When you make the plunge into Internet marketing, your intention is more than likely to make some money.  Whether you are looking to entirely switch careers and make a fresh start or just supplement your current salary with some side work, there is definitely money to be made.  However, you have to decide how much your time is worth when it comes to Internet marketing—some people seem to bring in huge profits, while others merely see a slight trickle of income from these methods.  Determining how much time to invest in SEO tactics and developing an online marketing strategy is important.

Once you spend so much time with an online marketing strategy that it takes up your entire amount of free time, you may start to feel that the cost is too high.  There are many tools that are available to Internet marketing specialists that are designed to help streamline website promotion and advertising online, but, no matter how streamlined you make it, there is still a lot of work to be done.  Hiring search engine optimization specialists may be an option, but, again, this is an investment and you need to be making enough profit through Internet marketing to make it worthwhile (and affordable) to hire someone to help you with website promotion and SEO tactics.

Choose Tools Carefully

With all of the buzz in the Internet marketing world lately about the importance of good content, you may want to steer clear of some of the tools designed to generate tons of content for your site.  The jury is still out on things like article spinners and content generators, so be very cautious about spending your time and money this way.  While these are tools that can help manage the routine aspects of your online marketing strategy, like content development, there may be better ways for you to cut corners.

What Are You Worth?

It might surprise you if you start to calculate the number of hours that you spend trying to make money through Internet marketing.  For some, it becomes a way of life.  For those who are trying to supplement an income or use this as a “side job,” it should be understood that it can take a great deal of time to be successful.  Now, that definitely does not mean that you should not try, because there is quite a bit of money to be made with Internet marketing if you are good with SEO tactics and have a strong online marketing strategy.  Those who are wise about website promotion and advertising online will have a far better chance.

Keep track of the number of hours you spend for one month on Internet marketing.  Then, take the amount of money that you made in that same month and divide it into the number of hours.  You will get your “hourly rate.”  Hopefully you will see that number and feel content that you are spending the right amount of time and making an amount that is comfortable to you.

For example, let’s say you spent 15 hours per week on your Internet marketing work.  At the end of the month, you calculate that you brought in $1200.  When you take $1200 and divide it by 60 (15 hours per week, times 4 weeks), you will see that you are making $20 per hour.  You have to decide for yourself what your time is worth, and what your own personal “tipping point” is when it comes to your profits and your time.  Just because you made $20 per hour for 60 hours of work does not necessarily mean that if you doubled your hours you would bring in double the profits.  Internet marketing is not always directly proportional in that way.  This is one reason that you should consider learning more about some time saving tools—when you can save an hour here or there on your online marketing strategy, the amount you get “paid” per hour will increase.  For those with long term goals, calculating an annual time investment and profit ratio may make more sense than doing it on a monthly basis.

There is no solid number or amount of profit that defines success.  Some people make more during less time, others work very hard for less money with Internet marketing.  The measure of success is quite personal, and sometimes your investment of time will pay off in the long term, even if you are not making money right away.  Learn what you can about SEO tactics and how to be successful with advertising online, and you will find that your Internet marketing efforts will pay off more and more.

Is there a difference when it comes to search engine optimization when you choose to use WordPress posts or pages?  There is an active debate about which works best when you are trying to increase search engine ranking.  When you discuss your SEO tactics with your search engine optimization specialist, you will discover that there are certain advantages or disadvantages to each type of approach to your online marketing strategy.  WordPress is a powerful online website platform and popular tool for creating and maintaining your site, learning everything you can about using this platform most efficiently will help you make the best decision.

Benefits to Having More Pages

Some WordPress critics and search engine optimization specialists make note that many of the blogs on this platform utilize only a few pages at the most.  This can affect your site’s ability to have long term search engine ranking and can limit the amount of time that your visitors spend on the site.  You need to have a considerable amount of content on your sites for best results.  With few places to go and check out, you may find that you have a higher bounce rate.  Visitors may often stay longer simply because they are intrigued by the amount of information that appears to be available.  As long as what “appears” to be true turns out to be true, you will find increased visitor numbers.  When visitors stay longer, you will see increased conversion rates, and make more profit.  This is one huge benefit to having more pages on your WordPress blog.  It is important that the pages be high quality, your search engine optimization specialist can help you develop high quality pages for each of your products and services.

On your WordPress blog, you will have the opportunity to showcase your products and services by using separate pages for each different thing you have to offer.  This is a good online marketing strategy as well, because it gives you multiple ways to get links that are reputable and useful.  Think of your WordPress pages as a showroom of sorts for your various products and services, and use the pages to describe and explain each product and service thoroughly.  You want to offer the answers to questions thatyour  customers may have, like “what is this product,” “what are the options,” “how is it used,” “why should I choose this product,” or “how can I purchase this item?”

Benefits to Having More Posts

While having many pages offers you the outstanding opportunity to showcase your products and services, having many high quality posts for content allows you the chance to use the posts for advertising online.  Website promotion is a huge part of any successful online marketing strategy, and you can use posts as reviews, stories, announcements, promotional materials or any other marketing needs that you may find useful.  Good posts help you to build up relevant, high quality content which will increase search engine ranking, as Google and the other search engines are looking for that.

WordPress posts can be individually ranked in the search engine results.  When a visitor searches for a product or service, they may be directed straight to the post about the product or service.  This is a good reason to use the post to advertise online for the product or service, and then have a link contained within the post that directs the visitor to the page that explains the product or service more thoroughly.

A Good Balance is Best

Having plenty of pages for your WordPress site, and adding frequent posts, makes for a great balance and can be the ideal online marketing strategy.  When your website promotion includes advertising online using posts, you can accomplish great things.  Work with your search engine optimization specialist to develop the best plan for your site.  Think of the posts as a way to advertise your products and services, and you can submit the posts as articles that will get you additional incoming links.  As you increase search engine ranking, you will find that more visitors find your posts, which should then be intriguing enough to lead them to your pages and products.  Good posts can increase your conversions when they send visitors to your pages.  Good pages will rank well in the search engine results and help draw more visitors.  Working both angles together is ideal.

Using pages and posts together as a combined way of advertising online and having good website promotion is important for search engine optimization purposes.  Posts should always direct visitors to pages, and pages should always be designed to entice people to buy your products and services.

It didn’t take long after the social media sites started popping up for people to start basically vomiting their words all over the place and start regularly posting incriminating pictures.  For those of you who are accustomed to this kind of social media networking, imagining how social media could actually help your business and work as a way of website promotion or advertising online may be a bit of a mystery.  Those people who are not aware that they need to be careful about what they say on the Internet are probably not reading this anyway…

The Entire World is Listening

When it comes to Internet marketing and website promotion for your business in a social media setting, you will begin to realize that your audience is actually watching what you have to say.  What you say needs to be said in a way that can be received by your target audience, and, ideally, engage them in some kind of interaction with you.  This is a great way for advertising online, and your business will gain exposure and you will benefit from the increased awareness and brand recognition that can come with this type of exposure.

Putting Your Best Foot Forward

Choose your status updates, tweets, or whatever carefully.  You want to promote your business and advertise online in a positive manner.  Avoid discussion of any slow business or customer complaints—though there is definitely a place for dealing with those and we will get to that.  Respect the needs of your audience, and consider what it is that they want to hear.  Is your business a microbrewery?  Well, then in your website promotion you may want to mention that you are crafting a new style and that there is something to look forward to soon, and that they should consider stopping by to check it out.  Do you make jewelry?  Well, you certainly want to make sure you are advertising online and putting some information out there about what you have and how to order it, especially around prime gift giving seasons and holidays!

You do not want to be over-doing it, though.  Multiple updates each day will not be good website promotion and will just be annoying and flood news feeds with your updates.  Nobody wants to see that, it is completely self serving and you will just become “that party girl” or whoever is most annoying and inappropriate on the news feed of that audience member.  They will merely skim over your post and barely take any notice whatsoever, other than to probably be annoyed.  When you only post something worthy or interesting, they will be more likely to stop and read what you have to say, and hopefully click on your link or your picture or make comment or plan to stop by your place of business.  This is the best way for advertising online.

Handling Poor Press

You do have a responsibility to your audience as well, and you should be careful to represent your company and your brand well, and accurately with your website promotion.   One thing that can be very beneficial to your company and help you establish trust with your target audience when you are advertising online is to handle complaints and bad press as gracefully as possible.  Some companies choose to completely eliminate all negative comments or complaints from their social media.  Although this does reduce the number of people who see the bad press, it does nothing to show how you handle customer complaints or problems.  A negative comment is a great opportunity for website promotion and for you to show how “the customer is always right,” or show how outstanding your commitment to excellence and satisfaction really is.

With that said, anything extremely derogatory or disrespectful can just be deleted.  When a customer is profane or rude, they may not even deserve a response.  But, a customer with a legitimate complaint or even negative feedback can be addressed in a way that helps to actually promote your business.  A complaint about items damaged during shipping can be made public, along with your solution of replacing the item, for example.  The examples for advertising online are endless, and you should not immediately jump to erase complaints—instead, use them to show your customer service prowess at its best.

Always be certain to publicize the good press that you get—the testimonials and compliments that you receive from satisfied customers are terrific reviews for social media sites and ideal website promotion.  Just be sure that if you are going to use a customer’s name or any identifying information that you have their explicit permission to do so, otherwise you must use the information anonymously if used for advertising online.

When you want to be ranked well in local search results, you need to start by working on your business’s website, and get it ready to be noticed.  Small businesses have the most to gain from local search and local SEO.  Think about it, most people in a community know exactly where the nearest Walmart or Best Buy is located, but they may not know exactly where they can find the nearest collision shop or café.  If you are a small business owner, you are missing out on a tremendous amount of business by not capitalizing on local search and local SEO.

Studies have shown that people using local search options on their smart phones are visiting local businesses about 40% of the time that they get the results.  This means that people are searching for things that they need, in the moment that they need them—and then going to the places that appear in the local search results.  You need to make sure that it is YOUR business that turns up at the top of the list, and get as much of this “by the minute” kind of traffic as possible.

The people that show up after getting the results of the local search are far more likely to buy—they have been sent to your business because you have what they need, right now.  This is a powerful process and this type of conversion rate is one you want to have as much as possible.  Basically, if you can get to the top of the local search results, you can almost send people directly to your cash register!

What to Do to Get Noticed

It is critical that your website has the most up to date information possible regarding your business when it comes to local search.  This means, updated hours, exact address, directions, email address, phone number and fax number.  The more information, the better, and the easier it will be for customers to find you.  People are not very persistent in many cases, and they want the information handed to them.  Most people are very busy and do not want to spend a great deal of time hunting down what they need.  If they arrive at your website and are immediately presented with the information they need, then they are more likely to head directly to you.

Use multiple local search listings, including Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Places.  Different smart phone service providers may use different local listings, and you want to increase the chances of being found.  Optimizing for multiple services is very smart.  If you have multiple locations, then you will want to have a separate page and separate local search registration for each location.  While you can list multiple locations on your main website, it is smart to have separate pages within your site for each location, this will increase the likelihood of being found during local search opportunities.

The more information that you can provide, and the more accurate it is, the better your chances are of being found by potential customers who are using local search methods.  Pinpointing your location is the goal, and being able to draw in those people who need what you have is important.  Making it as easy as possible will increase your chances of making a sale.  Including information that is complete, along with entering your business in a certain category and listing sample products and services, will help people know that your business is the best place to go.  Don’t skimp when it comes to the information.

Be sure that you are not merely copying and pasting information from your website.  Enter in each field properly and make sure it is completely accurate.  One digit mistakes are incredibly common, and if that one digit is in something like your zip code, this will basically drop you in the local search results.  Forget about stuffing keywords in, your business will get noticed based on category and location first, and the categories will work like keywords for this purpose.

Having your site properly listed for local search success will help to increase your conversions.  Fewer and fewer people use the phone book and the number of people using traditional search methods on a computer is also starting to drop.  With the use of smart phones growing rapidly, local search often means that a customer heads in your direction right away—make it as easy as possible for them to come spend their money at your place of business.  When a customer is ready to spend money, you want to make sure that your door is wide open and that they will have no trouble finding you.

When you read a lot about search engine optimization, you will start to see many of the same ideas repeated over and over again.  Focusing your SEO tactics properly is going to mean the difference between traffic and conversions.  These two things are not equal—you can get tons of traffic, thanks to good website promotion and never get conversions.  You must make sure that your online marketing strategy is properly developed!

Keywords Are Critical

When your efforts and SEO tactics are so focused on getting tons of traffic, you may lose sight of your actual target audience, the ones who will be buying from you, or so you hope.  The traffic is not what sells, it is what is on the site when visitors arrive there that sells.  You can sell more with less traffic, if your keywords are perfectly optimized.  Take a good look that the keywords that you are using for your SEO tactics and website promotion.  Make sure that those keywords are truly the right ones, the ones people will use to find information contained within your website.  You want them to use certain keywords and then be able to get to your site, only to find that this is exactly what they are looking for.

There are many examples of how to use keywords properly, and being more specific is better when you are looking for conversions.  For example, if you are selling printed knee socks, then “socks” is a very generic keyword to use.  You will have much better conversion rates if you instead optimize for keywords like “fashion print knee socks.”  You may end up getting less traffic, but you will get more conversions in the long run.

The idea behind making your conversion rate higher is that you can make more money per visitor when those visitors are led right to your site and find exactly what it is that they are looking for.  This is the ultimate success for any Internet marketing specialist, and one of the main secrets of a highly successful online marketing strategy.  Essentially, you are getting the best visitors that you can for your site.

Focus on Your Target Audience

When your SEO tactics are carefully focused on your target audience, you will be more likely to make a sale.  Although you want to get as much traffic as possible, the visitors who quickly bounce from your site are not worth very much to you or your online marketing strategy.  You want the visitors who are really interested in what you have, the ones who will return again and again, and be loyal customers over the long term.

Choosing the right keywords to optimize for and focus your SEO tactics on is challenging.  The secret is to choose keywords that are popular, yet perhaps not first on the list.  You want to somehow narrow down the competition.  So, if we are using the example from above about knee socks, then obviously “knee socks” would probably be the top ranking keyword, but not specific enough and it will have too much competition.  If you instead choose something less popular and more specific, then the visitors that get to your site will be there because you have exactly what they want.  They will have less of a need to shop around and be more likely to buy from you.

Finding the Best Keywords

One way to help you find the best keywords for your site is to check the pay per click advertising sites.  These sites will rank keywords according to popularity.  This is a good way to find out what relevant keywords will work best for your site.  The clicks that are making money are the keywords that you will want to use for your online marketing strategy.

Another way to find great keywords is to research which keywords your most fierce competition is using and then use that information as part of your SEO tactics to outrank them.  This strategy does take time and effort, but it is well worth it and your efforts will pay off in the long run when you increase search engine ranking and start to grab some of the business that was previously directed toward your competition.

Finally, review your traffic statistics regularly as part of your SEO tactics.  If you use one of the more popular tools, like Stat Counter or Google Analytics, then you will have access to the actual keywords that visitors are using to get to your site.  Keeping track of this information is critical.  Check out which keywords are bringing the visitors that are staying the longest, and focus on those.  Eliminate those keywords that you discover are only bringing the visitors that bounce quickly.

Wouldn’t it be great if a search engine could actually evaluate whether or not content was good?   What does it mean to get a good search engine placement, really?  SEO consultants are forever pondering this and debating the details of various SEO tactics.  Supposedly, the search engines are now indexing sites according to high quality content, but how is that really determined?  A machine cannot truly read and understand content, they can only scan content, find keywords, calculate percentages and densities, and compare with other documents.  They do not understand certain parts of grammar, nuance, or any of the social aspects of written language that help the writer and the reader connect.  This is a difficult concept to get your head around, with all of the buzz about “high quality” content.  Based on who’s judgment?  That’s the part that is a little confusing.

On Page or Off Page SEO

Because search engines are not able to really make a judgment about whether content is good or not, meaning whether or not it is informational and well written, they must rely on additional factors to make the determination.  You must work these factors into your SEO tactics.  Amazingly, the bigger search engines, like Google, Bing and Yahoo! make a sincere effort to evaluate these other factors, and they end up doing a pretty good job based on the information that they have.  At least for machines.

There has been quite a bit of chatter about links, both inbound and outbound to your site, and how the search engines, particularly Google, are measuring the quality of these links and assessing and ranking your site.  Google uses the inbound links to your site to help measure the overall quality.  By comparing your site to the ones you are linked to, Google is better able to determine where your site should be ranked.  This means it is especially important to only be linked with sites that are high quality.  For example, if you have written a great article about crime scene clean up, but it is not in any of the reputable article directories, then your article may never be read.  And, those links will not be useful.  On the other hand, if your article is in the high traffic article directory sites, with excellent links and good bio information about you or your company, you will be seeing increased traffic to your site—and you will see that it can increase search engine ranking, too.

Billboard Strength

Think of posting your articles on article directory sites as a way of advertising online for your site.  It is much like a brick and mortar business renting a billboard.  You want people to notice that you are out there.  The top article directory sites are well ranked, meaning that if you have articles on there with keywords that match what someone is searching for, these sites are highly likely to appear in the search engine placement results, leading more visitors to your site.

What is frustrating to many SEO consultants is that the biggest sites (think Amazon, Walmart, etc.) do not even have to think about doing SEO.  People find them automatically, and care so much about what they have to offer that they never have to give a single thought to an online marketing strategy or think about how to increase search engine ranking.  They are automatically on top, regardless of quality and simply because of size.  In some ways, it may seem futile to try and compete, but that is where finding your specific niche becomes incredibly important, and using SEO consultants that can help you use SEO tactics to increase search engine ranking and get more traffic is what you need to do.  Unfortunately, it is a simple fact in life and in business that the ones with the most money and resources will probably be the most successful.  This does not mean that you should not try—you will just need to do the search engine optimization that is required in order to make it work.

What is difficult is that bigger companies do have the resources to really have a strong online marketing strategy.  They can afford to hire writers, graphic designers and SEO consultants that can provide top notch service and increase search engine ranking quickly.  Don’t despair!  Little by little, you can work on advertising online and getting your online marketing strategy ready to go up against the big guns.  You will probably never outrank Walmart or Amazon, but there is more than one spot on the first page of the search engine results, so there is enough room for you to get there if you have the right SEO tactics and enough patience and perseverance to do it.

There has been a shift in how customers will find your business, and changes to how local SEO is needed for your company.  You are probably getting a little tired of watching people all around you talk to their phones.  Now, we are not talking about the typical phone use—talking to another person.  We are discussing people talking to “Siri.”  Siri, just in case you live under a rock, is the iPhone voice recognition software that can seemingly do anything, and it will simulate an interaction with a personal assistant pretty well.  Siri can take notes, send texts and emails, find directions, add appointments to your calendar and remind you of your tasks.  Siri is also changing search engine optimization.

What is happening is that people with iPhones (and this number is growing at an alarming pace) are using Siri more and more to find what they need at that very moment.  This is changing how most SEO consultants are using traditional SEO tactics.  While there is certainly still a place for the standard techniques to be a part of your online marketing strategy, local SEO is more important than ever—and perhaps focusing on other components, other than your Google ranking.

What?  Not Google?

Siri does not use Google to get her results.  She uses Yelp.  So, all of the hard work you do trying to understand the SEO tactics that please Google the most may not be enough to please Siri, too.  SEO consultants are working hard to integrate the techniques that will serve a dual purpose—be able to increase search engine ranking in the top search engines, while catering to Siri by doing good local SEO and working on Yelp strategies.

Hold on to your hats, Google is still critically important for your online marketing strategy.  But, it is just not enough anymore.  Hopefully you have been paying close attention and working on your SEO tactics and your local SEO, not just working on traditional keyword search strategies.  Google Places, Yahoo! Local, Foursquare, Facebook and more are playing a key role in helping visitors find you—both online and in person.  Ignoring the importance of local search will be the kiss of death for your business in today’s world.

How to Best Optimize Your Business Website

The search engines are not necessarily losing their stronghold on the Internet.  But, local search is gaining speed quickly.   As more and more users opt for smart phone technology and the shift continues, Google and the other search engines will most likely adapt to these changes and remain extremely relevant.  But, your local SEO tactics should definitely be including quite a bit of optimization for Yelp and other local search listings.  Siri gives results based on your current location, and this will often bypass the search engines altogether.

People who are becoming more accustomed to using Siri may be less likely to actually open a browser and perform a search the “old fashioned” way.  With so many people in the world still trying to get their heads around how to use a search engine in the first place, the introduction of apps like Siri could cause some people to truly lose their minds!  But, those who are using it and adapting to the advancing technology will be the ones driving the train as it continues to speed forward at breakneck speed.  Keeping up with your online marketing strategy and changing your SEO tactics as needed will not be an option if you want to stay around.

Keep in mind that the smart phones are going to bypass the search engines and use local search info to provide an answer to a query.  This means that the more thorough your local information is for online registries, the more likely your business will be to come up in the responses by Siri or whatever other apps are coming down the pike.  Working with your SEO consultants, you should adjust your SEO tactics to focus heavily on local search rankings and have traditional SEO come second, at least for now.  People will be spending less and less time using traditional search engines, so your online marketing strategy should be accommodating this shift.

Other Associated Changes?

There are a few other ramifications when it comes to smart phones and voice recognition apps like Siri.  People using these methods are going to be getting the information that is used by the app—so, for example, Siri uses Yelp, so optimizing for Google is less effective.  This will also affect some social media searching, because if you have a strong presence with reviews on one site, if that is not the site that is used by Siri, then your reviews will be less likely to get to the end users.

Finally, if you are relying on making money from your website by using pay per click ads for your website promotion, this could eventually decline and become less effective and less relevant.  Applications like Siri are bypassing this type of advertising online, and going straight to the results of the local search.

Some people may be surprised to learn that the headline of an article can be just as important as the actual article. A headline must be created in a way that will grab a reader’s attention so they will choose your website to visit when they are looking for specific information. Headlines are also important to Google because it tells them what that particular web page is all about, which means that you must make sure that the headline you create for any particular webpage must match the content of the article if you want to get the best rankings.

In fact, Google knows when you’re trying to trick them, so don’t even try to make a keyword-rich headline that doesn’t match the article content because they’ll know. There’s even a chance that you’ll be penalized for trying to pull a fast one on Google, who doesn’t have the time to mess around with those who don’t want to play by the rules.

Creating Headlines for Readers

There are so many things to read online nowadays that it’s really important to create a headline that will capture a person’s attention when they’re doing a search. Unfortunately, creating catchy headlines is not always as easy to do as one may think. In fact, creating a headline that will catch a reader’s attention is quite the skill because there’s so much riding on these words and you’re only allotted so many spaces to do it in.

Creating Headlines for Google

Yes, Google even crawls through your headlines. They want to make sure that the headline you create actually matches the content on that particular web page. This means that you’re going to have to use your main keyword in the headline while at the same time making sure that the content on that page indeed revolves around that particular keyword.

A Few Ideas for Making Catchy Headlines

The following are a few ideas that will help you when it comes to creating a headline that will grab the attention of those who are looking for specific information.

• Direct – Free Advice for Pain Sufferers
• Indirect – Red is the Best Color for Spring Fashion
• News Oriented – A Close Look at the Newest Marketing Tools
• How To – How to Make the Best Cookies in 10 Minutes
• Reasons – 5 Reasons Why You Should Use SEO
• Question – Are Your favorite Foods Good for You?
• Command – Take Control of Your Life Now by Contacting Us Today

Good to Know – 2 Tips

The following are a 2 really great tips that will help you create some really great headlines that both your reader’s and Google will appreciate.

1. Keep Them Short – Try to keep your headline (fairly) short. In fact, most search engines, which includes Google, will only display 70 characters (and that includes spaces). So that means you’re going to have to be very creative when it comes to using a limited amount of words.

For instance, consider the following headline:

– If you want the best prices currently available on laptops and accessories make sure you contact us today!

This is what people will see if you were to use this lengthy headline:
– If you want the best prices currently available on laptops and access…

Try this approach instead: (this time they will see the whole title)
– The best prices on laptops and accessories are here. Contact us today!

2. Make Them Fun and Interesting – If you make the headline fun and interesting, you’re going to get a lot more attention than if the headline were to simply describe the article using a few select words.

For instance, look at the differences between these two headlines that will take you to the same article. Which one would you choose to read?

– Performing SEO is a Good Idea
– How to Use the Best SEO Techniques for Your Website

Making a great headline is not only a critical part of getting people to read what you’ve written for them, it also needs to be made with the understanding that Google will be crawling through and analyzing the headline to make sure it’s relevant to the content. This is important because you want to make sure that your headlines truly depicts what is in the article so when people do decide to read your article they are getting the information they expected and won’t be disappointed.

Bottom Line

Creating a headline that will grab your readers attention is critical nowadays due to so much website competition. It’s essential that you do everything in your power to make sure that your website can be found by those who are looking for the information that you have to offer them.

Now, On-Site refers to everything you can do to your website from the inside, such as writing quality content. Off-Site refers to things you need to do so you can build your website up on the internet at large, such as exchanging links with other, prominent websites. We do recommend that you start using On-Site SEO first, and then follow up with using some Off-Site SEO techniques.

5 Ways to Optimize Your Website Using On-Site SEO

The following are 5 of the best ways you can start optimizing your website today using On-Site SEO.

1. Keywords – Keywords, or keyword phrases, are one of the best ways to optimize your website. You’ll first need to choose anywhere between 10 and 20 keywords that are specific to your niche, and then you’ll need to use these keywords throughout your website following a few keyword guidelines. The best thing to realize here is to be mindful of the keyword density (refers to the percentage of keywords used) so your content reads as naturally as possible.

2. Tags – There are lots of different types of tags you can use, which essentially help let Google know what your website is all about. For example, Meta Tags are often used to tell Google what a certain page is about. Title and Description Tags are what people will see when your website shows up during a search. Header Tags identify the most important keywords and keyword phrases within a blog.

3. Site Map – A site map not only allows your visitors to navigate more easily through your website, it also allows Google’s search engine spiders to index the information in your website (this is a good thing!). Creating a site map takes a bit of skill as you want to make sure that it is made  properly so it can fulfill its intended purpose.

4. Internal Links – An internal link means that you are creating a link on one of your web page’s so it can link to another one of your web page’s. The purpose of doing this is threefold – 1. to allow visitors to navigate more easily throughout your website, 2. helps to establish an information hierarchy, and 3. helps build your rankings. For example, say you’ve created a page on cooking chicken and you want your visitors to know how to handle uncooked chicken safely. You can create a link on your ‘cooking chicken’ page that takes people directly to your ‘how to handle uncooked chicken safely’ page.

5. URL’s – The URL (of a website) is what tells a computer where to go in order to find the website or webpage that you’re looking for. When you write an article, you are going to want a catchy title that not only grabs attention, it needs to reflect what that particular article is all about. When you post the article, you should change the URL to only show the essential keyword(s) used within that particular article.

Off-Site SEO Optimization

I know, we only promised to give you On-Site SEO optimization tips in this article. But since we’ve placed such a big emphasis on telling you that you must use both SEO parts together for the best results, we’ve decided to share with you the most important thing you can do when using Off-Site SEO – getting external links. Basically, Off-Site refers to getting external links so you can connect with other websites in your niche. Google cares what other people/websites are saying about you, making Off-Site SEO an essential part when it comes to getting higher rankings.

External Links – You want to connect with other websites by having them link to your website, which shows Google that your website is indeed worthy enough to link to and share with others. Every time another website links to you, Google sees this as a vote of approval, which helps to give your website the authority you want to be in good standing. The more external links you get, the higher you’re page rank will be.

Good to Know

Make sure that you install Google Analytics, which helps Google not only read your website easier, you also get access to a wealth of critical information. This information includes but is not limited to seeing exactly who is visiting your website, what pages they are visiting the most, measures sales and conversions, and much more. The tools provided here are very helpful when it comes to analyzing your website (hence the name!).

Bottom Line

When it comes to optimizing your website, start by using On-Site SEO. This way you can start adding the high-quality content to your website that people not only want but expect to see when they visit a website. Although it’s not hard to perform SEO, it is quite time-consuming. If you feel you could benefit from some extra help and advice contact us today with any questions you may have. We have the answers you need!

There’s lots to know about SEO optimization so be sure to start using SEO as soon as possible so you can start watching your website get the higher rankings you’re working so hard to acquire. For those who want a bit of a challenge, you can also set up a cache system that allows your website to load faster when people visit. You might also try to avoid using flash and JavaScript as this will lead to a slower loading time.

In fact, a page rank only applies to individual web pages and not to your entire website. For example, just because your Home Page has a PR2 (page ranking of 2, out of 10) doesn’t mean that all of your web pages are worthy of a PR2. This may be surprising to those who think of their website as a whole, instead of the many separate parts/pages it actually is that all together add up to make a whole website.

Why Should I Optimize my Web Pages?

Although the Home Page is often the first web page that people will see when visiting your website, you’ll want to optimize all of your web pages for Google so that they can crawl through your website and give you the high rankings you’re looking for. Google looks at your website as a whole, so you’re going to need to optimize every single web page and not just your Home Page.

Imagine that you’re surfing the internet because you’re looking for some specific information. Now imagine that you found a website that may meet your criteria so you start reading the Home Page. Most likely you’re going to find information that tells you what the website is all about. Great! Now imagine looking for more information while you slowly come to the conclusion that… there really isn’t any. What are you going to do? If you’re like most people, you’re going to leave that website and look for another one that will give you all the information you want and/or need.

Do I Have to Optimize all of my Web Pages?

The majority of your website pages should definitely be optimized. This not only lets your visitors know that you really care about providing them with the quality information they want and/or need, when you optimize most of your web page’s you’re telling Google that you’re taking the time to make your website into one that contains all of the high-quality information that people want to find in a simple and efficient manner.

How do I Optimize my Web Pages?

Optimizing your web pages means using SEO, which includes using both On-Site SEO or Off-Site SEO. Although Google uses more than 200 techniques when they crawl through your website in order to analyze it and give it a page ranking, today we’re going to share the top 2 techniques that we think will benefit you the most when it comes to optimizing all of your web pages.

1. Keywords – Google will focus on a particular keyword or keyword phrase that you’ve chosen for each and every web page. Be sure that you do your homework and choose some really great and relevant keywords, between 10 & 20 is good, which will give you the higher rankings you’re looking for. The best thing to realize here is to be mindful of the keyword density (refers to the percentage of keywords used) so your content reads as naturally as possible. Flow is really important.

2. Links – Google loves links. Remember, if it’s important to Google, then it should be important to you, so try to use links often. When creating links, you’re going to want to use them to take people to other pages of your website. This allows them to easily get more information, which is great, while also giving them a bit of a tour of your website, which is also great. The thing to remember here is that you want the links to link out to lots of different pages while making sure that it all makes sense. Make sense? Just remember, the more natural, the better.

Sorry! One Exception to the Rule

Not every single web page is going to need SEO. Sorry, did we just make this a bit more confusing? This exception applies to what are called ‘no follow’ pages. For example, your ‘Contact Us’ page can be set up as a no follow page because there is really no reason why it needs to show up in search results. As long as the link to this page is placed often throughout your website, it doesn’t matter if  the search engines see it or not.

Bottom Line

Even though your Home Page may be full of great information, there is still a need to provide your readers with a variety of pertinent information. One of the best ways to do this is by writing a lot of high-quality content that people want/need so they can make an informed decision. And people not only want lots of quality information, they also want it to be given to them in an easy-to-read and natural manner. In fact, most people who make their first visit to a website tend to stay on the Home Page for less than one minute before wanting to explore other pages in order to get all the information they’re looking for.