80% of a website’s traffic begins with a search query. Here are the six most powerful search engine optimization tricks to improve your rankings even more.
1. Link Building
This is the first part of common SEO tactics and it can be broken down into several techniques or methods. But the basic principle here is that you spread links going to your website throughout the internet. This is done because one of the factors that affect search engine rankings is the number of links leading to the site. Basically, each link is a “vote”. The idea behind this from a search engine standpoint is that if a lot of websites link to a particular website, then that means the receiver has good content and is deserving of a higher spot in the rankings. Link Building is done in order to replicate this effect.
2. Directory Submission
This is the first and probably the most common link building method there is. Almost any website today uses this method and all SEO specialists are at least familiar with this method. It is the fastest and easiest way to gain links from all over the internet. So how does this go?
First off, there are websites on the internet designed to provide people a service similar to that of the Yellow Pages. The main difference is that instead of providing the address and phone number of a particular business, it provides the URL of a particular website. These sites are called Directories and they are huge compilations of various sites all over the internet.
What’s great about Directories is that they also categorize the sites listed in them. Although categorization can differ from one Directory to another, it’s still very helpful that they are categorized. And, another great thing here is that you can use them to gain links for your site.
Basically all you have to do is to look for a Directory (which isn’t very hard). Next, look for the button to submit a site to their directory. You are then instructed to fill up a form containing information such as website name, the URL address, a quick description, e-mail of the submitter for verification, etc. After you do this, click on submit and it will be posted after the owners of the directory approve it.
Accomplish this process a couple of times every day and you’re sure to gain good backlinks for your website.
Now there are good directories and bad directories to submit to. You can identify a good directory if it has a high page rank and if it does not use a “no follow” tag on the links. Bad directories, on the other hand, are the exact opposite. They have zero page rank, which could also indicate that they are blacklisted by Google, and they implement “no follow” tags.
Manually register your site with DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project.The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors and feeds other leading web directories.
3. Content
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization, the content will play a huge role in your rankings. As they say, “Content is King, Link Building is Queen”. Remember, all the hard work you do in building up your links will be for naught if your content is garbage. Search engines love websites that have good content and that only. If you can build good backlinks, you have to offer good content as well to achieve proper optimization and success.
Actually, it’s not just for optimization’s sake. SEO is about bringing in traffic, and how can you get people to go to your website if you have nothing significant to share? How can you convince people to stay on your website and buy something or click on an affiliate link if you have no articles, videos, or at least pictures in there? Simply put, you can’t do any of that without proper content.
That being said, Search Engine Optimization should start with creating and uploading content. This can include a lot of things but the most basic piece of content that you will use is articles.
When writing your articles, you need to keep in mind two things: first is your reader, next are the search engines. You need to make sure that both aspects are taken care off. Make it easy for your readers to understand and digest what you have to say. You can have different approaches to writing your articles; it’s up to you in which method you’ll be comfortable in. The important thing is that you express what needs to be expressed. You let the readers understand where you are coming from. And, in a sales point of view, you have to convince them that they need to buy or avail of what you are offering. It’s all about convincing your reader that what you say is true.
Next, you also have to treat search engines in the same manner and importance as your readers. This is because if you treat search engines right, they will place your content in a higher ranking. As mentioned earlier, they love good, unique content. That been said, how do you make them happy? First, make sure that your article is not plagiarized or simply copy and pasted onto your website. There are a lot of free online tools that lets you do that.
Next thing to remember is to make use of your keywords in your articles. Sprinkle them all over the place, but do not overdo it. Using your keywords too much can result in search engines not liking your site due to Keyword Stuffing. Use it a lot but in a smart way.
Other things that can make search engines happy about your article are the use of tags like bold tags for your keywords, header tags, and title tags. This can significantly improve the looks of your article in the eyes of search engines.
Of course, there’s more than one type of content that you can use for your website. The main one would be articles, but you can also use pictures or images to enhance the look and feel of your website. It can also add emphasis to whatever you are saying in your article. Images are a great way to catch your reader’s eye and get the message across faster.
Audio and video content are also good choices for certain websites. You can add audio messages or even background music for your website just to give it a better feel or ambiance. Plus, it lets your visitors remember the site. Videos, on the other hand, give you a faster and easier way to communicate with your visitors.
4. Competitor Reverse Engineering
Nowadays, it’s very difficult to have an original idea on the internet. You think it, it could already be there. Do you want to sell something on the internet? Most likely you have a direct or at least an indirect competitor. Some of the most congested niches on the net right now are diet drugs, pharmaceutical products, travel services, selling software of various kinds, and selling t-shirts to name a few. Now, of course, you what you can do is offer a better product or service so that you will sell. But the problem is, how will people find you? You will have to do SEO.
The problem with that is these people are on top for a reason. For one, their product or service must be good. If you are confident that what you have to offer is better than the current leader, then the only problem you have now is SEO. More often than not, the leader of any niche would have done SEO as well. To combat this, you need to do a lot more than what they have already done. You have to find your edge SEO-wise. You need something to get you ahead. But before you get ahead, you must catch up first. And you have a lot of ground to cover. That’s where Competitor Reverse Engineering comes in.
Competitor Reverse Engineering is the process of checking what your competitor has done SEO wise and doing it yourself. The main question now is, how exactly do you do that? Well, first of all, there are tools that you can use to check their backlinks. These are the same tools that you would use to check your own backlinks. Basically, you do to their site what you would do to your site in order to see how SEO friendly or how properly optimized the website is. In doing so, you get an idea on where they post to get their backlinks. Truth be told, this can take a very, very long time. You have to be really meticulous in doing this in order to get every last drop of information and every last detail on what they did. You will spend hours doing search engine queries and looking at their website.
Gather all the information that you can and take note of them. Now that you have this written down, it is time to analyze them. The first useful information you will get out of doing this is to get an idea of how massive or how strong their SEO team is. You will see this in the number of backlinks they have and the number of indexed pages there are in search engines. With this information, you now have a benchmark on how big the workload you have in order to catch up with your competitor.
The next useful bit of information is you will find where to place your links. Check the backlinks. Not just the note of where they are, but actually look for them in the site they are published in. Look at where they are placed. Is it a comment? Is the link part of a signature in a forum post? Or is it a simple directory post? Whatever it is, list it down. Take note of every single detail of where the link is, how was it posted, etc. This will serve as your guide.
Now that you have the information in your hands, it’s time to act using it. You know how your leading competitor got to his spot. In order to position yourself to take that spot, you have to be right behind them. You can do that by using this information in one of two ways. First, you can do it in the exact, same way they have done it.
