Search Engine Optimization

One of the things people tend to struggle with when starting out in SEO is building links. There are several ways to build high-quality links to your website, but one of the most effective ways to do so, especially if you’re a beginner, is through guest posting. But there’s a whole lot more to guest posting than finding blogs that you like and submitting articles to them. In order to devise an effective guest posting strategy, you need to outline the goals you hope to achieve, define the purpose of each and every blog post you submit, and measure the results of your guest posting campaigns.

Define Your Target Audience

Who buys your products/services? What types of blogs do those people read? Find the most popular blogs that your target audience reads and submit posts to them.

Secure Guest Posting Opportunities

Once you decide which blogs you want to target, find out if they accept guest posts. If there are no clear instructions for guest writers on their websites, email them to ask if they accept guest posts. Prior to contacting blogs to pitch guest posts, make sure that you have some writing samples to show them, as well as a tentative title and description of the article you’d like to submit. Keep in mind that some bloggers don’t accept pitches and require you to submit completed posts for their consideration. Just make sure to follow each blogger’s instructions carefully because not following directions when submitting a guest post is a surefire way to get your work rejected.

Steer Clear of Sales Talk

It’s common for people who are new to guest posting to assume that they can submit thinly-veiled sales pitches as guest posts. But if you want your articles to get accepted and achieve optimal results once published, you need to remember that the point of your articles is not to sell your products/services, but to provide solutions to your readers. Make an effort to write the most helpful posts possible for your target audience. Sure, you want to get your business mentioned and get a link back to your site, but the article itself should educate readers. Besides, if you position yourself as a knowledgeable, helpful authority, people who read your article are far more likely to click on your link. On the other hand, if you try to sell, sell, sell in your guest articles, you will turn off readers and make them stop reading.

Measure the Results of Your Guest Posting Campaigns

Whatever it is you hope to achieve through guest posting, make sure you measure the results of your campaign. Building links is obviously one of the most important benefits that come with guest posting, but guest posts can also help you in several other ways, such as by building your authority, driving traffic to your website, attracting new blog subscribers, and growing your audience on social media networks.

Running out of Blogs to Post on? Find Blogs about Indirectly Related Topics

If your company sells shoes and you run out of shoe blogs to submit guest posts to, don’t fret. You can find many new blogs to submit guest articles to if you consider blogs about indirectly related topics. For example, you can write articles about shoes for fashion blogs, mommy blogs, sports blogs, or travel blogs. Obviously, your writing voice and angle will be different, depending on which type of site you write for.

Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of SEO, yet many people fail to do it properly. Making keyword research mistakes could cost you money because not all traffic leads to sales. In order to drive more profitable traffic to your site, avoid the following 7 blunders.

1. Targeting keywords people don’t use

This sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised to learn how many companies out there brainstorm to come up with keywords without determining whether people actually search for those terms. For example, some businesses use insider jargon as keywords. While these terms might be familiar to someone working in the industry, they are probably foreign to searchers, who tend to use different terminology. If you hire an SEO company to do your keyword research, make sure that they’re not targeting obscure, easy-to-rank-for keywords on purpose, just so they can guarantee rankings.

2. Targeting only high-competition keywords

For many business owners, targeting only high-competition keywords is simply unrealistic because there’s a good chance that they won’t be able to rank their sites for those keywords. Take your site’s authority and age into consideration when choosing keywords because targeting keywords you can’t rank for is a waste of time and money.

3. Not considering user intent

A keyword reveals a lot about user intent. Why did the user enter that particular phrase? What do they want? When doing keyword research, try to get inside the minds of users to figure out exactly what it is they want when they are using certain keywords. For example, a keyword that includes the word, “buy,” is more likely to convert into sales. On the other hand, a keyword that includes the word, “free,” probably won’t convert to sales because the searcher’s intent is to find something free of charge — not actually purchase something.

4. Selecting overly broad keywords

Ranking for overly broad keywords is pointless because broad keywords are far less likely to bring you targeted traffic and sales. For example, it’s better to rank for a specific keyword phrase, such as, “website development firm Canton, Ohio,” than a general phrase like, “website development.”

5. Failing to review keywords on an annual basis

Keyword research isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it process – it’s an ongoing endeavor. Consumer search behavior evolves over time, so reviewing your keywords on an annual basis is essential. During a keyword review, you can determine which keywords are performing poorly and need to be eliminated, as well as which keywords are performing well and show opportunities for growth.

6. Ignoring conversion rates

High levels of traffic don’t matter to your business’s website if that traffic doesn’t convert into sales. Ranking for certain, high-profile keywords might bring you droves of traffic, but financially speaking, your business would be far better off if you targeted keywords that actually translate to sales, even if they aren’t as glamorous as the former.

7. Rushing the keyword research process

Good keyword research, as with anything that’s worth doing, takes time. Rushing the keyword selection process could cost you money in the long run. Taking the time to select relevant, high traffic/low competition keywords that demonstrate purchase intent will bring you a high return on investment (ROI).

An increasing number of people have smart phones these days. Furthermore, according to mobiThinking, half a billion people accessed the mobile web worldwide in 2009. Within five years, usage is expected to double.

Although it’s possible to view regular websites on mobile devices, creating a mobile version of your website is recommended to ensure that it’s viewable on a wide range of devices and that it loads more quickly. In order to be mobile-friendly, your website must be HTML, not Flash. Additionally, it must fit the size of a smart phone screen.

Easy Navigation

The desktop version of your website probably features several links in the footer, header, and sidebar, but offering mobile users so many options isn’t recommended because they have such short attention spans. Only include links to the most important pages of your website, and make sure that the navigation bar is located at the top of your site, so visitors don’t have to scroll down to access content. Typing on a mobile device is difficult, so the idea is to make it easy for mobile users to find the most important content on your site.

Use Fewer Images and Graphics

Graphics and images are a must in web content, but on the mobile web, you should limit your use of them because they will make your website load more slowly on mobile devices. When you do use graphics and images, resize them, so they take less time to load and so that users don’t have to zoom in to see them. Furthermore, make sure they’re in .JPEG, .PNG, or .GIF format because those formats are lightweight.

Use Automatic Mobile Device Detection

Telling users that you have a mobile website and then getting them to visit the mobile version of your site can be a hassle. You can make it so that your website automatically detects mobile devices and triggers the mobile version of your site. One way to do this is through User Agent detection, which is when a server makes a decision about which website version to display based on the capabilities of the browser that the visitor is using.

Cut Down Content

Since most people who use the mobile web are on the go, consider cutting down your content into digestible chunks and providing links to the full articles for anyone who wants to read them in their entirety.

Use a Mobile Emulator

Use a mobile emulator to determine what your website will look like on different mobile browsers. Some helpful tools include the Blackberry Web Development Page, which gives you access to Blackberry simulators, and the Android SDK, which shows you what your website will look like on Android devices.

Put Your Contact Information in a Prominent Place

Many mobile users look for a business’s contact information, so make sure that your business’s phone number and address are displayed on a prominent part of your website. If you have a local business, including a map of your business’s location and directions that explain how to get there is recommended because it will make it easier for customers to find you.

PageRank is an algorithm that Google uses to measure how reputable a website is. A site’s PageRank depends on the quality and quantity of its incoming links, as well as on the quantity of outgoing links it has per page. PageRank values range from 0-10.

In the early years of SEO, PageRank was one of the most important ranking signals, so many webmasters tried to manipulate their sites’ PageRank by building links organically or paying for links from sites with a high PageRank. Nowadays, SEOs are divided when it comes to the topic of PageRank. Some SEOs still believe that PageRank is important, while others have stopped caring about it.

According to Google’s Matt Cutts, PageRank is still important, but it is only one out of 200 signals that Google uses to rank websites. So, while PageRank matters, webmasters should probably focus their energies on increasing relevant traffic to their websites rather than on boosting their websites’ PR.

But that doesn’t mean you should stop caring about PageRank altogether. Your website’s PageRank affects the number of pages on your website that get indexed by Google. So, in order to increase the number of pages of your website that are indexed by Google, you need to increase your site’s PageRank. Furthermore, to ensure that the most important pages of your site are being indexed by Google, it’s necessary to build high-value links that point specifically to those pages. High-value links are links that hail from relevant, high authority websites.

A website’s PageRank determines how much value its outbound links provide to other sites. Generally speaking, links from a PR8 site are more valuable than links from a PR1 site. However, links from high PR websites don’t matter if they aren’t from relevant websites, or if the websites link to several irrelevant websites from the same page.

For example, if you have a website that sells light bulbs and you get a link from a PR8 site that sells tables and links to several other irrelevant websites from the same page, you won’t get much value from that link, despite the high PageRank of the site. You’d be better off getting links from sites with a lower PageRank but that are relevant to your website. It’s important to note that few websites have a PageRank above 5 besides governmental websites, educational websites, or websites from large, famous companies.

Rankings, Traffic, and Conversion Rates Are More Important Than PageRank

The general consensus among online marketers is that PageRank doesn’t affect rankings directly because a PR0 website could outrank a PR5 website in some instances. It wouldn’t hurt to monitor your website’s PR, but it’s far from being the most important metric to pay attention to when it comes to your online presence.

When you build links to your site, make an effort to get links from high PR sites, but only if they’re relevant and don’t contain several other outbound links. The bottom line is that you shouldn’t obsess over PageRank, but you shouldn’t ignore it, either. PageRank is important because it helps you determine whether your link-building efforts are on the right track, but in the end, your site’s traffic levels, sales, and conversion rates are what matter most.

All the SEO in the world won’t help your website if it doesn’t have credibility. Websites that lack credibility have difficulty converting browsers into buyers because it’s impossible sell to people who don’t trust you. In order for your website’s SEO campaign to be effective in the long run, you need to focus on building a high quality internet presence that both search engines and people trust. Here are 10 tips for doing so.

1. Write high quality content

If writers in India are churning out articles for your website at $3 a page, visitors to your site aren’t going to think it’s credible. Bad grammar, bad spelling, and blatant misinformation will hurt your reputation and make people distrust your brand. Focus on quality over quantity and hire a professional writer to produce compelling content for your site. Content creation isn’t an expense – it’s an investment.

2. Include your physical address

Search engines, directory editors, and website visitors will look for a physical address on your site to evaluate its credibility.

3. Privacy policy

Along with your physical address and phone number, don’t forget to include a privacy policy in the footer of your website! A privacy policy is a signal of trustworthy website.

4. Build a social media presence

Make an effort to build a following on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites. Once you have a decent number of fans and followers, display your social media profiles on your website and invite visitors to connect with you. By displaying your social media profiles, you are showing potential buyers that there are real people behind your brand and that others listen to what you have to say.

5. Display the number of RSS feed subscribers you have

People are more likely to trust you if you have a large following. So, if your website has a blog and you develop a healthy base of RSS feed subscribers, display your subscriber count in a prominent area of your website.

6. State your qualifications

Do you have a degree or certification in your field? State all relevant qualifications that you have in your “About” page. In addition, if you’re a member of a relevant organization or club, mention it in your bio.

7. Limit advertisements

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make a buck or two with ads on your website, but not at the expense of your website visitors’ trust. Avoid plastering your website with ads. Feature only a limited number of quality ads that are highly relevant to your industry.

8. Have your website designed by a professional

Nothing screams “amateur” more than a generic template website. If you want your website to look trustworthy and reputable, have a professional customize its design for you.

9. Include a photo of yourself

Get a professional photo taken of yourself and your employees to increase the credibility of your site. People are more likely to trust your site if they know what the people behind it look like.

10. Update your website on a regular basis

Update your website’s content on a regular basis to show visitors that you stay on top of what’s happening in your industry. Static websites don’t seem as credible as dynamic websites because they look abandoned.