On Page SEO versus Off Page SEO

What’s the Difference Between On Page and Off Page SEO

One of the best ways to increase your business’ online visibility is through using search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. SEO is the process used to improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages. Even if you’ve never heard of SEO, you’re probably already implementing a few promising strategies. To get the most out of your efforts and increase your ranking, it’s important to implement both On Page SEO and Off Page SEO (also referred to as offsite or off-site SEO). These strategies involve different tactics, but both of them aim to increase your website’s ranking, gain more traffic, and lead to more conversions. In this article, we’ll explore the main differences between On Page SEO and Off Page SEO and how to start using both to your advantage.

What is On Page SEO?

On Page SEO includes all of the search engine optimizations techniques that you can do yourself, to your own website. They’re the things you have control over—things you can consciously decide to do, or not to do. Generally speaking, On Page SEO covers everything that your website, and each individual webpage, is about—it’s descriptive and relevant. It let’s people know what you do, what you’re an expert in, and what you have to say about your niche. On Page SEO is used to optimize your website and each of its moving parts to positively affect your search engine rankings. On Page SEO also helps recognize competitive keywords your website can rank for. To better understand all of the moving parts of On Page SEO, let’s look at some of the most widely used tactics.

Website Page Content

Any content that you add to your website needs to be relevant, useful, and accurate for your readers. If it’s not high quality content, it’s not going to help your SEO efforts. Make sure things are easy to digest and add value to your reader’s experience.

Keywords

When creating new content, try to do so with keyword optimization in mind. It’s not as heavily weighed as it used to be, but it’s still important. Use a combination of short-tail and long-tail keywords that rank competitively and never over-stuff your pages.

Title Tags

Title tags are the things that tell search engines what your web pages title is. It’s prominently displayed on all search engine results pages when your website comes up. Title tags are the hyperlinks you click on to visit a web page after making a search. Include your target keywords and try to create search engine friendly title tags.

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are the small paragraph that appears underneath your title tag on a given search query. It’s the short description that let’s people know exactly what the content of the corresponding page will be. Use relevant keywords and try to be as straightforward as possible with your meta descriptions.

Internal Linking

Another good way to boost On Page SEO is to internally link your web pages together. This is not only useful to visitors; it boosts overall user experience. User experience plays a huge role in your website’s ranking and Google and other search engines will notice anything you do to improve it.

Page Performance

How fast your page loads makes a huge difference in search engine rankings. More often than not, if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, people will leave—and Google will take notice. Run tests to ensure that everything is as fast as possible and if you can’t seem to beat 3 seconds, consider switching your hosting platform or optimizing your page’s speed using tried and true tactics.

 

What is Off Page SEO?

Off Page SEO is a little more complicated. It encompasses everything that happens to your website rather than on it—things that happen off of your actual site. When your company, website, or brand is shown on other websites, that’s Off Page SEO. When an influencer decides to link back to a helpful article you wrote, that’s Off Page SEO. It’s not as clear cut as On Page SEO, but it revolves around making your website more authoritative. To clarify, let’s look at a few examples of popular Off Page SEO tactics.

Backlinks

The most important Off Page SEO tactic is building strong backlinks. The more you have, the better your site will rank. There are a lot of paid backlink building approaches, but those are risky and can seriously damage your ranking. Instead, focus on organic approaches and continue to create high quality content that deserves to be shared. Try guest blogging on sites within your niche, reaching out to influencers, using other page’s broken links for your benefit, and getting involved in business directories the right way.

Domain Authority

Search engines assign a number for your domain authority, which basically describes how strong your website is. The more authority you have, the better you rank. This is measured by the length of time your website has been up and running, how many backlinks you have, and how many technical problems your site runs into. Try to keep your authority as high as possible by using a stable domain name, generating good content, and making sure your page is running without any problems.

Social Promotion

Another way you can work on your Off Page SEO is through social media. Sharing your website or web page on your social media profiles can lead to more website visits, more shares, and eventually more backlinks. It’s also a great way to connect with your audience and strengthen your brand.

 

How to Maximize Your SEO Strategies

We get a lot of questions asking which type of SEO is better, On Page or Off Page. It’s a difficult question because the simple answer is always that it depends. It depends on your website status, your audience, your expertise, and even your niche. Both On Page SEO and Off Page SEO have extremely important factors and both play a huge role in the algorithm Google uses to rank a website. Instead of focusing your energy on how to cut corners and get the best results with the least effort, you should prioritize both on your website. This way, you will work on bettering your website as a whole and simultaneously reap the benefits by rising in the rankings. With that being said, there are a few instances when you should put more of an emphasis on one tactic over the other.

New Website Launch

If you’re new to the website game, you’ll need to build up your content before you can start to get legitimate backlinks. With no content, people aren’t ever going to link to your site. If you don’t add content that will never change. In this situation, you need to focus your efforts on building up your On Page SEO and overall content. Once you start developing content that carries value, people will take notice. Once people take notice, you’ll start to earn natural backlinks and people will be more likely to link your website if asked. Another benefit of prioritizing content and On Page SEO with a new website launch is that you have a chance to build strong keywords from the beginning. Keywords are what Google uses to connect search queries with your website and are very important when it comes to indexing your site. Choose your keywords wisely and use them strategically to get the best results. Continue developing strong content and always double-check your information for accuracy and relevancy. Publishing low quality content will have an adverse effect on your efforts, so put in the time needed to make sure it’s high quality and targeted towards your audience.

Seamless Websites With Strong Content

If you’ve had your website for a while, are producing strong content, and rarely, if ever, experience performance issues, then you should focus more on Off Page SEO. Be advised, when we say strong content we mean it—you need long, unique posts that go into depth about a specific topic to rank well. When you produce content that can be found anywhere, why would someone choose your website over the others for a backlink? Chances are, they wouldn’t. Once you are producing high quality content, you can reach out to experts and share your information with them. If they like it, they’ll probably use it. If not, hopefully someone else will. The more authoritative the websites are that are giving you backlinks, the better your results will be. You can also use directories and guest posting websites, but they won’t be as strong as backlinks that are truly earned.

At the end of the day, SEO is an important tactic to implement as a whole. To see the best results, you need both On Page SEO and Off Page SEO. However, SEO can be tough and determining where to focus your efforts can get overwhelming. If you need help, or want to see if your SEO efforts have been paid off, get in contact with us today. SEO Fuel Marketing is always happy to help with any or all of your digital marketing needs.

The Basic Differences Between Google and Bing

Want to Make Sure Your Content Ranks in Google? Here’s How!

A lot of people write articles for their websites without ever considering what their readers want to read. In reality, you should be putting a lot of thought into what you’re producing. If this sounds like you and you’re ready to make an impact in your market, and rate highly in search engines, it’s time for a change. The best way to do this is through SEO copywriting. If you want to learn how to write read-worthy content that will get your posts ranked in Google, you’ve come to the right place. Read on for a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know about SEO copywriting.

SEO Copywriting: The Basics

In order to fully understand what SEO copywriting is, you need a basic understanding of each part of the whole.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process that businesses and influencers use in order to increase their webpage’s ranking on a given search engines results page (SERP). This includes Google, Yahoo, Bing and any site that you use to perform Internet searches. Your goal is to get to #1 and SEO helps take you there.

Copywriting

Copywriting is simply writing with the intention of persuading your reader take a specific action. It can be anything that helps move your company’s agenda forward and is used in all areas of advertising.

Bringing Them Both Together

So, when you combine SEO and copywriting, you’re looking at a type of high quality writing that utilizes specific, target keywords that will move you up in the results pages. Your goal is to rank higher and SEO copywriting is what accomplishes this. You’re taking the best of both worlds and meshing them together to create something that your readers want to read and search engines want to rank. So, while all of this sounds pretty self-explanatory, it’s a bit more intensive to put into action. Luckily, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide on getting your content ranked in Google, and other search engines, using SEO copywriting. Let’s get started.

Research the Right Keywords

The first step is making sure that you’re utilizing keywords that will actually have an impact on your ranking. To do this, you need to do some research. Don’t skip this step; it’s what you’ll use in each of the following steps to find success. Since each and every post that you’ll write will focus on a primary keyword, getting the hang of this process is crucial. Start out by brainstorming a list of potential keywords that are informational rather than transactional (a.k.a., they’re used to teach something rather than sell something). When people make searches on Google, it’s almost always to learn new information, not make a purchase. They go to review sites or straight to Amazon for that. Use a keyword tool like Google Adwords to perform research on the SERP of your brainstormed keywords. This will show you whether or not people are actually making searches with those keywords. If they’re using them, you’re good to go. If they’re not, find another keyword. Don’t leave out long-tail keywords. Even if they don’t have as much competition, if people are searching for them, they’re in the cards.

Understand Your Audience

After you’ve researched some potential keywords, put yourself in the mind of your target audience. Does it sound like something you could write an entire page about that they would actually want to read it?Think about what kind of content they want to see and work with that. Focus on search intent and research the current top ranked pages on your keywords. Look for commonalities and try to understand why they’re ranking highly. Most often, you’ll find that the highest ranked pages are answering questions about a topic in your niche or explaining how to do something. They come to search engines with questions and the sooner you understand their thought process, the sooner you’ll be able to answer them. Remember, the goals of your posts are to draw in your potential customers and give them something they want to read. Thus, not only are keywords essential to this success, your content needs to be high quality and catch their attention with a solid introduction (more on this later). Using your keyword research and audience knowledge put yourself in your audience’s shoes. The goal is to think about what you’d want to read… then write about it.

Study Your Competition

During your research stages, you’ll start to notice similarities in the top ranking pages. Do your research and take the time to study your competition. This will help you revise and refine your process so you can understand how to use your target keyword to get more results.Start by looking at the top 5 positions in SERP for your target keyword. Open them all and review their content. Seriously, read through the entire post and keep track of what they’re doing. Take notice of the format they use and mirror it. Most often, visitors want things that are easy to ready or skim through, which most people do. Focus on the writing aspects of SEO and see what your competition is doing right. Chances are, at the end of your research, you’ll find that their content was well formatted, easy to read, comprehensive, up to date, relevant and accurate. When you create your next post, make sure that it adheres to these 6 major content checks. You may also want to take the top 5 ranking pages and do a back-search to find out exactly what target keywords they’re utilizing. If you think you can create better content, go for it. If not, amend your keywords and try something new.

Stand Apart From Your Competition

Studying your competition is important because at the end of the day, it’s what allows you to stand apart from them. In SEO copywriting, it’s nearly impossible to create and write something that is 100% unique. There are trillions of articles already published on the Internet and the likelihood of publishing something that isn’t already out there is slim to none. Instead, use SEO copywriting to stand apart from your competition.You can do this by creating a unique voice and using it. Take something and put your own spin on it, add to it, elaborate, basically do anything to make yourself different from the rest. People find inspiration from personal experiences and personality and use it in their writing.

Spend Time on Your Introduction

Like we mentioned earlier, your introduction matters. It’s what draws people in and convinces them to either keep reading or try another site to get what they’re looking for. These are the words that will help people decide whether or not you can answer their question. Use them wisely. Not only do you need to make your introductions catchy, you need to unequivocally show your visitors that they’re in the right place. Communicate that you know who they are and why they’ve come to your website. Unfortunately, there’s no universal formula that you can use for each one of your introductions. Each one will be different because each of your pages will likely have a different target audience (depending on your keywords). Use the information that you’ve gathered thus far and clearly communicate search intent. If you demonstrate that you understand the reader and their problem, promise a solution in your post and then prove that you’re the right person to provide that solution, they’ll know they’re in the right place. All people want from an introduction is to know that they’re in the right place. Give them that and you’ll increase your reader base tenfold.

Link Your Post

While you can go ahead and edit, polish and post your article now, you may want to spend some time getting backlinks first. The more you have, the higher your post will rank. Both internal links and backlinks are important, but since you can handle internal links yourself, we’ll focus on getting backlinks. Backlinks are when other people link to your post. Unfortunately, most of them won’t come naturally. You need to put in work to get your numbers up there, but if you deliver what you promise, it’ll get easier as you go. For starters, you need to prospect and reach out to other professionals in your field. As long as they’re not direct competitors, most will be happy to include a link to your article in exchange for a link to theirs. The more unique your post is, the more people will link to it. This step will take some time to develop but has a huge benefit in terms of SERP growth. Check out a detailed post on how to get more backlinks here.

Edit and Polish Your Post

Now it’s time to edit and polish your SEO copywriting. Re-read your post numerous times and make sure that everything is accurate, up to date and relevant.Since most readers just want to know the solution to their problem, remove any unnecessary content or fluff. While we would love for everyone to read each and every word, it’s just not a reality. The more simplified your post is, the better. Use short, easy to digest, sentences and paragraphs and make sure that it is “skimmer” friendly for best results. Make sure your formatting includes lots of lists, white space, images and screenshots in order to break up your text and compliment your SEO copywriting. Use internal links and emphasize certain words for better readability. Once you’ve gone through it a couple times and feel like it’s ready to post, you’re done! The only thing left to do is upload your post to your website. Repeat this process time and time again. It will take time to perfect, a lot of time, but once you do you’ll receive more and more traffic to your site each month and appear higher in organic searches. If you’ve read through this comprehensive guide on getting your content ranked in Google and feel like you need some outside help, or just want to streamline the process, reach out to us at SEO Fuel. Our search engine optimization professionals are here to help with SEO copywriting for your website that gets you results.

Local Search Engine Optimization Tips For Small Businesses

One of the most difficult things about owning and operating a small business is making sure that you are marketing efficiently and effectively. It is probably the best, and arguable only, way of ensuring that your business will see growth. However, marketing can be a big task for a small business and a lot of start-ups just don’t have the resources to hire someone full-time. This is where search engine optimization comes in.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a way of positively affecting your web page rankings on multiple different search engines. It is a process that works with the algorithms used by sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo in order to boost your business to the top of the results pages. Essentially, SEO helps to show search engines that your company’s website is legitimate and worthy of being on the first page of results. This is extremely beneficial for businesses, especially those in a saturated market. Websites who are ranked on the first page of search engines see more traffic, which leads to more profits. However, if you’re not an expert it can be difficult to get started. That’s why we’ve taken the time to put together a comprehensive list of SEO tips for small businesses. If you want to make your company standout from the competition, you’ve come to the right place.

#1: Master Your Keywords

The first thing you’re going to need to do is get an understanding of some of the basics in small business SEO. It’s imperative that you understand the target keywords and phrases that you’ll need to utilize in order to successfully target your audience. Think about what words or phrases people will enter into search engines in order to find products, services or content like yours. Keyword research is important because it is the first building block in order to be successful. After you’ve completed the research, you’ll want to work on optimizing your sites to include the specific keywords throughout – including content, titles, descriptions, etc. If you don’t know where to start with keyword researching check out sites like SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner and KWFinder.

SEMrush

SEMrush assists in day-to-day tasks, provides in-depth keyword analysis helps improve website performance.

Google Keyword Planner

Google’s Keyword Planner helps you find new keyword ideas for your website that are relevant to your product, service, and target customers.

#2: Make Sure Your Website is Optimized

After your keyword research is completed, the next step will be to make sure that your website is optimized correctly. If you haven’t already created a domain name, you can either use your business’ name or something that represents your business or overall niche. Regardless of if you create a domain name or already had one in use, make sure that your website is properly categorized. This tells search engines what type of content you will be publishing along with what niche your website falls under.

Include your business name, address and phone number (also referred to as NAP), on all of the pages of your site. You can do this at the bottom so it’s not overpowering more pressing information, but it compliments algorithms and verifies credibility. Including relevant local information also helps to improve the validity of your company. Try publishing area specific content and keywords. Connecting with other local businesses and organizations is also helpful. Link building is another way to help improve small business SEO. Link building is the process of including internal and external links to relevant and high quality content.


External links help to boost the credibility of your business because they connect your website to trusted sites. It also increases user experience, which has recently taken more weight in search engine algorithms. This is only beneficial when the external links are related to the content that you are writing about. If you continually link to websites that are unrelated, it will actually damage your search results over time. Internal links can keep users on your website for longer. The longer someone is on and the more they click around, the better it is for your SEO. Finally, you’ll want to make sure you account for all of your mobile users trying to access your site. This is something to pay special attention to because most people who browse the web use their mobile devices to do so. This is why you need to make sure that your website has a mobile-friendly version. If people aren’t able to access your content on the go, they might not return to your site on a desktop. You’d be surprised at how much this influences traffic.

#3: Have Creative Tags

A very powerful tool to include this list of local business SEO tips is making sure that you take full advantage of Title tags. A Title tag and meta description are the things that show up on the search engine results page describing your web page. It involves the title of your content (either web page or article) along with a brief description of what it is about. Usually, these are limited to about 70 characters for a title tag and 160 characters for a meta description tag. Take advantage of this space so that your target audience will click on your links more often. It helps to include target keywords in both the title and description.

#4: Create Local Business Listings

Local business listings are online entries that contain all of the relevant information of your business in a local page. They include your company’s NAP (name, address, phone number) along with any other details that may be important to your audience. You can create local business listings across all the major platforms including Yelp, Google, Bing, Foursquare, Google and even Yellow Pages. This ensures that each of these search engines has your company’s information in their databases and that you are searchable to their users. If you go to register your business and already see a listing, you can claim ownership of it. Just make sure that it is listed accurately. If your information is not listed accurately across all of the platforms then search engines may get confused about which information is true. This leads to lower rankings and a decreased chance of getting contacted. This is one of the most powerful local business SEO tips available since it helps to associate your company with your local area. In addition to the major platforms, you can also see if there are any local specific directories that will list your business. Think about organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, newsletters, etc. and reach out to them directly. Some associations require you to be a member, but others will at list your business free of charge. Two very important directories to register with are Google My Business (GMB) and Bing Place for Business. When you’re registered and verified through both of these, your company has the potential to rank higher and potentially receive a spot in the “top 3” that include physical locations on their maps. After you verify your business, optimize your listing with as much information and as many pictures as you can. Taking this step will bring your small business SEO to the next level.

#5: Reviews are Important

Not surprisingly, the reviews you and your business receive actually make a big difference. The biggest impact you can see these from are Facebook, GMB and Yelp. When you have bad reviews, people tend to try and find a place that doesn’t. It’s as simple as that. Unfortunately, sometimes circumstances and negative attitudes combine for an unavoidable review. In these cases, take the time to reply and show your concern for your customers. Tailor to them and how you want their next experience to be the best. Remember, the customer is always right… even if they’re wrong. When you engage with your customers, on both good and bad reviews, you are more likely to attract new customers and retain your current ones.

#6: Stay Engaged

In a world where most of human interaction is done online, you can’t forget about social media. It is one of the most relevant local business SEO tips around. When you have a strong social media engagement, people start talking about you and linking back to your sites. The more back links you have, the more authentic your site will be to search engines and the higher you will appear on the results pages. It all comes full circle eventually, so take some time each day to engage with your audience. Tying it All Together In order for small businesses to stand out from their competition, they need to pay special attention to local SEO. It increases visibility, helps tie you to your target audience and creates an online presence that generates authenticity and credibility. SEO is an art and it is constantly evolving. In order to take advantage of these benefits, start with making sure that your company has successfully mastered the items on this list. The more you practice, the better you’ll get. It may be confusing or frustrating at first, but if you continue to research strategies and develop your website, you will see results.

Beginner’s WordPress SEO Guide: How to Set Up and Optimize Your Blog

SEO: Still the Best Marketing Strategy for Local Businesses

There are some people that believe that SEO is starting to become a thing of the past. We’re here to tell you that those people are wrong. SEO is still extremely viable and is considered one of the top marketing strategies for local business. It is a straightforward tactic that has the ability to help increase the reach of local businesses as well as bring in many new customers. If you’re unconvinced, here are a few reasons why SEO still trumps other marketing strategies.

It Gets The Job Done

For anyone that’s used SEO, they know that it actually works. In fact, in a MarketDive study, they found that 82% of users said that SEO not only works, but it is becoming even more effective. SEO helps improve your company’s rankings, which can lead to more business. Search Engines are not going anywhere anytime soon, so SEO is still crucial to put you at the top of your competition.

It’s Cost Effective

With the development of outbound marketing methods like cold calling, businesses are beginning to migrate away from SEO tactics. This is because outbound techniques feel more direct and come with a sense of simplicity. Unfortunately, it has been shown that these tactics are actually more costly in the long run. Studies show that inbound leads, like those from SEO strategies, cost 61% less than outbound marketing methods.

Infographic: 14 Reasons Why SEO is Still the Best Marketing Strategy

1. It Improves Credibility

SEO works to improve your company’s ranking on popular search engines while simultaneously building credibility. For instance, when you search for a local keyword and one company appears on Google but another doesn’t, it is more likely that you will choose the one that appeared on Google. This is because when a company shows up on the first page of Google, people instantly feel confident and a sense of trust in that company and their abilities

2. It Keeps Your Ranking Safe

Google algorithms change so frequently, that if you don’t keep up with the changes then your rankings will suffer. That’s why you need an SEO expert who is aware of the current best practices in order to keep your ranking safe. Investing in SEO will make sure that you stay at the top of the search results while your competition falls behind.

3. It is Relevant for Mobile Searching

With mobile searching becoming more and more prevalent in today’s technological world, it is important to make sure that your company is findable. In fact, according to a Reuters’ study, 75% of Internet users will be mobile in 2017 – a 71% increase from 2016. This is why it’s crucial to make sure that your company’s website and blogs are optimized for mobile use in order to improve SEO. This will give those companies who utilize SEO a huge lead against the competition.

4. It is Also a Market Research Tool

SEO focuses on compiling keyword research in order to improve search result rankings as well as analyze data from different agencies. This means that the work done for SEO can double as a market research tool. It allows you to have a better understanding of exactly what your audience is looking for and gives you better insight as to how to deliver it. It also doubles as a way to see the problems and the solutions that are being considered.

5. It Provides a Huge ROI

SEO can be a slow process. It might take a few months for the results to start coming in, but once they do you will see a massive return on your investment. In fact, SEO provides one of the best and most consistent returns of all of the marketing methods available to choose from. When Brafton.com performed a study, they found that over 70% of small businesses that had invested in SEO as their marketing method increased their profits.

6. It is Low Maintenance

While the first year of SEO may contain quite a bit of work, the maintenance after that is extremely low. That’s because, once you have built the backbone of SEO for your company, it will continue to serve as a foundation for all of your online marketing in the years that follow. You just need to make sure that you follow the content marketing strategy and release content that will be able to stand against the competition. That’s all it takes to maintain a first page ranking for your keywords.

7. It’s Easy to Outsource

Thanks to search engine optimization, there are so many great companies that are successful in providing high quality SEO. All you need to do is search for them! Make sure you find one that you feel comfortable working with and has a good track record. SEO Fuel Marketing is a great place to fuel your mission.

8. It Generates Consistent Leads

If you’ve ever used a search engine, you know how rare it is to actually move past the first page and look at the results on the second. In fact, over 75% of people never leave the first page and the #1 result generates almost 33% of all clicks. This means that if you can get your SEO rankings up to the first result, you will generate more leads than all of your competition. If you stay at the top, your leads will continue to roll in and you may even experience a need to grow your company.

9. It’s Easy to Convert Leads

Once you get an influx of leads from your search result ranking, SEO makes it easy to convert those leads into profits. SEO works to target people who are actually looking for your specific products or services. This means that once they find you it is much more likely that they will follow through with using your services. It might be surprising, but SEO leads have close to a 15% close rate while outbound leads only tend to have an average of 1.7%. That’s a huge difference!

10. It Improves User Experience

Google has started to place a premium on their user experience, which means that if you don’t have strong SEO you may fall behind. Having strong SEO will help to improve UXO and vice versa, which means that people will prefer to visit your company’s site over others with poor user interface.

11. It Gives you Competitive Advantage

Utilizing SEO will help give you a leg up on the competition. Since it can be a fierce race out there to be at the top of your market, you want to make sure you have all of the advantages that you can get. This means that when your website appears on the first page of Google, you will instantly be ahead of your competition. Make sure that it happens by choosing SEO tactics over other marketing strategies.

12. It’s Here to Stay

SEO has been around for quite some time and will continue to be around for years to come. All of the top executives at Google have come to the same conclusion, so make sure to get started sooner rather than later. While it’s your job to run your business, it’s our job to make sure your business gets the visibility it needs to succeed. With our SEO experts, we can help you achieve the results you want. Contact us today at SEO Fuel Marketing for all of your SEO needs.

Best SEO Tips for Beginners

Search Engine Optimization Tips for Newbies

SEO or search engine optimization knowledge is critical for the person starting out in e-commerce. Whether you intend to blog, run an online store or do anything else successfully online, you need to find out how to get noticed by search engines to ensure that people can find you. Understanding search engine optimization is critical for anyone who wants to succeed in online enterprise.

An important aspect of search engine optimization is the fact that you need to invest time and effort into your website regularly in order get traffic and keep traffic continuously increasing. If you allow your website to sit and collect dust it won’t do much for you.  Here are our SEO tips for newbies.

SEO Tip # 1:

Our first SEO tip for beginners is that there isn’t a magical SEO formula; at least none that’s evergreen so it’s important to stay current on Search Engine Optimization news. Dig deep to find information and read everything you can. You’ll find conflicting information at times but knowledge is power so absorb as much SEO news as you can.

SEO Tip # 2:

Create an easy to follow design with a standard homepage, easily viewable links and a site index. This way, people and online search engine like Google can find their way around easily and so can people.

SEO Tip # 3:

Determine what your target keywords are. There are some great SEO tools out there that can help you both for free or for a small fee. Often it’s fairly easy to figure this out on your own or you can use tools like Linkio to make it easier.

Businesses should use important product or services keywords to describe their company for local SEO ranking.

Ask yourself:

What are the top three to five words or phrases you would use if you were use to search for the product or topic you are selling? Make sure that those words are on each page of your website, especially in titles, headings and at the beginning, middle and end of each page. It’s a smart idea to use variations as well to give your site further credibility and increase the Long Tail.

SEO Tip # 4:

SEO Fact: Content is king. Always will be. Don’t assume that more is better in terms of keywords. Do not fall victim to the temptation to simply keyword stuff your site otherwise two things will happen. First, you’ll get banned by search engines and even worse, you’ll be ignored by humans who arrive on your page. Both types of visitors can see through vain SEO attempts to trick you to get onto their site.

Instead, you need to target the fine line between having enough keyword relevancy to make it impossible for the search engines to ignore you but not as much that your human visitors find your content to be poor quality. Hire a professional SEO article writer if you need to so as to come across as professional. Keep fresh content on your pages and change your content regularly. You don’t have to waste what you’ve put effort and money into, instead move your old content into archives so it continues to work for you simultaneously.

Use social media like Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest to build brand exposure for you business. It’s an easy way for SEO beginners to acquire backlinks which help in organic search rankings

SEO Tip # 5:

Web 2.0 is about social networking. Social networking, social book marking, forum posting and link exchanges can be invaluable if you can get high ranking websites in your niche to exchange links with you, this can help. If you are blogging, comment on other blogs in your niche to get a link back to your site and generate interest from bloggers that frequent other sites in your niche. If you use tools like Technorati, Digg, StumbleUpon and other social book marking tools on your pages with appropriate tagging, you can bring relevant traffic fairly quickly and it’s viral so others will do the same. Social networking activities are also indexed by search engines.

SEO Tips for Beginners Summarized

There are basic to advanced SEO techniques and website optimization tips that you can use to get noticed with big three search engines. You should always keep SEO in the on your mind, and always follow best practices. Skipping the basics of search engine optimization will only leave your website’s foundation disarray and prevent you from fully maximizing revenue opportunities. Your results will depend a lot on how narrow your niche is but there are some basic things you can do to be search engine friendly from the start. It’s never too late to optimize your site though, so don’t lose heart if you didn’t follow this advice on your website from the get go.  This is not an exhaustive list, but it is a great place to start for newbies to learn about basic SEO techniques, ideas and concepts.

Don’t Commit These 5 SEO Mistakes Ever

Here’s something most website owners eventually come to realize at some point in time. Using the right or wrong SEO tactics can either make or break your site. It’s widely known that if you do SEO right, you can propel your site up the ranks, maybe even to that coveted first spot on the search results. However, if you do SEO wrong and engage in risky tactics, Google could torpedo your site to obscurity.

The saying goes: “It’s a thin line between love and hate.” Well, the line between good SEO and bad SEO isn’t much thicker. Today I’m going to break down some of the most common SEO mistakes people make that can do long-term damage to their websites. Trust me when I tell you, NEVER commit these 5 SEO mistakes….ever.

Let’s start with this SEO mistake beginners often make…

1. Buying links
This is a huge mistake that website owner’s unfortunately make far too often. If you’re contacted by an SEO firm or see an ad guaranteeing you hundreds of links for a one time fee do yourself a favor and ignore it. Buying Links will no doubt get you penalized in the long run and that’s coming directly from former head of Google web spam team Matt Cutts.

2. Keyword stuffing
This is one of the most common SEO mistakes. Keyword stuffing is the process of adding the same keyword to your content many times in an attempt to fool Google into thinking your content should be ranked highly for that keyword. This may have worked years ago, however, the Google algorithm has caught up and can penalize such activity. If you stuff your pages with keywords for SERP’s, then chances are it won’t read naturally for HUMANS, and Google’s number 1 priorities are delivering great results and a great user experience. You aren’t providing a great user experience if you stuff your keyword in the text every few sentences. So don’t over optimize. Instead of keyword stuffing, simply create your written content so that it flows naturally. If you still think you need specific keywords, go back and place a few within the content as long as they are used naturally. If you use WordPress, you can download the Yoast SEO plugin to alert you if you’ve over-optimized for your chosen keyword.

Don’t let black hat SEO turn you from a SEO hero to zero with Google.

3. Jumping on the latest SEO scheme
Link wheels, link pyramids, private blog networks… They were all at one point the latest “get ranked quick scheme” and true enough they worked for a period of time, but as always Google eventually figured it out, updated their algorithm and slapped all the sites that were using these tactics to oblivion. Do your site a favor and don’t jump on the latest blackhat SEO fad. The odds are that you will pay for it in the long run with a steep drop in rankings. This will turn you from an SEO hero to zero in no time fast!

4. Not cleaning up broken links
This one is very sneaky and very common. Most websites eventually accumulate broken links. It’s almost impossible to avoid it if you’re a blogger and have been publishing content for awhile.
But take note of this: As common as broken links are, they signal one thing to Google…that your content isn’t up to date. So set aside a little time and clean up those broken links. Sounds like a time consuming and tedious task, right? Well, you can make it a lot less time consuming and a lot more convenient if you install the WordPress plugin “Broken Link Checker“. This plugin will alert you to any broken links on your site so you can easily fix or replace them in a few clicks, and all from one simple dashboard.

5. Publishing thin content
Last but not the least on this list of SEO mistakes you should never make is publishing thin content. And when I say thin I mean content that doesn’t extensively explore the topic it was meant to explore. Plain and simple, Google wants to deliver relevant answers to its searchers. It also wants to deliver the most thorough answers possible. So, if your content is thin it likely won’t rank high. Generally speaking, any article under 500 words has little chance of ranking on the first page of the search results so create amazing content. Words alone no longer capture people’s attention. You need great designed content to have visitors actually read it.

If your pages already have thin content, here are some ways to fix it:

• Remove pages or no-index thin content pages
• Add at least a few sentences of original text
• Rewrite the page entirely

Conclusion
When it comes to using SEO tactics to rank your site in the search engines, avoiding these 5 common SEO mistakes is definitely a step in the right direction. Now let’s sum up SEO mistakes beginners often make: Don’t buy links, avoid keyword stuffing, don’t jump on the latest black hat SEO fad, clean up your broken links, and publish detailed content that answers searchers questions. If you do all these things and have a little patience, your site should be ranking in no time even if you are a beginner to SEO!

35 Best Practices for Better SEO on Your Website

Here is a list of 35 SEO tips to rank your website on top of Google

1. Choose your domain name carefully. Make it memorable.
It is very important that the domain name of your site is related to the websites topic. In fact, it is best if the title of the site is the same or near as to the domain name so people can easily recall it and visit it again. With that, you should spend some time coming up with the possible domain names and search for keyword related terms while also choosing a  domain name that is catchy and short.

2. Establish the main keyword of your site.
One of the very first things that you should do for success marketing your website online is to establish the main keyword of your website. When you are able to accomplish this, you can then make use of thee keyword term to optimize your web page around those keyword related terms.

3. Use a keyword tool.
Using a keyword tool in order to determine the keywords of your site can go a long way in gaining website traffic. There are lots of keywords tools that you can take advantage of today. Whatever type of tool you want to utilize, make sure to understand how to use it effectively in zoning in on related keyword phrases that could attract attention to your website or blog. Picking the wrong keywords that either have too much competition or no estimated search volume will set you up for disappointment.

4. Quality of your content.
In order to attract people to visiting your site on a regular basis,  you need to establish some high quality content. If you can make it interesting, and give good insight or knowledge in your expertise, then all the better. Write the articles around valuable information so that people would be able to appreciate it and want to come back again. The latest research from Searchmetrics on ranking factors indicates that Google is moving further towards longer-form content that understands a visitor’s intention as a whole, instead of using keywords based on popular search queries to create content. In essence, stop worrying about keywords and focus on the user experience.

5. Add more content to your site.
You have to keep in mind that in order to have people purchase or sign up with your products and services, you have to convince them first. You would know if a person is almost convinced if he is constantly revisiting your site from time to time. To have a person revisit your site, you need to give him reasons to; and, one of which is by providing the site with new and updated content.

6. Don’t forget the keywords in your image file.
When you upload images on your website, which are related to your products and services, do not forget to establish keywords for the image as well. Remember to fill out the “alt” tags for SEO purposes which could show up high over time if optimized correctly. This also will lead to increased traffic.

7. Increase the domain authority of your site.
Domain Authority (DA) is actually an important signal with strong correlation to high organic search rankings. Traditionally, a link from an authority website is very valuable, as it’s seen as a vote of confidence. Having a higher Domain Authority than your competitors means that your site is more likely to rank higher in search engines. It therefore makes sense that if you want to give your site an overall SEO boost, focus on increasing your Domain Authority over time.

8. Pinpoint your top competitors.
Knowing your competitors is one of the best things to do in order to get ahead of them, or at least be at par with their performance. After identifying your closest competitors, try to analyze their online marketing strategies. See if such techniques can also be applied on your web page, so that you can take advantage of them if possible. An example would be to determine what high page rank links are they acquiring to point to their website. If you can mirror them, it should help you move up the rankings as well.

9. Determine your best keywords.
Do your research in order to determine the keywords you are using that pull the most traffic. This will give you more edge over your competitors in terms of attracting more potential customers to your website. Once you identify the best keywords, optimize your site with it, as well as your articles, so that you can maximize the benefits you can derive from it.

10. Determine if your website is crawlable by various search engines.
In order for people to find your site when they search for information related to it, your website should be crawlable by search engines. Make certain that your web files are not block from being indexed.

11. Make the most out of your tags.
Title tags are used to tell search engines and visitors what your site is about in the most concise and accurate way possible. To ensure that your web portal would benefit from your tags or title tags, you should use target keywords in it. Aside from that, you can also mention the area you provide services to in your title tag, if you cover a specific area. Moreover, you should also make use of the most valuable keywords at the beginning of your title tag.

The keywords in your title tag show up highlighted in search engine results (if the query uses those keywords), as well as in your browser tab and when sharing your site externally. You can write your own title tag inside thearea of your website’s HTML code:

<head>
<title>Example Title</title>
</head>

12. Establishing titles for your site’s pages.First and foremost, you should make sure that each page on your website is provided with a title. On top of that, the titles should be short and catchy, so that they are more captivating. In addition, you should make sure that the titles on each of your site’s pages are unique.

13. Distribute your articles to various article directories.
Each time you write an informative article, distribute the content to a number of article directories. In doing so, you are making sure that more people have a chance to visit your site. Article directories are frequented by people all around the world and can lead to a good amount of traffic if your content is interesting to those who follow topics you write about.

14. Don’t forget the links.
When you submit your articles to various article directories, do not forget to include backlinks within the content. These links should take the readers of your articles to your website when they choose to click it. In most cases, the links are included at the bottom part of your articles, so that people would see them just prior to finishing reading the article.

15. Beware of Keyword Stuffing.
Although utilizing keywords is one of the ways to promote your site, you should be careful in not overdoing it. If there are too many references to the exact match keywords within the content it can be considered “Keyword Stuffing”. When this happens, search engines, especially Google, may see your web page as a spam site, which is not good.

16. Local SEO.
Increasingly, Google is serving results to users based on their location. This is particularly important to businesses out there in the real world who need to catch a searcher’s attention just at the right moment like while walking down the street, on their mobile and looking for somewhere to get a drink or bite to eat.

You should register with Google My Business and verify that all your business information is correct and up-to-date, such as opening times, contact information, customer reviews and that your business is categorized correctly.

17. Cross-device compatibility.
Is your website and its content equally optimized for any given screen size or device? Keep in mind that Google has stated that responsive design is the preferred method of mobile optimization.

18. Schema markup.
You can make your search results appear more attractive by including Schema markup to the HTML code on your web pages. This can help turn your search results into a rich media playground, adding star-ratings, customer ratings, images, and various other bits of helpful info. Schema is also the preferred method of markup by most search engines including Google, and it’s fairly straightforward to use.

19. Minimize broken links.
Broken links are not good to have on your site, since they can cause missing images, and such. Keep in mind that not only people dislike them, but also various search engines. Therefore, if your site has lots of it, then it may not rank good in them. To avoid this, make use of link-checker sites or tools, so that you would know whether your site has them.

20. Take advantage of free blogging platforms.
There are lots of blogging platforms today which allow you to make your own blogs. Taking advantage of them can help you gain more traffic to your websites in order to expose your products or services to many people. Optimize your blogs with well researched keywords so that people would find them easily. Many platforms also incorporate social media plugins so you can distribute via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and more very easily.

21. Web hosting.
The quality of your web hosting company can also affect your site’s performance. You need to make sure that you have signed up with a reliable service provider with good customer service. Up-time and speed of the website are both critical. Read reviews and testimonials for various web hosting companies and compare their features and benefits.

22. Be helpful in online forums.
If you want more people to visit your site, then you should become more helpful in online forums. Being helpful means that you offer valuable information to people by answering questions related to your chosen topic or expertise. Aside from that, you can also start a thread about a certain topic and provide valuable tips and tricks.

23. Make use of backlinks.
Backlinks are simply links that lead people to your site that come from another site. It is best to make use of one way links (no link exchanges!). Acquire links from good domain age (DA) websites and citation trust along with being a website similar to your businesses industry.

24. Use website analytics tools.
It is very important to keep track of the number of people that visit your website on a daily basis. Google analytics is one of the most popular analytics tools you can use and it’s free. With an analytics tool, you can view the number of visits to your site along with information about where traffic came from as well the keywords they used to find your site.

25. Targeted traffic is more important than just traffic.
Gaining more internet traffic is very important. However, it is best if your site acquires targeted traffic, instead of just online traffic. This is because targeted traffic means that people visiting your web page are those that are really interested in the services and products that you can offer to them.

26. The first paragraph on your web pages.
Focus on making the first paragraph of your web pages as catchy as possible. Optimize the first paragraph with your main keywords as search engines rely heavily on the early portion of web pages rather than the bottom. The footer is the least important as it relates to SEO these days.

27. Don’t forget the value of social networking.
If you have not started using social media for your SEO efforts, then it is best to start now. Reaping the benefits from social media takes some time. Social media not only can grow brand exposure, but also helps in acquiring backlinks. So, although social media does not help directly with SEO, the obtaining of backlinks do assist with SEO.

28. Include your brick and mortar establishment’s address.
If you have a physical storefront business and you want to establish better a web presence, then make sure to include your local address on your website. Also, include it in the contact section of the web page. This will help in your local SEO efforts.

29. Use long tailed keywords.
These are simply more keywords in a keyword phrase. An example is “affordable SEO company in Chicago”. Just make sure that the keywords within the phrase are significant to your site’s topic. Long tail keywords may not have as many searches per month but they are easier to rank for so you will get some traffic from them.

30. Add internal linking within your website.
Internal linking is very important for reasons such as:

• To provides your viewers with further reading options on your site. As long as they are relevant and you use clear anchor text (the clickable highlighted words in a hyperlink). This can help reduce your bounce rates while leading to higher click through rates (CTR).
• Detailed and structured backlink anchor text is essential on building your website rankings high. This means it helps to improve your ranking for certain keywords and long tail keyword phrases. If we want this article to rank for the term “better SEO for websites” then we can begin linking to it from other posts using variations of similar anchor text. This tells Google that this post is relevant to people searching for “better SEO for websites”. Some SEO experts recommend varying your anchor text pointing to the same page as Google may see multiple identical uses as ‘suspicious’.
• It helps Google to crawl and index your site. Web crawlers that are sent out to fetch new information on your site will have a better idea of how useful and trustworthy your content and make it easier to crawl your internal links.

31. Bold or italicizing your important keyword phrases.
To emphasize on your keyword phrases, you can actually bold or italicize them. By doing that, you would be making the keyword phrases stand out. Just don’t overdo it, since it may not look good on your site.

32. The rate of speed in getting backlinks.
It is true that more backlinks can help your site in gaining more traffic and raise your rankings. However, you should not get them as quickly as you can since search engines may become suspicious of your site’s activities. Make backlinks in a slow but consistent manner just to be on the safe side.

33. Make sure to provide links on your online forum profiles.
When you participate in online forums, provide a link to your website below your name or on your profile. This way people will be able to visit your site if interested in learning more about you or your business. Just make sure to leave an interesting comment that is on topic.

34. Provide links on your social networking profiles.
Don’t forget to provide links on your social media profiles so that people get funneled to your website whenever they want to learn more about you. Plus, many social media links provide a backlink from a highly trusted website which is good in raising your own domain age and trust.

35.Relevancy.

Search engines try to provide the most relevant results to a searcher’s query, whether it’s a simple answer to the question “When is the next Foo Fighers concert” (the answer of which Google will likely provide without you having to leave the SERP) to more complicated queries such as “what is the best burger bar nearest to me?”

SEO Tips Summary:
Overall, SEO is difficult but it isn’t impossible if you follow our 35 tips to better SEO. With the right strategies and work, you can take your website to a whole new level of traffic – more than you ever thought possible. You always want to keep your patience with search engines such as Google and Bing. The companies that are dominating in SEO rankings have been taking SEO seriously for years. They didn’t just shoot up overnight. These companies worked hard to get where they are. Google values trust and the time that you have been around on the internet promoting your website. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to change that. These values are impossible to overcome except with time.

Have another SEO Tip you want to share? Leave a comment below and share this post with your friends, followers, or connections. It would be much appreciated!