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How to Optimise Sites To Rank In Search Engines In Four Easy Steps

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By gaming-guru


First off I'd like to thank you taking the time to visit my hub and I do hope you enjoy and learn from it. I am NOT trying to sell you anything nor recommend any ‘unbelievable' miracle product. This hub merely explains how to optimize your websites for higher rankings with search engines which in return will drive more visitors to your site and maximize your earning potential. This hub will take you through the step-by-step process of selecting keywords, analyzing competition, optimizing your content and last but not least building up a network of In-bound links. I hope you find this useful - I am pretty sure you will.

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Which Keyword To Choose, The Possibilities Are Endless
Which Keyword To Choose, The Possibilities Are Endless
Keywords, Keywords, Keywords
Keywords, Keywords, Keywords

STOP AND READ THIS

Remember guys that many who have overlooked the importance of keywords have failed miserably by falling into a highly competitive field. Think about it, YOU CANNOT TAKE ON SEO "GURUS"

As mentioned in this article please use Overtures FREE keyword suggestion tool Click on the link below to access this tool

Keyword Suggestion Tool

Remember that Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool is a means of COMPARING individual keywords to each other and does not reflect the actual number of searches for the phrase or keyword

FIRST STEP : RESEARCH THOSE KEYWORDS

Perhaps one of the most important steps in the whole process. Going in without researching keywords is like going in to battle blindfolded. If you do your keyword research right, you will have a rough idea of the competition that you will be up against. Trust me my friends, don't try to take on a competitor in very fiercely contested area, I have made that mistake and trust me, the effort required is simply not worth the return. The objective is to select a niche that is not fiercely competitive but still has many search queries for it. Remember the flip side to the coin is a highly specific niche that does not generate any search queries. Find the right balance. I use Overtures Free Keyword Suggestion Tool to get a rough idea of good keywords and the number of search queries that might be expected for that keyword.

Remember the results from this tool is NOT THE EXACT COUNT. Search counts could be considerably higher or lower but the idea is to ascertain how the individual keywords COMPARE TO EACH OTHER.

A Little Tip For Adsense Publishers

If you happen to run an Adsense campaign on your website or hub it is very helpful to know how valuable your keywords are. Knowing the value of keywords can help you earn a lot of money when Google places high paying ads on your website or hub. Trust me some of these ads pay as much as $50 per click!!! The best way to do this is to sign up for an Adwords account and bid on search terms to ascertain the value of the keywords that you want to target.

SECOND STEP : ANALYZING THE COMPETITION

Now that you have got your keyword or keywords that you want to target and you know on average how many searches will be made. The next step is to establish if this keyword(s) will be easy or difficult to rank.

Let's analyze the competitive landscape. This is done by going over to Live and Yahoo search engines and checking the number of results for your keyword(s). Did you note that I did not mention Google? Focus your campaigns on Yahoo and Live because they are easier to get indexed mostly in a couple of days (unlike six months with Google). This means that you aware of any NEW competition that may be up and coming. Please note that this NEW Competition may not be listed on Google and may surprise you a bit further down the road.

If the Live and Yahoo search results number a few million, don't be disheartened, next you need to count the number entries on the first search page that have the EXACT PHRASE IN THE TITLE. If only a few of the results have the exact phrase in the title, that's the amber light, competition is light for this keyword and your ready to conquer.

Now that your waiting at the Amber light, last but not least, you need to check the number of inbound links for the top three search results. This done by adding the prefix "link:" to the name of the website. For example "link:http://www.wikipedia.org/".

Whoa, hold on a minute, do the number on inbound links number in the thousands? How are you going to compete with that? Not to worry my friends the results page is not what it seems.

Let me bust two common myths surrounding In-bound links.

Myth #1 If I have millions of random in-bound links, my website will automatically be the best and rank number 1.

Busted!!! This is false because the links all have to contain the keywords that you want to rank for, for it to be any good. For example, your site is about race cars and you have a million in-bound links whose link text is "fast cars", you will rank well for "fast cars" but not "racing cars". Remember my friends, Quality always rules over quantity. A few high quality relevant in-bound links is always better than thousands of irrelevant links.

Myth #2 People seem to think that the results of the "link:" operator is the number of links that the search engines count as in-bound links.

Busted!!! To prove that this is false, just enter a search query using the ‘link' operator for the top ranking site for a keyword such as "Tortoise Pictures" on Yahoo. Watch as Yahoo generates well over 10,000 in-bound links for this site. Whoa, that's a lot of in-bound links. But really how many of these in-bound links to this site actually contribute to the ranking of this site? Simple.

Just click on the "Advanced search" link next to the search button. Enter the ‘link' command for the site and allow Yahoo to display 100 results per page, then click search. Yahoo now shows an EVEN HIGHER number of in-bound links than before. WTF? Look for the silver lining my friends, quickly scroll down the results page and you will see that Yahoo only displays 2 or 3 search result pages. 2 or 3 pages at 100 results each? How can that make more than 10000 in-bound links? Yahoo explains why in their statement at the end of the results page.

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ones already displayed."

There you have the answer, Yahoo considers over 9000 in-bound links to be duplicates. Links are considered duplicates when the domain has different pages on the same domain pointing to the same ranking page in question, Internal linking is considered duplicate in-bound links. Suddenly the competition is not that hard.

Armed with the confidence that you can take on a niche with very well researched keywords and competitor information. The next section of this Hub takes a look at on-page optimization.

THIRD STEP : ON-PAGE OPTIMISATION

On-page optimization to put it into simple words are the things that you need to do to your actual website that will enable it to get ranked. Yahoo and MSN search engines value on-page optimization more than Google. Here are a few tips on on-page optimization.

1) Ensure that the domain name contains the keywords that you are going to target for.

2) Make the Page Title to be the exact the keywords that you are targeting.

3) Use the H1 header tag and make the very first word(s) your keyword(s).

4) Following the H1 tag, start off the introductory paragraph with your keyword(s).

5) If your article is very long, break it up into sections with H2 tags that contain variations of your keyword(s).

For example if I have an article on ‘life insurance' that I want to rank for the phrase ‘life insurance'. I would get a domain name with the words ‘life insurance' such as www.lifeinsurance.com would be amazing but if this is not available, get it on a subdomain such as www.lifeinsurance.mydomain.com.

Next I make the page title "Life Insurance" along with my H1 tag. My article is pretty long so I will break up my article with H2 tags containing variations of ‘life insurance' such as "how to apply for life insurance", "life insurance do's and don'ts", life insurance advice" etc. You get the gist of it.

Remember, "Life Insurance" is just used as an example and is fiercely competitive. As mentioned before try to target less competitive keywords and the above 5 steps are all you have to do for on-page optimization. I am pretty sure you've heard so called SEO "Guru's" throw out phrases such as ‘keyword density' and ‘alt tag density'. My advice, stay well away from these as these are only useful for really competitive keywords. Remember my friends, WE ARE ONLY TARGETING LESS COMPETITIVE AREAS. Let the ‘Guru's' kill each other.

STEP FOUR : OFF-PAGE OPTIMISATION

In-bound links serve two vital purposes

1) They help a site get crawled and indexed faster by search engine spiders.

2) If the link text contains the keywords that you are targeting for, your site will get ranked higher based on the number of in-bound links pointing to your site

How do you get in-bound links?

1) You can pay for them

2) Or you can get reciprocal links ie swap links with other sites.

A lot of self proclaimed gurus say that number 1 ie paying for links is better because these are one way links which are more valued by search engines. I NEVER DO THESE, Why?

As I mentioned above, I do not go after heavily contested areas, let the ‘Gurus' do that. Going into less competitive markets usually means that reciprocal linking is sufficient. Remember my friends, content is king so if your site has some quality content, visitors will naturally give you free one-way links any way FOR FREE, so why pay for these!

How to get reciprocal links?

1) Run a search for the keywords that you want to target

2) Next, you will have to go to each and every webpage and e-mail the webmaster with an offer to trade links

3) Once you have e-mailed all the webmasters lets say the top 30, use the ‘link' command on each and every one of the top 30 websites that you have already contacted and check who links to them. E-mail these webmasters as well.

Closing

Does this sound like a lot of work to you? I am sad to say it is. There is no such thing as a quick buck. SEO is more time consuming than it is complicated. Once you have the knowledge and follow a successful blueprint like this Hub, you should have no trouble in setting up and cashing in on multiple websites. Remember my friends, patience and perseverance is key in this business.

Please let me know if this Hub has helped you and please feel free to send me any questions, comments, complaints, grievances or shameless praise:)

All Success

Afthab

Learn how to increase your Adsense CTR massively by using just a few unbelievable tweaks

How To Increase Your Adsense Click Through Rate (CTR) In Three Easy Steps

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Comments

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Jen's Solitude profile image

Jen's Solitude  says:
6 months ago

Hello gaming-guru,

Just wanted to let you know that your article certainly did help me. Thanks for an informative and easy to understand presentation.

~Jen

stephhicks68 profile image

stephhicks68  says:
6 months ago

Great tips! You are right that you cannot make a quick buck without doing some SEO work. Thumbs up.

gaming-guru profile image

gaming-guru  says:
6 months ago

Thank you very much jen, I am glad that I could be of any help to you.

Steph, Thank you ever so much for the thumbs up, means a lot to me coming from a seasoned veteran such as yourself. I appreciate that

Isela profile image

Isela  says:
6 months ago

gaming-guru

Very well written Hub. It´s true SEO is work, like any other job it´s better if you enjoy!

wordscribe41 profile image

wordscribe41  says:
6 months ago

Very helpful, well written and concise hub. It was easy to quickly get the information I need. Thanks for debunking some myths I believed.

Dolores Monet profile image

Dolores Monet  says:
6 months ago

Very informative, guru. So many of the technology hubs I read are so difficult to understand, using too much jingo. Thanks for helping me understand.

techie  says:
6 months ago

good point . can you suggest some keyword tools

MakinBacon profile image

MakinBacon  says:
6 months ago

Targeted an less competitive niche and backlinking is the key to making money online with Adsense, or most other monetization methods as well.

Of course that's assuming you've done the proper optimization of your content.

gaming-guru profile image

gaming-guru  says:
6 months ago

First off i'd like to apologise for the delay as I was really bogged down at work. Isela, Wordscribe41, Dolores Monet, Thank you ever so much for your great comments. Glad to be of any help.

techie - thanks for the comment mate. Try Google Adwords tool or even Yahoo or Google's Suggestion feature when you type in a search query. Works like a charm

MakinBacon - thanks for dropping by mate. Looks like you've been in the game for a long time now.

janakhan profile image

janakhan  says:
6 months ago

Definitely an insightful Hub. Keep up the great work.

kmackey32 profile image

kmackey32  says:
6 months ago

Awesome hub with great information!

gaming-guru profile image

gaming-guru  says:
6 months ago

I appreciate your comments janakhan and kmackey32

prasannasutrave profile image

prasannasutrave  says:
5 months ago

Its ok to make some money online but if you follow your passion about any subject then it will fetch huge money for long time and you also have fun doing work.

SeoInra  says:
2 months ago

Awesome Information...Its my first visit and I really liked the HubPages...Will make sure that i come here regularly from now on..

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