If you own a website and you are in the business of trying to make money from the internet then there is no doubt that at some point you will want to consider optimizing your site in order to take advantage of the massive amounts of search engine traffic that you could get for free.
Search engine optimization really is not that complex and understanding how the search engines work is quite simple. The bottom line is search engines love sites that have original unique content. Also to rise up the rankings you will need to get backlinks to your site that include the main keyword in the anchor text.
What are some ways to get backlinks? One of the best ways is to write and submit articles on your sites topic. If you run out of ideas simply visit any of the article directories and have a look at similar articles to get ideas, however do not copy or plagiarize these articles. The best length for an article is around 500 – 700 words and make sure your paragraphs are short. Short paragraphs make it easier for visitors to read your article.
Now the real benefit of writing articles is that you get to place a message of your choice in the ‘about the author’ box. This message can also include a link back to your site and for SEO purposes, you want the link back to contain the keyword that you are targeting. Another advantage of this is that you are getting one way backlinks which search engines value much more than reciprocal linking where you trade links with another site.
Make sure your articles are well researched and of high quality. This will give you the best chance of getting published in the article directories and also the best chance of getting picked up by other webmasters and having them put your article on their site. Another benefit other than improved search engine ranking is that you will get traffic directly from these articles too as they also get ranked pretty well in the search engines since most article directories are considered authority sites by the search engines so their pages tend to rank well.
Getting these valuable one way links slowly over time is the best way to improve your rankings but it is important not to ignore the way you structure and organize the content on your site. Always include a sitemap, privacy policy, about us and contact pages as these links will let the search engines know that you are a legitimate online business that is here to stay.
The main keyword you target for your site can also be very important and it is important to pick a keyword that has high searches and relatively low competition, ideally under 2 million results in google and at least over 50,000 searches on overture. Make sure that your homepage has the main keyword in your H1 and H2 tags and sprinkle your keyword in naturally throughout the page. No need to overdo it, a maximum of once per paragraph is enough. Also ensure that your keyword is in the last paragraph of the page too.
Related Articles: