101 SEO Tips to get more Traffic

101 SEO Tips

Simple SEO Advice

• 1Keyword(s) in Domain Name
  If possible, put your main keyword in the domain name. www.bestdogcollars.com
• 2Hyphens in Domains or not
  For SEO it seems that there is no difference between delimiting words in domain name or writing them together
• 3What is wrong with hyphens in the domain name
  It's just people are more used to domains without hyphens.Stop Press:- Matt Cutts of Google seems to prefer domains with hyphens.
• 4Domain Name Suggestion Tools
  there are several websites which will generate possible domain names from a list of keywords you supply. Click the following Google Search link google.com/search?hl=&q=domain+name+generator
• 5Landing Pages
  These allow you to fine tune a page on your website for a particular keyword phrase.
• 6Keyword or Keyword Phrase
  People talking about keywords usually really mean keyword phrase.
• 7Synonyms
  When writing it is good practice to use synonyms as an alternative to the main keywords as it makes reading the article more interesting less turgid this is also sensible for SEO reasons. So you might describe a girl as pretty or beautiful or attractive. They will increase the page ranking.
• 8Goldilocks Effect
  Any technique that is used to improve the SEO of your website will if over-used damage the page's ranking. So use your common sense and get it "Just Right".
• 9Alt Tag for Images
  Ensure that the principle relevant images have a keyword-rich descriptive ALT tag. eg "Baboon using hairbrush"
• 10Image Names
  Ensure that you name your relevant images with keyword-rich names . eg not baboon1.jpg but "baboon-loves-his-hairbrush.jpg"
• 11Google Page Rank
  Google ranks pages 0 to 10, 10 being the best. PR 3 or 4 is usually good for an Internet Marketing site.
• 12Alexa.com
  Alexa is a quick way to get data on your page rank, incoming links and general popularity.
• 13Keyword Stuffing
  This is name given when there are too many references to your keywords. Google may decide that you are a Spam Site and demote or sandbox you.
• 14Google Sandbox
  If your site upsets Google your site may disappear from the SERPS and effectively be sandboxed.
• 15SERP
  Search Engine Results Page: you want to be on the first one or two for your keyword phrase.
• 16Organic Traffic
  This is the best kind of traffic which arrives because you've done your SEO and because your website has good content. This traffic is caused when people find you in the SERPS and is FREE.
• 17On Page SEO
  This refers to all you can do optimize your website or web page for SEO as apposed to the more difficult Off Page SEO which includes back-linking, blogging, Social Website marketing.
• 18Broken Links
  Everyone dislikes broken links, missing images, Google does as well and will down rate your site. Use a link-checker website to get a report on your site
• 19Well structured site with good navigation
  Anything that makes your site easy to navigate for humans will generally make it easier for Google to explore and index your site.
• 20Site Map
  A Site Map makes it easier for Google to navigate and index your site. Site maps are best generated by an automatic tool as they are easier to keep updated.
• 21For internal linking - put nofollow attribute on links to unimportant pages
  eg like "Privacy Policy", "Contact us" and other pages
• 22Nofollow attribute for hyperlinks
  <a href='htttp://squidoo.com/' rel="nofollow">NoFollow Attribute</a> This is used by forum and blogs to reduce the amount of spam postings as any resulting link is worthless. You can use it indicate to Google which pages on your site are important.
• 23Title Tag,Meta Description and First H1, H2,H3 Tags
  These are the most important tags and in that order. They should really say the same thing, all variations on your keyword phrase.
• 24Web Silos
  This is the sectioning of your website into different themes that are hardly inter-linked but have a lot of internals links.
• 25Breadcrumb Trail
  A breadcrumb trail is a navigation tool that allows a user to see where the current page is in relation to the Web site's hierarchy. It is very good for people visiting your site as they always know where they are, it is also brilliant for SEO as it is keyword rich.
  e.g.
  Baboons - Baboon Hair Care - Baboon Hair Brushes each section of the breadcrumb trail is clickable.
• 26Visit Competitors Websites
  When you put your keyword phrase into a Search Engine go to the websites that appear on the first page and see what they are doing right.
  Read their Meta tags look at their layout, keyword frequency; is there anything you can learn from them?
• 27Viewing your website as a visitor would
  It's important to try and view your website as others might. The could ask a friend or colleague to review the site, how easy it is to navigate your site and what he perceives the message to be. Also there are many websites which will analyze your site from a SEO point of view.
• 28Why you will succeed with your SEO
  You will succeed because you painstakingly apply what you know. Every significant image with an Alt Tag, relevant and different Title and Meta tags on every page, good focused content, intuitive site navigation and so on. This requires persistence and patience and many people frankly can't be bothered or get fed up halfway through, if you don't then your website will do better than theirs.
• 29Add new content regularly
  Search Engines like fresh content, in fact they pride themselves on their ability to index new information.
• 30Meta Keywords Tag
  Focus on phrases, rather than single keywords in your Meta Keywords section
• 31Meta Keywords Tag
  Use a maximum of 10-15 keywords/phrases in the Meta Keywords tag on each page of your website. Make sure they different for each page, a maximum of 400 characters including spaces, commas.
• 32CSS
  Put your CSS in includable stylesheet files eg /css/main.css this reduces the clutter on your page and makes life easier for the Search Engine Robots who index your site.
• 33robots.txt
  A little file in your home directory which tells the search engines what NOT to index.
• 34Anchor Text
  You will often see a hyperlink Click Here The clickable bit is called Anchor Text It is essential in SEO terms to get your Keyword Phrase in there instead eg Click the following to learn more about Baboon Hairbrushes .
• 35On Page/Off Page SEO
  On Page SEO is everything you can do on your Website to optimize your SEO. That in a way is your easy part because it is under your control. Off Page SEO is everything you do to get other people to link to your website it also includes all the links you can get back to your site Backlinks by posting in forums and by social marketing (Facebook, Twitter etc). Once again the quality and relevance of any links is very important.
• 36Backlinks
  Links to your site from other relevant quality websites and forums. One-way links to your site are the best as they imply that your site is the important one. Best if from a related site with a high Google PR. Should not be from a link farm.
• 37Local SEO
  Many service-based businesses such as plumbers, dentists are only interested in attracting local customers. Local SEO is currently very big.You need to get local geographical information into the website.
• 38Traffic Retention
  Once your hard-won visitor decides to leave your site make sure that as many as possible of the hyperlinks leaving your site are to OTHER websites you own! Don't have just-for-the-sake-of-it links to Wikipedia etc.
• 39Keyword Density/Saturation
  This is the number of times your most important keyword phrases are repeated on a single page, helping to indicate how that keyword is the "focus" of what the webpage is about. Most webmasters aim to get a 3%-7% saturation rate for their most valued keywords or keyword strings. Search Engines may penalize saturation above these levels, don't risk it.
• 40Google Analytics
  The easiest way to keep track of visitors especially if you have lots of websites is to use Google Analytics (free). Tell you how many visitors per day, month. Where they came from, what keywords they used to find your site etc etc
• 41Is their a hungry market for your products or services?
  Have you researched this? I mean no matter how good I do a site for Baboon Hairbrushes no how well I implement my SEO , no matter how much I spend on PPC I'll obviously never sell a single one. Is there enough of a market for your product be honest??
• 42PPC : Pay Per Click
  This is legitimate way to buy traffic. However many people lose money with PPC as it is a skill in itself.
• 43Canonical URL : http://www.baboonhairbrushes.com/
  Not http://baboonhairbrushes.com/ not http://www.baboonhairbrushes.com not http://www.baboonhairbrushes.com/index.html
• 44Linking to your pages
  Don't link to /hairbrushes/ in one place and /hairbrushes/index.php in another, Google will split the link-juice between the two versions it will NOT assume that they are the same. Lesson 1 be consistent. Lesson 2 use the short form /hairbrushes/
• 45Link Juice
  The amount of credit you gain or lose every time you link either internally or externally. Gain if it's to a quality relevant site with as good or higher page rank, lose if it is to a low ranking site with no relevance to your keywords.
• 46Don't use nested HTML Tables
  If when you view-source your webpages the HTML looks a jumbled up mess then it will also look that way for Search Engine robots. Use CSS Stylesheets instead, properly used they vastly reduce the html in your pages.
• 47Buy your Domain LAST: After your research
  Many people regret their choice of domain name which they rushed into!
• 48Hot buyers
  Something who is considering buying a new television types "flat screen television" into a search engine. Someone who is close to buying types in "Panasonic TC-L22X2", he has narrowed down his choices. Which visitor would you rather have a shop-window browser or someone with his credit-card in hand.
• 49Targeted Traffic
  It is unfortunately not good enough to get traffic what you really need is quality targeted traffic that means the people who come to your website are potential customers. If you get quality traffic it probably means that you are getting your SEO right.
• 50Hyperlinks : Use the Title Attribute
  Sometimes it may not be convenient to get your keywords into anchor text eg lack of space, but you can always use the title tag.
  <a href="http://passiveearners.com" title="Learn how to create passive income streams"> Passive Income</a>
  
  In fact we should always use the title tag but very few do!
• 51SERPS : The double battle
  Yes you want to get on SERP page one or two, but that's only half the battle people still have to click your link. Whether they do mostly depends on whether the excerpt shown by the Search Engine is sufficiently punchy to attract their attention and more importantly reassure them that your website/page is what they've are looking for.
• 52Keyword Phrase Synonyms
  When writing elegant easy-to-read English it is necessary to avoid repeatedly use the same words or phrases to do this we instinctively use synonyms. Search engines like synonyms as well and people using Search Engines are likely to use all sorts of variants on your keyword phrase. Use a Thesaurus to get more synonym ideas , a book or a website.
• 53First Paragraph of your webpage
  The search engines may use this as the representative excerpt of your website in the Search Engines. Concentrate on making this punchy and end it with a hook to encourage them to click on your link and once on your site to carry on reading it.
• 54What are your potential customers entering into the Search Engines?
  This is the never-ending question, lots of websites including Google will try to supply you with this information e.g. Google Trends.
• 55Persistence: What will make the difference
  You have to keep improving your copy, your SEO until you start to build traffic, you may never know what it was that finally made the crucial difference but it won't be down to chance it will be down to your persistence.
• 56Evergreen Niches
  Health, Wealth, Relationships, Animal Care. Sorry if you think these are dull, these are the evergreen markets which will always work and even if there already a million sites there is room for more more.
• 57Blog Topical News
  Serious news or celebrity news doesn't matter but you must be quick as soon as the story breaks
• 58URL Sub-Directories Depth
  http://www.baboon-hairbrushes.com/african/congo/ two levels maximum is optimal for URLs.
  So avoid http://www.baboon-hairbrushes.com/african/congo/southcongo/
• 59Ugly URLS
  Search Engines don't like and get confused by dynamic webpages with complex parameters eg:-
  
  http://www.baboon-hairbrushes.com/page.php?continent=africa&country=congo=region=x1234
  
  ( you can use URL rewrite rules to mask these) so that the above URL has a virtual URL of form.
  
  http://www.baboon-hairbrushes.com/africa/congo/
• 60You are in many different SERPS pages for many different Keywords
  Many of course are hopelessly low down but who knows they may bring you occasional traffic. Other phrases may suddenly rise in the rankings because some event has made them topical. You have to decide which keyword phrases you are going to prioritize on. What this means is that SERP rankings are fluid. You have to remain alert and flexible.
• 61SEO: Ideally you are doing the SEO for just one website
  SEO is a full-time occupation and is on-going you have to be alert for changes in ranking, trends, broken hyperlinks etc etc. The sites you are trying to manage the more your efforts are diluted.
• 62Long Tail Keywords
  These are keyword phrases with quite a few keywords in them e.g. "Green Baboon Hairbrushes". The trick is to find a Long Tail Keyword that has significant searches but not much competition.
• 63Backlink Double Whammy
  The most important thing about a relevant backlink is the link-juice if people actually click on the link and visit your site then that is a welcome bonus.
• 64No follow Backlinks
  Yahoo Answers is a great source of traffic even though like many such sites it only allows no follow hyperlinks., it is still worth it because of the traffic. The question you have to answer is how much time and enthusiasm do you have for establishing your Yahoo Answers reputation?
• 65Split Testing
  This is trying out two methods and comparing the results, so you could try promoting a product one way on one landing page and the another way on a different page and then after a period of time measure the results.
• 66SEO: Your Integrity
  Play it straight, no Black-Hat Techniques, the Internet is a double-edged sword you don't know who is watching you.
• 67Black Hat SEO
  This includes Doorway Pages, these techniques allow you to hijack traffic that the actual content of your site doesn't merit. Search Engines don't like this and will probably sandbox your site. Black Hat techniques usually only have short term benefits which don't outweigh the risks.
• 68White Hat SEO
  Legitimate techniques to maximize the attractiveness of your site to the Search Engines.
• 69Keep thinking of ways to stand out from the crowd
  Keep looking for an angle, a slant, for originality a new way of looking at something that no one else has spotted.
• 70When describing something be as precise as possible
  That's not a bus it's a "1966 Routemaster RML 2548". Do this to get the Long Tail Searches.
• 71Content is King but with SEO it is so much better
  Content is King but today there are many sites with excellent content the easiest or only way to pull ahead of them is by maximizing SEO.
• 72Regular Fresh Content
  Search Engines like to see regular changes to you website. Dormant websites gradually slip down the rankings.
• 73Incorporate a Blog
  A blog is an excellent to way to keep your website fresh and to focus visitors on new developments in your business.
• 74Calls to Action
  Instead of writing "Best Squidoo Poll" "Take the Best Squidoo Poll Now!". Get Your Sneak Peek..., Free Guide on ... , Learn how .... Turn your link from passive to active.
• 75Internal Hyperlinks
  Be sure to include your keyword phrase in internal links both hyperlinks which jump to a different part of your page and also to different parts of your website. Search engines estimate such links must be important. If you don't have any such links consider adding them!
• 76Logout of Google before checking your position in the SERPs!!
  If you are logged into your Google account, Google will tailor your search results to suit your previous search Preferences this completely skews the results and will show your sites appearing much higher in the rankings! Best thing use somebody else's PC!
• 77Deep Linking
  Search engines like to see links that go elsewhere than your home page e.g. directly to a subsidiary page or article. The only problem of such links is that they easily get broken when you reorganize your site.
• 78Keyword Stemming
  This is the process of using a popular keyword and modifying it in order to increase your chances of getting hits.
  So if search is the base or stem word, you should also work in searching, searchable, searched etc
• 79Your SERP Extract
  If you search for your website what does it look ?
  101 SEO Tips to get more Traffic <-- Highlighted link
  101 SEO Tips explains SEO as simply as possibly. Not just what you have to do but the commonsense reasons why you should do it.I've made a lot of mone... <--- whoops broken off , should be punchier
  http://www.squidoo.com/101-seo-tips <--- displayed URL
• 80Title Word Order Counts
  If your title is "Baboon Hairbrushes" you will appear higher in the search engines when people search for Baboon Hairbrushes than a Title
  "Best hairbrushes for Baboons" and vice-versa. You have to decide which keyword phrase you want to target.
• 81Make Your subtitles Questions or Answers
  People are always using Search Engines to Ask Questions or seek Solutions. Try making your Headings either Questions or Answers
• 82The important first 50 words of text
  These should be a nutshell description of your web page, they should contain a sprinkling of your keywords. These 50 words may be used as the excerpt display by search engines, so they must engage the interest of any human visitor, they must be compelling.
• 83URL/Domain Age
  Search Engines give greater credence to old domains, five years is a nice age, provides a bit more evidence that this was not a fly-by-night website created by an aggregator.
• 84Get Backlinks Slowly
  It's hard to get them quickly so Search Engines will be extremely suspicious if a previously unknown site suddenly has lots of links.
• 85Think Seasonal, think Topical
  Which of your products are seasonal Xmas, Easter etc, which are in the news, if so blog them and put them on your home page. Bricks and mortar stores are constantly rearranging their shop displays.
• 86Warm List
  This is your list of friends and colleagues and forums that you use regular which you can use to see a little traffic for a new site, blog or lens. Don't abuse your warm list, save them for important launches!
• 87Hungry Crowd
  Not all traffic is equal , traffic from a Hungry Crowd that is what you need , targeted traffic from people with their credit cards already in their hands
• 88Why SEO Analysis Tools and Websites are so useful
  These tools analyze your website dispassionately showing you what your Title, meta tags, first H1, the first 50 words etc. I'm often horrified to see that I have sites that I thought were fully optimized still contain SEO clangers! Many of the omissions occur because at the time you first created a site you were so busy with just getting the site up you neglected the vital SEO aspects.
• 89Get Inside the Heads of your Potential Customers
  Are your customers sophisticate Internet users or not? Do they know they are looking for your product or what problem are they trying to solve?
  You must know why people would want to come to your website. You must also know why your existing visitors came to your site.
• 90Observe your own behavior
  Pay more attention to how YOU use Search Engines, try and notice what it is that draws your eyes and makes you click a link?
• 91Multi Titles
  Separating a title with Pipes allow alternative Titles eg
  <title>SEO Tips | Learn SEO | SEO Secrets</title>
• 92Social Marketing
  Twitter, Facebook, Stumble-upon etc. People will click your link if you write interesting posts or appear to be an authority on a subject or because you are amusing. The power of Social Marketing is when people retweet or relink your article, posting or site.
• 93Use Site Analysis Tools on your Competitor's Websites
  See what keywords they use, what they do right or wrong or just get ideas!
• 94SEO is Non-Linear
  A small change in SEO can have a dramatic effect, you may however never know which change. You just have to keep patiently improving content, improving on-page SEO and especially off-page SEO
• 95Don't accidentally delete the thing that is bringing you traffic
  Be careful updating a successful web page or website it's easy to remove the sentence or paragraph that is attractive to the search engines. Many website owners are astonished when their expensive new website gets less traffic than their old plain-Jane website. That's another reason why it is so important to know exactly why you are getting traffic.
• 96Domain Name or Squidoo URL (2)
  Since I have been researching this Lens I have noticed that domain names that include nearly exactly the keywords that you searched for will come top or very nearly top. Search for "Anti Jokes" or "happy dogs" or just test 2 keywords you arbitrarily choose yourself.
• 97Build a Cluster of websites/blogs based on your niche
  Build a cluster of websites and blogs around the same theme and inter-link them.
• 98YouTube Videos as source of traffic
  Video is becoming increasingly important as a traffic source, YouTube is used as a search engine by an increasing minority of people who consume (only) information visually. If people find your videos interesting enough they will click your link. Include the video on your website of course. When videos go viral your traffic could explode.
• 99Demographics: Who are your Customers?
  research who is your Target Customer Market? Middle-aged women, housewives or working, affluent young people, silver surfers and so and then modify your SEO appropriately.
• 100Tip 100: Never stop thinking about your Keywords
  Think about keywords day and night how can I get just the right keyword phrase into my content and make my content even more compelling, even more relevant. Keep improving your understanding of SEO, eat, drink and sleep SEO.
• 101Tip 101: Nothing your Rivals are doing is hidden!
  By using analysis tools and view-source you can see what techniques competitor websites have used to get their site to the top, what keywords, what SEO, where they got their back-links from nothing can be hidden.
• 102Google Hates Thin Content
  Well it doesn't exactly hate it but rather it needs enough text to take your web page seriously, it needs enough words to index. You will notice serious bloggers write quite long articles. You will know if you've written enough or whether you have skimped.
• 103Content is King: Did you sweat the content?
  Did you put your heart and soul into your content, did you thoroughly research, was most of it original, did you find a new slant?
  Did you ask someone to review it, did you improve the elegance of the text, did you improve the readability? Remember this is the bit that is difficult to fake.
• 104UUU : Unique, Useful, Updated Content
  This is what the Guru Seth Godin says is the secret to getting traffic, your content should unique, actually useful and frequently updated.

On Page SEO the Numbers

How may keywords, how long a description etc

• 1Title Tag Length :70 characters max
• 2Meta Description: 150 characters max
• 3Links per page : 100 Max
• 4Meta Keywords
  Should only include keywords that appear in your content otherwise may be seen as keyword stuffing. Can be keywords or short key phrases.
• 5Hyphens in URL or domain
  More than four will be considered spammy.
• 6The First 50 words of text
  Your keys should occur in the first 50 words of text on your page. These may be used as the excerpt on a SERPS page as well of course.
• 7Keyword Density
  Should occur at least once for every 100~ words (1-4%) written on the page. This is actually quite a lot. Use a website which will analyze your site to check these percentages
• 850 Backlinks
  This is really a speculative number and will depend on market sector, but 50 postings to forums should get you on page one. That's 50 good postings on relevant forums.
• 9Page Size
  40k is good 100k is max (images, text & html)
• 10700 words per page

SEO Strategy

1. Create Your Keyword Phrase List
   Make a list of a 100 or so phrases relevant to your site (use a spreadsheet). Use keyword research tools such as the keyword selector tool at Wordtracker to find the keyword phrases that will be most worth your time to go after that is to say have 200 or so searches a day but less than 30,000 competing websites.
2. Create a Page Optimized for Each Keyword Phrase
   having ruthlessly pruned your list now create a page for each remaining phrase.
3. Get Quality Relevant Backlinks
   This is the toughest but most vital stage.

The Five Types of SEO

• 1Pre-SEO: Keyword Research/Niche Research
  This is a whole field of expertise itself. This researching your market, whether a viable market exists, are there keywords available that are not too competitive, do you have a chance of succeeding in this niche.
• 2Off Page SEO
  Backlinks from other websites, backlinks from posting in Forums, backlinks from Social Marketing, backlinks from Article writing.
• 3On Page SEO
  This is conventional or technical aspects of SEO having the most relevant Title,Meta Description and Keywords, H1,H2,H3 tags, alt attributes on images, titles on hyperlinks, keyword density, article focus etc
• 4IN Page SEO
  This is in my opinion the most important it is the artful inclusion of phrases and sentences that will attract the Search Engines it is the art of copy-writing, the skill of introducing hooks, creating anticipation in your text. It is continually experimenting with your copy and techniques, moving paragraphs around adding or removing an image. It is the adding of fresh or topical information. It is being concise and interesting. IN-page SEO is normally lumped in with On-page SEO but I think it is so important that it is best to separate it out.
• 5Measuring your SEO / Analyzing your website
  continuously measure your website traffic, Search Engine Ranking, use Google Analytics, use all the other sites which will analyse your website in various ways. It is important to quickly notice whenever traffic ramps or falls. Continually investigate how people found your site from what sources sources and with which keywords.

What you need to understand about SEO

It is simple really

SEO Research

1. Research
   Start your SEO campaign with an emphasis on research of all kinds
2. What are You Promoting?
   Research your product offerings and services, research your Niche
3. Who are your Competitors?
   Identify your top competitors (Google Search)
4. What are your Competitors Doing Right?
   They are at the top of Google, what Keywords, SEO strategy are they using?
5. Can you hope to Compete?
   It could be too much effort. might be better to promote another product or niche
6. Links from your own Sites
   There are so many free blogs, websites, that you can create today and them then use them to link back to your own site. The best thing about this is you have control over the link's anchor text . Blogger etc

More SEO Tips and Tricks

• 1Learn how to View-Source Webpages
  The View Source function of your browser allows you to see how any web page is constructed, see what keywords and meta description your rivals are using. If you view-source a Squidoo lens you will see that underneath it is a conventional HTML page.
• 2Link Wheels
  There seems to be some controversy about whether Link Wheels are white hat, but just so you know what they are:- Create a new blog let's call it The Hub, then create other blogs or links from social sites which have one way links to this hub. Then make single one way link to your main website. All the link-juice flows one-way into your website.
• 3First and Last Sentence on your Page
  Get your Keywords into the FIRST & the LAST sentence of your page.