How To Optimize Your Content For Search Engines
If you ever discuss SEO with an SEO expert, you will hear talk about two different types…on page SEO and off page SEO. In this very brief tutorial, I will discuss the absolute minimum that must be performed in both of these areas.
I will begin the with easiest of these two…on page SEO. Before you write any content, yo must first head over to a keyword research tool and select a keyword that describes what your content will center around.
The sole purpose of keyword selection is to make sure that the words you use are actually being used by individuals searching for phrases. Generally speaking, you want to find a keyword that gets a high level of searches per month, preferably local, and has a low level of competing pages as per a Google query.
Once you have selected this keyword, you must place it in the following places in your article: the title, the meta description, in the first paragraph, in your closing paragraph. These four locations are absolutely essential in terms of keyword placement.
There is lots of talk about keyword density. Rather than worry about keyword density, focus on writing for your readers in a way that it unique, informative, and useful. If you read enough articles, you can easily pick out which ones have been over optimized.
Now for the off page SEO. Off page SEO is all about links, links and more links. These links can be categorized into two types, on site links and off site links. On site links are links that link to your article from another article on your site. Smart search engine optimizers inter-link all of the articles on their sites.
Any time you link to another article on your site, link to it using anchor text that contains your keyword(s) of interest. Do not link to any other page of your site without using keyword rich text. If you do, you have neglected to use an essential component of SEO.
Now your article is optimized and you can now focus on the last and most important aspect of off site SEO…off site backlinks. Off site backlinks are the most powerful force in the SEO universe. Each off site link could be likened to one vote cast as to the relevancy of your site with respect to human opinion. So how does one get off site keyword-rich text links? There are several ways, but it is important to note that they must be “dofollow” links, meaning that the “nofollow” attribute must not be applied by the site that hosts the link.
Some common methods for obtaining off site backlinks are: writing awesome content and having people backlink to it naturally (this is the toughest) or, if you are not an awesome writer, submit your site to directories, write articles with links in the reference box. Submit your article to social bookmarking sites. If you visit and read forums, add your link to your signature file, comment on other blogs that link out. Submit your RSS feed to RSS directories. Exchange content links with other bloggers or webmasters. The possibilities are endless. There are other ways. If you have a favorite, leave a comment and tell me about it.
All SEO follows these basics. After you cover the basics, competing with other web pages is simply a matter of the quality and amount of your links acquired. Simply put, if you have more than the next guy, you will rank higher in query results and set yourself up to receive a larger chunk of the traffic.
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