If the search engines cannot find and index your site, your traffic will be insignificant, probably limited to a small number of your friends and family and their personal contacts. If your website is selling a product or service, that really would be an absolute disaster.
What SEO does is to enable you to lift the chances of your website being indexed by the search engines. But when done really effectively it also gives you a chance of having your URL on Google’s first page, when a potential visitor enters one of your keywords into their search bar. Your aim should be to get to number one – to be at the top of the first Google results page.
When first beginning to consider SEO for your website, you have to consider the two separate, but essential elements of the optimization process.
- Onpage optimization
- Offpage optimization (this is rated as slightly more important by the major search engines)
Onpage covers the following:
* A well constructed sitemap (this really helps in getting a good ranking)
* Your page title which must reflect the page content – three titles separated by a straight line are a good idea (the key is on your keyboard below the backspace, but it won't show here)
* Anchor texts not only in your first headline, but throughout your pages
* Your keywords, which are vital and should also be reflected in your page title
* Well thought out ‘h1’ and ‘h2’ html tags, again probably closely reflecting your keywords
* Outbound links to high ranking sites (this is gaining strongly in importance, especially with Google, who are also beginning to value one-way links far more than reciprocal links – because of recent growth of automatic reciprocal link builders)
* Videos (most of the major search engines value relevant video imaging and audio links quite highly)
*
Offpage covers these facets:
* The number of website pages which link to your site (on a one way basis, ie not requiring a reciprocal link – see above)
* The Google page rank (PR) of the website linking to you
* The page title of the website linking to your site
* The anchor text used in the link to your site
* The number and type of links on the website linking to yours (so-called authority sites are especially important, if you can get them – eg those with .edu / .ac / or .gov in their domain name
* Which websites link to yours (those with a high Google page ranking are the most desirable)
* The number of outbound links on the website linking to yours (if they already have a high Google PR, the fact of this will reflect very well on the website at the outbound links)
* The total number of links on the website linking to yours
* Whether or not Google regards the websites linking to yours as being “authority sites” eg those with a .gov or .edu extension.
Obviously you can see that links are extremely important. This will involve you trying to contact the owners of the highest ranking websites, with the aim of persuading them to have a backlink, on their site, to yours. You can actually influence the success of this, by ensuring that you already get plenty of backlinks from other sources. There is no doubt that the higher PR Google ranks are the best places to get links if you can, but try to get as many links as possible from other sites, before you even approach them.
If you were wondering how on earth are you supposed to do this, it is actually surprisingly easy. It is all about writing (relevant) articles and then submitting them to as many article directories as you can. Again, start by sending to the most popular, like Ezines, Article Dashboard or Amazines, but at least try to find 20 or 30 article directories with a Google PR of 5 or 6 (or better) and submit to these sites. There is some good article submitting software available, and I’m sure you can find it with a simple Google search.
At the end of each article is an author’s resource box, where you can promote yourself. This is where the article publishers allow you to quote the URL of your website and your email address, and these URL quotes will be the backlinks to your site for which the search engines will be looking. You should note, by the way, that most article publishers disallow any self-promotion in the body of your article, so make very good use of the Resource Box, it is the only chance you have got.
Many people don’t feel too confident about writing articles, which is understandable, but you can fairly easily find article writers who will pen original, never before published articles for you, at pretty low prices (eg typically you can get a single 500 word article for just $10). And guess what? You've just found one! Email me with your requirements and I'll be happy to write something exclusively for you. I have quite a number of articles out there on e-zine sites, and elsewhere in cyberspace because of readers at these e-zines who have copied my article for their own use (allowed).
I would certainly advocate trying to get some sort of SEO textbook, and I know just the thing for you! Email me at mikeATmakingdollars4u.com, with SEO e-Book in the subject line, and I will send you a free copy of Brad Callen's excellent SEO e-Book. He gave it to me for free, and encouraged all his friends to send on to others for free too.
Many thanks for taking the time to read this, and I wish you all the very best with your online business, post Search Engine Optimization.
Michael is a British citizen, but long term resident of Asia (Hong Kong and now Malaysia).
After 25 years with a global banking leader, he began to head up his own Management consulting company, and today this successful business has branched out to include database/direct marketing aswell as Internet and Affiliate Marketing. Michael may be contacted through his web site http://www.makingdollars4u.com or directly via email mikeATmakingdollars4u.com
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