Don’t Overlook These 5 SEO On-Page Factors

Panda is not all about content.

Since Panda came about and kung fu kicked everyone’s poor quality websites down the search results, all people are shouting is that ‘content is king’. No, not true. You, the person handling the overall SEO campaign, is king. The content is just part of the overall picture and really, producing quality content from the point you took over the project should have been your objective, regardless of what Google are doing. It’s basic common sense. With the focus on recent months having shifted across to blogger outreach and spending time writing high quality articles, it’s easy to start overlooking those essential on-page factors.  Don’t do it. You can have the best quality content in the world but you’ll be letting your site down if you don’t pay attention to the very basic on page factors which should be working in harmony with your off site link building.

The significance of some of the factors listed below is up for debate. I’m not saying they will dramatically improve your search rankings. But they will certainly not have an adverse affect. The true extent of these on-page search engine optimisation techniques can only be found when you’re testing, but if they are just minor tweaks that can be made to enhance the SEO of your site, then start doing them today!

5 Essential On-Page SEO Factors To Consider

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions (and Keywords!)

This is basic SEO best practice. Very basic. But you’d be amazed at the amount of sites that focus on building links yet still do not have optimal keyword titles and descriptions. Let’s hit the starting point. Each of your pages should have titles that include one or two key term targets and/or a variant term.  Do not overlook the keyword research and always ensure where possible that no page titles are targeting the same key terms.  Keep your titles at a maximum of 70 characters where possible as this is all that is shown in Google rich snippets.

The importance of meta descriptions in terms of search engine optimisation ranking factor is still questioned by many but you MUST add them in. It can do no harm to include one or two target key terms in your meta descriptions and you should always include a call to action at the end. Keep your meta descriptions snappy and at a maximum of 156 characters. Don’t use capitalisation and try and really get across your websites USP without it feeling too much of a hard sell.

Semantically Listing Header Tags

Google has obsessive compulsive disorder, it loves everything being in its rightful place and semantically ordering your header tags across pages will be positively rewarded. Try and only include one h1 tag per page which should include a target key term for that page. Then break your copy down into sections using h2 tags (1-4) and then sub sections with h3, h4, h5 and h6 as appropriate. This is just a guide though and if you have vast amount of content on your page, you may want to use header tags differently than how I’ve outlined. The key point is to separate your content sensibly and make it easier for both readers and search engines to identify the key headings of your page. Where possible, include target key terms and key term variants in heading tags.

If you run a WordPress site (like most of us do) it’s likely the theme you’ve bought hasn’t necessarily been made to be SEO friendly and may include instances of headers being used for elements which aren’t incorporate semantically. Dedicate some time to going in and changing the styling settings manually and stylise the text to replace the header tags you do not want.

Alt Tags

Alt tags are probably one of the most overlooked aspects in terms of on-page search engine optimisation and the only reason I can think as to why is because of the time involved in adding them, as the task itself is so damn easy. Primarily alt tags are used for those using screen reading devices, but including alt tags for each and every one of your images can also be beneficial to your SEO. Be explicit in every alt tag description you enter on a page. If you have a picture of a car, describe the colour of the car, the model, the location in which the car has been pictured and other aspects of the picture. Where appropriate, include your target key term in at least one of the images on a page. A great tool for identifying image alt tags on a page is the web developer toolbar for Firefox.

Internal Links

Try and include your target key words in internal links. Though you can’t go ‘Google Bombing’ as much these days as you may have done 18 months ago, including target key terms in internal links still can add that little extra boost to your on-page SEO. Instead of using phrases like ‘return to home’ or ‘click here’, you may want to include a key term such as ‘return to SEO home’ or ‘check this search engine optimisation tips page’ for more information. Don’t waste your time going out of your way putting key terms in every single internal link, but certainly try and identify a few which looks natural.

<strong> and <em> tag

A <strong> and <em> tag should be wrapped around your target key terms within the first 100 words of your page. But again this is only a guideline. If you have a large page of copy, the best way to use these tags is simply to wrap them around the key aspects of your copy. Whatever you make user friendly is likely to be search engine friendly too. It may also be worth experimenting with your copy to use and tags in the last 100 words of your copy too as some suggest that Google focus on the start and end of your page copy. Personally, I try and not overuse these tags for target key terms as it can come across a little too unnatural and unprofessional, but for the SEO benefit, at very least I’ll use them once each per page.

Scott is a writer whop urges people to realise that Panda is a search update, not a search attack.

How to Expand Your Online Network Successfully

Expanding your online network has never been more important than it is today and luckily for you and I, it has never been easier. Take a look below and keep in mind the rewards that come with successfully marketing yourself and your business online.

Take advantage of social networking sites:

Do the obvious first and set yourself up with profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google +. Import the contacts you have already made by syncing with your email contacts list. Create a list of specific keywords you need for your company. Use this list to find people that match the audience you want your brand or business to attract.

Make a networking plan:

Anything worth doing is worth doing well as the saying goes, really this couldn’t be more important than with online marketing. There are many free online tools you can use to create a networking project plan or contact list. Put this on top of your to-do list and make it a priority.

The likelyhood is, you have probably underestimated just how many contacts you already have. Start with these, and section them into different categories; friends, family, business contacts, clubs and groups you belong too. Once this step is completed you will be ready to put your plan in action.

Google places to increase your networking potential:

Check out Google’s free and extremely accessible service, Google Places. This is what Google says “Google Places brings users and their local businesses together, both online and in the real world”. This feature is great way for customers to find you online. Google takes its time to verify who you are but it’s well worth investing a small bit of time in.

Greeting and Tweeting:

Sign up to be a Tweeter, link up with those with similar interests and use that list of keywords you made earlier to network with those who could be potential customers. Take the time to get to know your followers and followees, greet users and offer feedback and advice at every opportunity. Setting yourself up as an expert in your field will make you the go-to guy they will remember. Tweeting does not have to be too time consuming and there are hundreds of apps available on the internet free of charge that will make your workload on Twitter a whole lot lighter.
Make sure you also take advantage of the free buttons all of the social networking sites offer and implement them on your website, blog, store or directory. A simple ‘like us’ on Facebook button can give you a great idea of how well your online networking is going. There are also buttons available for Twitter, LinkedIn and Google + along with other worthwhile sites, install 4-5 of your choice (or more) and make it easier for your potential and existing customers to get in touch. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to networking online. The one thing I would say is that you don’t necessarily have to stick to the sites that we all know. Take a look around the Internet and see what works for you. Another site worth a mention is Jigsaw.com, I found this site great when I first started my business, hopefully so will you.

Ben is an SEO Consultant. London is his base, but his clients are Europe-wide and include the likes of No.1 Traveller, operators of airport lounges. Gatwick, Heathrow and Stansted are their current locations, although they plan to open more soon!

Relationship Marketing: What It Is And Why You Need It

It seems that every year a new handful of hyped up marketing techniques become the latest craze. That is in addition to older classics of the web such as SEO, which are still a staple today despite the changes made in search engines to curtail abuse in the area. In the end, it is best to keep a fair share of these methods brewing at once to give you the best overall results possible.

But one has never stopped being true, even if for some companies it went out of style: the customer is always right. Or, more specifically, customer satisfaction for loyalty building.

It is as true today as it ever was that getting a new customer is about ten times more costly than keeping one that you have already sold to. What you might not know is that it goes beyond that. It is also less important to make a sale than it is to ensure the happiness of that customer.

This is what we refer to as relationship marketing, and it is really what it sounds like: fostering a relationship with each consumer to ensure they are satisfied with the service they are being provided. Focusing on this element, it has been shown to increase profit by generating brand loyalty, an important part of any business model.

The main problem that companies seem to have lately is forgetting this principle. With so much competition thanks to the Internet – both a blessing and a curse for the sales world – there is too much focus on sale by sale transactions. Many think that just offering a small discount once in awhile is enough to bring people back. But this is wrong, and it ends up costing the company a lot more in the long run.

What you want is establish yourself as the brand of choice. This means making sure that each customer chooses to return for more in the future, and that is where relationship marketing comes in to play.

Unfortunately, if you are reading this now, you are probably not getting the most out of the method that you could be. In fact, you might be doing the opposite and ruining your chances. Here are some ways that you can increase your odds of properly utilizing relationship marketing for your business.

Business Transparency Is Not Necessary…Usually

Let’s say you run a multi-billion dollar organization that has dominated the business world. With the current anger over the bail outs, executive bonuses in the financial sector and an increased interest in corporate responsibility, transparency is a good idea. It will help to show customers that yours is a positive business where they can buy in confidence.

But if you are a small or mid-range business with no political ties, chances are it is unnecessary. In fact, transparency might just work against you. It might be interesting (and for some, infuriating) to see how much a Wall Street tycoon makes in a year, yes. Though it is doubtful that your meager or average salary will generate much interest.

Social Networking For Updates, Not Intercommunication

You will never be able to convince me that social networking like Twitter and Facebook (especially the latter) are not brilliant marketing platforms. There is endless potential for generating interest and keeping consumers informed of upcoming products, changes, and of course offering special discounts for those loyal enough to join your page.

But when it comes down to it, many businesses make a misstep here and use it as a chat platform. The only communication you should have is official; handling complaints, taking suggestions and providing details. Anything else is too easily misconstrued. Not to mention pointless, because who actually wants to have a conversation with a business? That is what customer service is for, and no one actually relishes calling it.

Don’t Think Of It As a Relationship, Even A Business One

Yes, it has ‘relationship’ in the name. But really what you are focusing on is building brand loyalty, which is all about the history the customer has had with your company. Which is what you need to set your eye on: how often they have bought, how they plan to buy in the future, and how you can increase the odds of that happening.

Fostering a professional relationship to this end is important, but it should not be overly personal. Which is the same mistake made with social media sites mentioned above.

In the end, the whole point is to make it so they want to come back for a long term customer relationship. Not to be buddies.

Conclusion

Alright, so this is your ultimate goal: to get the customer to keep buying. Not to buy once and walk away. Not to get five people to buy once and then walk away. But to get that one person to keep buying every time they need that item, and then do the same with the next customer, and the next. That is relationship marketing: focusing on this goal rather than just on sales alone.

After all, you could sell to a dozen people easily enough. But then you would have to find another dozen people, and then another, and it would just keep going on. Wouldn’t it be better if with each dozen, you have a constant sales pool generating new profits on a regular basis?

Personal touches are good, and they make people feel like sticking around. Making it about them is the best way to go about it, by showing each one that they are more than a number of a dollar sign. Just don’t get too hung up with the personal aspect, as it should still be more about the marketing and less about being friends with the customer.

All you have to do is show them that you are the best, and you’re golden.

Annie is a business blogger for Life Insurance Finder, the free source of insurance-related information for Australians

Picking And Choosing Guest Posting Opportunities

Not all guest posts were created equal. Guests posts offer a variety of different advantages for your blog – one that isn’t summed up with just one Internet marketing strategy like providing your web site with more “link juice” or getting a trickle of traffic because of your opportunities. No – guest blogging is more than just that.

There are many blogs out there that are strictly dedicated to the idea of guest blogging and what it can do for your website. It is something of a huge phenomina in which whole websites were created for (like MyBlogGuest.com and BloggersLinkUp.com) to help people find better and more guest blogging opportunities. It is a marketing strategy that has taken hold of the SEO and it seems as if it might be here to stay for a while because of all the benefits it provides, not only the people that are doing the guest posting, but websites that are created from guest posting.

In fact there are many websites out there that get 100% of their content strictly from outside sources such as guest posting. Guest posting has affected the Internet world like nothing we have ever seen before. Here are a concepts of what guest posting actually is and what guest posting actually does for your web site.

• Branding
• High Powered Networking
• Gains Exposure
• Link building
• Traffic Building

When Should You Guest Post and When You Shouldn’t

Not all guest posts, not all blogs, and not all networks were created equal. One of the “golden rules” of link building is that if you can receive traffic from a link, then it is probably best to build that link. The same can be said with guest posting but I would argue that you should take it a little bit farther and only guest post if you get substantial traffic from that guest post.

Now, substantial traffic can mean many different things. It all really depends on where you are at in terms of the strength of your web site at the moment, and if you are barely getting traffic in the first place, then getting more guest posts whenever you have the opportunity to obviously will make a little more sense.

How Do You Get the Most Traffic From Your Guest Posts?

Your guest posts, since you are posting on another website, and in a lot of cases a website that may perhaps get A LOT more traffic than your website, have to be some of the best content you can come up with. If you are going to want to convert a lot of the traffic you get, into normal and frequent visitors, then you need to make sure that your guest posts are top notch quality.

First thing is first. Do not look at blogs solely as metrics that your SEO Quake Bar feeds you. There are many Page Rank 2 (and even 1 in some cases) blogs and websites out their that can provide amazing benefits to your website out their and there are also many different PageRank 3,4 and even 5 blogs out there that would not provide as much value to your website. PageRank is not a magic number – I try to stress this fact as much as possible.

There are many different other factors when picking and choosing yuor guest posting opportunities other than page rank.

• Is your article going to have a chance to rank at the top of the SERPs?
• Does the website have a solid base of readership?
• Is the website getting a lot comments on each blog post?
• When was the last time the website got updated?
• How is the quality of the content on the blog? Is the web site actually providing value on the Internet or is it more of a content farm?
• How relevant is the web site? Are these the types of visitors that you are going to be able to turn in to frequent visitors?
• Is the site a good target for cross promotional strategies?

As you can see, there are many different reasons that you should do a guest post on a web site. To get the best results, you should look for websites that have very positive results in terms of the criteria mentioned above. You should also do a lot of research for what it is that you would like the article to rank for.

When approaching guests posts from this angle, you should definitely approach each and every one like you approach your own web site. You should get a set of keywords that you would like to aim at ranking for and then you should sprinkle them throughout your content.

If you can maximize the amount of traffic your guest posts gets, you can maximize the traffic you will get, and also the amount of people that link to your site and that guest pot naturally – will add a lot of “link juice” to your site. Like posting on your own site however – it all starts with the quality of your content.

This article was contributed by Philip Russell. In his spare time, Philip loves to join the online world in discussion about SEO, Internet marketing, and the newest and coolest way to make money online. By day, he helps to provide a white label link building service over at www.inetzeal.com – an established a reputable white label SEO Company. He also enjoys computer programming, basketball, and music.

Brand Equity and Mascots?

WHen I built my blog in 2006 it was completely by accident that I stuck to some sort of branding in the form of an insect (the title of my blog is “A Bugged Life”). Four template changes later, I’ve managed to keep this brand and it’s been known by the local community. I’ve contemplated on going crazy with the idea by building a full mascot outfit of a huge cute bug which can be displaced during new media events. Mugs, tees, stickers — yeah you get the idea.

What sort of personal branding have you done as a blogger to enhance your equity in other spheres apart from the online space? Have you gone crazy with the idea or are you happy with the way your blog is now? Is your blog ubiquitous, allowing it to take on many shapes even off the Internet?

I write this in reference to the resurrection of UK’s Ask Jeeves — based on surveys, despite Jeeves’ departure from the Internet in 2006, he still brings forth a lot of brand recall as “Jeeves” is easier and more fondly remembered than a corporate logo. And in Asia, just look at the brand recognition Ajinomoto has achieved with it’s “Dapur Umami” online cooking class.