8 Tips for Small Business Homepage Design
We asked a panel of 13 successful entrepreneurs to share their best advice for generating high-quality, organic search traffic to their business websites. Here's what they had to say:
1. Focus on the Long Tail
If you are a new site, it can be difficult to go after popular keywords right away. I find it better to write many quality articles on very specific keywords than to go after the ones with more search traffic. A great benefit of staying focused with long-tail key terms is that they usually convert better, as well. To help with this, I recommend a tool called HitTail, which drives targeted search visitors to your website by focusing on the most promising organic keywords in your existing traffic.
- Lawrence Watkins, Great Black Speakers
2. Stick Around
The longer you are in business and producing quality online content, the more likely you are to pop up in search results for all related keywords. Starting a blog or churning out a bunch of articles is all fine and good, but keeping those activities going for years as opposed to months (or weeks) makes a huge difference.
3. Optimize Your Articles
There are three main ingredients to a successfully optimized web page or article: your meta title, description and keywords. This is such a simple thing to fill out when you're publishing a piece of content on your site, so take the time to do it each time, and you'll start to rank for your keywords much faster.
- Nathalie Lussier, The Website Checkup Tool
- Nathalie Lussier, The Website Checkup Tool
4. Don't Forget About (Ethical) Link Building
Keyword-embedded links are the foundation of off-page search engine optimization. The best part is that links can be free. Just ask vendors, partners, press, clients, your alma mater and any other credible source that you interact with to embed hyperlinked keywords back to your site for the terms that you are targeting. If the referring source has a high page rank, you should see a pop in your rankings in less than two months of them being published.
- Christopher Kelly, Convene
- Christopher Kelly, Convene
5. Use Google's Keyword Tool
Use Google's Keyword Tool to find long-tail keywords that are not as competitive, then structure some content around those. If you are in a competitive niche, this is a way you can start building up some small recurring traffic and engage your users.
- Patrick Curtis, WallStreetOasis.com
- Patrick Curtis, WallStreetOasis.com
6. Provide Amazing Value to Your Readers
When it comes to increasing organic search, content marketing through blogging or guest posts is the fastest way to build great traffic. However, content marketing is a quality game and not a quantity game. If you have horrible content, people won't bother reading it or sharing it, which is basically the entire point of building a company blog. Therefore, when I write content, I constantly ask myself if I would take ten minutes out of my day to read it and if I'd share it with others. If you wouldn't do either of those things, then you really need to look at your content strategy again.
- Liam Martin, Staff.com
- Liam Martin, Staff.com
7. Don't Try to Outsmart Google
Gaming Google's system might work temporarily, but it is not a good strategy for the long haul. To increase organic search traffic, produce top-notch content that's relevant to what your users might be searching. Check the Google Keyword Tool to make sure you're using the correct terminology that the general public is using when they're searching.
- Sarah Schupp, UniversityParent
- Sarah Schupp, UniversityParent
8. Think of SEO as an Opportunity to Create Value
SEO isn't a game. At least it's not a game that you'll win in the long run if you think of it as a game. Create content that readers find valuable and Google will deem search-worthy. Visitors are more likely to share content that they enjoyed reading and will stay on your site longer, while bloggers and the media might use your site as a reference, which means more organic links.
- Danny Wong, Blank Label
- Danny Wong, Blank Label
9. Decrease Bounce Rate
If there is one thing search engines hate, it is a high bounce rate. Check your keywords for this, and optimize those pages to reduce your bounce rate. Search engines will love you for it.
- Adam Lieb, Duxter
- Adam Lieb, Duxter
10. Produce Quality Content
Search engines are rewarding people and companies who are getting high-quality, consistent content coming from them. Things such as author rank are going to have a big effect on organic search results. Put a plan in place to not only create content to publish online, but also to be able to maximize the value of the content so that it is properly distributed across social channels and has a chance to go viral.
- John Hall, Influence & Co.
- John Hall, Influence & Co.
11. Create a Company Blog to Increase SEO Traffic
SEO is king in organic search traffic. The more popular search terms within your niche that you include on your website, the more searches will organically lead to your site. But including too much text on the main pages of your site can do more harm than good, which makes it difficult for consumers to find the information they want. Instead of overwriting the copy on your homepage, about page and product pages, start a separate blog for additional SEO work. Use the blog to write about your niche, whether it's construction, beauty or entertainment. Try to do keyword research to find out which phrases are trending in your industry and include them in the blog posts. As long as your blog has a highly visible link back to the main page of the website, the blog will increase your visibility.
- Jay Wu, A Forever Recovery
- Jay Wu, A Forever Recovery
12. Leverage Industry Experts
Everyone likes opining as an expert. You'll be surprised how easily you can convince industry leaders to contribute guest posts to your own blog. They will likely have their own readerships, and those people will become familiar with your brand. The experts are also likely to produce great written content that will be of great interest to your existing users.
- Chuck Cohn, Varsity Tutors
- Chuck Cohn, Varsity Tutors
13. Create a Community
Increasing Google traffic is all about answering questions your community finds important. You need to become the authority in your niche. Have your community ask you questions, and you'll be well on your way to providing high-quality, valuable and useful content. That's what Google cares about. When you provide answers to your community's questions, Google will rank your site well for many keyword terms you wouldn't have been able to think of on your own. You create loyalty in your community and rank well in Google at the same time. That's a win-win.
- Mitch Gordon, Go Overseas
- Mitch Gordon, Go Overseas
Post Credits
Post Site: http://mashable.com/
Post Arthur: Scott Gerber
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottgerber
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| SEO: Gray Hat SEO - Is It Real And Should You Do It? (SiteProNews) |
This Gray Hat SEO tips and tricks, sounds very interesting. I'm sure you would find it very useful.
Also Read: SEO: The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet 2.0 (Moz)
Since the advent of SEO, like any human-created system, many have found it challenging to play by the ethical rules. Thus, “black hat” and “white hat” SEO were born. Black hat refers to shady practices where businesses buy links and engage in bot-scamming techniques, and white hat are all those standardized practices that develop increased rankings the old-fashioned way: by earning it.
It’s a natural progression, then, that the ever-present desire to bend the rules as far as they can go without breaking would manifest a new SEO term, “gray hat.” Many argue it’s the best search engine game in town, while others say it doesn’t even exist – there is no gray.
What exactly is gray hat SEO, and should your business consider pushing these boundaries? That all depends on your risk tolerance, adherence to structure, and willingness to walk the line between integrity and unethical practices. Read on to see where you land in the mix.
Gray Hat SEO: A Definition
Consider gray hat practices akin to a newly developed street drug – there’s a period of time where those in the know can use it before it’s deemed illegal. To some, these tactics are legitimate – crafty ways to play within the system, and come out on top.
In truth, gray hat is just a nicer way to say you’re attempting to cheat the process, without looking like it. To illustrate this point, let’s examine the most common gray hat practices.
Gray Hat in Action – Popular Tactics
Domain Purchases: Some businesses do a grab-and-buy on old yet authoritative URLs that can then add backlinks to the sites they own, thereby boosting rankings. While this may seem like an out of pocket expense, it can cost far less than the time and effort it normally takes to build your link juice.
Social Media Buys: Looking to increase your social media numbers overnight? There are services that automate this process, but proceed with caution: Twitter, at least, isn’t allowing these inflations any longer, and other platforms may soon follow suit.
Content Manipulation: Many now use software that scans the web for content on a particular topic, then “spins” it by rewording sections, thereby avoiding a duplicate content ding. Copyright infringement is still a possibility since normally no original content is added, but it can whiz past Panda’s watchful eye.
Cloaking: Famous in black hat circles, cloaking is an attempt to tell search engines one thing, and users another. By manipulating meta-data and IP addresses, you can convince search engines to crawl you when they otherwise would not, based on your content. Some argue this is a legitimate “gray area” for communities and membership sites.
Keyword Page Strategies: Another middle of the road tampering that involves creating landing pages for each keyword or keyword phrase. This can be time consuming, but certainly effective; as long as releases are staggered over time, so as to avoid spam filters.
Google-Bombing: A technique involving the formation of a big dose of links, generated solely for rankings. When combined with keyword bombing, this can inflate rankings in short order.
CSS Content Deception: Those with the coding chops can fool search engine bots into thinking a site’s content appears farther down the page than it actually does. The benefit? Google crawls content first, and if it’s perceived to be significantly down the page, the site can read as having increased value.
Microsites: Similar to keyword pages, some businesses create a different mini-website for each category they cover. As an example, a business selling pet supplies may create separate sites for cats, dogs, exotics, birds, etc. This is easy for search engines to sniff out, however; especially if you’re using the same contact information for each site.
Should You Consider Bending The Rules?
The argument for following standardized practices is always this: the bad guys seem to finish first. But is that really the case? And are there any exceptions?
Yes, it’s true that those that engage in questionable SEO tactics often seem to hit the top of the rankings. Monitor these results long term, however, and you’re likely to see cracks in the armor. Google, Bing, and Yahoo have an incredibly vested interested in catching deceptions as fast as they can, and years of algorithm shifts have shown they’re definitely paying attention. If you want your business to have staying power, it’s advisable that you not make the big dogs angry, or you may have to start from square one.
That said, some industries are themselves deviant and renegades, and in order to compete, you may feel like you have no choice.
In the SEOChat forums, one user, named Cygnus, puts it this way:
“I’m a white hat for some sites and a grey/black for others…trying to be a white hat in an uber-competitive industry doesn’t make sense with the current SEO environment. I can’t imagine someone trying to take on the phrase “viagra” with a pure white-hat approach…they probably wouldn’t crack the top 30.”
The Myth Of White And Gray
In actuality, “gray hat SEO” is only a matter of perception. One person’s gray is another person’s pitch black. It’s really only a category created to make those breaking the rules feel better about their strategies.
That said, anyone attempting to only follow white hat SEO practices has an almost impossible task. Because Google defines black hat as any attempt to manipulate rankings, you’d be hard pressed to find a site that hasn’t crossed the line. We bribe sites to link to us by offering link juice in return. We study keyword density for content and do our best to make search engine bots take notice. The list goes on and on.
Because the world knows that SEO is a critical component to online success, it’s natural that folks do all they can to get their business on top. The game, therefore, becomes one of risk tolerance and ethics. Only you, the business owner, can decide where in the spectrum of black, gray, and white you choose to land. No matter how you choose, there are repercussions – and you have to be comfortable with potential outcomes before moving forward with your strategies.
There is no guarantee that white or black hat, or any shade thereof, will help you win the race.
Where do you land in the spectrum of SEO? Do you think gray hat SEO is a legitimate classification of strategies?
Since the advent of SEO, like any human-created system, many have found it challenging to play by the ethical rules. Thus, “black hat” and “white hat” SEO were born. Black hat refers to shady practices where businesses buy links and engage in bot-scamming techniques, and white hat are all those standardized practices that develop increased rankings the old-fashioned way: by earning it.
It’s a natural progression, then, that the ever-present desire to bend the rules as far as they can go without breaking would manifest a new SEO term, “gray hat.” Many argue it’s the best search engine game in town, while others say it doesn’t even exist – there is no gray.
What exactly is gray hat SEO, and should your business consider pushing these boundaries? That all depends on your risk tolerance, adherence to structure, and willingness to walk the line between integrity and unethical practices. Read on to see where you land in the mix.
Gray Hat SEO: A Definition
Consider gray hat practices akin to a newly developed street drug – there’s a period of time where those in the know can use it before it’s deemed illegal. To some, these tactics are legitimate – crafty ways to play within the system, and come out on top.
In truth, gray hat is just a nicer way to say you’re attempting to cheat the process, without looking like it. To illustrate this point, let’s examine the most common gray hat practices.
Gray Hat in Action – Popular Tactics
Domain Purchases: Some businesses do a grab-and-buy on old yet authoritative URLs that can then add backlinks to the sites they own, thereby boosting rankings. While this may seem like an out of pocket expense, it can cost far less than the time and effort it normally takes to build your link juice.
Social Media Buys: Looking to increase your social media numbers overnight? There are services that automate this process, but proceed with caution: Twitter, at least, isn’t allowing these inflations any longer, and other platforms may soon follow suit.
Content Manipulation: Many now use software that scans the web for content on a particular topic, then “spins” it by rewording sections, thereby avoiding a duplicate content ding. Copyright infringement is still a possibility since normally no original content is added, but it can whiz past Panda’s watchful eye.
Cloaking: Famous in black hat circles, cloaking is an attempt to tell search engines one thing, and users another. By manipulating meta-data and IP addresses, you can convince search engines to crawl you when they otherwise would not, based on your content. Some argue this is a legitimate “gray area” for communities and membership sites.
Keyword Page Strategies: Another middle of the road tampering that involves creating landing pages for each keyword or keyword phrase. This can be time consuming, but certainly effective; as long as releases are staggered over time, so as to avoid spam filters.
Google-Bombing: A technique involving the formation of a big dose of links, generated solely for rankings. When combined with keyword bombing, this can inflate rankings in short order.
CSS Content Deception: Those with the coding chops can fool search engine bots into thinking a site’s content appears farther down the page than it actually does. The benefit? Google crawls content first, and if it’s perceived to be significantly down the page, the site can read as having increased value.
Microsites: Similar to keyword pages, some businesses create a different mini-website for each category they cover. As an example, a business selling pet supplies may create separate sites for cats, dogs, exotics, birds, etc. This is easy for search engines to sniff out, however; especially if you’re using the same contact information for each site.
Should You Consider Bending The Rules?
The argument for following standardized practices is always this: the bad guys seem to finish first. But is that really the case? And are there any exceptions?
Yes, it’s true that those that engage in questionable SEO tactics often seem to hit the top of the rankings. Monitor these results long term, however, and you’re likely to see cracks in the armor. Google, Bing, and Yahoo have an incredibly vested interested in catching deceptions as fast as they can, and years of algorithm shifts have shown they’re definitely paying attention. If you want your business to have staying power, it’s advisable that you not make the big dogs angry, or you may have to start from square one.
That said, some industries are themselves deviant and renegades, and in order to compete, you may feel like you have no choice.
In the SEOChat forums, one user, named Cygnus, puts it this way:
“I’m a white hat for some sites and a grey/black for others…trying to be a white hat in an uber-competitive industry doesn’t make sense with the current SEO environment. I can’t imagine someone trying to take on the phrase “viagra” with a pure white-hat approach…they probably wouldn’t crack the top 30.”
The Myth Of White And Gray
In actuality, “gray hat SEO” is only a matter of perception. One person’s gray is another person’s pitch black. It’s really only a category created to make those breaking the rules feel better about their strategies.
That said, anyone attempting to only follow white hat SEO practices has an almost impossible task. Because Google defines black hat as any attempt to manipulate rankings, you’d be hard pressed to find a site that hasn’t crossed the line. We bribe sites to link to us by offering link juice in return. We study keyword density for content and do our best to make search engine bots take notice. The list goes on and on.
Because the world knows that SEO is a critical component to online success, it’s natural that folks do all they can to get their business on top. The game, therefore, becomes one of risk tolerance and ethics. Only you, the business owner, can decide where in the spectrum of black, gray, and white you choose to land. No matter how you choose, there are repercussions – and you have to be comfortable with potential outcomes before moving forward with your strategies.
There is no guarantee that white or black hat, or any shade thereof, will help you win the race.
Where do you land in the spectrum of SEO? Do you think gray hat SEO is a legitimate classification of strategies?
Post Credits
Post Site: http://www.sitepronews.com/
Post Arthur: Tina Courtney
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/oshgumishy
Follow on Google Plus: Tina Courtney
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| SEO: The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet 2.0 (Moz) |
This is a very useful article on SEO for all web developer who seriously wants to take their search engine optimization approach to the next level.
It is my honor and privilege today to introduce the brand-new version of The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet. This free and downloadable document covers all of the important SEO code and best practices that are needed by online marketers and developers.
Benefits and features
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Backstory:
- Save the Google searches for your new inbound visitors: This cheat sheet covers all of the details you would normally spend hours researching online. This leaves you with more time for the important things (like laughing at JennaMarbles or pretending you don't watch Vine compilations).
- Available both online and offline: You can store the free downloadable PDF wherever you want. Save a hard drive, kill a tree! (It's printable.)
- Updated for the inbound marketer: With new sections like responsive design and rel="author", you can uphold your flawless nerd reputation by publicly shaming those who make syntax errors in their code (and are foolish enough not to download this cheat sheet!).
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- Important HTML Elements
- HTTP Status Codes
- Canonicalization
- URL Best Practices
- Webmaster Tools
- Robot Control Syntax
- Important User-agents
- Sitemap Syntax
- Facebook Open Graph
- Twitter Cards
- Google+
- Google+ Authorship
- Google+ Publisher
- Targeting Multiple Languages
- Mobile Web Development (Responsive Design)
It has been five years since I created the first version of this cheat sheet. Frustrated with how hard it was to find technical SEO information, I stayed up an entire night crafting the original resource. Without getting a second opinion, I blindly posted it on the company blog and went into the office.
At the time, I was still establishing my professional self and was an intern at Moz. The company was small, and the future of my unpaid internship was uncertain.
The blog post announcing the new cheat sheet resource went on to become the most popular blog post (as judged by thumbs) in the company's history (in fact, it still is!). The cheat sheet was heavily distributed on popular sites of the day and drove an incredible amount of much-needed links to the still-developing SEOmoz domain.
The Moz team was super excited about how many people the resource was helping, and I gained some desperately needed clout. When Rand tried to show his excitement over the piece, I learned an incredibly valuable lesson about intra-office communication.
Note to interns everywhere. Don't actually make vocal sound effects when your get the opportunity to "blow up" your boss's impromptu pound handshake.
At the time, I was still establishing my professional self and was an intern at Moz. The company was small, and the future of my unpaid internship was uncertain.
The blog post announcing the new cheat sheet resource went on to become the most popular blog post (as judged by thumbs) in the company's history (in fact, it still is!). The cheat sheet was heavily distributed on popular sites of the day and drove an incredible amount of much-needed links to the still-developing SEOmoz domain.
The Moz team was super excited about how many people the resource was helping, and I gained some desperately needed clout. When Rand tried to show his excitement over the piece, I learned an incredibly valuable lesson about intra-office communication.
Note to interns everywhere. Don't actually make vocal sound effects when your get the opportunity to "blow up" your boss's impromptu pound handshake.
Rand: Great job, Danny! Pound it!
*Reaches out fist in congratulatory manner*
Me: BOOOOM! POW! EXPLOSION!
*Confusion followed by reddened face*… *Saddened apology*
Rand: Erm... good job anyways!
Despite my social mishap :-), Rand and the team continued supporting me and this resource. Today's version is better than the original and even more valuable.
Looking back, the Moz team was absolutely fundamental in shaping me into the person I am today. My career at Moz was some of the most important years of my life thus far.
After leaving Moz in early 2011, I used the many habits and skills I learned from the talented team and continued to step up my career.
Thanks to Moz (and partly due to the original version of this cheat sheet), I am now living my ideal lifestyle by pursuing my bucket list full-time. You can read more about my story here.Thank you!
Looking back, the Moz team was absolutely fundamental in shaping me into the person I am today. My career at Moz was some of the most important years of my life thus far.
After leaving Moz in early 2011, I used the many habits and skills I learned from the talented team and continued to step up my career.
Thanks to Moz (and partly due to the original version of this cheat sheet), I am now living my ideal lifestyle by pursuing my bucket list full-time. You can read more about my story here.Thank you!
A very special thanks to Cyrus and Dawn Shepard for making this new resource a reality. Your long hours and persistence have been inspiring. Thanks to the Moz design team for your artful assets and gleeful glamour (those are good things!).
Lastly, thanks to all of you for downloading and making this thing a success. You all rock!
Lastly, thanks to all of you for downloading and making this thing a success. You all rock!
Post Credits
Post Site: http://moz.com/blog/
Post Arthur: Danny Dover
Danny Dover is a passionate online marketer, influential writer and obsessed bucket list completer. He is the author of the best selling book Search Engine Optimization Secrets and the founder of Intriguing Ideas LLC. Before starting his own company, Danny was the Senior SEO Manager at AT&T and the Lead SEO at SEOmoz.org.
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DannyDover
Like on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DannyDoverPage
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| SEO: 30 Recommended SEO Settings For Blogger By Mybloggertricks |
Learning SEO is important for every webmaster and blogger. Why? Because no matter how great the content on your site is, you're not getting any of it into search results if you don't apply SEO tactics. SEO makes your content visible to the outside world. Therefore, for your content to actually bring in any traffic, you need SEO. We have previously shared various posts on search engine optimization, but today, I'd like to share some SEO settings that every blogger should apply on their blog. These are specific to Blogger, but that doesn't mean you can't apply some of them to other platforms.
Before Writing a Post
1. Choose Your Topic Carefully
Choosing the post topic is the most important part of creating content. The topic you choose should be compliant with what your users want. It should be unique and original, and should offer something of value to the users. Then, as you're constructing your post, you should ask yourself some questions regarding the topic and content (see Number 20 below).
2. Check Out Competition
Always check to see what your competitors are doing; what topics they're posting about, what strategies they're using, and most importantly, what's hot on their websites. I'm not saying that you go ahead and copy them. But take a general hint before coming up with your own content ideas.
3. Check Out Latest Trends
Make sure you follow the latest trends and news on various social media networks. Write about what's hot. Writing on the most recent trends not only brings in a lot of readers, it also tells search engines that your website is dynamic, and provides fresh and latest content to its users.
4. Keyword Research Before Post!
So, you've decided to write about something. But you're looking for words to explain? You have to learn how to do some keyword research first. You will need keywords for various different things, such as titles, meta descriptions, tags, and so on. Check out this article on doing keyword research to find out more about it.
5. The Difference Between a Writer And a Blogger
A good blogger might be a good writer, but the vice-versa isn't always true. A good writer might know how to write for readers, but a blogger also knows how to write for search engines. To be a good blogger, you need to adopt a technical style of writing, keep a consistent approach, and a lot more. Check out this post on creating great content that applies to readers as well as search engines.
6. Recommended Word Limit
There's no such thing as an 'ideal word limit' for a blog post. It purely depends on the number of posts you publish, and the post topic. But SEO experts agree on a minimum of 300 words to avoid penalties. We would recommend a range of 500-700 words on average, since that seems to be the magic number when it comes to readers - neither too short so as to miss out on important things, nor too long for it to get boring.
The ideal word limit for a blog post
While Writing a Post
7. The Title is The King!
The title is the most important part of a blog post, since it is the one that actually brings in the clicks. Optimizing post titles is a part of being a good blogger. Check out this post to learn all about creating search engine friendly post titles.
8. Optimize Permalink
Always keep permalinks short. Use custom permalinks of around 4-5 words at max, and separate each word a hyphen "-". Make sure you capture your most important keyword in the permalink (your focus keyword).
9. Intro With Keywords
Keep all the keywords you can up with at the start in mind, and use them all in your introductory paragraph. It doesn't matter how many keywords you use in the content. But you must use them all at least once in the intro paragraph.
10. Headings and subheadings
Always use a combination of different headings. Usually, blog titles are H1s, so never use H1s. Post titles are usually H2s, so don't use H2s either. Use them only rarely. For the most part, use a combination of H3s and H4s in your post to specify a clear hierarchy in your content.
11. Typography
Typography refers to the styling of your content. It is almost as important as the content itself. Try to use different colored headings; use italic and bold text to emphasise your keywords, Also, once you're done writing your content, select all by pressing Ctrl + A, and then justify its alignment, so that the text looks neat at both ends.
12. Meta Descriptions
The Meta description is the second-most important part of your post (after post title), as it is what users will see on a search engine (along with your title). Write a very short description of at most 170-180 characters, and make sure to include all the important keywords in it which you came up with before writing the actual post.
Why Meta Descriptions appear in all search results
Meta tag generator for Blogger
Linking
13. Inter link
Every post on your blog must have an internal link to another relevant post. This is one of the many ways to improve our rank. Try to at create at least two internal links within your intro paragraph, and at least one or two more in the rest of content. For a detailed guide, read the following post.
How to smartly interlink your posts
14. Be Careful with Anchor texts
An anchor text is the text you use to link to another page, and it is what users click to get to that other page. Choosing anchor text is a very important part of linking. Never use a single word anchor text. Always use a phrase. Usually, a three-word phrase is the best option. Always use a keyword phrase as anchor text.
Also, keep in mind to never use the same anchor text twice for the same link. It is considered as keyword stuffing, and/or spamming. Whether on your site or another, always vary the anchor text.
15. Nofollow vs Dofollow Links
A nofollow attribute in a link tells a search crawler not to 'follow' a link. First of all, when linking to external pages, always link to a page that has a better rank than yours. But if you must link to a lower quality page, always us the rel="nofollow" attribute with the link tag. But never do this for reputable sites, like Google, Wikipedia etc, nor for linking to your own pages.
When to add a nofollow tag?
When should you tag external links as nofollow
more articles on the nofollow tag.....
Visuals
16. Use Visual Content to Enhance Your Posts
Images, videos, infographics, animations; such things spice up your content. If you have a video related to your content, that's great. Otherwise, try to include at least one image in you blog post. And depending upon the topic, you can add many. But make sure you don't add too many, so much so that the textual content gets snuffed out.
17. Naming Files And Images
Before uploading a video, audio, or image file, always make sure you rename it. Use meaningful keywords, and separate them with dashes. This way, users and search engines can tell what the file is about just by its file path!
18. Optimize Images Before Uploading
Suppose you want to display an image that is 500 pixels wide and 300 pixels high. There's no point in uploading a 1200x720 image. It'll take up space on your server, and rendering time at the user's end. Do everybody a favour, and scale down your images before uploading them.
19. Image Title and Alt Text
Always tag images with Titles and Alt text. And always use relevant keywords. We've compiled some posts for you regarding image optimization. Make sure you check them out!
How ti tag images to drive traffic
How to optimize images
After Writing a Post
20. Basic Questions to Ask About Your Content
So you've created really awesome content. Great! But before it is internet-worthy, you need to ask yourself a few questions about. If the answer to any of the questions below is no, then there's something wrong with the content!
Does The Content Make Sense?
Have I used good grimmer and punctuation and made little spelling mistakes?
Is the content useful?
It is unique/original?
It it worth sharing and linking?
Is it appropriately detailed?
Does it have visual content, such as images or videos?
Does it have examples, references, unique ideas?
Is it interactive enough with the readers?
Are there enough calls to action to invoke engagement?
Does it ask readers questions about their own experiences?
21. Blog Labels
Organize your blog's structure into a series of Labels (or tags and categories if you're using WordPress). Use at least one, and at max three labels for one blog post. And keep the total number of labels between 15 and 20 (for Blogger blogs, but same for categories in WordPress).
What are blog labels?
22. Synchronize Posts With The Traffic
Don't publish your blog posts as you complete them. Always schedule them for an appropriate time. For example, monitor your traffic stats and see what time do you get the most amount of traffic. You might want to schedule your posts for around that time. But try to be consistent about your timing. Pick a timing that works for you, and stick to it!
23. Posting Frequency
There are no restrictions when it comes to posting frequency. But the more, the better. Try to keep up with at least one post a day. You may write as many as you can per day though. There's no limit. You can even write a hundred if you can afford to :)
Other settings
24. Create a Sitemap
A sitemap is a listing of all the pages on your site. Often times, search crawlers might miss out on a page because you might not have linked to it in any other page. So to tell search engines to index that isolated page, you have to submit a sitemap to them. You could use a plugin for generating a sitemap, or read our post on Blogger Sitemap Generator for more details.
25. Blog Load Time
The blog load time is the most important when it comes to user-friendliness. The slower a blog loads, the more users tend to leave it before it's done loading. So always try to keep your load time to a minimum. Here are some tips that should help;
11 Useful Tips to help reduce your blog load time
26. Sitelinks
Sitelinks appear on blogs that have PR 2 or above, and they are a collection of some of the links on your blog that appear in Google search results. They make your blog look more professional. Check out our post on how to tell Google what links to display in sitelinks.
27. Social Bookmarking Widgets
Add social bookmarking widgets on your blog to improve your social rankings. Search engines like it when they find links to your social profiles. Besides, such widgets make it easier for users to share your content.
28. Directory Submissions
Submitting your blog to directories such as DMoz increases the number of backlinks you have, and in turn, your website's rank.
Why submit blog posts to the top 10 article directories?
Submit your blog to bloggers directories now!
29. Working on Your PageRank
PageRank is Google's way of ranking websites. The higher your PR, the better chances you have of getting into search results, and the faster your index rate will be. Read the following post to learn a lot more about PageRank, and how to improve it.
Reasons why your PageRank is not improving
30. Avoiding SEO Penalties
In the end, avoid using shady SEO tactics to jump your rank. Always use Search engine friendly techniques to avoid algorithmic penalties. Check out the following posts for more info.
Post Credits:
Post Author: Qasim Zaib
Post Site: www.mybloggertricks.com
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