SEO doesn’t have to be complex

and by following these simple on-page optimization techniques you can give your SEO campaign the perfect start.

SEO is often seen as being a difficult and in-depth process, but the reality is that by following some reasonably common sense guidelines it is possible to get good rankings. That’s not to say that optimization is a simple or quick process; there are, unfortunately, no short cuts. Your SEO efforts should be a concerted and long term effort in order that you will enjoy the best possible results and should incorporate both on-page and off-page optimization techniques. By following the on-page SEO strategies below you can set a strong foundation to all your SEO work.

Keyword Research

Before you begin penning content and writing title and meta tags you first need to research the keywords you will use on each of your pages. Using the wrong keywords can negatively impact your entire campaign, causing you to lose untold hours and days of work and eventually forcing you to concede that you made the wrong decision and start all over again.

The most appropriate and most beneficial keywords are popular enough that they will enjoy regular searches but without being prohibitively competitive or overly generic. A number of keyword research tools exist and your competitors’ websites are a good place to start your early research. Ensure keywords are targeted specifically to the type of content you will provide as well as the service or product you will be selling. More targeted keywords will result in more targeted visitors and targeted visitors mean greater conversion rates and an improved return on your efforts.

Niche And Semantically Related Keywords

A good strategy is to incorporate a reasonable list of competitive keywords with less competitive ones. The more niche keywords will serve you well during the early days of your website and over time you should be able to start competing for the more challenging of the keywords you use. Also incorporate semantically or topically related keywords into your keyword list because the search engines are placing more and more emphasis on those pages that use related keywords as well as primary keywords.

Accesibility And Standards

Site accessibility is an integral part of good website design but it should also be considered an important factor in any SEO strategy. Using standards based code for your website will help to ensure that anybody that wishes to access and view your website will be able to do so. It will also mean that the spiders used by search engines will be able to access and index your pages effectively ensuring that you get the full credit for your site.

Navigation And Intra-Linking

Your navigation menu and internal links should be prominently placed, easy to see, and easy to follow for the spiders. It is good practice to include a text link from the home page to a compliant sitemap on your site, alleviating any potential problems that might arise from broken links or the use of graphical or flash based navigation menus. You can also consider adding links into the main body of your content, although too many will make the page difficult to read and therefore diminish the overall effectiveness so don’t get too carried away.

Title And Meta Tags

While search engines do not specifically use the meta tags to help assess the value of a page like they once did, meta tags are still critical to good SEO performance. The title and description tags that you add at the top of a page are used in various ways including in the compiling and display of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This is the first thing a potential site visitor will see from your site so this mini listing needs to be as effective as any paid advert or PPC ad. Poorly written titles and descriptions can put many readers off viewing your pages so a little time and effort here can have a very positive effect.

Using your keywords in the title and the description is good practice because these will be highlighted in the search results if they were used in the search query itself. This will make your result more prominent and instantly identify your page as being relevant to the user. Don’t needlessly use keywords, however, and don’t throw extra keywords into the description at the cost of a well written, short ad.

Other Formatting Tags

On-page content should always be written with the visitor in mind, although obviously it can still be optimized for search engines. As such, proper page structure is important to your reader as well as to the engines. H1 and H2 tags are an effective way of breaking up page content, and give readers the chance to skim through a page and determine its relevance.

A page should only contain a single H1 tag at the top of the content but can include multiple H2 and H3 tags. Alt tags on images should also be included and these as well as the actual file path to the image itself can include important keywords (but do make sure that they actually make sense and are more than just a keyword thrown in for the sake of SEO).

Page Content Optimization

Finally, we get to the heart of the page – the content itself. Use the keywords you researched for a page including semantically related keywords. Write as naturally and appealingly as possible while keeping those keywords in mind and don’t get carried away stuffing or cramming them into the body of the text. Not only is this unappealing to readers but is seriously frowned upon by the search engines.

The reader really is the most important aspect of your content. If the majority of your visitors are coming from the search engines remember that they arrived using specific keywords. This means that they are searching for equally specific information relating to those keywords – make sure you deliver on the promise that you made in your title and description tags.

About the Author:

Matt Jackson – WebWiseWords is a content writing service enabling website owners and online business owners to buy web content tailored to their needs. Services include affordable and high quality SEO content writing and more.

I don’t know about YOUR inbox, but there’s no shortage of soft-sell (or even hard-sell) pitches making their way into my email mix.

“Buy this, buy that.”

“THIS is the greatest!”

“For the first time ever. Now or never.”

Blah … blah …

Don’t get me wrong, I love marketing. Truly I do. I love the art of it. I love the science of it. I love the logic of it. I most definitely love the profits of it… so these emails are welcomed as I take and borrow from them for my own promotions.

But ENOUGH WITH THE SALES PITCHES ALREADY, right?

Well…

I’m an offender! (big surprise, eh? lol) Because I’m about to try *my best* to SELL YOU something.

The difference is, this “something” won’t cost you a penny. This isn’t about spending money. Instead, I want to “sell you” on an idea, a lesson, one that should be etched onto a “10 Commandments of Actually Making Money” stone.

Here it is:

“You should only take flying lessons from a HIGHLY TRAINED and EXPERIENCED flight instructor!”

Because if you DON’T do that, then not only will you find yourself spending money on tips, suggestions, ebooks and courses from “new flying enthusiasts” (vs. expert flight instructors), but you’ll also end up LOSING money on these marginally effective, theory based tactics and losing a lot of TIME in the mix as well.

And if you’re willing to be REALLY honest with yourself … there’s a great chance that your past few months, or even past few years are a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Write back and let me know if I’m wrong! (But, I don’t expect to get too many comment replies back on that one).

Here’s my point (and the no-money, nothing to buy sales pitch of it)… There is a contest running called “The Massive Marketing Arsenal Giveaway” (or, as Carl Galletti calls it, “The Mother of All Offers” contest). The prize is a library of education from Dan Kennedy… the one man who offers up the best and most profitable advice on likely the perfect home-business model: information marketing. Some of his students have risen from NOTHING but a kitchen table and a few hundred bucks to literally $117 million in sales.

He teaches the teachers.

Beginners, 6-figure earners, all the way to billion dollar companies are part of his client / student list. Yet you can walk away with over $5000 worth of his best tips and best advice for NOTHING!

All for answering this one question: “Which  specific idea/solution of the 77 listed in Dan’s letter would you like to learn more about and why?” (The link to the ‘77 reasons’ is provided on the contest page).

Have YOU made your way over to this contest to post your reply? Along the way, you also pick-up the 90-minute audio course “Information Marketing: How To Create Your Fortune With Information Products” and can pickup a truely WOW gift (worth $397) … one of only Resale Rights Licenses to the “Future of Information Marketing: Pros, Cons and Predictions” course.

You get these last 2 gifts whether you win or not. But just for posting your reply to that ONE question, you are automatically entered into the draw to win the entire $5000+ library from Dan Kennedy.

Here’s the link:
Dan Kennedy’s Info-Riches

The sad thing is, you have a VERY good shot at winning … seeing as only a minimal number of individuals have bothered to take advantage of this contest. (The masses are too busy wasting time reading yet another “quick fix” sales pitch).

So there it is…

I gave it my best shot. I SINCERELY apologize if I wasn’t able to communicate the importance of taking this one lazy step (to post your reply on the contest page). That one lazy step could win you a library that could absolutely revolutionize your life.

Head over to the page below, register for your gifts and follow the link directly to the contest page. Go win your future!

Dan Kennedy’s Info-Riches

All the best,

Ross “The Pit Boss”

Before you can begin to utilize any SEO on your site, you have to decide what your page is going to be about. This may seem unneccesary at first, but if you just throw up a bunch of topics and niches onto the site, it’s not going to do well at all with the search engines, and you’ll not get nearly the amount of traffic you want to see.

So, you’ll have to decide what topics you are interested in writing about, then also decide which of those topics you’ve got some knowledge on. This second is not mandatory, but it certainly helps your writing, and in setting up your site, if you know something about the subject at hand. Sure, you can look the information up, or have it ghost-written, but then it’s not coming from you. It won’t have your “flavor” and character on it. Let’s use myself as an example. I was in the casino business for 8 years as a dealer and as a Pitboss, so I know what I’m talking about if I write about gaming, gambling, casinos, living in Las Vegas, etc. I’ve been there and done that and have alot of valuable experience. (And the T-Shirt!)

The idea here is that I’m coming from a place of understanding and experience. I can answer any questions anyone has about that topic. Again, while it’s not mandatory that you have as much experience in your chosen niche as I do in Gambling, it certainly helps quite a bit when you are trying to get a point across, or when you are trying to sell something. After all, my assumption is you are here to learn how to use SEO techniques in order to improve your traffic to get more sales.

Unless you are strictly into a niche that does not have a product (is there really such a thing??), and you just want the increased traffic to get more visitors commenting on your site, then your focus needs to be on what you know about the niche you are selling in, OR where you can get this information. Let’s talk about that second one for a moment. Back in the day, I used to work for a large chain grocery store as a “courtesy clerk” (read – bagger, stocker and cart retriever). When I first started working there, of course I was not familiar with the layout of the store and where everything was. So a customer would ask, “Where’s the pickles?” and I’d say that I wasn’t sure, but let me find out for you. I’d then go get another employee, and ask what aisle are the pickles on, get the info and go back to the customer and take them to that aisle and show them the pickles.

Now this did a couple of things. First, I made a great impression with the customer, because I didn’t brush them off, or shovel them off to someone else, and I learned what aisle the pickles were on and by taking them there myself, I saw what else was on that aisle. You see, it’s all about knowledge and information. If you have these things in your niche, people will come to you for that, and more importantly, they’ll buy from you because you’ve built up their trust in you that you know what you’re doing and/or talking about. Remember that one. It’s important.

Once you’ve decided what niche you are going to pursue, you need to make a decision as to how you are going to accomplish this. Basically, you have two choices. One is to create your own webpage, with all the html/php/asp/java code involved and sort out the table structure, page layout, etc. For some of you, that’s not a big deal. For the rest of you… well the term “nightmare” comes to mind. I’ve done it myself, so I know fully what’s involved, which is why I chose option 2. Install a Wordpress site. Wordpress makes life a whole lot simpler when it comes to building your own site. You still have to know some tech stuff like how to use FTP and how to set up MySQL on your server, but it’s not nearly the chore building it from scratch is.

Of course, if you are a total non-geek (my sincere condolences) you can always hire someone to create the site for you based on your specs. For myself, I like getting into things and knowing how it all works, so I don’t have a problem going either route, but using Wordpress is fast and easy, comparatively speaking.

In my next post, I’ll talk further about setting up and designing your site around your niche, and in particular, how using Wordpress is to your best SEO advantage.

For those of you who have been waiting for Yanik Silver’s new ‘Maverick Business Insider’ intro package, first off, my apologies on Yanik’s behalf, and secondly, it’s ready. 

Maverick Business Insider

Here’s the scoop on all this madness – I’ve been telling you about this really awesome package and I thought (and was told) everything would be ready last Thursday.

Well…

They had to put the entire site in a “holding pattern” because of big-time technical gremlins that would have caused a customer support nightmare. So instead of taking thousands of orders and having really upset customers - Yanik decided to closed it down. For those of you thinking this was one of those ”manufactured” outages that other Internet Marketers are famous for, nothing could be further from the truth. You don’t “create” an outage before the launch.

The good news in all this is that because of the snafus, and since he’s opening the doors on the weekend – he’s going to extend all of the generous FAST-ACTION bonuses *way* beyond what they originally intended. They are now available until Monday at 3 PM, ET.

Really – this means an even better deal for you so it’s probably a good thing they had these delays.

In case you don’t remember the whole deal – it’s pretty simple.

You’re getting a special, $15k closed-door presentation entitled “Instant Leverage Points in Your Business That Bring You Surges of Cash”. It’s a presentation Yanik did last January to 26 top-gun entrepreneurs and business leaders, who paid about $15k in membership fees and trip fees to come together in Baja, Mexico.

Plus, he’s bundled up this DVD, the MindMap he handed out, his newest book called “34 Rules for Maverick Entrepreneurs”, a 2 CD-Audio program and more – the only thing you pay for is s/h.

That’s it.

Yes it’s a totally no-brainer but there’s one little ‘catch’ and 2 qualifications on your part to get in on this ‘ethical bribe’.

Check it all out and get the full story:

Maverick Business Insider

Sincerely,

Ross “ThePit Boss”

P.S. This package has it all! Not much more I can say about it other than that, and to apologize again for the delay.

Maverick Business Insider

Today, here in the U.S., we’ll be electing another President.

I know some people will be glued to CNN watching the results roll in to figure out what it means for their future. Concerned that if the ‘wrong’ candidate wins – it’ll spell certain financial doom and gloom.

Guess what? I won’t be one of them…nor will Yanik Silver.

Why?

Quite simply because we’ve figured out how to write my own ticket regardless of what’s going on with the crazy economy, the next person in the White House or any external factor!

It starts from figuring out how to create profits on demand (just like turning a tap). Then that gives you freedom to do what you want and when you want. And it expands to how you live your life and what meaning you bring to others.

This is what Yanik calls his “Maverick Philosophy for Entrepreneurs” – It’s a way to make more, have more fun and give back more! It’s his ‘Maverick Manifesto’!

Want to see what he’s talking about?

He’s put up a free 60+ minute video right here:
Maverick Manifesto

Sincerely,

Ross “The Pit Boss”

P.S. Yes, I know, I know, the word “Maverick” has been stomped on with the election but it makes sense here because you get to write your own rules. You get to be the person that decides how to play the ‘game’ and that’s being a renegade…someone who’s NOT going to cower in the corner while the media tells us the sky is falling.

If you’d like to join us – you’ll want to watch this powerful video:
Maverick Manifesto