On-page SEO Tips and Resources

SEO (short for Search Engine Optimization) is the active, on-going process of getting your pages at the top of search engine rankings for the search terms of your choice. Prior to that, you must determine specific keywords to target by doing some keyword research. These keywords should ideally be high search, low competition, buying keywords that are likely to drive targeted traffic to your site.

SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing techniques available as search engines can generate huge amounts of free traffic to your online presence when ranking well for high search keywords. Typically, the higher a page appears in the search results, the more visitors it will receive.

SEO encompasses improving internal (on-page) aspects as well as external (off-page) aspects. Improving on-page aspects includes optimizing your page titles, meta tags, headings, body content, etc. Improving off-page aspects includes building high quality inbound links, etc. Search engines use algorithms based on both on-page and off-page aspects to rank pages.

You should consider optimizing your:

  • Page titles
  • Headings (H1, H2, etc.)
  • Body content
  • Anchor text
  • Permalinks
  • Alt attributes

There are lots of other on-page aspects that you may want to optimize for search engines but these are generally considered as the most important ones. If you really want to go deeper into knowing which internal and external aspects are considered as important, you should read this report by SEOmoz: Search Engine Ranking Factors (2009).

SEOBook is full of useful tools and resources to optimize your online presence for search engines. This site is widely considered as the #1 SEO Resource and you will definitely understand why after you sign up! The SEO Toolbar is very useful to monitor several important aspects of any site. Another great resource is Website Grader. This site will scan your site and grade it, giving you a few hints on how to improve it for search engines.

Recommended resources

SEO Book

SEO Book

Website Grader

Website Grader

Once again, make sure you target specific keywords before starting to optimize your pages. Several experts consider off-page optimization as more important than on-page optimization. This might be right, but you should still consider spending some time optimizing your pages to make sure you aren’t missing out on anything!

A MUST HAVE if you use WordPress:

If you don’t already use this wordpress plugin, I can’t suggest it highly enough. I now use it on ALL my blogs (including all the niche blogs I make, I have over 100 of them) and it is awesome for making sure your page is ready for the search engines. It is called SEOPressor and I have to say that there are not many simple tools that I feel are worth paying for, but SEOPressor is powerful and is well worth it.

The Plugin asks you to enter in the keyword that you are targeting for that post (the term you want to rank in the search engines for) and then when you publish it, it gives you feedback on what you should add etc. to improve the on-page SEO. So grab SEOPressor today if you haven’t already.

Author:
Julien
Hot Topic #5 – Article Marketing Tips and Resources

Article Marketing can be a very hit and miss form of promotion, so here are some article marketing tips to ensure you get the results you are chasing. It is an affordable yet very effective marketing technique when properly put into practice. Submitting articles linking to your pages all over the web has several advantages, but also a few downsides…

Article marketing is a great way to promote your business and generate free traffic to your site. This is a major advantage you can have over your competitors as not every online business (effectively) uses article marketing. Article sites have millions of visitors every day and some of them are even among the most visited sites on the web!

These sites give you the chance to build high quality inbound links to your online presence. Why are they high quality links? Simply because the topic on the page is directly related to the topic of your online presence and this means a lot to search engines. Make sure the links are dofollow though, as nofollow links have far less value for search engines.

However, writing articles may be time-consuming if you aren’t good at copywriting. With practice, things should get easier for you though. To overcome the few downsides, make sure you continue reading as you will find article marketing tips and resources on how to make the most of your article marketing strategy.

For example, you should only submit articles that are related to the topic of your business. If you sell an MLM product, you will be writing and publishing articles about MLM… The topic must be related (at least to some extent) to the topic of your online presence.

Choose a relevant, keyword-rich anchor text for your links as this can help a lot for search engine rankings. Try to place your links early in the body content (when possible) so they are more likely to be found by search engines. Don’t stuff your articles with outbound links though or they could get penalized (to be overly promotional). Just a few links should be more than enough…

Here is a non-exhaustive list of article and user-generated content sites ranked by traffic:

Highly recommended sites:

Ezine Articles

Ezine Articles

Articles Base

Articles Base

Squidoo

Squidoo

HubPages

HubPages

If you don’t really know how to write articles, simply follow these few basics: (1) a great, keyword-rich subject line to catch the reader’s attention but also for search engines, (2) a short, interesting introduction that makes the reader want to continue reading, (3) a body part with useful information on the topic you’re covering and (4) a short, analytical conclusion that ideally makes the reader want to learn more.

As previously mentioned, the links should ideally be placed at the top but this is not always possible as some article sites like Ezine Articles only allow you to place them at the bottom. No big deal though, your links will still count! You may even want to add a title to them when possible so a tooltip shows up when readers hover them. Don’t add more than 2 to 3 links (to different landing pages) per article.

However, make sure you don’t fall into plagiarism… Some sites like Ezine Articles, Squidoo and HubPages are very strict on duplicate content and may even ban you for submitting duplicate articles. Some of them may just flag your articles for being overly promotional. In that case, edit them a little and remove a few links.

If you get inspired from already existing articles, use Copyscape to verify whether or not they will be considered as duplicate content. If they pass the test, they’re good to go! If not, edit them before you publish them. Search engines will not penalize your articles if they are duplicate but will simply not rank them well, as their content is already available elsewhere. Now you know the basics, you can publish articles without moderation!

Article Marketing Programs – Recommendations

If you’re after programs that can help you with article writing, rewriting and submission, you should give My Article Network, SEOLinkVine (highly recommended), Free Traffic System and ezArticleLink a try. Submit your articles to these article networks and they will be spread all over the web automatically building inbound links to your pages. You may even open your own blog for content submission. These programs are very easy to use and can greatly help you build inbound links to your pages and thus rank better in search engines.

Free Traffic System

Article marketing – and internet marketing in general – may require some work, but here are a few beginner tips on how to set up a successful internet marketing business for you.

This blog post is part of a series of hot topics for making money online. Stay tuned for more and feel free to share your own experience on article marketing with us!

If you missed out on the first four hot topics, here they are:
Hot Topic #1: Keyword Research Tips and Tools
Hot Topic #2: Choosing a Web Host: ViralHosts vs HostGator
Hot Topic #3: Autoresponder Marketing Strategy
Hot Topic #4: Choosing a Theme: Squeeze Theme vs Thesis Theme

Author:
Julien