Search engine rank optimization is an important skill to have. Knowing how to rank high in the search engines will boost your traffic and, in turn, your sales. And best of all, it’s 100% free!
The biggest mistake newbies make is that they create their website and then try to optimize it for the search engines to get traffic. You need to do the research first and then build your site around your keyword phrases.
When researching your keywords, look for ‘buying’ keywords that are not too competitive, for example:
‘keyword phrase guide’ or ‘keyword phrase book’
Don’t target keywords that suggest the surfer is searching for free information, e.g. ‘keyword phrase tips’ or ‘free keyword phrase tips’.
Also, don’t try to rank for keywords that are too vague, e.g. ‘real estate’ (also way too competitive). Target specific keywords relevant to what you’re selling, e.g. ‘los angeles commercial real estate’.
Using Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool you can see how much volume a keyword is getting. Then, if you do a search in the Google search engine, you can see how many results are returned for that phrase (make sure you wrap your keyord in “quotation marks” when doing this). Only target keywords that have competition less than 100,000 results.
Keyword Phrase Competition
The best platform to use to build up your website is a blog, specifically Wordpress. Search engines love blogs because the content is fresh and organised well.
Install and activate the ‘all-in-one-seo pack‘ and the ‘Google XML sitemaps‘ plugins. Wordpress and its plugins are free and can be found at Wordpress.org.
If you don’t have your own domain and a web hosting account, you can set up a free wordpress blog at Wordpress.com but I strongly recommend buy your own domain and web hosting. Namecheap is recommended for domain registration and Hostgator is a good web host.
For the best search engine ranking results, you need to look at on-page optimization as well as off-page optimization.
On-Page Optimization
Try to register a domain name that contains the keyword phrase you are targeting. Dot com (.com) and dot org (.org) domains work best. Stay away from .info and .net, they don’t rank as well in Google. If you can’t get your keyword phrase as a domain, just add an ’s’ or the word ’site’ at the end or hyphenate the phrase, e.g. los-angeles-real-estate.com.
The headline (h1 tags) of your page/post should contain the keyword phrase you’re targeting and also include your target keyword phrase at least once in the content. Once at the start and once at the end is a good practice. Don’t stuff your keywords everywhere in the content. Make your content sound natural.
Before publishing your blog page or post make sure you add your keyword as a tag. Keep your title less than 55 characters (longer gets cut off) and include your keyword. Your description keep less than 160 characters long and make it an attention grabbing headline. You’ll want to keep in mind that the search engine will show this exactly as you type it.
Website Title and Description
With images, use the alt text to include your keyword phrase to describe your image and make your image file name the keyword phrase you’re targeting. This will not only help your ranking but also will help your site to show up when someone is doing an image search.
Don’t make your blog posts/pages too long. Make it 300 – 600 words and break it up with subheadings, images and/or videos. Basically, you want to make it easily digestable.
Link to other related content on your site, making the anchor text the keyword phrase that you are trying to optimize for. Also link to other sites (external links) that are already ranking highly for the keyword phrase you’re targeting. Search engines like this.
Off-Page Optimization
Get as many quality backlinks to your site as possible. An easy way to do this is to submit an unique article to good directories like Ezine Articles.
Link not just back to your homepage, but also to specific pages/posts with anchor text of the keyword your targeting. You can do this with sites like Squidoo and Hubpages.
Video sharing sites offer another great way to get quality backlinks and lots of traffic. One way of creating videos from your content is to create a Powerpoint presentation and do a voiceover. This can be captured onto video by CamStudio. Then you can use services like TubeMogul to upload to several video sharing sites with just one upload.
Another way to get more backlinks is to create mp3’s from your content and upload it to podcast directories like PodcastDirectory.com.
The great thing about most of the resources covered in this section is that they are all 100% free!
Search engine rank optimization takes work but the results are well worth the effort.
Free?
Marko´s last blog ..Clasic Curls Tutorial
Yes, it’s 100% free
I don’t think a demo version is available. However, it does come with a 100% money-back guarantee so there’s no risk
Hi
I bought Auto Profit Launcher and when I found it was not what I expected it to be, I checked the website for refund gurantees and I found this:
———————————————-
Auto Launch Your Profits,
Or Rob Us Blind Guarantee
Try out Auto Profit Launcher with zero risk for 30 days. And we mean really try it.
Create your websites during that time, get them out there and send traffic to them. Keep all those profits — they’re all yours.
After 30 days, if you’re if you’re not completely happy with Auto Profit Launcher, we’ll refund your money, no questions asked.
—————————————————————-
So after 30 days I applied for refund and got a shock ! The support staff drew my attention their “terms of use” which is not readily visible and it says you have to apply for refund with 30 days.
So I think this is a deliberate attempt to avoid refunds. One the website, the customer is asked to apply for refund after 30 days and when he does point to terms of use and refuse refund. What do you all make of this devious plan of Auto profit launcher ?
I am a newbie and $497/- is my hard earned money.
Hi Eric,
I think you should be able to get a refund. If the site says “Try out Auto Profit Launcher… After 30 days, if you’re if you’re not completely happy with Auto Profit Launcher, we’ll refund your money, no questions asked.” but then they tell you that you need to apply for the refund within 30 days this is certainly misleading on their part.
This is what I would do if I were you; I’d reopen the refund request support ticket or open a new one and tell them exactly what you have mentioned above. Also add that if they do not promptly refund your money that you will alert the appropriate authorities.
Let me know how you go.
This is absolutely true – goals can really mean the difference between wanting to do something and actually doing it. I always think that I’m pretty good at setting goals, but judging by how I don’t find myself reaching those goals very often I am starting to think that maybe I’m not that good at it. It’s important to set realistic and specific goals, and maybe put them a little higher than realistic so that you’re always stretching a little harder to reach them.
Toronto Movers´s last blog ..Mississauga Movers
These are some great advice to rank high on Google (or any other search engine). But finding a keyword with good search volume and low seo competition can be much more challenging than it might seem, trust me.
Moreover, if we make it a practice to write based ONLY upon keyword research, it might cause us to drift away from our blog’s main niche, some times.
Apart from these possible dangers, overall great advice!
TechChunks´s last blog ..Watch Google’s 11 Year Evolution in Just 2 Minutes!
This looks interesting, I’m going to check it out. Brian Tracy’s books are really entertaining and informative about selling, that’s for sure.
Hi John,
Thanks for understanding the situation and for the support. It is a very clear and devious ploy to avoid refunds. They are completely ignoring all references to their “30 days” statement and keep harping on their “within 30 days” in the emails.
Some gurus had promoted this product and I am going to inform them and also all other gurus on whose list I am. Everyone should become aware of such practices.
I am planning to report this to the FTC. Such unscruplulous marketers shouldn’t be allowed to fool customers.
Now this is not something new with aweber.. I have had frequent problems with Aweber earlier.
This is great info…
I did not think eZine articles was the to rank high with.
This is incredibly good advice. Especially the part about being an expert in a field. Alle successful people are experts in their field. Study 10.000 hours and more.
Goals could be achieved when you put your heart on what your doing. Gather all the resources that you can use and able to utilize those resources to commit your goals. Failure could sometimes happen but those failure can make them your motivation to work hard.
Thanks for those patterns and it will come in handy for me.
Love, love, love Jeff Johnson. He has some awesome information and tools that help people get top paying careers online. We plan to tweet this posting for our readers as well. Thanks for sharing!
Top Paying Jobs´s last blog ..Top Paying Careers May Not Be Found in Florida
Your first step, writing down your goal, is absolutely essential in achieving goals. I find that writing things down somehow solidifies what you’ve written down – it’s like setting something in stone. And once it’s set, there’s no other turning back from it.
I agree with adding a PayPal cart to your website if you want to sell stuff online. It just makes things easier and faster! Although I confess didn’t bother watching the video – I outsourced the techie stuff to a freelancer and he was the one who added the PayPal cart to my website.
Clickbank is the top-of-mind brand, at least over here, for affiliate marketing. That’s how powerful it is. Even for non-newbies, Clickbank is still one of the better affiliate networks out there.
Good post! your right – supply and demmand, its the first thing people should think of when deciding to sell on ebay..
Dave´s last blog ..Sell Affiliate products using eBay classified Ads
C’mon blogger is easy, you don’t have to be clued up on HTML scrits or anything, how easy can it get..?
Dave´s last blog ..Sell Affiliate products using eBay classified Ads
As a business we think about, I’m the manager and this is what I need my team to do. But people aren’t motivated by what’s important to you as the manager. There motivated by what’s important to them.
I’m not sure I’m preselling properly. I was recently informed that I need to use a “call to action statement” in my articles. But isn’t that selling?
SFaith´s last blog ..Feb 25, Assembly at Home – Work at Home Crafts – Work from Home Assembling Crafts
Hi SFaith,
Yes, you’ll want to have a strong call to action at the end of your articles. This call to action is allowed to be included in the resource box which is added at the end of the article. This is acceptable (and even recommended) by all the article directories.
John
Really timely news for me as I’ve just put together a Rock Music antoresponder sequence on Aweber. So I have just made sure I’m not tracking the click-throughs, until this issues resolved. Much appreciated info.
The latest news I have about the League of Extraordinary Minds is that Jay Abraham and Rich Schefren are pulling together groups of the experts into panels.
If you sign up all she has to do is your email and pass word then she can use your account, statements will go to you, or if authorized you can let her inter you account info (bank access) and use as hers.
Thanks for posting this John. I am presently using Aweber’s Javascript web form. I will change it to RAW HTML.
I’ve joined up with ClickBank a while ago and have not made any considerable income, maybe I need to work with them a bit more. Thanks for the read though.