With this article I am going to focus on linking for the search engine spiders.  You will be designing your link structure to get more of your pages indexed and to focus more link juice on your main pages.

When you are trying to build up your important pages there are two things to consider: limit the number of outgoing links on that page and increase the number of pages linking in to that page. Here are four ways to do that.

1.  Combine Your Overhead Pages

Every site has some standard fluff pages that they need to include but do not need to show up in the search engine rankings.  These can include a privacy policy, terms of service, contact us, earnings disclaimer, etc.  Instead of wasting valuable link juice pointing to an individual page for each, create a single page with all of this information and use named anchors to point users directly to the specific section they are looking for.  In my PageRank sculpting article I describe in detail how this is done.

2.  Control Your Outbound Links

The last thing I want you to do is create a site that is a "black hole."  These are sites that link juice enters but can never, ever escape because the site will never link to anyone else.  You should freely link to other sites that provide valuable information to your readers.

What I am suggesting is that you avoid linking to other sites from your homepage, category, tag, and archive pages (the pages you are driving a lot of link juice to).  It's easy to take the links out of your summaries (the short versions of your post that display on these pages).  This will keep your PageRank flowing to your own internal content while also allowing you to link out freely from inside of your articles.

3.  Use a SiteMap Wisely

I use an archive page that links to all of my categories and sub-categories.  If your category archives are large enough where you have several pages of archives, you want to link to each of these pages from your sitemap. This ensures that every piece of content on your site is only three clicks away from the hompage.  By linking to the sitemap from my homepage it increases the chances that the spiders will crawl every single page of my site, leaving no piece of content so far from the homepage that it is forgotten by the spiders.

You should limit the number of links on this page to 100.  The search engines don't crawl an infinite number of outgoing links on a page, they normally cut it off around 100 so if you have a large number of categories, create additional sitemap pages.

4.  Limit Global Navigation Links

Most sites have some sort of global navigation menu.  This menu is the same on every single page of the site.  If you are going to have one of these, you want to limit the number of links in the menu as much as possible.  This conserves pagerank on every page of the site and pushes more to the few pages you link to from the menu.

Another tactic you can use is to change the navigation as users dive deeper into the site.  For example, on this site if someone clicks on the "Search Engine Marketing" category and then clicks through to a piece of content, the menu changes from what's on the homepage to my "SEO" menu listing the important pieces of SEO content I have written.

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Originally posted at: Homepage Linking & Navigation

So, what is the best way to organize your content?  You want to create a funnel that takes them from a general area and narrows it down to a highly targeted, specific page on your site.  Each click a visitor makes needs to take them to a page that exactly matches what they expected to find when clicking that link.  Each click should narrow their options until they reach their final destination.

Home Page (Tier 1)

Most users will visit your homepage at some point.  What your homepage should do is tell the visitor what your site is about and serve as a starting point to finding more specific information.  You need to make it extremely easy for people to find what they are looking for from your homepage and you do this with your main navigational links (or main menu).

What are people going to want to do on your site?  What are the most common questions they will want answered?  When you know the answers to these questions you can look at your homepage and see how easy it is for a visitor to find what they are looking for.

Categories (Tier 2)

Your homepage should link to each category you have on your site.  I prefer to create a landing page of general information covering each category, but if you are using a WordPress site you can use links to your category archives that list every post you have created under that category.

Obviously create as many categories for your site as you need, but you will want at least three links in your main menu.  If you get too many categories that you are linking to you might want to see if there are any opportunities to consolidate.

Content Pages (Tier 3)

Your important content resides in this tier three section and is linked to from your category pages.  Using my site as an example a user can easily go from the homepage to the "Search Engine Marketing" category and then from that category page to this article on organizing content.  For content sites like mine their third tier will be the actual articles, but in an ecommerce store this tier would contain the product pages.

Deep Content (Tier 4 & Beyond)

If you site grows large you may add tiers.  Using the example of an ecommerce store, a product page may link to reviews, color choices, different styles, etc.

Tailor This Structure to Your Needs

As you organize your content keep the user's navigation in mind and go from general to specific.  Use this as a basic guide, but if you are in a targeted niche your site might essentially be a "category" of a larger site.  You may only need to go two levels deep.

If on the other hand you run a large site you might need categories within categories and can get a very deeply tiered site going.

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Originally posted at: Organizing Your Content

Title

Page titles are the most important part of on-page SEO.  They tell the spiders and your visitors what the page is about.  Titles are the text you see at the top of a browser window when you are looking at a page.  They are the clearly displayed, links to your page in the results given by the search engines.

You can edit your page's title in the <title> tag of the HTML code.  If you are using WordPress or another content management system the title will be easily editable in the backend.

Some tips for writing an effective page title:

• Use your keywords near the beginning of your title - these words will be highlighted on the results page by the search engine.
• Use less than 70 characters - this is all a browser and a results page will display.  Use that space effectively and avoid running your title over the edge.
• Entice a click through - great headlines encourage user's to click through by getting them interested.  Stuffing keywords in the title doesn't get the user excited to see what's on the page.
• Use different titles on each page - you are mapping each keyword to a single page so this shouldn't be a problem.  Don't create several pages that rehash the same idea as this is seen as spammy and doesn't add anything to your site.  If you have more to say just create a longer page.

Headings

If a piece of text appears larger than the rest of the text on the page, it's more than likely included inside a heading.  These are the <h1> (or 2,3,4 or 5) tags included on the page.  Search engines look at headings for another clue as to what the page is about and give them more weight.  Use the <h1> tag only once per page, and include <h2> tags if you have a couple of sub-headings in your post that you want to stand out.

URL Structure

A URL gives an exact location of a page, for instance this page is located at http://www.jamiefaidley.com/on-page-website-optimization/ .  You want to name your page after the keyword you are targeting.  With WordPress you change the permalink structure under settings to "%postname%".  Here are some more tips on quality URL structures:

• Keep them short and sweet.  Longer URLs are no good.  Don't create a lot of directories and sub-directories extending out the URL.
• Separate words with dashes (-).  Don't just run words together.  Some people use the underscore (_) instead but stick with what's common.
• You don't want to have your URL's be numbers or a date. Instead use your keywords.

Load Time

Users want their information fast.  If your page is taking too long to load then it's likely the visitor will just hit the back button and look for another site.  I wrote an article on how to speed up your WordPress blog if you want a few tips on increasing your site's speed.  Basically, the less code, images, widgets, and plugins you use the better.  Think simple.  Also, go with a quality hosting provider as that alone can show significant improvements in your site's speed.

Keyword Stuffing

Don't stuff your keywords in the body of your text!  This might seem counter intuitive since we have talked about the importance of having your keywords located on the page, but trust me it won't work.

Write the body of your article with the end user in mind.  You want your content to be readable and to solve the user's problems.  Even if you were to rank for a page that is stuffed with keywords, the visitor would quickly bounce off of the page if it didn't answer their question.

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Originally posted at: On-Page Website Optimization

You are not going to be able to optimize a single page of your site for a wide variety of terms.  Your title and meta description only allow for so many characters before you are cut off.  That is why we target only 1-3 keywords per page.  You will want to create new content on your site that is fully optimized for each of the major keywords you are going after and that content should deliver exactly what the user expects to find for that particular search.

Now, you don't need to create new pages for every small modifier of your term.  As long as the modifier doesn't completely change the meaning (free v. buy), most can be combined for a single page of your site.  When you are creating a brand new site, it's more important to focus on the bigger picture and get content created for your more general terms first.  After getting the basic structure of your site complete you can work down on the extremely specific content within the broader categories.

As your site matures you are going to want to use your analytics to map out additional keywords.  If people are finding your site already using a keyword term, then make sure you are serving them the answers they are looking for.  If you aren't, create that content and start directing that traffic to the appropriate page.  You won't have to do much work to rank for these terms since you already are, but you will be able to increase your conversion rate off of that traffic.

So where does that leave the homepage?  Your homepage is likely going to have the most incoming links and thus the most pagerank of any page on your site.  However, your homepage likely will not be very specific for any kind of search term.  That means you should take your 1-3 most important, competitive, general keywords and target them to your homepage.  As you keep working on your SEO you will be able to rank for more and more terms, but start small and achieve some successful rankings before you move on to additional terms.

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Originally posted at: Mapping Keywords to Pages

Even without as many inbound links as a competitor, the internal linking structure of a site can push it higher in the rankings.  A solid site structure magnifies your link building efforts, giving you more "bang for your buck."  There are two audiences you are trying to serve with your site structure:

Human Visitors

Always focus on your human users.  Your most important goal should be to make the site easy to use for your "real" visitors.  The user should be able to get to where they want to go in just a few clicks with each click getting them closer to their goal and final destination.

Every goal you have with your site has to do with the end user, whether it's to get them to buy something from you, support your cause, or whatever else.  A positive experience will leave your visitors happy and happy visitors sign up for your newsletter, purchase products, and link to your site.

Search Engine Spiders

You optimize your site structure for search engine spiders in three ways: funneling link juice to your most important pages, firing keyword-rich anchor text to pages on your site, and linking to your deep content to make sure those pages get indexed.

Link juice is important because each page has to have a certain amount of pagerank in order to be shown in the results. The more pages that link to the page, the more pagerank gets sent to that page.

Anchor text tells the spiders what the page the link is pointing to is about.  Keyword-rich anchor text is the holy grail of SEO marketers, but too many ignore the opportunities presented on their own sites.  If you are looking to get a boost for a certain keyword, change the anchor texts of your internal links to that page and more than likely it will help.

Getting every page on your site indexed is important.  This gives you more pages to work with for firing anchor text and it gives you more landing pages in the search engine results.  The more landing pages you have in the index the more long tail keyword terms you are going to rank for without even trying.  Don't discount this traffic because over time it will make up the majority of your new visitors.

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Originally posted at: Why Site Structure is Important

Definition

For the main page of your site the keywords will be the terms and phrases that best describe what your business, site, product, or service is about.  It is what the users will type into a search engine to find you.  They are the terms that you are going to pay to show up for in the results while running your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns.

Keywords are more than just a single word.  I use the term to cover any phrase or combination of words that are used by the searcher.

Brand Names

Unless you are a major brand, your keywords will not be your company name.  People are more interested in the services or solutions that you provide than what you are called.  So for example Amazon.com might be big enough now to get enough people to search for them on their name alone, but early on they wanted to rank their home page for the keywords of "online shopping" or "online books."

How Many Keywords Per Site?

A site can have many different keywords.  Again using Amazon as an example you will see that each individual page of their site is optimized for separate keywords for that specific page.  If you search for an individual product, it almost doesn't matter what kind of product it is anymore, Amazon will show up in the search results.  The product pages of their site are targeting the keywords you are searching for related to that product.  How many keywords to target for your site depends on how many resources you have.

How Do You Use Keywords?

In the old days people use to "stuff" their keywords into their content in order to try to rank high in the search engines for those terms.  This is a big no-no these days as you want your content to read naturally and to give the searcher exactly what they are looking for.

Today, what you want to do is include your keywords in the title and the meta description of the page.  Not only does the title tell the search engine spiders what your page is about, but when your page shows up in the search engine results they will bold the keywords in both your title and the description when displaying you along with the other pages.  That bolding will draw the attention of the searcher to your page and increase your click through rate.

The other way to use keywords is in getting links to your site.  When someone links to your site the words or phrases they highlight when giving the link is called anchor text.  That is a strong signal to the search engines telling them the keywords of your page.

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Originally posted at: What is a Keyword?

Keywords not only drive people to your site, but these are targeted visitors.  People who are hungry to learn, have a problem solve, or have one of their needs met.  You want to make sure that you are targeting the keywords that you can actually provide the answer to.  This ensures you get the best return on your investment.  So if you are going to focus your attention on the right keywords then you need a keyword strategy.

General Terms

It is very important when you begin planning your keyword strategy that you think of what visitors you are going to and can serve.  I worked with an insurance agent once who didn't know much about Internet marketing except that there was a bunch of money in it and he was missing out.  He wanted to rank no. 1 for insurance.  Not only is this going to require a TON of resources to even start to think about getting on the first page for, it wasn't going to give him a very good return.  What kind of insurance does he sell: health, car, home, or more?  Could he serve every state?  How about every country?

After asking a few simple questions about his true customer base, we narrowed his focus down to "Iowa" and "Des Moines" focuses keywords on "car" and "house" insurance.  He might not have gotten near as much traffic, but he received plenty of targeted leads that earned him more business.

The Holy Grail

A lot of new marketers come online and have one goal in mind: rank No. 1 for their main search term.  That's all fine and dandy that you have high aspirations, but don't get too caught up searching for the holy grail of a no. 1 ranking for the term that gets the most traffic.  You see, the real key to winning this game is to realizing that it's not only how high you rank, but also how many keywords that you rank for.

It's a simple formula really: higher ranking + more keywords you rank for = more money.  Don't lose track of both parts of the equation.  Too many people spend the majority of their resources on a few, highly competitive terms instead of shooting up the rankings for a LOT of lower traffic, less competitive terms.

So, maximizing your traffic requires a plan.  The more you research before hand to get an idea of the popularity and competitiveness of your keywords the better you are going to be able to put your resources to use.

Forming a keyword strategy isn't a one-and-done affair.  You are going to want to keep coming back, going over your plan, checking your rankings, and seeing if new terms are worth going after.  Don't worry if this sounds like a daunting task.  The more you work at it, the easier it will become and the more money you are going to make with your online business.

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Originally posted at: Why a Keyword Strategy is Needed

1.  What is Your Product or Service About?

Your major search terms are going to be focused on the main product, solution, or information that you deliver.  You should have anywhere from 3-10 different majors keywords that describe your site.  These can either be one word ideas or commonly used phrases and will drive most of your homepage anchor text efforts.  My site is about "Internet marketing" and "making money online."

Tip:  Remember, keep all of your terms relevant for what you are providing.  I could probably get a lot of traffic for "make money online with surveys" but I do not have any kind of content on my site to help someone interested in that.  Only go after keywords that you can provide the searcher what they are looking for.

2.  Categories

How are you going to organize your content?  What are the common themes you are going to be talking about with the articles that you write?  On my site I break it up into different categories of Internet marketing like keywords, search engine optimization, email marketing, conversion, outsourcing, analytics, and pay-per-click.

3.  Brainstorming the Categories

Once you have the categories down it's time to really get down to the core terms that you are going to target.  These are the two-to-four word phrases that you want to use to attract targeted traffic.  These are the most popular phrases describing your categories.  You'll want 10-20 in all and you will organize them into each category.

For example on my main keyword landing page I would go for "keyword strategy" or "keyword guide" as an example.  I always start with two or three keywords that I am going to start targeting and focus my efforts on those specific terms until I hit the front page.  Then you can move on to trying to get the page to rank for other relevant terms.

4.  Will Users Search for the Plural or Singular Version?

Once you start figuring out your list of keywords, check to see if the singular or plural version makes sense.  If it does, you might as well try to rank for both of them.  For something like "article marketing" some people might search for "articles marketing" but not enough for it to be worth my time.

5.  Use Tools

Using your brain and coming up with every single keyword that you possibly can to describe what kind of information you provide or will be providing is the best way to get started.  After you have a nice list there are a few tools that you can use to help you discover some related terms.  Personally, I recommend the Google Keyword Tool over anything else.

Type in your keywords, select "exact" from the match types category, and see what else comes up.  The best part is that it gives you the traffic numbers for both your keyword and the related ones, so you can see just how much traffic you could expect to get from it.  Those numbers aren't going to be exact, but it's a good rough estimate.

6.  Using Keywords for Content Ideas

By using your own brainstorming and the keyword tool you will be able to group together keywords.  When you have three or more variations of basically the same kind of search term, you want to make sure you create a page and start targeting those searchers.  Let's take a look at my "keywords" category.  By using the tools I can see several different topics I can cover under like strategy, tools, density, and finder.  All of those keywords turn into content ideas and pages on my site.  Who knows, if you plug those specific keywords into the tool above you can maybe even drill down further.

7.  Are You Local?

If you have a small brick and mortar shop then you are more than likely serving your local community, especially if you are service based.  Make sure you include local modifiers to all your keywords.  City, state, county, suburbs, or any local terms used to describe the geography can help drive you more targeted traffic.

8.  Brand Names

Do you sell or review a particular product?  Then you will need to target those terms.  If I am reviewing someone's SEO tool you can bet that I put the name of their product in my title and try to rank for "(product name) review."

9.  Misspellings

Don't worry about typos or common misspellings of the words.  Search engines are figuring out what users mean and fixing their mistakes for them.

10.  Modifier Tool

If you have a lot of modifiers (words like "free," "buy," or colors) that you can attach to keywords, use our easy keyword generator to come up with long tail terms.

After going through our list you should have plenty of keywords that you are ready to target for your SEO and PPC efforts.

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Originally posted at: How to Find the Best Keywords for SEO

Why Outsource in the First Place?

You only have so much time so you have to allocate it wisely.  If you want to get more things done you can either work more hours yourself, become more efficient, or hire additional workers.  At some point you are going to run out of your own time and once you reach mass efficiency you can't really cut any more time off of your process.  That only leaves you with outsourcing and hiring additional workers to complete additional tasks and get more done.

What to Outsource?

If you are just starting out with your business you may not have the money to outsource.  You might want to start off by using your time to build your business.  At some point you are going to hit a point where you "max out" what you can do and you will need to start paying someone to help you grow your business.  So, when that happens where do you start?

Some key questions you have to ask yourself are:

1.  What Do You Not Like to Do?

There has to be some parts of your business that you enjoy more than others.  Personally, I do not like handling customer service.  Most of the time it's dealing with negativity and complaints, which just put me into a bad mood.  You have to constantly be checking emails or waiting for the phone to ring, which makes it tough for you to get in a rhythm when working on other tasks.  One of the first things I outsourced was email and phone support for my products.

2.  What Are You Not Good At?

I know a little bit of programming, but I'm not very good at it.  For any kind of application that I need built I could spend a lot of time figuring out how to do it myself, but then it probably wouldn't be as solidly built as when I hire an expert.

3.  What Can You Get Done the Cheapest?

Re-writing articles is kind of a brainless activity.  It doesn't take a rocket science to summarize and re-phrase articles so they are unique.  Instead of doing this myself I hire someone else to do it.

Key to Outsourcing

The key to outsourcing is building systems and processes for everything that you do.  There are a certain number of steps that it takes from getting a project from start to finish.  If you are talking about something as simple as publishing a piece of content on your site or building a massive application, it all comes down to a certain number of steps that need to be completed before you are finished.

For example, let's say we want to publish an article on our site.  To start with you have to find out what to write about.  You do research to see what your audience is interested in.  After that you do keyword research so you can see what people are searching for around that topic and you can optimize your article.  Next comes researching the topic to gather information.  Then you write an outline of the key points that you want to cover.  When the article has been written, you want to proofread the article to catch any grammatical or spelling errors.  Then finally, you want to publish the article to your site.

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Originally posted at: Outsourcing

Send Times

Your email subscribers will establish a ritual, so it's important to maintain a consistent send time. If you are going to send them something every day, then don't skip days here and there or disappear for a week. Don't send them something at 8 AM one day and 3 PM the next. Why not send it to them when you have the highest chance of them reading it? That time is before 6 AM EST. Why? Because most people check their emails first thing when they wake up (which is between 6 AM & 7 AM - use eastern since more than 50% of US residents live in that time zone). If your email is sent very close to that time it has the best chance of being on top.

How Often to Send

Are you scared that by emailing them every day they will unsubscribe? Don't be. Infrequent emails actually lead to more unsubscribers than frequent. If someone is going to unsubscribe they will do so early on and because they do not like your newsletter content. If they want your information they will want more of it not less.

What To Send

Give your readers lots of links back to your site. Link to more valuable free content and link to the products you talk about. I link at least three times in the emails I send out. That ensures that if they are interested in your content they are going to click through. Do it once early in the newsletter, once towards the end, and once again after your signature.

If you are only sending them promos and trying to get them to buy you are going to wear your list out eventually. Think of your relationship with each subscriber as a glass of water. Every time you send a promo to them you pour a little out of the cup. Every time you offer them something of value water is added back in. You have to build your relationship with them up if you are going to send them promos. If you send your list valuable content mixed in with trying to "sell stuff" you are going to have more of a response on your offers AND you are going to keep your subscribers signed up.

Example

Let's take an example of a site that sells stock predictions. A great way to get people to sign up for your newsletter would be to give them a free pick everyday. This doesn't have to be your best stock that you see with the most potential to rise, save that for your paying customers. This can be a stock you feel good about that is showing just a little bit of value. Send it out early in the morning, every day before the market opens. When the market is closed on weekends and holidays, you can take those days off.
If you don't have a free pick on a certain day, check for someone else who does and send that (hopefully you are selling multiple experts on your site.) Make sure the analysis is top notch, don't just send them a prediction with no thought behind it. That's low value and isn't going to build a relationship. You can also give them solid analysis on certain companies, markets, or trends. Write them about the techniques you use to come up with your predictions. These can all be viewed as high-value content by your subscribers.

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Originally posted at: Managing Your List