Some SEO Essentials

The first thing to know about SEO is that you should never begin any search engine optimization effort without a great keyword strategy in place first. You must learn what keywords you are optimizing for, and they should obviously be relevent to the business you are in. To uncover the validity of optimizing for any precise keyword, it’s wise to employ an application like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (which is free of charge) or even a paid program like Market Samuri, Traffic Travis, or WebCEO. A lot of paid resources supply a free trial offer, so be sure you like the software before you buy it. Whatever you decide to do, don’t embark on a serious SEO campaign without first performing your research. You need to know the monthly search volume of each and every keyword you desire to optimize for as well as the relative competitiveness for ranking highly for any keyword.

After you have defined your approach, it’s time to get moving. Start with optimizing the web site itself. This process is known as On-page search engine optimization. Necessary On-page SEO factors which can be assessed include your website address, Meta tags, keyword density, load speed, header tags, and much more. Of all of these components, perhaps nothing is more valuable than your title tag. Your title tag is a Meta tag. It tells search engines like google just what the theme of one’s website is. Ensure that your main keyword is included within your title tag. Also, do not forget to keep this under 70 characters, as Google won’t show a title tag longer than this.

Once your title tag is in place, you are able to proceed to other On-page SEO elements. If it is possible, register a domain address that features your main keyword. Do not worry if this isn’t possible, but if you can do so it will help. Next, be sure to fill in your Meta description tag and Meta keyword tag. Tell search engines and Web users what your website is about and what the main themes are. After accomplishing this task, ensure your website loads in a reasonable period of time. To make sure that your website loads speedily, buy quality website hosting. Don’t forget that you get what you pay for. The business of Website hosting isn’t an exception. Also, you must take note of keyword density. Ensure that your primary and secondary keywords are well represented on the website. Just keep these keywords at a level of eight percent or less in terms of overall density. There are lots of no cost tools available online to determine keyword density, do don’t overlook them. Lastly, make certain you use header tags. They help yahoo and google see what words jump out and are important.

Next, you should ensure that you reap the benefits of online directories. The majority are totally free, so be sure to register and thoroughly complete the form. Examples include Google Places, Yahoo! Local, Yellow Pages, Super Pages, Mapquest, and many more. When filling in these directory accounts, you should add a link back to your website.

After cleaning up your website and taking advantage of online directories, you’ll want to pay attention to Off-page SEO factors as well. There are plenty of ways to do this. You could start by providing high quality content free of charge. To create quality content which is beneficial to others, you can use a blog or distribute articles like this one to article directory services. When you provide good quality content, you might see other people link to your posts in other regions of the Net. This sends an indication to search engines you happen to be an expert on the topic and could enable you to rank higher for your keywords.

Search Engine Optimization is part art and part science. It is also an extremely hard and sophisticated activity. In case you aren’t sure what you’re doing, seek out an established and dependable SEO firm to assist you. Make absolutely certain you hold them accountable by monitoring your progress.

Searching for a premium search engine optimization springfield mo company? Make sure you ask for references and case studies to verify the potency of their ability.

The Panda Attack!

Well, I had a little venture last year that taught me a lot about the infamous Google panda update. Talk about a kick ass update! Except for those that got hit, like myself lol. I had a site with around 4,000 pages – and some localized content and a duped content block on each of the pages, not to mention a few adsense ads ha. In other words, you could call it a step up from a basic database driven site.

The site was lead gen focused and we had an excellent backend, good looking site, quality SEO work, good link building, relationship building, and were maintaing rankings pretty well. All until this big white and black fuzzy mother fucker came out of nowhere and ate the shit out of that site. It’s funny, because when panda came out no-body really knew what the hell was happening! So many websites got hit and overall it’s a great update by Google and has definitely forced us SEO Ninjas to find other means and strengthen current ones when ranking a site.

I than got in touch with a good guy over at Distilled who’s main focus was the Panda update and we collaberated on what could be done to fix a site that’s been hit. All in all, I learned some decent shit, and that if you get hit it’s gonna take ya awhile to snap out of it.

Since panda, any database driven site I’ve tried out always performs the same if you start out with just basic optimizations or as I would call them “Before Panda Optimizations – BPO”. The site gets indexed, performs very well and traffic starts flying in, the world looks great and you see $$$ dollar bills all over and than BAM! That shit headed panda smashes the site and you go on a downhill spiral until you completely remove the bad and replace it with quality and wholesome goodness.

Lesson Learned = Do It Right The First Time, Don’t Take Shortcuts!

Brandon – G’night*

Starting the Blog Over

Well, for those of you that followed my blog, you would be well aware that I had a decent amount of posts. My one mistake was to not have a backup online. After my hosting was hacked, I lost all my posts, so 2012 will be a fresh start for the Brandon Swenson blog.

As for how I was hacked, I was running WordPress and installed an unknown plugin which used a bad jquery URL known as j-query.com which allowed access to everything. It was a very unfortunate experience, but I’m back up and running!

Thanks!

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