Archive for SEO Advice:

Off-Site Search Engine Optimisation

Before reading this, ensure you’ve followed all my tips for On Site SEO. The next stage is to get your site indexed fast! These are just some simple techniques, but as Tesco’s say, “Every little helps”.

Sitemap – Upload your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools and verify your site.

QUIT – Use this tool provided by BlueHatSEO.com to get your site indexed within 24 hours.

Add Url – Manually add your site to Google’s search engine

Backlink Building

I’ve found building relevant backlinks works a treat when trying to rank well in the search engines. By relevant I mean on sites that relate to your niche, so if you have a health related site you want links on other health sites. Easier said than done!

Remember, don’t rush this stage and have all your links with the same anchor text of Google will smell a rat. Take your time and mix it up, even doing deep linking, i.e. linking to a sub page and not the home page.

The following are not all the techniques but just some simple ones I use…

Directory Submissions – An old fashioned, labourious task, submitting your site to directories can take a long time. Google it and you’ll find someone to do this for you in no time! Social Bookmarks – As previously stated, having your site bookmarked is like buying permanent backlinks, except they are free! If you get your site on the front page of a popular social bookmarking site, you’ll automatically get at least 100 backlinks from other sites who have found your content and like it!

Link Exchanges – Getting your site linked to by an older site in the same niche and giving a link back will benefit you more than them, so try it. E-mail the webmasters, don’t say your site is new just say you both have quality content and your visitors will benefit from each other’s information.

Wikipedia – This is heavily monitored and they do use “No Follow” but the links are great for getting your site indexed and they are counted as strong backlinks. They key to getting linked is by writing quality content and putting it in the “External Links” section. For example, if you write an article title “Why protein is important in your diet”, add it to the “External Links” as “An interesting article on why protein is essential in your diet”.

Forum Signatures – I’ve got over 2,000 posts at one Webmaster Forum, each containing my site’s links with their targeted keyword as the anchor text. That’s a possible 2,000 backlinks, just for being a forum member.

On-Site Search Engine Optimisation

I split my Search Engine Optimisation program into three main areas; On Site SEO, Off Site SEO and Backlink  Building.

This is the first of three posts about SEO and my aim is to help you understand the basics that often go unnoticed. Why take my advice? Well it’s free and to prove it works here are two examples of my recent achievements…

Kortaz.com ranked 1st for “Web Proxy” 

TattooLettering.net ranked 2nd for “Tattoo Lettering” in one month 

I’m not an expert and I don’t have all the answers, but these tips do help me so they will help you. So, what’s my advice? Well let’s begin with the meta tags…

<Title> Tag – Keep this your targeted keyword. If you are wanting to rank well for “Diet Plans” then your title should be exactly that, nothing more. Don’t confuse search engines with “Free and Simple Diet Plans and Weight Loss Assistance” if that’s not what you’re targeting. For my blog, my title is “Internet Entrepreneur Khalid Al-Khames”, so people know who the blog belongs to. <Keywords> – Keep this to a maximum of 10 keywords, let’s not try to target anymore than that. I’ve never ranked a site 1st for more than 3 keywords, so 10 is out of reach, but keep a few extra in for choice. Use a keyword search tool to find other popular keyword terms

<Description> – Short and sweet, keyword inclusive, for example “Diet Plans and Diet Information by DietPlansUK.com” Secondly, the content…

Articles – Your site should have at least 4 pages with 500 word articles that are keyword inclusive, for example “Simple Diet Plans”, “Vegetarian Diet Plans”, “Bad Diet Plans” etc etc (notice how they all have your keyword “Diet Plans” in them). Article headers should use <h1> tags too!

Links – Your internal links should be keyword inclusive and use the description tag too. For example, “Simple Diet Plans” should be “Simple-Diet-Plans.htm” and not “sdp1.htm”. If you are using a CMS like WordPress, use SEO friendly links by editing the hyperlinking in your control panel.

Sitemap – Get yourself a free sitemap, just google it.

Robots – Ensure your site has a Robots.txt file too

Images – Ensure your images have SEO filenames and use the alt description tag too. For example “Diet-Planner.jpg” description “Diet Planner”.

Social Bookmarks – Sharing our findings is all the rage these days, with sites like Digg, Netscape, Stumble Upon and Technorati having millions of users. Although most of these sites use the “No Follow” tag, it is still worthwhile getting backlinks from these sites. Add a Social Bookmark button(s) to your site because if you get, even 1, submission by a user each day, that’s 31 new links every month.

I hope this helps, good luck!

Khalid.