Subscribe to Social Networking and BloggingSocial Networking and Blogging RSS Feed
Browse > Home /

SEO and Positioning your Website for Top Search Engine Rankings

December 8, 2008

SEO and positioning your website to grab top positions in search engines for targeted keywords require both good on-page and off-page optimization. On-page optimization refers to how you tweak the webpage itself, ie the meta-tags, webpage title, content, navigation sitemap, etc. It has everything to do with the web architecture. Off-page optimization is more of a technique applied beyond your website, without involving any change to your website. Let’s take a look at some important elements of SEO and positioning that would boost the ranking of your website.

First of all, we need to understand a bit more about the role of on-page optimization in SEO and positioning. In summary, on-page optimization requires you to craft the web page structure such that it is optimized for a particular keyword that you are targeting. Never build a site first before knowing what you hope to achieve, ie whether your aim is to drive maximum traffic and sell more products or just as a hobby.

You need to pay attention to the keywords you are targeting first, and do detailed researches before you start building your webpage and optimizing it for the keywords. A lot of webmasters fail to realize the importance of keyword research in SEO and positioning for top search engine ranking. They often do it the other way round, targeting popular and extremely competitive keywords and keyword phrases. You may have realized that competitive keywords like “search engine optimization” or “web traffic” are simply out of reach for a new or amateurish website. SEO and positioning your website for such keywords would only bring you disappointment as you realize that even with a fully optimized page, you are still on page 1000 of the search engine results.

One hint for you is to go for any keyword phrase with less than 1 – 2 million search results and fewer than 1000 competing websites in Google. How do you check the number of competing websites? Simply type in “Allintitle: Target Keyword Phrase” into Google search box and all the websites containing the specific keyword phrase would be displayed. It is common sense that any website targeting a keyword phrase would include it in the webpage title, isn’t it? Looking at the search results alone is vague and difficult to determine the level of competition. Once you have found the keywords for optimization, remember to include them in your page title, sub-headers, and meta-tags.

Off-page optimization looks more at the popularity of your website. The search engines are constantly changing the landscape of the internet but one principle stays constant, that is to give users relevant results. Other than meddling with the on-page factors, you need to be aware of how search engines measure your website popularity and keyword relevance. One major yardstick of SEO and positioning is using link popularity. Search engine spiders are not humans and can only understand web content to a certain logical extent. A human may see a web page as rich in content but a search engine spider may deem it as spam.

The unbiased and more accurate way of judging the importance of a web page in terms of keyword relevance is to leave the decision to fellow webmasters and search engine users, or in short, votes of confidence. A link to your web page is a vote declaring that your web page is worth mentioning for that specific topic. But I must emphasize that not all links are equal. Find out why at my blog and also learn basic and advanced tips and tricks about SEO and positioning your website for top rankings either manually or using tools that would conveniently and quickly rank your website.

This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety in any ezine, newsletter, blog or website. The author’s name, bio and website links must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Filed Under Blog SEO · Comments Off  

How to Market Your Blog for Optimal SEO Gains

November 21, 2008

blog seo
Ben Kemp asked:


Ok, so you’ve created your nice shiny new blog, and you’ve been adding high quality postings containing lots of useful information on a regular basis for a few weeks (or months)… whats next?

Review Your Blog

First, take stock of your blog’s set-up, and make sure its ready for debut; 1.) Do your postings have some relevant key word content in the headings? If you’re intending to improve your overall ranking across search engines, remember to “optimise” the page just as you would any other page of your site. Decide on the keyword phrase you are targeting, make sure its used in the heading. Make sure its highlighted in the body text, particularly in the first and last paragraphs.

2.) Do your postings contain a “clickable” link or two back to your site? By this I mean a “proper” link in the format (a href=”http://www.example.com”)Example Link(/a) and not just your plain URL. To build traffic, you want to make it easy for people to get to your site!

3.) Does each posting contain your “Author Details Panel” that credits the articles and postings to you, including your (clickable) site URL information? Make your links open in a new window – thats a kind gesture to those who’d like to return and finish reading the original page…

4.) Have you made a statement of your copyright constraints, if any? Perhaps you should encourage people to copy and distribute your blog content, providing the Author Panel remains intact? That would be the best way to ensure widest distribution, and the consequent proliferation of valuable 1-way links back to your site! Write up your requirements, and post it as a page, which then generates a permanent link on your Blog menu.

Blog Marketing

You will probably want other people to read your blog in order that they may appreciate your literary genius, right? But of course, nobody knows where its at yet, so you’ve got to give it some publicity. The first step should be to add a prominent link to it on your own web site, or sites – pretty obvious, you’d think? However, in all the excitement, that is sometimes overlooked!

More importantly, if you want it to start generating lots of nice new incoming links, and generating serious traffic increases, you’ve got to actively “market” your blog to the places that blog readers go… and “Where is that, pray tell me do?” I hear you say…

Well, the ping services you’ve added earlier are all well and good, but due to the volume of spam and garbage postings, some discipline had to be installed into the blog process to exert some control. Your site is no doubt “pinging” a variety of servers each time you create an entry. However, before any significant transfer activity takes place, you will have to front up and formally register yourself and your blog with as many of those services as possible.

The process is analogous to submitting to a normal search engine or directory, and pretty much for the same reasons. In some cases you may be asked for a reciprocal link – not too much to ask for the favour about to be rendeered to you. In other cases, a “donation” might be requested. Before handing over the cash, have the sense to check the Google Page Rank of the site… its got to be high (5+) to be worth it!

The challenge is finding all these blog directories… but a brief search will show that there are listings available.

By the time you’ve spent a day working through the 150+ directories accessible from the various links you’ve located, you’ll be in good shape to get that traffic counter ticking along. Your postings, and the consequent “ping” to the various services, should now have your content distribution flowing right along.

Good luck!



If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Filed Under Blog SEO · Comments Off