Blog Me Happy I don't want to be a newbie any longer.

If you use a website for your business you would surely love to be found the first page of a search engine’s search results.  It helps bring you focused traffic to your site that can, if executed correctly, greatly increase the possibility of achieving your web site’s goals.   Not only that but it is usually one of the least expensive kinds of advertising even if you use an expert to do it for you.  If you contract the services of a Toronto search engine optimization firm it may cost a few hundred dollars every month.  This can seem like quite a bit but you could easily burn through a thousand dollars with traditional paper advertising.  And optimizing your web site can give it much a broader exposure.

You don’t necessarily have to hire an expert because you can do a number of things yourself if you are prepared to put in the effort.

Before you even begin to optimize your site you need to think about which keywords you want to rank for.  Think like a visitor to find keywords phrases they might use to find a competing product or service.  Try to come up with as many as you can.  Once you have your first list you can use services such as Wordtracker, Keyword discovery or Google’s own research tools in order to dig a little deeper.  Services such as these permit you to see if your chosen phrases are really being used and the number of times.  A big number of searches often equates a potentially great amount of traffic.

However highly searched for terms are usually more difficult to rank well for.  This should in no way frighten you away from them but just know that more time and effort will be required.  Attempt to pick a mix of competitive and non-competitive terms.  This will help get you a short term and long term focus.

Next you should begin to think about the content on your site.  It should include the keywords that you are attempting to target but in a way that flows.  Although one of the reasons for using your keywords in your web site is for the search engines don’t forget that real people will be reading it.

The greater the number of pages you can create for your site the better.  Every time you add new content you are encouraging the search engines to frequently return and reindex your web site.  They can subsequently drive vastly more traffic to your site using many more keyword phrases than you started with.

Finally comes what is definitely the most critcal area.  One of the top factors a search engine employs in determining a site’s ranking is the number of other sites that are linking to you.  That does not mean obtaining just any type of link from any web site.  They should be from sites that are of the same theme to yours.

For example if your site is real estate oriented site then you will need to have a real estate search engine optimization plan.  This may include obtaining links from various real estate agent sites, blogs, or anything related to that industry.  Target quality and not so much quantity.

Article marketing is extremely effective way of doing this.  You will write informational content based on your niche. These can then be posted to different directories for inclusion like Article Alley.  Your site will get a link pointing back to it in return for handing out free information.  This is step you could be doing a minimum of once a week.

If you frequently monitor your keywords phrases, add content and writearticles, you will slowly see you rankings and traffic begin to raise.  The greater the time period you optimize your site for the greater your results will be.  It could take some time and work however it is well worth it.

Technorati Tags: on-line marketing, ranking, search engine optimization, SEO

Posted under Site building.

If you are not already aware of the main way the major search engines rank a site it can be summarized in one word, “Backlinks”.  You can think of it in terms of every link pointing from a site to yours is a vote for you and the more votes you receive the greater your site’s ranking will be.

That seems like child’s play right?  All you need to do to get better search results and more visitors is to increase your backlinks.  You could easily pay a lot of money hiring a Toronto search engine optimization company to do it for you.  Now comes the hard part for many which is how or where to find these links.  Lets review ways you can obtain huge amounts of backlinks that won’t cost you a dime.

You have most likely heard the phrase “content is king” when referring to search engines.  This is accurate for two reasons.  For one your site needs content for visitors to read and search engines crawl. And other sites need information for the same purposes. These other websites are what you are going to zero in on.  Give them your content for free.

Write an article on a subject that is closely related to your website’s theme. Your article should be between five hundred to on thousand words in length. If it makes sense in the article to add your website’s keywords then do it, but if it does not don’t worry about it.  The main goal is to create quality content.

Next you are going to give this article away for free, but with a stipulation.  Post it to an article directory like Article Dashboard for free.  An article directory has two purposes.  They will deliver or allow others to download your article and use it on their own site and they allow you to add a resource box at the base of your article.

The resource box has a brief description about the writer. But really the most thing in the resource box is a backlink to your site.  So every time a site posts your article they will also be adding your website’s link.

Don’t just submit your article to a couple of directories.  The more places you post your article to the greater mileage you will get from it.  If you submit your article to just 20 article directories you will get twenty backlinks to your website.  This amount can be boosted if each directory syndicates your article at least 5 times to 100 links directed to your website.  In many niches like real estate this will be a huge step in getting your site to the top of the search engines.  A little more work could be required, however, if you need a more complete real estate search engine optimization strategy.

You may now take your article a step further and convert your article into a podcast.  You may record your own reading of it but the easiest way is to use a free text to speech service like Odiogo.  These nedd your article be put on a blog such as WordPress or Blogger.com.  You can have your new blog on-line with a few clicks of the mouse.

By following these steps you can boost your search engine rankings and bring targeted traffic to your site.  In no time you will be way ahead of your competition.

Technorati Tags: on-line marketing, ranking, search engine optimization, SEO

Posted under Site building.