For maximum traffic you should aim to optimize each page on your website for a different keyword phrase and you should make sure that the keyword phrase that you pick for your home page or the main page of your website gets a good number of searches per month.

Here are the main places on a web page that you should put your keywords when you are optimizing your website:

• In the <TITLE> tags - this is the text that is displayed along the title bar of your browser
• In the Headline tags - especially the <H1> tag
• In the ALT attributes of images - mention your keywords in one or two of the alt attributes of any of the images on your page
• Through out the body of your web page - ensuring that your keywords are mentioned at the beginning, middle and end
• In the anchor text of links - if you have any links to this page elsewhere on your website try to make sure that the anchor text (clickable text) has your keywords in it.
• In the <META> tags - although the main search engines no longer use these tags for ranking, you may want to mention your keywords in the keywords tag and in the description tag. The description tag is used by Google and other search engines to display a summary of your site when it is displayed in the search engine results.

Optimizing your website doesn’t have to be a complicated process - just make sure you mention your keywords in all of these places. At the same time, don’t over do it as keyword spamming can have the opposite affect! 

Taking an extra 10 minutes to do this when creating a new website can mean the difference between lots of traffic and no traffic.

ShareThis

Here is my strategy for multiplying my traffic. I get so much more traffic from my sub pages than I do from my home page.

At least once per week I do the following:

(1) Choose a topic

(2) Research keywords for that topic. I am currently using Wordtracker to shortlist my keywords and the Google keyword tool to check the search volume.

(3) Find a good keyword phrase. I want something that has at least a couple of hundred searches a month, but not too much competition. The keyword needs to be less competitive than the one for my home page.

(4) Create a page about that topic and include the keywords in the filename, the <TITLE>, the <H1> tag, throughout the body, in the alt attributes and so on. If you don’t know how to create a new page on your site, a blog post will do. Put the keywords in the blog title and 2-3 times throughout the blog post. Monetize the page with a link or information about your product or service, or at least one affiliate program, or adsense, or a newsletter optin.

(5) Link to that page from at least one other place on your site e.g. home page, blog or menu. I usually link from the home page and one of my sub menus.

(6) Social bookmark the page.

(7) Write an article about that same topic, but make it different from the page that you added. I post my article using Submit Your Article with article leverage. In half the resource boxes I use only a deep link to this new page and in the other half I include both a link to my home page and a deep link. I put my keywords in the anchor text too.

(8) Repeat for a new page…

This technique works better than trying to squeeze lots and lots of keywords into your home page.

ShareThis

You also need to make sure that your website converts, otherwise building all that traffic will have been a waste of time.

If you have a website and are struggling to get traffic to it, or if you don’t yet have a website and need to know how to get started and get visitors and sales then you may be interested in participating in Online Coaching to help you.

In a few weeks time, myself and my five business partners Ken Troyer, Cynthia Minnaar, Mal Keenan, Jeff Schuman and Jeff Casmer, all of whom are successfull internet marketers, will be launching the Niche Power Group

The Niche Power group can provide you with online mentoring in the areas of keyword research, on site and off site search engine optimization,  website conversion and also building, monetizing and marketing your website online.

Visit the Niche Power Group now and register to receive a special offer when we launch in September.

ShareThis

Today I’m going to talk about how not to get a better search engine rank. It is good to know what you need to do to improve your search engine ranking, but what about what you shouldn’t do?

 (1) Hidden Text- some websites use underhand techniques such as making massive lists of keywords on their pages, but making these keywords the same color as their page e.g. white text on a white page. These keywords are invisible to a human visitor looking at the web page, but they are visible to the search engines. Search engine ranking alogorithms are highly complex, so to thing that they can’t spot a simple technique like this is niave. Search engines could potentially penalize your website for using hidden keyword tricks.

(2) Keyword Spamming - this is similar to the above, but this time the keywords are not hidden. Some webmasters think that stuffing as many keywords as possible throughout the page and the meta keyword tags will improve their ranking in Google and other search engine rankings. The truth is that this could end up having a detrimental effect on your ranking. Take a look at the keyword density of your main competitors and aim for something similar to them instead. It is also useful to note that the major search engines don’t really pay much attention to the meta keywords tag, so if you are using this on your page you don’t need to put more than 4 or 5 keyword phrases in there.

(3) Too Many Links - don’t list too many links on a single page. The Google Webmaster guidelines suggest having less than 100 links on a single page. It is also good practise to ensure that you link only to high quality sites as you could be penalized for linking to “bad neighborhoods”.

(4) Using Flash Intros - some websites have fancy flash intros. Although these can sometimes look nice, they will not do anything for your search engine rank. Search engines cannot understand flash and graphics, so if you must have a flash intro, try to ensure that you also get some text on the page with your keywords in there as well.

(5) Submitting your Site to Search Engines - although this one is likely to do you no harm, it won’t help either. The way to get a good ranking in the main search engines is with good, keyword rich, fresh content and lots of high quality backlinks to your site. I have another blog post on why you don’t need to submit your site to search engines.

(6) Using Other Peoples’ Content - this is one of my pet hates, as I have had people steal my website content a few times in the past. Aside from the fact that this generally infringes copyright laws, it is not going to help you get a better search engine rank. You have a much better chance of getting a high ranking with fresh, unique content.

(7) Javascript or Graphical Based Navigation - When creating a menu or a way to navigate your website it is best to make this text based. Search Engines do not read javascript and cannot see the text that may be on images or graphics. If you have to have a javascript or image based menu, ensure that you also have a text based menu on the same page.

ShareThis

Google has now started publishing the actual search volume for keyword phrases. Previously Google just displayed a little graph to help people determine the search volume of a particular phrase, but now they are showing the actual number of searches for both the previous month and the average number of searches.

 You can use this tool for free here:

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Prior to this, using Wordtracker was the best way to estimate search volume for a particular phrase, but because Wordtracker uses only a small percentage of searches from meta engines and multiplies this up to give estimates for Google, MSN, Yahoo etc, it wasn’t always accurate.

It will be interesting to see what changes Wordtracker make as a result of this new feature from Google.

 I am still going to use Wordtracker as it is the best way of getting together a quick set of statistics about keywords, taking into account the competition, but I will now be able to cross check all my phrases using the Google tool to make sure that I haven’t picked a duff keyword.

ShareThis

Three way linking can easily be explained in the example below:

 You have three websites - website A, website B and website C.

• Website A links to website B.
• Website B links to website C
• Website C links to website A

As you can see, there is no direct reciprocal link here. Each website is linking to another website, but getting a link back from a different website.

The reason for doing this is because reciprocal links can easily be detected by search engines as “unnatural” links, therefore you won’t get as much benefit from a reciprocal link as you will from a one way link. Doing a three way link exchange makes this look more natural as site A is linking to site B, but getting a link back from site C.

If you decide to use three way linking as a strategy for link building I would recommend only linking to websites that are related to your own website and ensuring that your backlink is coming from a site that is also related. By related, I mean the same theme. So don’t link your home business website to someone’s dieting website.

How do you set up a three way link?

It is easy to set up a three way link if you already have two or more related websites of your own. You can email a webmaster and propose a 3 way link exchange. The disadvantage of this is that it is a manual process and it can be difficult to keep track of your links and be sure that the other webmaster has kept his or her link to your website in place.

Another strategy is to use a three way linking service such as 3 Way Links. This service allows you to automatically set up three way links with other websites. All websites are manually reviewed so you don’t need to worry about linking to bad neighborhoods.

Three way linking is definitely a strategy that you should consider using as part of your overall linking campaign along with other methods such as article distribution, forum posting, directory submission and press releases.

Visit 3 Way Links for more information.

ShareThis

Read on and learn a little bit more about the search engines and how they work before going off and paying for some search engine submission service that will probably do absolutely nothing for you apart from cost you money.

 First of all, the main search engines are:

• Google (approx 69% of the searches)
• Yahoo (approx 19% of the searches)
• MSN (approx 8% of the searches)

None of these search engines require you to submit your website to them.

Why not…? The reason is that these search engines find websites by themselves without the need for anyone to submit them. All of these search engines have software programs known as “spiders” which basically go and visit  (crawl) different websites on the internet, following links on each of these website, which lead to other websites, which lead to more websites and so on.

All you need to do to get your website indexed by a search engine is to get some backlinks to your website. A backlink is simply a live link from one website to your website. There are many easy ways to do this including distributing articles with your resource box in them containing a link to your site, submitting your site to online directories, exchanging links with other websites, distributing an online press release and more.

Once you have been indexed by a search engine there is absolutely no need to submit your website to them once, never mind every single month. Submitting your site to search engines won’t do you any harm (apart from wasting your time or money), but it is not going to do you any good either.

So if you have already started a search engine submission campaign I recommend that you stop immediately and spend your time or money on building good quality backlinks to your website instead.

I hope that answers the common question of “how do I submit my site to a search engine”. The short answer is, “you don’t”.

However, submitting your site to manually edited link directories such as Yahoo Dir and Dmoz is a completely different thing. This will benefit your site and it is a worthwhile exercise.

ShareThis

In simple terms a page rank is an indicator of the quality of a particular page on website. By quality I mean the number of links that the web page has pointing to it rather than the actual quality of the content on the page. 

A page rank is a whole number from 0 - 10, where 10 is the highest quality and 0 is the lowest. To find out the page rank of a particular page you need to download and install the Google Toolbar which is free. Page Rank applies to a page on a website, not to the whole website.

If the toolbar is grey, this means that a page has no page rank. If your website has pages on it that have a grey toolbar this could mean that

• The page is very new and has not yet been indexed by Google OR
• The page contains duplicate content and is in Google’s supplemental index rather than its main index OR
• Your website has been de-indexed/dropped from Google for some violation (less likely

If the toolbar is white, this means you have a page rank of zero. A PR0 is very common for a new website or a new web page as it take some time to build enough links back to your website to achive a higher page rank. It is also worth noting that Google typically only updates the page rank on the toolbar every few months so if you have a new website it may take  months for page rank to show on the toolbar for your website. However, Google is always updating the page rank of sites on an ongoing basis, so the page rank shown on the toolbar is not a true pagerank, it is a snapshot of your page rank from a given time.

To increase your page rank you need to get high quality backlinks to your website. A backlink is simply a link from another website to your own site. The best way is to get links naturally by writing such good content that other webmaster’s want to link to your website, but in reality most webmasters build backlinks by distributing articles, submitting their website to directories, exchanging links, distributing press releases, commenting on blogs and more. You can find out exactly how to increase your page rank here.

It is not just the number of backlinks to your site that count towards page rank, it is also the quality of these links. So for example, a link from a PR6 page is will increase your chances of getting a higher page rank, more than say, a link from a PR4 page. The number of links on the page that is linking to you also affects how much page rank (also known as “link juice”) is passed on to your web page. A link from a page that has 5 other links on it is of more value than a link from a page with 40 links on it.

Page rank is not linear, so it is much more difficult to get from say a PR4 to a PR5 than it is to get from a PR0 to a PR3.

Google Page Rank plays an important part in how a web page is ranked in Google’s search engine results but it isn’t worth much if you haven’t researched your keywords and optimized your web page. Page rank is a useful indicator of how popular a website is, but it is only part of the equation. So, do take notice of your website’s page rank, but don’t get hung up on that little green bar. The most important thing is that your traffic is increasing, not your page rank.

ShareThis

Setting up your website is one of the initial steps of an Internet marketing campaign, but the success or failure of your website is dependent on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t have any idea what you would like your  website to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything.

If you expect visitors to your website to perform some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them,  signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product, there are some steps you can take to make sure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any out of the ordinary offline promotional activities.

If you find that thousands of visitors have come to your website this does not necessarily mean that your website is successful. Usually,
you want those visitors to actually do something on your site. The number of visitors to your site who made a purchase is usually called the site conversion rate, and it is one of the most important figures in determining the success of your website..

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 4,000 hits to your site, but only 50 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this percentage, just take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100.

If your website is designed to get your visitors to fill out a form or sign up for a newsletter, make sure to also figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually purcahse something. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.

If your conversion rate is poor you may want to consider how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible? Does the visitor have to jump through hoops to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just give up and move on to another  website. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.

It also makes sense to have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

It is important to check your conversion rate before embarking on an SEO campaign to get a higher search engine rank. You can use pay per click advertising to check the conversion rate of specific keyword phrases. This can save you time upfront as you do not want to end up optimizing and promoting your website using a keyword phrase that does not convert well for your product or service.

ShareThis

Each of these 7 methods can make a vast difference to where your website or blog ranks in Google or any of the other major search engines.

(1) Double Check Your Keywords

If you are getting very little or no search engine traffic, this will be for one of two reasons. Either because you have chosen a keyword phrase for your website that doesn’t get searched on very often, or you may have a good keyword phrase but your site is not on the first page of search engine results for that phrase.  Alternatively you may not have even thought about keywords.

Whatever the answer, if you are receiving no search engine traffic it is worth taking a second look at your keywords. Use a keyword tool such as Wordtracker to generate a big list of keywords related to your website and take a look at two very important statistics for each keyword:

• The total number of searches in a 24hr period
• The number of competing pages

You need to be sure to pick a phrase that has a good number of daily searches, but you also need to be sure that the competition is not so tough that you will never be able to reach the first page of the search engines. It is a bit of a balancing act, but once you have found the right keyword phrase, read on for more tips about how to get a higher ranking for your keywords.

(2) Make Sure your Keywords are in the Right Places

Many people believe that you just need to list your keywords in the meta keyword tag of your web page to get a good ranking, but this is a myth. Most major search engines including Google do not even take these tags into account when ranking a web page. The main reason for this is that they have been spammed so much in the past that they are no longer worth considering.

Two of the most important places to put your keyword phrase are in the <TITLE> tag of your web page and in the heading tags <H1>. Try to mention only your keyword phrase(s) and nothing else in these tags to ensure that you don’t dilute your efforts.

You should also aim to mention your keyword phrase throughout the body of your web page. Mention it a few times at the beginning, middle and end of your web page, but don’t go over board  - a spammy page with your keywords mentioned too many times can have the opposite effect on your ranking than you would like.

(3) Check your Web Page is Perfectly Optimized

As well as putting your keywords in the Title and heading tags of your web page you should also mention them in the anchor text of some of the links on that web page or on other web pages on your site and in the alt and title attributes of links and images. Again, don’t go overboard with this.

When you have finished optimizing your page you may want to check your keyword density. There is no exact formula for the keyword density and it should normally be around the 2-5% mark. Use a free keyword density tool to check the density and compare it to your main competitors. Try to aim for a similar density.

(4) Create a Sitemap

Creating a sitemap can be beneficial to both the visitors to your website and to the search engines. It will help to ensure that the search engines can find and index every page on your website. You can create a site map by hand, but it is much quicker and easier to use a tool to automatically generate one.

Here is a free sitemap generator. 

(5) A Little Bit of LSI

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. It sound very complicated, but it is a relatively straightforward concept.

LSI is about the meaning of the words on your web pages and how they relate to each other. If you have optimized your web page for a particular keyword phrase the search engines will analyze your web page to see if there are other words that are related to these keywords or have a similar meaning.

As well as putting your keywords in the right places and checking your keyword density you should think about including other keywords on your page with a similar or related meaning. This will strengthen your page overall and improve your chances of ranking well. 

(6) Understand Who your Competitors are

Even if your keyword phrase returns a million pages when you type it into Google, the only pages of real importance are the first few websites on the first page of results. Most people don’t go past the first page or two when searching for something, so you have to aim for a page one ranking. To do this you need to take a close look at who your competitors are. Enter your main keyword phrase into Google and take a good hard look at the websites in the first few positions. How well optimized are they? What is their Google Page Rank (PR)? How many backlinks do they have? Who is linking to them?

Doing this analysis will give you a very clear picture of what you need to do to beat this competitor. In some cases you may find that the top competitors are huge multi million companies with many staff working on the website and in this case you may decide that this keyword phrase is too competitive and you may want to rethink your keywords. 

(7) Boost those Backlinks

Finally and most importantly you must continually build high quality backlinks to your website. This is one of the most important factors in getting a top ranking. You can do this by writing articles, submitting your site to directories, distributing press releases, posting in forums and making comments on blogs and websites. You can get a good idea of how many backlinks you need by comparing your website to your competitors’ websites. Use a backlink tool to compare the number of backlinks on your site to your competitors.

Read about more Ways to Improve Your Google Page Rank here.

If you would like to learn about these methods in more detail or find out even more ways to get a higher search engine ranking download my report 10 Ways to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking.

ShareThis