Wordpress is popular among Internet marketers and bloggers all over the world because it simplifies and streamlines the creation of a professional, high quality website with its intuitive and ease of use functions, making it head and shoulders above similar CMS options out there.

Not only is it easy to use, but it has everything you need to bring targeted traffic into your site, as long as you know how best to optimize. Without traffic, a website is a waste of time; with Wordpress you can take advantage of the wonderful features to make SEO easy.

Wordpress helps you find and direct organic search engine traffic to your site with simple to use, efficient features. It is a much more effective method than typical HTML sites that rely on undirected, overpopulated search engines to generate traffic that may not fit the profile of your audience. The easy to use features Wordpress incorporates into your site help you get the most targeted traffic out of Google and other popular search engines.

I want to give you various ways you can get your Wordpress blog ranked and what it takes to achieve this.

The “tags” tool within Wordpress is one of the most effective tools available. Many people who blogs don’t use tags when they post – you don’t want to make that mistake. Tags help search engines to properly index and rank your posts by keyword. Tags are simply keywords that are “tagged” by the author to show specific relevance to the topic or focus of the blog post. They are useful in describing your post in relevant terms that enhance the article itself.

Curious about how these tags are put to work by the search engine? They use them to categorize your posts appropriately and index them faster. It’s a simple step that’s well worth doing, and it only takes a few moments to add your tags once your post is complete.

Internal linking should also be part of your posts. Cross-reference other related posts within your own blog by linking to them in new posts. There are two ways to do this – either by adding them in yourself within the text of your post or by using a Wordpress plugin that will do the work for you. Some developers will create links from old posts to a new post that they really want to drive traffic to and increase its importance within the blog as a whole.

Another thing to do is to set up blog categories, which will keep your posts sorted appropriately. Putting your posts and pages in the right order is also a vital step to ensure that your website is clear and makes sense to the search engines and to your visitors. It’s just a matter of cleaning up the clutter and making sure the information is organized.

If the permalink function is on for your blog, you’ll see that the category is listed in the post and as well as the URL. Not only will this give yet another boost to your SEO, but it will also help your readers see right away what they can expect from the post simply by reading the URL.

In regards to Wordpress SEO, one of the most vital things you need to do is customize your blog’s permalinks. Your obligation is to be sure and put the title of your post into the URL as well. To do this, all you need to do is change your permalink settings to the custom setting. You need to make these changes because the default structure is made up of numbers and question marks. This is bound to hurt your ranking with the search engines.

Additional Resources:

Effective blogging through high profile content syndication

Making a website attractive to search engines is a key factor for its success.  One of the key ways in which to rank well with search engines is to choose the right keywords and optimize on the page.  But in order to be successful in your keyword strategy campaign, you should use the following two steps.

1. Keyword Selection and Placement
You will need to determine what your pages are offering and also determine which words your potential visitors might use when searching for the pages of your site.  You then need to create keywords which are based on those words.

For the full optimization of keywords on your site you should use between 3 to 5 keywords on the appropriate pages.  It is vital that you start using them from the top left and then down.  Many times you will find that this will be the first 200 words on each page of your site which will include the title tag, headings, abstract etc.

So the closer to the top left of your page the keywords are placed then the more weight they will be given by Google. Often visitors will view your site in the same way that the search engine spiders do, so emphasizing your keywords from the top left and down is a good way to design a site.

This is what Google calls the Golden Triangle:

Also, another issue where keyword selection is concerned is you need to determine whether the keyword is too popular or competitive.  So if you find sites that are already competing for high rankings using particular keywords, then you may need to select more specific keywords instead.

This can also be said for keywords which have several different meanings as well.  Therefore it is important that you look how users will search for your pages, and which specific questions the content of your pages actually answers.  So whenever possible, refine the keywords that you use in order to answer these questions.

Whenever you are refining your keywords, it is important that you keep in mind that a large portion of searches carried out on the net contain three words or more.  So when people are searching for answers on the internet, they will often phrase their search term as a question.

Therefore many people will not use search words that describe the solution to a question.  So in order to optimize your pages to their full extent, it is best if you think like the person who is searching.

2. Check out the Keywords of Your Competitors

This is a great way of getting ideas, and you do this by carrying out a search using keywords that you already know, and that you would like to target.  Then click through the top 10 sites that come up as a result of this search. This is your true competition. Then once on the site, view their source HTML code and view the keywords that they have in their Meta tags.

It is important that you remember to use those keywords which relate to your site or page.  It is easy to view a sites HTML code, all you do is click on the “View” button at the top of your web browser page and then select “Source” or “Page Source”.

By developing a list of keyword phrases, you should be able to optimize each page of your site for the search engines.

Subscribe to my newsletter in the upper right corner of this page for more advanced SEO tutorials.

Additional Resources:

SEOMoz

Free Internet Marketing Tools

Link Structure

If you are using Seo book keyword tool, like any other keyword research tool, remember that what is actually the most important is to do your SEO right.

Search Engine Optimization tends to scare people away BUT in fact SEO does not need to be complicated.

What you should do is make sure that each and every page of your site is a unique entity. Below I provide you with some guidelines which should help you achieve your SEO results.

At the end of this post there are links to other tutorials. For more in-depth SEO tutorials, info about SEO book Keyword Tool or other keyword tools and keyword research tips, subscribe to my newsletter using the form in the right corner of this page.

1. Get the Keywords Right

It is important that you make sure the selected words you use meet your marketing needs. So do not pick words which are too general. Using words that are more specific will result in a higher ranking for your site. Also, it is important that you choose words which are suitable to your site. For example, you will find that “optimizing search engines” and “search engine optimization” have completely different rankings.

2. Include keywords in your Page Titles

Unfortunately, a lot of people will use either inappropriate names or their company name in the page’s titles. So it is important that you include the appropriate keywords in your title, as that is they way people carry out searches on the internet.

If you have a blog, remember that a post is actually like a page and should be optimized the same way. So all my recommendations also have to be applied to blogs.

3. Inclusion of keywords in your Title Tags and Meta Tags (meta description)

It is vital that, for each page of your site, you include the appropriate keywords within all the page’s tags. Also, take time to go over the Meta description that you use. You should make sure that any description you use is alluring and interesting to those who are visiting your site, AND include keywords within it wherever possible. There are many search engines around today which use the Meta description as the text that will be displayed in their search results.

4. Keywords in Content (Body)

It is important that you make sure you include keywords in the content of your site as well. But do not over do this, as too many will result in your page being discounted by the search engines: as a general rule, 1% is the minimum, 3-4% is the limit.

Using these basic guidelines in relation to seo book keyword tool for search engine optimization and you will find that your site will rank higher in the search engines.

You might want to read more SEO tutorials:

SEO Basics – Why use SEO

Linking structure

Bold Text

This gives slightly more weight to a page than ordinary text, but not as much as an H Tag does.  So whenever possible, enclose the keyword in bold tags occasionally where it appears on the page.

Normal Text

Whenever possible, use the search term several times on the pages of your site (your keyword density should be about 1%).  Ensure that you use the term once or twice in the very early pages of the body text, and then as often as possible throughout.  If you need to, reword small parts and add sentences to ensure that the keyword is well represented in the text for good search engine optimization.

Alt Text <img src=”url” alt=”some alt text”>

Include your keyword in the alt text of all images on your pages.  It is important to remember that some systems use the alt text.

So in summary what you need to do is as follows:

1. Select the main keywords you wish to use.
2. Allocate these keywords to a suitable existing page, and if you need to, split pages.
3. Organize your internal links, and then link text, to suit the target keywords and their pages.
4. If you can, organize those links from other pages to suit the target keywords and their pages also.
5. Now organize all the on page elements in order that they suit each page’s target keyword.
6. Finally, now sit back and watch your site’s page rankings begin to improve.

You can have access to more advanced training on how to build links to your site by subscribing to my newsletter in the form in the upper right corner of this page.

Additional Resources:

Link Structure within Your Website: SEO Basics – Part One

Why Use SEO – Part One

This is probably the most obvious, but certainly one of the most overlooked aspects of search engine optimization.  This helps to make sure that search engine spiders can actually find (crawl) all of your site’s pages.  If they can not find them, then they won’t get spidered, and this means that they won’t get indexed.

In this SEO basics tutorial I give you some link structure tips you should apply to your website.

First, it is important that you make sure that all pages on your site link to at least one other page.  Pages which do not link out are known as “dangling links”.  It is important that you structure the internal links so that targeted keywords are reinforced.  So make sure that you organize your links so that your topic’s sub topic pages are linked to it (ensuring that you use the right link text that is specific to the page being linked to) and vice versa.

Link Text (<a href=”url”>some link text</a>)
This is one of the 2 most important elements to ensure good rankings for a site.  It can either be on pages within the site, or on other sites’ pages.

It is vital that you include the target page’s main keyword in the link text.  Also, whenever possible, do not use identical text for every link that links to a page.  But you can include the target page’s main keyword in the link text instead.

Title Tag <title>some title words</title>
This is probably the second most important element in order to get good rankings for a site.  It is important that you make sure the page’s keyword is contained within this tag.  So try to place the keyword first in your title while ensuring that the title reads well.

In fact, there is nothing wrong with you placing the main keyword up front on its own and then follow it with a period such as “Page Rank. Google Page Rank and how do I make the most of it?”  As you can see, the target keyword here is of course “Page Rank”.

What you should obviously do is make sure that each page’s title tag is different from the title tags on your site’s other pages.

Description Tag <meta name=”description” content=”a nice description”>
You will find that some search engines, such as Google, do not always display the description. To increase the probability that your description shows up, use an SEO plugin, for Wordpress All in One SEO Pack works very well. Then, write a description that is appealing and incorporates the page’s keyword into it.

Keywords Tag <meta=”keywords” content=”some keywords”>
It is important to remember that the keywords tag is never actually treated by search engines as keywords.  They will be treated as text on a page.  Although this tag is not effective as it used to be, there is no reason to leave it out.

Instead, make sure that you put your most relevant keywords, one or two is best, and never more than 5 because that will make you appear as a spammer.

H Tag <Hn>some heading words</Hn>
The “n” in this tag represents a number from 1 to 6.  The biggest heading is represented by 1.  You will find that H tags are given more weight than ordinary text in a page, and so the bigger the H size, the more weight it will have.

So it is important that you include your target search term in the H tags at least once on the page.  Also place your first H Tag as near to the top of the site page as possible.

Read Part Two of this tutorial:

Additional Resources:

Why Use SEO – Part One

Why Use SEO – Part Two

This is he second part of the short SEO tutorial: SEO Basics – Why Use Search Engine Optimization – Part One.

• Ensure that your URLs are search engine friendly

It is important to use search engine friendly URL’s, as opposed to dynamically generated ones that have a query string (which lets the server know which data to fetch from a database).  Unfortunately, there are many search engine robots which have difficulties with this kind of URL and they may well stop at the question mark, and so not actually look at the query string.

By using a search engine friendly URL you are helping both your ranking and the users of your site.  Many sites have seen an incredible improvement just because they have changed the URL scheme on it.  However, the modification and rewriting of a site’s URL can be a little tricky.

• Getting Linked

The really good way to ensure that your site gets linked is to ensure that it contains good content.  For any site on the web, incoming links are very important, especially for Search Engine Optimization.  In fact, you may find that this is the hardest part of SEO for you to implement.

But many people have found that incoming links are less important, especially where you have more specific and unique content on your site.

• Do not try to fool the Search Engines

Never use such methods as cloaking, link farms, keyword stuffing, alt text spamming or any other dubious ways.  Although they may work for a short period of time, you not only risk getting your site penalized, but it could actually be banned from search engines altogether.

• Avoid the use of Frames

Although it is possible to provide workarounds that will allow a search engine robot to crawl frame based sites, these will still cause problems for any visitors who find that site through a search engine.

What happens is that when someone follows a link from a search result to a frame based site, they will end up on an orphaned document.  This will, in most cases, create confusion for the user, as in many cases, vital parts of the site will be lost, such as navigational links.

• Do not spend too much time with Meta Tags

You will find that most search engines do not place a great deal of value on the content contained within Meta Tags today.  This is because they have been used too much by spammers.  So instead, if you need to, use Meta description elements. Although keywords will not hurt, they don’t really help either, so generally it is not worth the effort to use them.

Some search engine sites will use the content of a Meta description element to describe a site in their search result listings.  So whenever possible, make their contents unique and descriptive for every document or page.

These are a few basic guidelines in relation to SEO.  But there is much more that can be done in order to increase your site’s visibility with search engines. I’ll post more SEO tips on this blog, and you’ll have access to more advanced SEO tutorials in my newsletter (go to the upper right corner of this page and subscribe).

You might also be interested in reading:

SEO Basics – Why Use Search Engine Optimization – Part One

This is a series of posts, in the form of short SEO tutorials, that will give you some good SEO basics. You will have access to more advanced techniques if you subscribe to my free newsletter on the upper right corner of this page.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a sub section of search engine marketing. With SEO, there are no shortcuts, and if you are looking for a way to get easy results, then this isn’t it.  You will need to carry out some work, especially in relation to the actual content of your site.

If you are looking to improve the search engine position of your site, you should consider this very early on when looking at using SEO.

Here are some very important points as far as SEO is concerned:

• Good Content

This is probably the single most important point you should remember when doing SEO, especially if you want your site to be found on the web.  Although your site may be technically perfect so that the search engine robots find it, you will find that it will not help if the actual content of your site is not good.

Whatever your site is about, the content actually needs to be unique and specific so that it will appeal to people.  Moreover, it needs to be particularly appealing to those people looking for information or who want to find your site.

By having good content on your site, visitors will return and eventually these visitors who return are more likely to link to your site.  Having lots of inbound links is not only great for your site, but for search engine rankings also.  It is even better if those links are from more highly ranked sites.

You also need to have fresh content. If you add new content to your site on a regular basis, you are giving your visitors more reasons for returning to it.  Because of this, search engine robots will also visit your site more often as soon as they notice that you are updating it regularly.  So what this means is that any new content you add, will then be indexed much quicker in the future.

• Make sure your Page Titles are Descriptive

If you make your page titles as simple, descriptive and relevant as possible, it will make it easier for the search engines to know what each page of your site is about.  This will then allow people to scan through the search results they get, and are able to quickly determine if your document contains what they are actually looking for.  Also, it should be remembered that the page title is also what is used in order to link to your site from the results provided by the search engines.

• Use of Real Headings

This is where you need to use h1-h6 (header tags) elements for your headings.  By using graphics for your headings you are able to use any typeface you want (but search engines will not pay much attention to this).  Even if you do use the alt attribute to specify an alternate text for heading images, this is not anywhere near as important as using real text in a heading element.

If you are unable to use real text, then look at the various image or flash replacement techniques that are available instead.  However, be aware that there may be some risk involved in doing this.  As image replacement involves hiding text, it is quite possible that you may be penalized by search engines for doing this.  But at present, this kind of risk seems pretty slim.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this tutorial on SEO basics…

Google and the other search engines out there are in business, they have customers. But their customers are not Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers…so what’s Google’s business?

Their customers are the people who are searching. And their product is the quality of their search results. Their mission is to provide a good user experience. If the results they provide for a given keywords are crap, the customer is not happy and in the long run the search engine is out of business.

That is why Google is putting so much emphasis on Relevance and quality Content.

So, as an internet marketer, help them make their product better, and they’ll love you.

Search engines use computer programs called spiders to go out and put it in their database. Then when someone is searching, another program decides whether your site or a site with a similar theme is more relevant.

You must honestly convince each Search Engine that you are the most relevant (at least in the Top 10 search results, preferably in the Top 3) for the keywords that you target.

You can try to trick the search engines, and many people do, but if you trick the engines your success won’t last long. Tricks hurt a search engine’s product instead of helping it.

Help the searcher — your potential visitor and your merchant’s potential
customer. Solve his problem. Help him find what he’s searching for. By doing this you add value to the search engine’s product.

Use this approach and you will never have to worry about Google again.

And this means…

• No multiple domains, hidden inter-linking, etc.
• No off-target keywords to suck in untargeted customers.
• No tricks in comment tags or invisible links.
• No 8 versions of the same site, one for each major engine.

Keep your focus on creating a website which scores well with most of the engines for most of your keywords. Write your page for the searcher – the search engine’s customer, first and foremost.

When it comes to having a high search engine rank, everyone wants to be number one, and there are millions of websites out there.  So the real question is how do you become number one and stay there consistently?  Consistently is the key word here. Sure, you may apply the newest, best trick in the book today, but when someone else comes out with a better one tomorrow, you will be scrambling to get to the top again.

One key point to get a good search engine rank is to do a good keyword targeting and focus on very SPECIFIC keywords. You can do an awesome job in every area of search engine optimization, but if you go too thin here, you will not make it to number one in any of your keywords.

Use the right keyword research tools and focus on one, or at most, two keywords. Produce all your content (build your site, write your articles, make your blog posts, make your videos) around those keywords. The key word on Google and other search engine is RELEVANT CONTENT.

Producing content with tons of untargeted and general keywords will get you nowhere but to the Google sandbox, as you will probably be seen as a spammer.

Then, from a SEO point of view, would you rather have one keyword that has a number one placement, and thus gets about 60% of the traffic, or 8 keywords with a number 20 placement each, that are getting close to no traffic at all?
To me, number 20 is like number 1 million – you don’t get enough clicks to pay the bills. I would far rather have one keyword for which my site is on the first page of results than twenty that are all over the place.

Build yourself a web site that has a strong keyword density – for one or two keywords. Put those keywords in your title and description and keyword lists.

What keywords should you go after? They should get a high number of searches per month and a relatively low number of results. It should be specific and targeted, related to your offer.

If you follow those guidelines you will be surprised how well you can actually rank in search engines by targeting the right keywords.

Make sure you subscribe to my newsletter in the top right corner of this page for more SEO Courses and tips.

See you at the top…

Everyone tends to focus on on page and off page SEO but most people forget that the URL is important and that a good URL optimization can help you get better rankings.

Here are some quick tips about optimizing your URLs for better rankings.

1. Use main keyword in domain name

You will always want to register a domain name that has your main keyword in it. This is a key point if you want to rank better with your URL. If your website is about dog training, you will try to register a domain that has dog training in it.

2. Choose your TLD

Then, I recommend using .com, .org and .net in this order of importance. This is what people use and know most, and they also appear more often in the search engine results.

However, although I have not really tested the influence of the TLD on the rankings, I don’t believe it to have a real influence, so using .biz, .us or other TLDs might as well be fine.

3. Avoid using subdomains

If the domain name of your main keyword is already taken, you can think of using a subdomain. The main advantage of using a subdomain is that you have your keyword come first in the URL and this can boost your rankings. However, I would be very careful with this because it appears that many people use this technique to spam the search engines, and Google is going to catch up on this sooner or later.

The main drawback of using a subdomain, and that’s why I recommend to avoid this method, is that by doing so you will lose all the power (link juice) of your main domain, as well as your PR (pagerank).

For instance, an article posted on a new subdomain: subdomain.domain.com will not benefit from the age, PR and link juice of your domain.com. Instead, you have to post the article into domain.com/folder so that it can benefit from all the backlinks you have created for your domain.com as well as its PR.

More tips coming soon…stay tuned.