Category Archives: SEO
Most Effective SEO Techniques
As we all know SEO techniques are quite crucial when it comes to delivering returns and for best ROI
There has been an argument always between webmasters about this. In my opinion, on-page seo is more important as it doesn’t affect search engines alone, but it reaches your readers.
But for your site to rank well on search results, you need to apply both on-page and off-page optimization.
Most Effective On Page SEO Techniques
1. Interlinking (100% effective)
This on-page seo technique helps search engines to better index your blog as search bots will crawl from one link to another adding all your new pages to their searchable index.
When writing a post, try as much as possible to include links to your other relevant posts, having at least 6-8 links pointing to other posts really works miracles.
2. Title, Meta Description, Keywords And Formatting (95% effective)
Your page title, meta description and keywords – This helps search engines place your content on the right place, it helps them determine what your content is all about.
Formatting – Post formatting is all about optimizing your content for search engines and readers, this includes: using header tags in your post heading and subheadings, ensuring that your text is not too tiny for readers eyes, including your targeted keywords in your post and highlighting them in bold or italics.
3. URL Optimization (90% effective)
You can optimize your url for better search engine results by:
A: Having a good permanent link – The first example is the default permalink of new word press blogs, if your link structure is still like that you can change it by visiting “settings” – “permalinks”, use a permalink that includes your post title, category name or both for good results.
B: Canonicalizing your URLs – Canonicalize your urls to avoid duplication. If a page of your blog can be accessed through multiple urls, search engines will treat those pages as duplicate contents. If you are a word press user, you can canonicalize your urls by using an seo plugin (seo by yoast) or visit “general settings” in your dashboard, include the full url of your blog (e.g. http://www.example.com/) and save. This redirects other versions of a page to prevent duplicate issues.
C: BONUS: Using breadcrumbs – Let visitors (and search bots) navigate your blog easily by enabling breadcrumbs.
4. Image Optimization (85% effective)
Images makes your post look professional, more readable and friendly. Here are ways to optimize your images.
A: Create your own images – 90% of images you use on your posts should be original and always give image credits when you copy an image.
B: Make it search engine friendly by using alt tag and avoid using names like 4850.jpg or image3.jpg on your images, include your keywords in your image name, here’s a good example “Apple iPhone4.jpg”.
C: Compress your images to avoid increasing your blog load time. If you are on wordpress there are lots of plugins to help you with that ex: wp smush.it.
5. Regular Blog Posting (80% effective)
I recently wrote a post on Setting up a blog. Read on the post to know the benefits of updating your blog regularly.
6. Quality Content (100% effective)
Create quality and original posts, posts that provides useful information and apply the above on-page seo techniques.
Best Off Page SEO Techniques
As i said earlier, off-page seo is done outside your blog, it’s all about promoting and advertising your blog. Off-page seo is mainly concentrated towards creating backlinks. Here are off-page seo techniques that works.
7. Social Bookmarking
Use top bookmarking sites like url.org, stumbleupon, delicious, folkd.com, bookmark.net and reddit. You can do a quick Google search to find more high pr social bookmarking sites.
8. Guest Posting
Guest posting doesn’t only create quality back-links for your blog, it drives targeted traffic.
9. Social Networking
Social networking seems to be the most popular of off-page optimization, even a newbie blogger can advertise and promote his blog on social networks. You can tweet your posts, share it on facebook, there are a lot of ways to promote your blog on social networks.
10. Commenting
Blog commenting has always been a good off-page optimization method. Dropping relevant comments on blogs creates back-links and even traffic. There are blogs that provide no-follow comments while others are do-follow, but i highly recommend you mix both do-follow and no-follow blogs when creating back-links.
11. Directory Submission
You can still gain quality back-links from link directory sites. I recommend you only go for those that doesn’t require reciprocal links. Below are few link directories to start with
http://www.sitepromotiondirectory.com/
http://www.freeprwebdirectory.com/
http://www.highrankdirectory.com/
http://www.britainbusinessdirectory.com/
http://www.submissionwebdirectory.com/
http://www.ukinternetdirectory.net/
12. Article Submission
I agree this is an old off-page seo technique but it’s still very effective. Submit your original and quality articles to high pr article directories and have quality backlinks pointing to your blog. Below are few top article directories to start with.
Courses and Consulting for Authors, Coaches, Consultants and Healers
http://www.sooperarticles.com/
http://www.articledashboard.com/
13. Forum Posting
Join forums that are related to your niche, add your URL to the resource box, join or open a conversation, help others on topics you understand deeply and gain free quality back-links and traffic to your blog.
14. Press Release Submission
This is a great way to drive huge targeted traffic to your new blog that hasn’t been indexed by search engines. Although Google no longer consider links from press release sites, the traffic it drives is still worth it. There are free and paid press release sites, below are some good ones to start with.
Free Press Release Sites
http://www.free-press-release.com/
Paid Press Release Sites
15. Link Exchange
To get the best out of link exchange, you need to exchange links with high pr sites. Find high pr sites related to your niche and request for a link exchange.
16. Submitting To Classifieds
Advertising your website on classified ads sites also helps. Below are few good ones to start with.
http://www.ebayclassifieds.com/
http://www.freeclassifiedstuff.com/
http://www.classifiedsforfree.com/
http://www.thefreeadforum.com/
For more details contact me
SEO Best Practices: Setting Up a Blog
One mistake many businesses still make is creating posts that consist of self-promotion with little “meat” to entice anyone to engage with the content, much less share the content.
Usually post should be relevant to the topic and to the point.
Setting Up Your Blog
Once you know you’re trying to achieve, you need to consider where the blog resides. Should you use a sub-directory, a sub-domain, a completely separate domain, or either WordPress or Blogger? Let’s look at all the options.
Blog on a Subdirectory
More often than not, this is how I recommend clients set up a blog. In my opinion adding fresh content to the root domain is a good thing. I also believe that having an RSS feed of “latest blog posts” to the home page of the website is a good thing.
I believe that promoting content that resides “on” the website is a good thing because you can earn links and provide balance to your link profile. And, I believe that having thought-leadership content that is closely associated with your brand is a good thing.
Pros:
- Add fresh content to the root domain.
- Add deep links (from other websites)/social signals directly to root domain (assuming that you’ve promoted this content well).
Cons:
- Won’t provide an additional “brand” listing (in most cases) in the SERPs, so doesn’t serve well for reputation management.
- No direct ability to get links “from another website/sub-domain”.
Blog on a Subdomain
A good case can be made for why you might want to blog on a subdomain.
For example, perhaps you have issues with reputation management (perhaps someone posted to review complaint sites like Ripoff Report, Pissed Consumer, etc.) so you need to occupy additional real estate in the SERPs. By building your blog on a subdomain, you accomplish this by providing the search engines another “official web presence” (the search engines will treat this as a separate entity) for your company, that should rank when folks search your company name.
The nice thing about having a blog on a sub-domain is that it will also piggyback on the authority of your root website (hopefully you already have some authority on your root domain) and posts there can rank, without the need to build up the authority for a new website.
Pros:
- Get an additional brand presence in the SERPs that you control.
- Get links “from another website”; Ability to deep-link to specific pages within the root.
- Piggyback on the already “built” authority of the root domain.
- Can be hosted anywhere. Very important consideration for those on a content management system that does not provide a blogging platform.
Blog on WordPress.com or Blogger
Some pretty large companies have gone this route because – to them – it’s the easiest to execute. Mind you, a link from WordPress.com isn’t a bad thing, but how does this help with any of the aforementioned reasons why you might want to blog in the first place?
Are you tying in the “thought leadership” to the brand? Are you adding fresh content to the domain? Are you aiding your abilities to provide an additional “official brand presence” to the SERPs? (Perhaps, but you’re better off with subdomain).
Pros:
- You could create some very aggressive link building tactics or “test” things without burning the domain.
- You would gain a link that is coming from an authority domain (remember, a quality link profile is about gaining links from many different/authoritative/relevant websites/domains; not many links on one domain)
- Easy. Just about anyone can get engaged and start blogging today.
Cons:
- Limitations as to how you can design/template to fit your brand.
- Any content promoted (linked to) won’t provide direct value to your main company website/domain.
- Inability to utilize plugins.
- Cheesy. It is what it is. Not gonna be a great representation for your company.
Blog on a Separate Domain
Some people like to create a “non-official” blog presence, to have control over a website that isn’t directly tied to the brand. They want to have an “unbiased” voice and probably use this to occasionally link to their main website.
I typically discourage these types of initiatives, for many reasons – not the least of which is the amount of effort that would need to go into making this new web presence gain any amount of trust/traction or authority.
Pros:
- Can create an “unbiased” resource (that just happens to link to your corporate website, on occasion).
- If the content is good, and it becomes respected in your industry, the blog can gain authority that can then be passed through to your corporate website through “unbiased” linking.
Cons:
- There’s a better than average chance that gaining good authority/ability for posts to rank is going to take considerable time.
- Does little to really show thought-leadership for your company.
- If you really do drop links to the corporate website, there’s a good chance that it’ll be seen for what it is: a paid advertisement, not an official unbiased reference. The backlash from this could be (should be) huge.
Cons:
- Not as much freshness on the domain.
- Content that “hits” (gets good promotion/links) doesn’t add as much link value to the root.
Wordpress Consultant | Magento Consultant | SEO consultant 