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SEO and Branding Strategy
Both branding strategies and search engine optimization (SEO) are powerful tools of the trade. However, they are somehow antagonistic, and you may often find yourself forced to choose between them when doing business. Although it’s not impossible to find a way of getting them to work together, we will summarise a few reasons you should use internet advertising as a branding strategy, in terms of SEO and branding strategy.

What does search engine optimization actually mean?
Webmasters like to strategically customise written content in order to make it search engine friendly. This is usually done by inserting long tail keywords into posts at a certain density. High keyword density (3-4%) will make written content more sensitive to search engine queries, and therefore the website will be displayed at the top of the search results pages. Hiring professional writers to provide SEO friendly content is actually cheaper than paying Google to offer you the top spot. In terms of business, SEO can earn you money from two different points of view:

• more traffic, meaning more ad clicking and therefore more revenue to be earned
• more visitors, meaning more potential clients

Can SEO become a part of your brand strategy?
Actually, it can. However, it depends on what kind of online business you’re into. Building up a brand image for internet exposure is slightly different than any traditional business context. To be more specific, it’s a known fact that SEO is perfect for advertisers. Ads usually detect visitors’ geographical location, which obviously narrows down your targeted user area. You can therefore use SEO and expect users to find your brand among local search results (Google comes with different search settings and domains for each country, for example google.com for the United States, google.co.uk for the United Kingdom, google.fr for France etc.). Wicked, isn’t it?

SEO and branding strategy, the friendly way!
Now that you know what it’s all about, here are a few tips you should take into account when branding your company in an online business. Remember: branding is the key to a successful business, but it won’t do all the work for you.

1. Be unique. Come up with a creative name for your company, something which has never been used before. This is a very important SEO and branding strategy. When it comes to search results, this will also clearly distinguish you from other companies, something that wouldn’t happen if your names were similar.
2. Make a new name. This is what branding is all about in the first place. Think about an appropriate user name to register with social networks and domains. Just to be sure, check its availability on http://namechk.com/ – it might be already taken! If so, no worries! Your imagination has no boundaries; you will definitely be able to come up with something new.
3. Use keywords in your website’s tag line. Tag lines are displayed on your website, below the title or in the status bar of your browser window. Never use keywords in titles – it’s tedious and sometimes draws readers’ attention away from the main thing your website is all about. Moreover, taglines are way more sensitive to search engine queries.
4. Connect. Get involved. Don’t limit yourself to a mere website. Dedicate a Facebook page and a Twitter account to your business. People who spend a lot of time online are usually dedicated to social networks, so that would be another way to spread the word about your brand. Once you’re done setting up your business online, commit to it and get used to spending time online on a daily basis. Potential customers won’t enjoy slow response – they will feel ignored and probably make a bad impression.

website has become an important factor in terms of ranking in google and in other search engines. Gone are the days when the websites were built with html tables with loads of java scripts, dhtml and flashy objects and large images. Nowadays if your website isn’t light and fast your rankings can be affected.
How to get rid of that? At first check your website speed. This tool is free and it will give you a fair idea about how much time it takes to load. Also you can take help of this to calculate the page speed of your website. Don’t forget to check the website size too. This is very important since google is incorporating the speed factor into their search results. If you want to rank high in google searches you must consider this factor with utmost importance.

Use less Java Script Objects

The first and foremost step is to get rid of unnecessary java script objects. Search engines can’t read java scripts, so it will not help you to achieve a higher rank instead it will decrease your website speed. After removing them check your website speed again. Isn’t it a little faster?

Don’t use flash movies on your landing page

Flash movies also make your website slower. Use them in inner pages if you have to. Sites with lots of videos will take a lot of time to load.

Use a Good Host

If you can avoid shared hosting packages specially if you have a large website. A good cheap dedicated or VPS or hybrid hosting will work well.

Get rid of large images

Don’t use a heavy background image or lots of images in your homepage. Use css to make your website looks great. An average user won’t wait for more than a few seconds to visit your website. Specially for business sites it will affect a lot.

Get rid of Twitter Updates on your homepage

You might have seen how much time it takes to load the sites using twitter updates. If the twitter server is busy then it will affect your website loading time too. Avoid this if you can.

Get rid of too many advertisements specially banner ads

Too many advertisements also make your website slower. If you use banners try to host the banner images on your server. It will make your site faster.

Try to use excerpts in your homepage if you have a blog

You might have come across many blogs which have full posts on their homepages. 10-20 posts with lots of images, videos, etc make their blog homepage slower. If you are one of them try to use the excerpts in your homepage.

Take the help of Image Size Reducer

If you have to use images in your homepage, then I will suggest you to take the help of image size reducer. There are so many tools online and offline to do the job fairly well.

Last but not the least

Making your website faster can improve your ranking in the search engine results but there are lots of other parameters controlling the ranking of your website. So if you want to optimize your website for search engines like google, you have to consider those other factors too. Try to visit my website later for more tips and guides or subscribe the feed.

By Carolyn Clayton

Studies have revealed that 90% of Internet users find websites through search engines and out of those users, 90% do not go past the first 30 results displayed. With this in mind it is easy to see why it’s important for your website to rank high in these results.

Search Engine Results Pages (SERP's) are the pages you see after you type in a search on Google or other search engines and click on the Search button. Because 90% of people use search engines to find what they are looking for these SERP’s are the most important pages on the internet.

The Search Engines Result Pages (SERP’s) can be broadly divided into two categories: “Organic” or ”Natural” listings and Paid Advertisements usually bought on a "Pay Per Click" (PPC) basis.

Roughly 80% of clicks at Google occur within the organic listings not the PPC listings. This is why is it important to get your site to rank naturally in the search engine result pages. Getting your site to rank high is not tricky; it’s just a matter of optimising your website to be search engine friendly. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of engineering your website so it can be properly read by the search engine spiders. SEO is pretty much common sense, search engines are text analysis systems so if your webpage is full of images with little text your site will not rank high. You need to target each keyword/phrase on different pages. So if you want to target the search terms “business plans” you need to have one page with the title “business plans” and lots of text about “business plans”.

To me this is just common sense but then I have been working in the SEO field for a number of years. However it never ceases to amaze me why people still call their home pages “home” or have their business name on the title of every single page of website. The owners probably search for their business and are pleased when it comes up first in Google. This is only good for the customers that know your company which is fine for large brands like Argos or Amazon but if you’re trying to get customers from for internet users you need to optimise your text for the search engines.

The other aspect of getting high SERPs is trust and authority. It is kind of no different than any other business trying to gain trust and a good reputation. Forgetting the cyber world for a moment, in the real world established businesses have much more clout that new start up businesses. Like your favourite restaurant. If a new restaurant opened up just down the street you might not want to chance eating there and stick with your favourite restaurant. Now if you hear that its gaining a good reputation for good food you might then decide to try it out yourself. The same can be said about websites except the trust you get is via an algorithm. The more links you get from already established trusted (authoritive) sites the more Google will trust you. It makes sense really, because a good website will not link to a rubbish or not relevant website.

Another aspect of trust is by doing things with the search engines terms and conditions. This means building links naturally and using keywords excessively. Adding 500 pages in one day is not a naturally progression, search engines like websites to expand naturally, anything else and their warning lights flash which means they might look into your site and possibly penalise it.

So the only way to obtain high SERPs is to do everything the search engines like. This means building websites that are easy to navigate (so users and the crawlers can find every page easily) ,have lots of good relevant interesting content and plenty of trusted links. Make your website the best site on the internet in your chosen niche and you shouldn’t go far wrong.

About the Author: Carolyn is the webmaster of Search Solutions Ltd, experts in obtaining High Search Engines Results.
 

By Larry Johnson

Is it possible that today's internet marketers are missing one of the best, most powerful marketing methods available to them today.

Something that is lying right under their noses and still they have overlooked it.

Something that is free, yes I said it, "free", and they have missed the opportunity to seize it and use it to it's fullest.

There are many methods of promotion available on the internet and off line too. For several years I have tried just about everything, but there is one that I have not utilized fully. Along with others, I had underestimated the value and power of a press release.

Many netrepreneurs are not using the best promotion tool available, according to one expert in the field. Angie Dixon, the Press Release Diva, advises that press releases are the best marketing tool most people aren't using.


A well-written press release, distributed by the several high-quality free press release distribution services on the Net, can bring a wave of traffic, says Dixon.

"I recently ran a press release through a free service. The release was picked up by Google Alerts. I got a subscriber every 87 minutes for 24 hours. I couldn't buy that kind of result," Dixon says.

Yet most netrepreneurs aren't using press releases at all, or aren't using them correctly. This is all about to change.

Dixon gives two reasons for this. Many people, she explains, aren't aware that press releases can be such a powerful marketing tool. Others know about press releases but do not know how to write an effective release.

Angie Dixon, the Press Release Diva, offers an interactive online course in press release writing. You will discover all of the necessary skills and tools to develop,distribute and track your press releases.

The additional traffic you will receive from the press releases will be welcome and best of all it is free.

About the Author: interactive course, visit: Learn More The first session begins January 16. Course openings are limited. Enroll now. This article may be freely reprinted as long as this resource box remains intact.

By Andrew Hallinan

Most corporations understand that a great search strategy relies mostly on incorporating the absolute best practices throughout their organizations. It can become a nightmare as a corporation’s activities start to become separated from each other. Departments often have territorial or political reasons for not talking and communicating interdepartmentally, and sometimes the organization of these departments prohibit excellent communication across multiple branches.

The key to great support comes from the top down. If your upper management creates an environment which is central to having search strategies a priority, then it can then be a goal shared by the entire corporation. Upper management absolutely needs to provide the necessary resources for search integration and to make sure that all departments are motivated to create great upward momentum to the search marketing strategy.

Here are some tips to great content architecture across your organization.

1. Make sure that your website has the most useful and functional information architecture possible
Make sure that multiple pages don’t have similar or thin content. Will your website’s visitors be confused at all? Is the page they access relevant to the information they’re looking for? Don’t ever confuse your visitors, and don’t ever show them something they aren’t looking for. Keep it simple!

2. Make sure that the copy on your website speaks to your customer
Keyword research is a huge part of this. You must make absolutely certain that anyone writing web copy has access to (and understands) your keyword research. Make sure they use this research in the writing and development of web copy – if your core demographic is high school children, don’t write using the vocabulary of someone with a PHD.

3. Although your meta keywords tag is not helpful in search engine optimization, it can be helpful in collaboration.
Often, a company will spend countless dollars and time on research about how to speak to their customer, how to create the best marketing calls, marketing segments, and then a copywriter will change the message without realizing all of the energy that was put into the message. To help avoid this, make sure the copywriter has coordinated site wide, and make sure they incorporate the correct keywords into the content. Don’t focus too much on keyword density, but rather on providing valuable content.

4. Remember that every page of your site is a possible entry point.
Every page of your website is a possible entry point for your customer and should be developed using this mentality. Make sure that each page clearly states the primary subject, provides contextual navigation and momentum about the rest of the website, helps the visitor complete a task/find what they were looking for, and to motivate the visitor into your sales funnel. Pages often don’t have a strong call to action and conversions may suffer greatly.

Your corporation should create a checklist for each page to ensure all of these actions get met.

5. Make sure that your website has a great internal linking structure.
This is absolutely crucial to make sure that you have an easily crawlable website. At least one internal link should be in place to each page of your website. A page that does not have an internal link to it is called an “orphan page” and will never be seen by the search engines.

6. Think about what you’re going to link to from the home page.
Your website’s home page is the page that most visitors will see – so it’s important that you link to your most important pages. Search engines also recognize this, and they use your home page link architecture as a sign of what your most important pages are.

About the Author: Andrew Hallinan is the owner of Tampa Search Engine Optimization company, and is Tampa Bay's leading Search Marketing Specialist. Andrew Hallinan has more free tips and advice at his blog.

Source: www.isnare.com
Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=543601&ca=Internet

• Use StumbleUpon.

• Use the MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog, SignUp to join them and to all the MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog communities, then you will see the visitor will come to your blog from the directory.

• Submit your posts to Digg.com, propeller.com, buzz.yahoo.com often I use all three if a post has a lot of competitors. So this kind of tool that will direct the search results in Google to our blog.

• Submit your blog to blogrankings, blogtoplist, topofblog, blogtopsites etc..

• Import Feed your blog to Facebook and Twitter, then you will potentially get a significant number of visitors.

Today Internet has become a source of potentially huge earnings and so businessmen who normally operate "offline" try to expand their business (usually small to moderate) to new sphere. In most cases these people first become overwhelmed by the number of new terms and information. Usually they become bombarded by offers and spam messages from people who call themselves SEO experts and offer tremendous results within short time. In order not to waste your time and money on a service with doubtful quality, read this article first.


Let's start with several questions to people who are new businesses. What do you expect from SEO? Do you want to use it because you want to see your website on the top page of search engine listings? Or would you like to know what people want and seek in products like yours and want to apply SEO because it's known as a mirror of people searches?
If your primary aim is to become #1 in your field, think again prior to starting. Today search engines use complicated algorithms that involve multiple factors and it is, in true, unlikely for any new business to become high rated by search engine within short period of time. You will have to wait and, maybe, you will have to wait for a long time. Are you prepared for this?
I may suggest you have seen so many "super offers" that promise to make your website popular and "defeat Google", but believe me, these are nothing but marketing tricks that have one aim - make you open your wallet and pay. If you purchase one of such programs, most probably the only thing you get will be some basic SEO knowledge that can be accessed online for free and, maybe, a couple of tricks got from blogs devoted to SEO.
In general these "super programs" are nothing but a waste of money. Search engines like Google have crews of talented programmers who work on the same problem - how to make sophisticated search algorithms and better crawl websites. Even if some individual programmer finds out a "gap", it will be closed pretty soon.
So you may wonder there's no way to become top ranked within short time. No, there's one way and it implies spending money. This means you should participate in paid listings. Sign up for Google AdWords program, select your keywords, set up highest winning bid and your website will appear at the very top and in right column of search results that include your keywords. It sounds simple, but there are several problems that must be mentioned.
First, not all businessmen have sufficient funds for such Internet campaigns. If you just start your business online, most probably you're ready to spend some cash, but you'd like to escape serious investments. Second - people who use Google often know where paid advertisements are located and they expect to see paid service or product there. That is why people usually prefer clicking the results of organic search first.
So now let's move back to the question posted below. SEO is really important for new businesses because this is the only way to make search engine pay attention to things you offer and they may be pretty close to the products wanted by your potential customers.
The points that will be important for beginners:
- Proper keywords. Find out what people type in their search engine bars when they try to find a product similar to the one you offer. Make sure you use these keywords in your content and most important one is present in your domain name and titles.
- Check your sitemap. It should be well-organized and provide error free data. Check inner linking system. It should be simple, but effective.
- Someone has told famous "content is king". Today this phrase is still very true. Content rich in keywords wins. Do not turn your website into a bare price list. Each product should have a description between 300-700 symbols. Note images are good for people, but search engine robots cannot index information on pictures, so try to create a combination between images and text.
- Incoming links and outcoming links. When you post links to other websites, be careful. Post links wisely and preferably to related websites. Avoid numerous links to unrelated ones as this may cause lowering in the rank. In worst case your website can be considered as spam by Google.

So you’re looking to increase the profitability of your blog for the Christmas period (and beyond). You’ve optimized your AdSense, Chitika and Affiliate programs, you’ve even written a little seasonal content…. but there’s one missing element…. Traffic. Unless you actually have people viewing your blog it is very difficult to actually earn anything from it.
So how do you drive traffic to your blog?
I’ve written quite a bit of this previously in a number of posts (for examplehere) but want to spend a little time talking today about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Why SEO?
When you are looking online for information on a topic where do you go first?
While I’m sure there will be a variety of answers given to that question – the majority of average web users would answer with one word – ‘Google’.
Every day Search Engines like Google send many millions of web users to websites in their index. While there are plenty of Web 2.0 web indexing services around that are increasing in popularity – the fact is that search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN are still the biggest source of traffic to websites on the web.
As a result – learning how to be indexed and ranked well by them seems like a no brainer.
Writing for Search Engines and Humans
Some bloggers have a problem with the idea of optimizing a blog for search engines. They argue that rather than writing for search engines a blogger’s sole focus should be that they write quality content for humans.
I personally don’t see that writing for humans and search engines have to be mutually exclusive things – in my opinion both can be achieved without compromising either.
Some bloggers argue that if you write for humans that SEO looks after itself. To some extent I agree with that – if you do write quality content that others like you will find that they link up to your site (a key in SEO) – however I would argue that incoming links from other sites is just one part of climbing the rankings in Search Engines (an important part but not the only one).
There are other factors that come into play also and I believe that by knowing them and naturally incorporating them into your blogging you can increase your chances of being found by readers in Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Of course – some people become a little obsessed with SEO and forget the human reader, don’t fall for this trap and keep a balanced approach and you’ll benefit both from traffic from the search engines as well as a loyal readership who keeps coming back for more quality content.
Basic SEO tips for Bloggers
I’ve written previously on this topic so rather than writing the same thing again in a slightly different way will republish some of my previous tips below. I hope you find them useful.

Before I start - I’ll say that while I do get a lot of SE traffic that I’m not really an SEO expert (it isn’t what I devote most of my time to). If you want to read something by someone who has spent a lot more time and effort on the topic I recommend looking at an e-book by Aaron Wall – SEO Book (aff). I’ve actually been reading through it in the last few weeks (it’s been on my to do list for a long time) and have found it really helpful.
SEO experts tend to divide search engine optimization techniques into off site and on site techniques.
Off Site SEO Techniques
Off site SEO techniques are as the name suggests factors from outside the site itself (ie from other sites) that impact the blog’s ranking in search engines. Many of these factors are outside the blogger’s control – however they are useful to know. The most obvious and probably most powerful offsite factor are Inbound Links (something I’ve already referred to above).
It is generally agreed that the links that point to a website are one of the most powerful way of climbing Search Engines results pages (in fact many argue it is THE most important factor). – To put it most simply – every link to your site is seen by the search engines as being a vote of confidence in your site.
Ideally Speaking – The best inbound links have three main qualities to them:

    they are from higher ranked sites than your own
    they are relevant to the topic you are writing about
    they link to you using relevant keywords to your page

Whilst you may not have complete control over who links to you these are the types of links that you should be dreaming of.
How to generate quality inbound Links?
Of course whilst most of us know this it doesn’t make getting such links any easier – its in the hands of others in many cases. So how do you get such links?

    Quality Content – There are all kinds of link generating systems out there but in my opinion the best way to get links to your blog is to write quality content that people will want to read. You can solicit links with others or sign up for different link building programs or even buy text links on other sites but the cheapest and probably safest approach is to build inbound links in a natural organic way as others link to your quality content.
    Notify Relevant Bloggers of your content – Whilst I don’t advocate spamming other bloggers and asking for links – I would recommend that if you write a quality post on a topic that you know will interest another blogger that it might be worth shooting them a short and polite email letting them know of your post. Don’t be offended if they don’t link up, but you might just find that they do and that in addition to the direct traffic that the link generates that it helps build your own page rank in the search engines (more on letting other bloggers know of your posts here).
    Directories – Another way to generating inbound links is to submit your links to directories. I know of webmasters who swear by the benefits of such a strategy – the first thing that they do when starting a new site is to do the rounds of directories – submitting links to key pages with appropriate keywords in the links. There are loads of directories out there – many of which offer a free submission. Ari Paparo has compiled a list of blog directories that you might want to start with.
    Inter-link your Blogs – Increasingly bloggers are starting or joining blog networks to enjoy the benefits of multiple sites and writers working together. One of the advantages of networks of sites is that they usually link to one another. In doing so you have complete control over how your sites are linked to from multiple domains. It is worth noting that you should be careful with this approach – if all your sites are hosted on the one server many think that Search Engines will work out what you’re doing and the impact will be lessened.
    Buy Links – Many professional web masters have a budget to purchase links from other highly ranked and and relevant sites. I won’t go into this too much here but you might like to read more about it in my recent post On Buying Text Links.
    Swap Links – Similarly many bloggers swap links with other bloggers. Sometimes this happens pretty naturally (you see someone linking to you so you link back) but in many cases the links are strategic ones and formally arranged between site owners. I get daily requests for such reciprocal links (I rarely act on them). Whilst there is some benefit in such link swapping I would again advise caution here as many SEO experts believe that the search engines have methods for tracking such strategies and devaluing the links. Some try to get around this by doing indirect or triangulated links. ie instead of site A and B doign a direct swap they involve other sites. So A links to C in exchange for D (also owned by C) linking to B (also owned by A) – makes your head hurt doesn’t it!?! There are also a variety of systems around that say they’ll take care of such interlinking for you – I know many who use Digital Point’s Free C0-Op Advertising system. Personally I tend to avoid such schemes and have a policy of linking to sites I think are valuable to my readers. If they link back then so be it.

If you’re looking for link exchange/buying/selling programs you might like to look at systems like:
- Link Adage
- Text Link Ads
- Link Worth
On Site SEO Techniques
Having looked at Offsite Search Engine Optimization Techniques I’ll now turn my attention to examining some of the factors you might like to keep in mind as you build your blog – (or Onsite techniques – things you do on your blog that help build a higher ranking). As with all SEO techniques there are many of these and a lot of speculation around all of them so let me touch on as many as I can:
1. Keyword Rich Content – identify a few keywords for your article that you’re hoping will get indexed highly by Google. Don’t pick too many but consider the questions

    How do I want people to find this post in Search Engines?
    What will they type into Google if they want information on the topic you’re writing?
    How would I find information on this topic in the Search Engines?
    What results come up when I do plug these keywords into Google?
    What other keywords are other sites using?

The answer to these questions will give you a hint as to what words you’ll want to see repeated throughout your article a number of times.
These keywords will need to be the most common words used in your article. Use them in some or all of the following ways:

    Keywords in post and page titles (read my post on using keywords in titles)
    Keywords in URL of page (blog herald wrote on this a while back)
    Keywords in outbound links. Of course you should always link to sources of content as an ethical consideration but the bonus of this is that many SEO experts think that linking to relevant and quality sites on the same topic of your post with good keywords can also add credibility to YOUR post also.
    Keywords in bold tags (try do it at least once)
    Keywords in heading tags (there is debate over exactly how to use them but it’s generally accepted that h1 tags are important and that h2, h3, h4 etc tags also have an impact. Having said that I’ve seen some pages rank very well in search engines without using heading tags. There are many tutorials online about heading tags
    Keywords in image alt tags
    Keywords in the general throughout the text of your post – but especially early on in the first few sentences
    Keywords in meta tags (they seem to be less valuable these days but many still believe they are useful with some search engines –

Of course you can go over the top with keywords in posts and let it destroy your content – but if it fits with what you’ve written tweak it to include the words you are targeting a couple of extra times. Most SEO experts recommend getting your keyword density up to between 5-20% – I think 20% is probably bordering on massacring your content.
One last word of warning and disclaimer on keyword rich content (because I can just hear the comments on this post already) – don’t sacrifice your readers experience of your site just for the sake of SEO. Yes keyword density can be important in climbing the search engine rankings – but more important is that your content and design are user friendly and helpful to readers. There is nothing worse than a site that is stuffed with keywords – these sites come off as cheap, nasty and spammy – don’t fall for the temptation.
Keep in mind keywords that might be specific to the season we are approaching. While during the year there might be less people searching for posts relating to Christmas, gifts, presents, new year sales etc – this time of year will see an increase in these types of searches.
2. Themed sites - One of the growing theories of SEO is that you are more likely to rank well if you have a substantial amount of pages on a similar theme. ie a niche topic blog will probably rank higher than a general one that covers many topics. Build a blog with over 200 pages of content on the same theme and you’ll increase your chances of ranking well as SEs will see you as an authority on the topic. The take home advice here is to keep to some kind of a topic/niche/theme for your blog. It is also probably another argument for categories and tagging posts that relate together strongly.
3. Site Design – Search Engines like well laid out, well coded and easily to navigate sites. Make sure your pages validate (I need to work more on this) and that they are viewable on all major browsers. Search Engines don’t tend to like too much Flash, Frames or Java Script in your site – keep it simple and clean and their robots will index your site a lot faster and more accurately. Also try to keep your blog free from dead links (a challenge for those of us with older blogs with big archives).
4. Interlink your Site – The way Search Engines index your blog is to send little robot crawlers to your site to track what you’ve written and follow the links. Make it easier for them to get around your blog by using internal linking wisely. Most SEO experts recommend that you provide some sort of Site Map that means every page on your blog is just a link or two away from every other one. One way to do this for bloggers is to make sure that your category pages are in your sidebars as I do in this blog. Also make sure every page links back to your main page and any other important pages on your site. If you’re writing on a topic you’ve previously written about consider linking to what you’ve written before or use a ‘other relevant posts’ feature at the base of your article. You’ll see in my menus at the top of the page a number of my key categories and articles. One of the impacts of having them highlighted in this way is that they have become some of the most highly ranked pages on ProBlogger simply because they are linked to from every page of this blog. This is a key point in the lead up to Christmas – if you have a few seasonal posts that you particularly want to do well in the SE’s make sure they are linked to from every page on your blog.
5. Update regularly – The more you update your blog the more often Search Engines will send their crawlers to your site to index it. This will mean your new articles could appear in the index within days or even hours rather than weeks. This is a natural benefit of blogging – make the most of it!
6. Outbound Links – There is debate over how SEs treat outbound links from your blog. I’m in the camp who believe that relevant outbound links enhance your site’s ranking in search engines. I always link out to quality relevant sites that I think my readers will find useful and have a little anecdotal evidence that seems to support the theory that this is healthy for the way SEs index you (check out Waynes article on the topic for more info). Linking to sites outside your own blog does mean you end up sending traffic away from your blog so you need to count the cost of such a strategy. Note that you should always try to link to reputable and relevant sites to your own page. Also keep in mind that too many outbound could have detrimental impact upon your blog. Like in most things in SEO – moderation is the key.
7. Choose your domain name wisely – there are numerous factors to keep in mind when selecting a domain name. For one you might like to include your keyword in it if possible. Secondly you should do a little research to see if someone else has previously used the domain. This could have both positive and negative impact. If it was a quality site with inbound links you might reap some benefits but if it was a banned spam site you could still be banned from Google for a long time. One service you might want to use to check expired domains is Way Back Machine at Archive.org.
8. Register your Domain for a Lengthy Period – a recent patent by Google indicates that it now looks at the length of your domain’s registration in ranking it. It does this because many spam sites have short registrations and a longer one indicates that you’re building a site with substance and are in it for the long haul.
9. One topic per post – the more tightly focused the theme of a page the better when Search Engines come to rank it. Sometimes you might find yourself writing long posts that end up covering a number of different topics. They might relate loosely but if search engine ranking is what you’re after it could be better to break up your post into smaller more focused pieces.
10. Write optimal length posts – there is some thought going around the Search Engine Optimization community that pages that are too short can get passed over for high rankings. I try to keep posts at least 250 words. Of course there are some posts on my blogs that are shorter, but if I’m writing a post that I want to rank well I try to give it some meatiness in terms of length. On the other hand don’t make it too long either – because in doing so you make it difficult to keep your keyword density up and could end up with a less tightly focused page. Research also shows that longer articles can have a pretty steep drop off rate in readers after the text gets below the ‘fold’ or to the end of the first screen of article (looks like this post is in trouble – is anyone still reading?).
11. Avoid Duplicate content – Google warns publishers in its guidelines about having the same content on multiple pages. This goes for both multiple pages that you own but also pages that others own. This is because a tactic of spammers is often to reproduce content on many pages and/or to steel content from other sites. There is some debate over what duplicate content does and doesn’t include (for instance many bloggers use ‘free articles’ as content on their blogs – these articles often appear on hundreds and even thousands of other sites around the web and to me could be seen as duplicate content) – my advice is to be very careful about how many places your content appears. I do republish occasional posts (or parts of them) but try not to do this too much and attempt to add elements that are unique on each occasion that the posts are republished).
12. Ping – services like Pingomatic (there are numerous others too) will ping a variety of websites for you to notify them that you’ve updated. In doing so you’ll also be letting search engines know that you’ve updated which will trigger their robots to come visit your blog. I’d also suggest pinging Google’s blog search tool.
13. Submit your RSS to MyYahoo – submitting your RSS feed to MyYahoo seems to help with getting indexed on Yahoo. Read more about this at Getting Yahoo Traffic for your Blog. Some also think that doing the same thing to Google’s Personalised pages could have a similar impact.
14. Quantities of Content – I always get into trouble when I write about having lots of content – but I think its true that bigger sites tend to rank better than smaller sites – whilst it is possible to rank highly with a small site – it’s probably not the norm.. Search Engines will see your site as more comprehensive the more content you have. You also better your odds of being found in Search Engines if you have more pages. By no means am I saying just to put up random junk content – be careful about this – rather work at building a comprehensive and large site over time.
15. Submit to Search Engines – You can do all the best onsite SEO strategies in the world and still get no where because the Search Engines have not found you to start with. Each search engine has a way of letting it know about your site – submit your URL to be included in the index. Please note that this takes time and perhaps a quicker and more effective way is to get linked to by a site already indexed by the search engine.
You might also like to tryout some of the services around that offer to submit your sites to search engines for you – I’d be wary of paying for this sort of service though. I never have and seem to do ok.
The Time Factor
One more element that I think is often overlooked in SEO tips posts is that of ‘Time’.
My own experience of blogging is that you can do all of the above things and still not be ranked well in the Search Engines for months and months. Here at ProBlogger it actually took around a year before I started to get significant search engine traffic – despite me doing all the ‘right things’.
This might not be particularly good news for those of you wanting to optimize your site for Christmas this year – but it is yet another reminder that blogging is a long term thing and that it takes considerable time for a blog to become established.
If you’re not ranking well in the search engines – hang in there. Keep posting, keep working on quality content and keep the above factors in mind – as you do this you’ll find that in time your SE traffic will gradually increase

Blogging can be an Internet Marketer's best friend by allowing business to communicate directly with their clients.  But, did you know that blogging can also directly impact your Search Engine Optimization efforts?
Blogging and SEO - A perfect Small Business Internet Marketer Match

It has become pretty obvious that blogs have been become an important part of marketing for almost any type of online business.  They are unmatched resources when it comes to connecting with customers and potential customers.

But, there is an additional benefit that shouldn't be over-looked:  there impact on your Search Engine Optimization efforts.  Blogging can greatly enhance any websites natural search results through regular postings, and natural keyword placement. There in fact is no stronger way to market ones website for free than by blogging with natural keywords.

Similar to article marketing, posting daily blogs with the keywords of your business included can have remarkable effects on the ranking of your site in any given search engine, and thus net you more traffic. One key to gaining more traffic from keywords is to use ‘niche’ keywords. These are keywords or keyword phrases that may be searched for less often, but that have less competition. This means you may be able to rank much higher for these keyword. An example: The keyword term “baseball” is certainly searched for often, but there are millions of websites optimized around this keyword. However a keyword phrase like “Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz news” would have fewer competitors. The longer keyword also increases the likelihood that your blog contains exactly what the visitor is looking for.

Getting picked up in search engines can lead to increase volumes of traffic heading to your site every day. There are top keyword placers that use blogs to retain huge amounts of daily traffic to their sites just by integrating a variety of niche keywords into their posts. The amazing thing about blogs is they are often picked up by the search engines almost as quickly as one posts to it, which makes it an even more powerful tool for SEO purposes.  Our experience has been that blogs that take advantage of Google's Blogger or Wordpress are quickly indexed. 

Another way blogging can help your site’s search engine ranking is by the quality score. Most search engines, including Google rank sites with a quality score, the more unique, user provided content, the higher it appears the quality score becomes. If a website is just a sales page, and a few pictures, the quality score will most likely be low. But if a site has a blog on it, with fresh, daily posts, the quality score becomes much better, and thus the site gets ranked much higher when people are searching for your niche, or keyword terms.

If you haven't considered a blog for the pure marketing aspect of it, it's probably time you considered it from the SEO perspective.  You've got nothing to loss but website visitors.