Search engine optimization is not the only solution, SEO, like a tool, serves a very specific purpose and function, which is to increase exposure for your website. However, just because you gain exposure and drive traffic to a page or a website, does not ensure success alone.
Factors such as usability (navigation, image placement, font selection, color choice), having a clear call to action, having impeccable content and using the right triggers to engage your target audience are all part of achieving a successful online marketing campaign.The tendency to rely too heavily on one marketing medium is a crutch that must be balanced and evaluated for its overall performance, it either works or your attachment to it prevents you from letting it go and finding other alternatives.
How To Optimize Your WordPress Blog
WordPress is free to use content management software that publishes your content in blog form. A blog does not have a static homepage like conventional web sites, instead all new content appears on the homepage and then finds it way in to folders and archives as more new content is published.
There are two big benefits to publishing with WordPress:
- It’s FREE to download and use
- The Search Engines, in particular Google, love WordPress blogs
WordPress is open source software, which means it’s free to use. When you choose a hosting account, try and choose one that uses a control panel called “CPanel”, because installing WordPress becomes as easy as clicking a handful of icons, it really is simple!
So you’ve bought a domain name, found a hosting company with CPanel and installed WordPress on your new domain! In theory you’re ready to make your first post! But before you do, read on!
Before you post, you need to configure your blog and optimise it for the search engines, doing this before you post makes life a lot easier for the future.
As WordPress is open source, developers around the world have written literally hundreds of plugins that enhance the functionality of your blog, and again the majority are free to install. Take a look at WordPress.org where you’ll find hundreds of free plugins. Ones I recommend are:
- Installer (install this one first, simplifies plugin installations)
- All In One SEO Pack (optimises your posts)
- Adsense Manager (adds Adsense blocks to your posts)
- Google XML Site Maps (creates a site map for your blog)
- Ultimate Tag Warrior (essential plugin for managing tags)
- Sociable (assists with social bookmarking)
Next, within your dashboard, select Options in the menu and then Permalinks. You need to modify the settings on this page to improve the seo of the url’s WordPress produces so that your keywords appear. In the Custom Options box, type and save the following:
/%category%/%postname%/
Typing this will optimise your posts, but you must be careful only to ever select one category per post in the future, and not change a post’s category after you’ve published it!
When you post with WordPress, it automatically notifies (known as pinging) blog directories of your new content, they index it based on the tags you assign. The search engine robots regularly visit these directories, and as a result your new post will be indexed by them very quickly. Rapid indexing is one of the huge advantages of blogging!
Within your blog set up, you need to add a bunch of directory sites to “ping” to in addition to the default. Simply search on the web for “ping list”.
Finally, you need to optimise the appearance of your site. You don’t want to use the basic template that comes with WordPress. There are lots of free themes available on the web for download, take a look at WordPress.org again in their themes directory. Whilst there are hundreds of free themes around, I never seem to find one that perfectly meets my needs, so I often end up buying one!
Once you’ve installed the theme of your choice, activated all of your plugins, and made the configuration adjustments I’ve recommended, you’re ready to post, so what are you waiting for!
5 Free Must Have SEO Tools
Let’s face it, we all want higher rankings for our targeted keywords. So here are 5 Free SEO Tools you can use to help you achieve those rankings…
5 Free Must Have SEO Tools
Unless you go the PPC route and pay for your traffic, SEO or Search Engine ptimization will play a major role in the success or failure of your website. Therefore, it’s in your best interest as a webmaster to learn everything you can about SEO and use the right SEO tools to achieve an advantage over your competition.
Needless to say, SEO or getting high rankings for your keywords is extremely competitive, especially for popular lucrative keyword phrases which bring in the big bucks. You must be at the top of your game if you want to compete.
One important factor in winning the SEO battle is using the right SEO software or tools. Major online companies use expensive software, hire SEO firms and have whole departments devoted entirely to search engine marketing – so you know your work is cut out for you.
You’re probably asking yourself how can the little guy compete against such stiff competition? Well, it is not as difficult as you might think or believe. For starters, you can use some simple SEO tools which will help give you a slight advantage if you
use them properly.
Surprisingly, all of these SEO tools are free and any webmaster can take advantage of them in their ongoing SEO endeavors. I believe all webmasters must learn and master SEO in order to succeed online or get someone else to do it for them.
Over the years I have built up a passable knowledge of SEO due mainly from running 9 or 10 sites and working as a full-time online affiliate marketer. My livelihood depends on me achieving high rankings for my lucrative keywords in the search engines, mainly in Google. Also the daily running of two websites on Internet Marketing Tools has played a small part as well!
Along the way I have used countless SEO tactics and tools to try to increase my keyword rankings. Here’s a short list of my most helpful Free SEO tools that I use on a daily basis in the running of my websites:
1. SEO Book Keyword Research Tool
http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
This tells how many searches are made each day for my targeted keywords. Invaluable information to have for Search Engine Marketing and for choosing your keywords. Most experts suggest you go for the mid to low range keywords if you’re just starting out
and targeting long tail keywords (three or four words) yields the best returns.
2. Detecting Online Commercial Intention
http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx
This MSN tool tells me the probability (percentage) someone clicking my chosen keywords is likely to buy. Another great tool for picking keywords if you’re trying
to earn revenue from your sites. Higher the percentage, the more likely you will make a sale or earn revenue.
3. SeoQuake for Mozilla Firefox
This is an addon for Firefox and gives you invaluable SEO information on any site you’re
viewing. All the important info is here: Google PageRank, Number of Links, Traffic ank,
Whois, Keyword Density, NoFollow links… used in conjunction with Firefox this tool will prove invaluable.
4. Google Alerts
This is a great SEO tool if you use it to track and build your links. Just create Google Alerts for all your major keyword phrases and Google will keep you updated on current links being formed/indexed on your keywords. Also great for tracking articles, urls, competitors… and staying up-to-date in your niche.
5. WordPress
This free blogging software lets you place very SEO friendly blogs on your sites. Social media, blogging, tags, RSS feeds… are becoming increasingly important for online success so you must get your sites into this whole mix in order to compete. WordPress is a valuable SEO tool for improving your keyword rankings. Blogger and Bloglines
are other blogging alternatives you can use.I use many more SEO tools but these are the top five.Try some of these handy tools and see if they can improve your own keyword rankings like they did mine. No harm in trying and you may be pleasantly surprised
at the results.
How to get reciprocal links
Reciprocal links help you in two ways
Reciprocal links are arranged when two web sites agree to link to each other.
Reciprocal links are also known as “link swaps”, “link exchanges” and “link partners”.
A common misspelling is “reciprical links”.
Reciprocal links help you in two ways:
1. They increase your web site traffic, from people who click on the links.
2. Reciprocal links also play a major role in boosting your rankings in search engines.
Warning: Late in 2005, Google’s Matt Cutts made it clear that it’s possible to “overdo” reciprocal links. Getting good, solid, reciprocal links should be part of your links strategy, not your total marketing strategy.
When ranking sites, the major search engines take into account the number and quality of the sites that link to you.
Persuading good quality, relevant sites to link to you can be tedious, time-consuming and frustrating. Here are some tips to increase your chances of success.
One way to find link partners is to do searches in major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! to find sites which complement yours but are not direct competitors.
Many sites also link to direct competitors, figuring that the benefits outweigh any disadvantages.
Examine their links pages
A refinement of this strategy is to visit your competitors’ sites and complementary sites and examine their links pages or resources pages.
The sites you’ll find there are potential reciprocal links partners. They should be linking to you.
Now visit THEIR links pages and examine them, and so on down the chain.
You should end up with a long list of good sites with which to exchange links.
How to set up reciprocal links
- Find GOOD QUALITY, complementary sites.
- Place a link to them on your site.
- Only AFTER you’ve placed a link to them, email the owner of the site a short, friendly note. Address him or her by name. (If the name isn’t on the site, you may be able to find it at DomainTools.com.)
- Genuinely praise something on the site. If you can’t find something worth praising, delete the site from your list.
- Tell the web site owner you’ve linked to their site, giving them the URL of the page where you’ve place your link.
- Ask for a link back to your site, suggesting a page where the link would be appropriate.
- Three weeks later, if there’s been no reply, send a brief, polite reminder. It’s easy for emails to be lost or overlooked.
- Use the phone and/or snail mail. A link from a good site is a very valuable thing. If you can’t get noticed by email, consider trying a phone call or posting a letter. They’re more expensive but also more likely to attract the answer you want.
- Keep an alphabetical record of sites you’ve linked to and requested links from. You need to know who you’ve contacted and who you haven’t.
Want links from pages with high PageRank?
To boost their PageRank, some webmasters concentrate on getting links only from sites that have high PageRank. (If we all did this, no new site would ever get reciprocal links.)
If you want to try this approach, SEChat’s PageRank Search is a useful free search tool to use. It gives you Google search results PLUS their PageRank. You type in a key phrase and can quickly see the PageRank of pages optimized for that phrase.
Really serious ways of getting links
You can arrange newsletter article exchanges with other newsletter publishers in your niche, preferably with newsletters which are archived online.
Some webmasters also arrange “article swaps”. You write an article to be published on their website and they write an article for your site. This gives you an in-context link, which is much more effective than a mere link on a links page.
Reciprocal links websites
You can search in Google for link exchange websites which publish directories of website owners who actively exchange links with each other. As a general rule, the easier and more automated link exchanging is, the more risky it is that you’ll be doing something which the search engines don’t like. For example, you don’t want to get involved in link farms which link to totally unrelated websites.
Reciprocal linking tools
To facilitate getting reciprocal links, consider the software described in Ralph Wilson’s “Reciprocal Linking Tools” report. His 22-page report explains the functions of various types of reciprocal link management software, divides them into three types, and provides reviews and recommendations on best-of-breed software.
It includes brief reviews on Zeus, Arelis, LinksManager, Links4Trade, Hot Links SQL, Linking101 Link Management Script, LinkManager Lite and Pro, Duncan Carver’s Link Management Assistant, and PowerLinks.
Arelis is a good choice.
Three ways to save time
1. You can hire companies which specialize in finding reciprocal links partners for you. This will probably cost about $6 per link. Prices vary in different industries. Dirk Johnson’s LinkStrategy is one company which provides this service.
2. Use the free SiteSell Value Exchange. It’s a very simple, fast, efficient way of exchanging links with relevant sites.
The Value Exchange is very useful but isn’t likely to find you all the reciprocal links partners you need. In some industries, it may find you only a small number of link partners. In others, it may find you several hundred links partners. It’s definitely worth joining – especially so because it’s free!
Join the free SiteSell Value Exchange – FREE
While you’re there, make sure you download the free Make Your Links Work report. It discusses sound, long-term linking strategies.
3. Arelis software takes a lot of tedium out of finding reciprocal links partners. For example, it has a great “Find Competitor Links” feature that allows you to quickly find all web sites that link to your competitors.
Web sites that link to your competitors are sites that should link to you. Arelis quickly locates these sites and helps you to contact them and ask them to link to your site.
If they’re already linking to similar sites, there’s a good chance they’ll be willing to link to you.
You can also search for reciprocal links partners by keyword or keyword phrase.
Arelis makes link management very simple and saves you a lot of time. It also builds your link pages for you. You can customize the template to match your site’s style and no one will ever know you’re using a link management program.
Warning about SBI and Arelis
Here’s a warning from a Site Build It user who also uses Arelis.
“If you upload pages created by Arelis (or any other pages for that matter) to SBI, the links to external sites are replaced by redirected links, presumably for tracking.
“What that does however is that it prevents you from passing any PageRank to your link partners. Putting aside the debate whether PageRank is important or not, many webmasters clearly believe it is important and simply refuse reciprocating with sites that don’t link to them is straight HTML. Certainly that has been my experience.
“…the only way around this is to create all reciprocal links in SBI by hand and forget about uploading pages from Arelis or any other reciprocal management software.”
SBI users can still use Arelis for a very powerful purpose – to find potential link partners – and can add the links to their sites manually.
Arelis checks your links
Arelis also checks to see that your reciprocal links partners are still linking to you – another really useful time-saver.
There’s a free trial version. Highly recommended.
Download the free Arelis trial
Automate Link Exchange
I haven’t tried this link management software, but it’s getting some very favorable reviews. It could be worth checking out: Automate Link Exchange
