Whether you are a blogger, eCommerce store, or any other type of Internet marketer, knowledge of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is essential. After all, the first key to Internet success is to get the search engines to notice you. One part of effective search engine optimization is investing the time and effort into your site or blog to keep it updated and its traffic continuously growing. A site the stagnates will probably go downhill fast! Here are some more SEO tips for beginners.
SEO Tips for Beginners
1. Stay Current On SEO News
No optimization techniques remain valid forever. You won’t find an “evergreen” formula, so keep up on how the industry is changing. Of course, you will come across contradictory advice at times, but the more you learn, but better you’ll be able to weed out the bad advice from the good.
2. Put Some Thought Into The Design Of Your Website
Your site should have an index and its layout should be easy to grasp. This way, not only will human visitors be able to find their way around your site but so will search engines.
3. Do Some Keyword Research
This should be done for every piece of content you create. There are a number of tools available online to help you with this, either for free or for a fee. Check out my recent article on Free Keyword Research Tools to help you use some free keyword tools. If you want a great paid option then check out SEMrush.
Also ask yourself: what words would you use if you are searching for your particular product or service? Brainstorm three or four alternatives. Common search terms that apply to all pages of your website should be on every page, particularly in titles and headings. Phrases targeting a particular page or article should be included in the beginning, middle and end of the text. You can throw more figurative “nets” into the water by using keyword variations.
4. Remember That Content Is and Always Will Be King
Don’t think that loading your site up with keywords will make up for good content. Instead, this can cause you to be banned by the search engines and can put off human visitors who find the writing to be boring and repetitive. Both humans and search engine spiders can see through vain attempts to trick them into coming to your site.
It is necessary to tread a fine line between having enough keyword density to make the search engines see your site as relevant but not so much that readers find your material to be poor quality, and this is, in fact, what professional SEO writers specialize in.
Also, change your content regularly so as to keep it fresh. This is the beauty of a blog. The content that you put time, money and effort into never disappears, it is simply moved down into the archives, always searchable, as new content is added at the top. A voice dictation package like DragonDictate for Mac or Dragon NaturallySpeaking for PC can help you create a large amount of content without wearing your typing fingers down to the bone.
5. Don’t Forget The Web 2.0 Sites
Forum posting, social bookmarking, social networking and link exchanges can all help. If you can get high ranking blogs and websites to trade links with you, so much the better.
OnlyWire can help in the social bookmarking area. This is an online service and companion software for Mac and Windows that will post your links to dozens of social bookmarking services simultaneously. A certain number of monthly links are free.
OnlyWire also has a badge that you can add to your blog to allow visitors to easily bookmark your site to social bookmarking tools like Technorati, Digg and StumbleUpon. This is really a form of social approval and viral marketing that can draw more traffic to your site. Remember also that social bookmarks and other activities are indexed by the search engines.
Commenting on other blogs in your niche can not only help to get your site noticed and generate backlinks but can lead to blog readers directly clicking the link to your site as well.
There are many search engine strategies that you can use to get noticed by the big three search engines. It is never too late to optimize, so why not start now?
SEO Tips for Beginners
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Great post!! SEO is such an important part of any online business, posts like this one help people understand SEO better. Thanks, Duane
Duane,
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed this post.
Andy
Commenting on other blogs in your niche can not only help to get your site noticed and generate backlinks but can lead to blog readers directly clicking the link to your site as well
Joyce,
Completely agreed! There is definitely something to be said for clicks from a blog comment.
Andy
Good point! Also, subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs to increase your chances of being the first to comment on any post.
Tim,
I just posted something on WF very similar to that idea.
Andy
Hi Andy! good tips from you! Never thought about it, I think many newbies from blogging will need it. SEO is really one of the tools that bloggers need when they start!
Tracy,
SEO is crucial for new bloggers and one of the last things they look at starting.
Andy
Nice tips on SEO
I am new to the field of SEO. I also want to know about On Page SEO and Off Page SEO.
Just emailed you.
A key point to optimizing your site’s content is remember to write for your readers but have a strategy in mind.
Something else to remember is optimize your images with keyword latent names, titles and descriptions. You’d be surprised how well a page with optimized images can rank.
Thanks for the article.
Greg,
Definitely something to keep in mind. With all the weird nuances of SEO writing for readers is strangely not always the same thing.
Andy
Good post. Developing valuable content is one of the best ways for your blog to not only get comments, but shared via social network, guest posts, etc.
Could not agree with you more!
Have you ever thought about adding a little bit more than just your articles? I mean, what you say is fundamental and everything. Nevertheless think of if you added some great pictures or video clips to give your posts more, “pop”! Your content is excellent but with images and video clips, this website could definitely be one of the most beneficial in its field. Good blog!
That is actually kind of funny that you mentioned that. This was a guest post. I just started requiring all new guest blog posts to have some type of PLR image, video, or stock photo that can be used on the site. The challenge is going back over 600 blog posts to see which have images and which do not is a bit challenging.
A good article on SEO for beginners. Maybe some more tips could be added to this, like importance of the page title, as this is one of the most important factors in ranking. Once the keyword research is done, then these keywords need to be added in the right places like in a Title tag to make some difference.
Petra,
Thanks for add! Page Title is definitely huge!
Andy
Very nice post this really very helpful to those who is new in SEO like me. I’m new to this business and I know I need to learn a lot before to succeed.
Ronald,
Glad this was helpful! Is there anything else I can do to help you with SEO?
Andy
Great post!! SEO is such an important part of any online business, posts like this one help people understand SEO better. Thanks, Mary
Your welcome! Appreciate the kind words.
You’re definitely right about the content. It is what you’re using to draw people’s attention to your site, and what makes them stay longer in it. If you regularly deliver good content, you’ll be getting a lot more good responses from your audience, and that’s what you would want to happen. The more good responses you get, the higher the chances that your links will be spread out by the very same people who have been giving you good reviews.
Gerald Martin
Gerald,
Absolutely! I hope that was one of the reasons why you commented today. Plus, the fact is that the more you create great content the more you can increase people’s interest in sharing your information.
Andy
Great stuff. I totally agree- it all comes down to content. Create interesting stuff and people will find you!
@larryphoto
Larry,
Absolutely! SEO matters more on quality than quantity. The quantity only comes when you deliver quality.
Andy