Understanding The 4 Basic SEO Elements

There are so many elements possible for you to optimize that you may not know where to start.

Search Engine Optimization can be incredibly complicated, as well as exceptionally uncomplicated; it all depends on what you focus on. Just like everything else in marketing, when it comes to SEO, you have what works the best, what is important, what is not so important, what doesn’t really matters, and what is useless.

Obviously, you should spend most of your time on what works and is essential, so today I have decided to highlight what I consider the 4 most important elements of Google SEO.

On Page SEO Elements

On-page SEO is where it all starts, that is with your own site. There are just so many tweaks and tricks you can apply to improve your on-page SEO, but out of all those, I only found out 2 elements that really makes a difference in your general SEO work:

  • Your Page Title.
  • Your Content.

Keyword in Title

Having your keyword in your page title is really important.

I comprehend some of you may perhaps disagree that you have seen a first ranking site without their keyword in the page title, etc…, yes you will always be able to find some exceptions to any rule if you really want to, but that’s not the point.

You are obliged to include the keyword you want to rank for in your webpage title.

At this point, having it in your page title doesn’t suggest that you have to spam your keywords all over either! For a good measure, judge against the top ranking pages, how often they use their keyword, this will hint you a reasonably good basic clue.

Keywords in content

Ok, when I talk about content, the golden rule is to write quality content; that is content that your readers will enjoy reading.

In all the search engines guidelines, you’ll see that it is recommended to write for your readers, and not the search engines!

That said, having your key keyword, and some additional associated terms here and there indubitably never hurt anybody.

That doesn’t imply you have to fill your content with keywords, it’s truly a waste of time, and in addition it possibly will harm you by getting you penalized for over-optimization.

Off-Page SEO Elements

If SEO starts on-page to get you indexed, there’s no doubt that it is your off-page SEO work that will get you ranked where you want to be in the search engines.

Among all the factors to take into consideration, the following 2 are critical to your success online:

  • Your site Link Popularity.
  • Anchor Text Of Your Inbound Links.

Link Popularity of your site

On internet, the popularity of a site is measure by how many pages, and preferably domains link towards your site or page.

Just imagine every one of thoseinbound links as a “vote”. In basic Google SEO help, the more votes a page has, the more popular it becomes, and thus the higher it should rank for the search engines.

Therefore your evident effort must focus on building quality inbound link in order to grow your link popularity.

And yes, the more respected a webpage or website linking to you is, the more you gain from it; equally, if the authority level of that webpage is very low or none, so will be the value of this “vote”.

Anchor text of the inbound links

The second key element of your off-page optimization is the anchor text of your inbound links.

The amount of inbound links do strengthen your popularity rank, however it is the anchor text used in those links that will notify the search engines what your website is popular for!

Let me say that again:

“The anchor texts of your backlinks tell the search engines what your site is popular for!”

So if you guess it right, your keyword should be there too.

Now, you want to keep things natural, so it’s important to vary your anchor texts, but as far as possible, offer your keyword or variation of it in the anchor text of the inbound links towards your site.

In Conclusion

There are just so many points to cover and learn about when it comes to SEO, and don’t worry, I’ll cover them all in my different free SEO training courses, but for those of you who are getting started or those of you who are getting confused at which element they should mainly focus on, this is the 4 elements of SEO that I consider essentials and will account for 80% of your search engine ranking position.

Pay attention on what works to start with, and sort out the rest later when you have time and opportunity!

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This post was written by Robjohn on August 22, 2009

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Why Google Doesn’t Index My Site?

This is most likely the most repeated whine in relation to doing Search Engine Optimization!

Given that you know that internet is going anywhere; you are possibly also aware that having a website is about as crucial today as having a cellular phone. It's a reality, whether you like it or not, that the way things are.

At this moment determined by the awareness of the fact that an online presence with a first search engine ranking in Google might dramatically change your business, you resolve to join the world of online business.

So here you are, you just have finished to build your website, and finally submitted it to Google and then… nothing happened!

What happened! So you go online and look for all the SEO help forums and sites you can find and post your thread:

Why Google Doesn’t Index My Site?", eventually, you will also state that you did everything, including submitting a sitemap, that you have a few inbound links, etc…

Google Indexing Process

Let’s review how Google proceed to index a page or site:

  1. You build a site.
  2. You submit it to Google.
  3. Your site is subsequently queued by Google to be crawled.
  4. Your webpage is crawled.
  5. Your site is analyzed.
  6. If it's considered appropriate it will be indexed.

If you want your site to be indexed, you must first make certain that it gets crawled, and unless Googlebot is informed of that, it's on no account going to happen.

Maybe a good way for you to start should have been to learn a bit about Google SEO, before you started, but since you are here already, let’s see what we can do about it.

It’s All About Crawling

Googlebot travels across the internet by followings links from different websites it knows until it discovers fresh or new content. Unfortunately, if your site is not linked by other crawled sites, Googlebot will never be capable to discover you, unless of course you opt to sent a submission request.

Fair enough you can do that, still it's not a great solution. If you reflect on just how many fresh websites are produced each and every day, not even taking into consideration the billions of websites that are updated, let me tell you right at this instant that the waiting list is going to be very long…

Just for your information, here’s the priority order in which Googlebot crawls sites:

  1. Fresh content from authority sites.
  2. Fresh content from other sites.
  3. Unsystematic internet crawling.
  4. Submission requests.

As a result by submitting your site for inclusion, you kind of come last on the list… in reality it possibly will take months literally!

Helping Googlebot

Googlebot behaves a lot like human beings, it doesn’t like to be told to do something, but rather do thing its own way, that is finding content by itself.

After you are crawled, regularly except if you have done something very dishonest, it's very easy to be indexed.

The easiest means for Googlebot to stumble on you is to be where it loves to crawl!

  • WordPress blogs.
  • Authority pages.
  • Applicable webpages.

As for your Sitemap, it's onlya tool used to assist Googlebot find out which pages you'd like it to crawl. Keep in mind, it's just a hint and doesn't warrant at all that Googlebot will crawl all the pages of your sitemap or index them.

In Conclusion

Remember, there’s a huge difference between having a page crawled and being indexed.

If you are really serious about getting an online presence on Google, I strongly recommend you to attend some kind of SEO training course, even free ones, just to make sure that you get at least the basic knowledge and understanding of what it takes to be successful online.

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This post was written by Robjohn on July 21, 2009

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SEO Help and Benefits

There are many webmasters that are confused to why they can’t get good rankings in Google. I decided that it would be a good idea to give seo help to webmasters that have a hard time getting to the first page of search engines. When I opened up my first website, I couldn’t figure out why my rankings were so bad. A couple months later, I came to the conclusion that I needed seo help because my links weren’t helping me.

 

My first links were from blogs that were dofollow, and the pages were all high in page rank. I would make comments on them and post links back to my page. Since all of the pages had a high page rank, I figured that I would be able to easily move up the search engines for my targeted keywords. After waiting a long time, I realized that it wasn’t going to work out. Since the blog pages had no relevance to any of my links, it was hard for me to move up the rankings for my keywords.

 

There is always bad information being spread about search engine optimization. When I first began optimizing and building links, I thought that I would see the results every three months. Now I realize that it is updated constantly and that my links were just worthless. You will hear about people complaining that their website is in a sandbox, but they are just doing poor search engine optimization.

 

The key to ranking well deals with relevant backlinks. If you start off getting links on pages that have nothing to do with your website, then you are not going to get good rankings. You have to make sure that you get links with the keyword as the link. You should make sure that you understand this clearly because search engines are based on link algorithms. If you continue to keep getting links on relevant pages, then your links will be worth a lot more.

 

After a few months, your website will gain a lot of authority due to the value of the backlinks and you won’t need seo help anymore. It took me nearly a year to understand exactly what I needed to do to actually get the good links. Experts don’t like giving away information that works because they don’t want more competition.

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This post was written by Robjohn on July 21, 2009

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Your SEO Guide

If you would like to know more about the Search Engine Optimization, here are some books you might be willing to read.    
Let’s start with the book called “Search Engine Optimization on an Extreme Budget” by Ruperto Elpusan. It is the 2nd edition of the book, the first one was published in 2002. The book was very popular and now updated. In the book you will find a very easy to read information on SEO on a limited budget.
A major feature in this book is a chapter: WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction) in the SEO Wars. It is a practical step-by-step guide on how to attain link popularity and reputation to rank better within the search engines.
It is an approach that is based on the experience of an seo professional who worked in seo field since 90’s. It is possible for a small business to achieve just as much traffic, as well-heeled websites with huge budgets can. Ruperto Elpusan will share with you how it can be done – quickly, to the point, with pieces of advice and warnings.

Another wonderful book is “Search Engine Optimization and Placement: An Internet Marketing Course for Webmasters” by Renee Kennedy. Don’t be afraid of the word “Webmasters”. In this book you will find the directions on how to promote your website, write effective web copy for search engines, understand the online directories.You will also get acquainted with the work of different search engines, how to find right keywords and key phrases, work with seo analytics ans analyze your own traffic.
The comprehensive guidebook takes internet promotion to the next level. Inside the book you will find worksheets that will help keep track of keywords, meta tags, online directories where your site is submitted, and more. Used in conjunction with the continually updated online tutorial (search for links in the book), it is fantastic and easy to understand introduction to search engine promotion. Within a few hours, you will be able to get to the optimization of your own web pages.

Let’s move on to another book called “The Truth About Search Engine Optimization” by Rebecca Lieb. In this book, seo professional Rebecca Lieb brings together over fifty major facts and insights decision-makers must know to drive more web traffic through better search engine placement. “The Truth About Search Engine Optimization” is not just a theory: it delivers quick, practical information with explanations that every professional seo agency might be using, so can you, no matter what kind of website you are running, or what your goals are. Readers will learn how to set realistic goals for seo, attract qualified traffic, implement search-friendly content management, use public relations, blogging, and other techniques to boost the traffic. This book is simple to read and use, it will help you with every process you will need to accomplish to promote your website.

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This post was written by Robjohn on June 10, 2009

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