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Powerful SEO Secrets to Grow Your Web Traffic

Written by: Michael Fleischner

Article Overview: Search engine optimization is a great way to improve the popularity of your website and increase traffic. There are a variety of factors that affect where your site is ranked on major search engines like Google and Yahoo! Here are some tips that are guaranteed to improve your SEO results.

Powerful SEO Secrets to Grow Your Web Traffic

If you want to rank on top for Google, Yahoo!, and other major search engines, you'll need more than a basic knowledge of search engine optimization. Those who rank high on natural search results do so because they've been able to effectively manage their on-page and off-page optimization factors.

On-page Optimization
What you do on your web pages can have a positive or negative impact on your search results. However, as we'll discuss later in this article, off-page optimization is even more powerful when it comes to increasing your natural search engine placement.

Some of the most important on-page optimization techniques begin with choosing a key word to optimize your page for. There are a number of free tools available on the Internet that can help you find a keyword that is popular but not overly competitive. Keywords that are highly competitive are often very difficult to place well for.

Once you've selected a keyword, you can take advantage of:

Secret #1: Don't optimize for a single keyword, optimize for a keyword phrase.
When you optimize for a single keyword, more often than not, that word is highly competitive and your chances of coming out on top are minimal. Where you gain a significant advantage is by focusing on a keyword phrase. This actually increases your chances of ranking well and ultimately helps you towards ranking well for the single word you originally chose.

Secret #2: Place your keyword phrase within the first 25 words of text, and the last 25 words of the page. The h1 tag can be used for developing a headline on your page and emphasizing your keyword phrase within the beginning of your page text (search engines love h1 tags). Another suggestion is to use your keyword phrase just after your copyright notice on the bottom of your webpage. This ensures that it is present within the last 25 words of your page.

Secret #3: Place your keyword phrase in your page title and description. Additionally, place the keyword phrase throughout your page - being sure to bold the phrase once, italicize the phrase once, and underline the phrase once. Mention your keyword phrase every paragraph or so. Just make sure that it appears natural. If you stuff the page with your keywords, you'll potentially turn off browsers who would otherwise find your page valuable.

Off-page Optimization
Now that you've learned about on-page optimization, it's important that you focus your attention on off-page optimization. Of all the techniques that have been developed for SEO, it still comes down to the popularity of your site.

The ranking of your website in a natural search engine result list is directly correlated to the popularity of your website.

So what do I mean by popularity? Popularity is the number and quality of links to your website. Although I've simplified the explanation here, you should know that links essentially count as votes. If everyone is "voting" for a particular website then the website becomes popular.

Secret #4: Get other sites to link to you. There are a number of ways to improve link popularity. Although I won't recommend a specific link building tool, I will say that there have been a number of good products developed that simplify the process. It still takes time and hard work, but over time, increasing the number of sites linking to your website can pay huge dividends.

Secret #5: Make sure that incoming links are of high quality (sites with a high Google page rank). It's not only important to have other sites link to you, it's also important to have quality sites link to you.

Secret #6: Anchor text must include your keyword phrase. When other sites link to you, make sure the link includes your keyword phrase. Sites that link to your domain can help with overall page rank and popularity, but websites who link to you using your keyword phrase (in the anchor text) are what get you to the top of search engine result lists.

Secret #7: Give people a reason to link to your website. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, white papers, free content or tools, etc., but ultimately it comes down to offering something of value. If you do, other websites will give you their "vote", increasing your link popularity and your search engine results.

Increasing your rank on major search engines isn't complex. But it does take time and effort. If you want to increase your website ranking, begin by implementing what you've learned in this article and stay the course.

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Article Tags: Google, keyword phrase, keyword phrase, link popularity, major search engines, natural search, page optimization, page optimization, search engine optimization, search engine placement, search engine result, Yahoo



Related Forum Posts
Re: Alexa Ranking Goals - LOL, I spoke too soon. Within a few hours of my post, Alexa updated the Traffic Rank on the toolbar. Note however that the 3 month Traffic Rank on Alexa.com has still not been updated...
Re: My 3 best business books - 1. Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill 2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey 3. Permission Marketing - Seth Godin Think and Grow Rich seems more powerful each time I read it or dip into it. The 7 Habits not only offers some very effective ways to organize your life (which I have yet to master!), but also some great quotations and thought provoking statements including this by Nazi concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl: [i:2naxzsom]Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.[/i:2naxzsom] Seth Godin's Permission Marketing is a good read for anybody seeking to understand how to approach doing business on the Internet in the right way with regard to winning people's trust.
Re: My 3 best business books - It seems that Napoleon Hill works help a lot of business men. He had done a really good job. I bought Think and Grow Rich many times.
Think and Grow Rich - Hi Moira, What a great post! I completely agree with it and it really is too easy to underestimate those 3 points but once we learn to use them the sky is the limit. I am currently reading Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill. Have you read that book?
Re: I'm A Winner!! - Thanks Tami and Ideasuniversity! Traffic is up. Forums are good places to get your message out. I also do quite a lot of article marketing and blogging etc. Still a long way to go, though, on every front!


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