5 Advanced Tips for SEO and Your Website

When creating content for your website and taking Search Engine Optimization (SEO) into consideration, there are some additional advanced techniques to consider to help get your page positioned well in search results. Good content, keyword rich file names and directory paths, inbound anchor links to your site, keyword rich page titles and meta descriptions are important, but these other tips will help as well.

Page Redirects / Site Moves

Use a 301 Redirect via the .htaccess file. A 301 redirect is the most efficient and search engine friendly method for web page redirection. It's not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you need to change file names or move pages around, a "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently"."

Use a Rel="nofollow"

To better control the 'votes' or 'page rank' you give to other web sites that your web site is linking to, if you add a rel="nofollow" to a the hyperlink, it will prevent any link benefit to that site keeping the value of your link juice on your web site. A web page with this tag indicates that the destination of that hyperlink should not be credited any additional ranking by user agents (search engine bots) which perform link analysis upon web pages (search engines). For example, on your web page you link to a neat article found on some person's blog. Rather than boost the ranking of that blog, you can add the tag to your link which allows you to not 'endorse' the site, just link to it.

Legitimate Link Building

Link building can include, blog posts, directory submissions, link exchanges, or other advanced link building efforts such as link baiting. Search engines are cracking down on 'Paid Links' so if you are doing, or planned on doing that, forget it. Save your money because doing so will put your web site at risk (if caught) and be dropped from the index. The best method currently is to do a link exchange with other similar and relevant content as to what your web site is about.

Link Baiting

Link baiting doesn't have to be as negative as it sounds (though people will abuse it most likely). Simply said, link baiting is basically attracting anyone who can link to your site to your web site...and have their web sites present your link to as a web site to visit. The trick is, to have a web page that creates this type of social buzz where everyone wants to link to it.

Local Listing

You should optimize your web site to attract local traffic by showing your address and local phone number prominently at the top of the web page. Use Yahoo Maps or Google Maps to display the location of your store (if you have one). You should also submit your web site to the free local listings services on Google (which now display 10 locations) and Yahoo. You will also need to make sure your web site is listed in local directories such as City Search and ask customers to leave reviews of your business on these web sites.

These 5 advanced techniques, in addition to the 5 Beginner and 5 Intermediate techniques, when done correctly should help with your organic ranking. Also be aware of the 5 SEO Abuses that can get your site penalized or even banned from the search engines.

Jason Perry

Two great SEO tools which can help track the success of your web site are WebPosition 4 and Hits Link. Both which you can try for free.

Why Articles Are Not The Route To High Search Engine Rankings

If you have any interest in getting high search engine rankings for your website (and who doesn't) you've probably been sold the idea that writing and publishing your own articles will do it for you.

Here's why that's not entirely true.

Imagine the following scenario...

You write an article around a keyword or keyphrase you want to rank well for.

You submit that article to all the article submission sites and directories and ezines you can find.

Your article gets published in hundreds of places.

You now have hundreds of links pointing back to your main site...

But your own site never shows up in the top ten results for that particular keyword or keyphrase.

Instead you find that there are lots of other sites carrying your article that rank better than yours.

You've completely missed out on an excellent opportunity to get high rankings for your keyword or keyphrase.

Even worse... you just handed your precious keyword-rich content on a platter to possible competitors who happened to publish your article on their website, and may have lost some of your most targeted visitors and sales to them.

So where did you go wrong?

Your mistake lay in using your precious article - the keyword-rich content you toiled for hours to write - for entirely the wrong purpose.

You failed to use the power of the medium of article publishing to give your site an unbeatable advantage over others.

Here's how to use your articles the right way to boost your search engine rankings.

1. Publish Unique Content On Your Website

When you make an article available for reprint, the article, by virtue of it being published on hundreds of other sites, now no longer qualifies as unique content.

In the eyes of search engines, those pages with higher Pagerank (and hence greater importance) than yours will now rank better than you for the keywords your article is optimized for.

Instead of making your article the main course, use it as an appetizer to direct search engines and readers to a UNIQUE, keyword-rich, well-optimized report or white paper on your website, and you'll see dramatically different results.

2. Use Your Article As Spider Bait

Think of your articles as simply the conduit that leads search engines to your website.

Publishing your articles all over the web is like leaving scraps for a puppy (a.k.a. the search engines) that follows them all the way back to the kennel (a.k.a. your website) where it can feast on the main course - your UNIQUE content.

3. Use Keyword-Rich Anchor Text In Your Resource Box

Use your main keyword or keyphrase in the anchor text of the article resource box that contains a link pointing back to your unique content.

This will create hundreds of keyword-rich links pointing back to the well-optimized report on your website, and give your pages a powerful edge over other websites.

Often this factor alone is sufficient to take your website to the top of the search results, especially with search engines like Google and MSN.

The guidelines above include few of the steps you need to take to get high rankings for the keywords of your choice.

Priya Shah is author of the search engine optimization ebook, Number One In Your Niche, that shows how to use your articles and content to get long-term, top ten rankings for your website.

Three Steps to Improved Search Engine Rankings

One of todays hottest marketing buzz phrases is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. SEO is the process of configuring an organizations Web site in such a way that when a person goes to Google (or other search engine) and searches for keywords related to the organization, the search engine lists the organizations Web site within its search results in the highest possible position.

SEO can be a valuable promotional tactic within any Web site marketing strategy. However, SEO can also become time consuming because Google, Yahoo, and MSN (the big three) use sophisticated algorithms to index Web content. All three companies continually adjust their algorithms to provide users with the best search results. Therefore, you will need to continually test new techniques to achieve and maintain high rankings.

The AVS Group has researched and developed an SEO model that improves search engine rankings. This article highlights three tactics from our model you can use to improve your own rankings:

Select great keywords

Convert keywords into traffic

Link building

Tactic #1: Select Great Keywords

Your first priority should be to select great keywords that describe your organization and the content within your Web site. It might be tempting to save time by developing a list of keywords, some specific and others broad, and then applying all of them on every page throughout your Web site. However, you will achieve greater results by selecting 10 custom keywords or phrases for each page of content within your site. For example, select 10 keywords and use them exclusively on your home page, followed by 10 different keywords for each subsequent page of content.

When selecting keywords, avoid words that are broad or vague. Broad or vague keywords provide little benefit because likely too many other pages are currently indexed in the search engines using those keywords. To illustrate, lets use AVSGroup.com as an example. Open a new browser window and go to Google. Search on the term Web Site Design. Look at the upper right corner where Google displays the number of pages currently indexed for the keywords. Google has already indexed about 22 million pages for Web Site Design.

Instead of competing against 22 million pages for Web Site Design, AVS chose to optimize a page of content for Web Strategy Development. This phrase precisely describes one of AVSs Web services, and because fewer pages are indexed, there is a greater likelihood of achieving a high ranking. To illustrate, go back to Google. Search on Web Strategy Development. Google has indexed 623 pages and AVSGroup.com is the number one ranked site.

Tactic #2: Convert Keywords into Traffic

Once you have selected great keywords, the keywords must be incorporated into the right locations within your Web site to drive more traffic. Some of the best places are within your sites page title, META description, and META keywords. Google, Yahoo, and MSN look for keywords in these locations to help properly index a sites content.

If you are unfamiliar with how to view a page title, open a new browser window and go to AVSGroup.com. The page title is the white text that appears inside the bar at the top left of your browser window.

Next in importance is the META description and META keywords. Both are used to describe the content found on a particular page. To locate the METAs, open a new browser window and go back to AVSGroup.com. Click on the View drop down menu within your Internet Explorer window. You will see several options including View Source. Select View Source. This will display the HTML used to create the AVSGroup.com home page. At the top of the page, you will see the META description and META keywords.

You will achieve the greatest success if you develop custom page titles, META descriptions, and META keywords for each page within your Web site using the keywords that you selected earlier.

Tactic #3: Link Building

Link building is an SEO term that means requesting other Webmasters to add a link to your Web site within their Web site. This usually takes place in two ways. Webmasters will sometimes add your link within their own sites content because your Web site could be a valuable resource to their site visitors. You can also encourage Webmasters to post your content onto their Web site provided they include a link to your Web site within the credits.

For the first example, open a new browser window and go to http://www.viroqua-wisconsin.com/. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see a link that reads Web site design and development by The AVS Group. This link provides AVSGroup.com with additional traffic if someone were to click the link, but more importantly, the link helps increase our Page Rank. More on Page Rank later.

Next, open a new browser window and go back to Google. Search on the phrase e-mail marketing tips. You should see a link that reads Learn Successful E-mail Marketing Tips (it might even be the number two ranked site). Click on this link and you will find a Web site that is featuring one of The AVS Groups Resources articles. This is an example of leveraging your Web site content by permitting other Webmasters to post it and provide a link back to your site. Scroll to the bottom of the article and you will see a link to AVSGroup.com.

Your link building activities increase what is known as, Page Rank. Page Rank is a measure that Google uses to evaluate the relevancy of a Web sites content. If you have hundreds or even thousands of Web sites linking to your Web site using these two examples, Google will consider your Web site to be more relevant. You will earn a higher Page Rank score, resulting in improved search results for your Web site against sites that might even be optimized for the same keywords.

In closing, this article shared three key tactics within our SEO model that you can use to improve your search engine rankings. Because of the complexity of SEO, please let us know if you would like to learn more about our full SEO model. Our Web experts will demonstrate the various tactics within our model and discuss the results.

The AVS Group is a marketing, training, and communications company. AVS is in La Crosse, Wisconsin. AVS helps clients communicate and market effectively. AVS can be found online at http://www.avsgroup.com

Improving Your Link Popularity With Directory Submissions

Directory submission services are a great way for your website to attain considerable online popularity. This is done by submitting the URL of your website to hundreds of excellent site directories, for the purpose of increasing its exposure in a specific category. Normally, people flock to directories to gain easy access to a number of sites, and you can benefit from this by making your website accessible in these directories.

When you submit your site to a directory, the name and URL of your website will come up during directory searches for a particular category. The websites in these directories are ordered according to groups, making it easier for internet users to find the specific site that they are looking for. Along with exceptional website content, appropriate keyword placement, and effective online marketing efforts, directory submissions will help your website achieve higher levels of long-term publicity and credibility.

The Clear Advantages of Directory Submissions

One of the plain advantages of manual directory submissions is enhanced exposure. Through this your product or service offerings will be more accessible to a wider range of clients. Your website is not merely available through search engines, but in various directories as well.

Secondly, this SEO technique will improve your page rank over time. As more traffic streams into your website, these web directories are bound to place you on higher rankings through a particular category. This translates to even more page views and increased quality traffic to your website.

Third, your website will gain better link popularity through link sharing. Directories typically classify the various websites, thus when one visitor clicks on a particular website, there is a good probability for the other websites to be viewed as well. This is primarily due to a sharing of links.

Relevant Linking from Directories

It is not enough for a website to achieve simple link building. A website must be able to attain appropriate link building. This means that the inbound links of your site should come from quality websites that search engines recognize, and one that is highly related to your website.

Search engines normally rank websites both ways: through outstanding website content and first rate inbound links. This makes linking an even more attractive goal for most websites. When highly credible websites link to your site, this means that your website must have top quality content. These inbound links are typically what search engines look for in their ranking trends and algorithms.

A poor link will be frowned upon by discriminating search engines. Since web directories normally divide websites into categories, there is always a better prospect for quality link building.

Submissions of websites to directories are typically done for search engine marketing purposes. There are hundreds of directories available online, and it is smart to choose the established and highly reliable ones. Any website will stand to benefit from this highly effective and reasonably priced SEO technique. The benefits of manual directory submissions will allow any website to weather the next competition within a cutthroat online industry.

Sunita Biddu is a search engine marketing expert. She also writes tips and articles on SEO strategies. Currently, she is offering manual directory submissions, article submission and various SEO services. To know more about these services, please visit http://www.seo-peace.com