SEO White Hats

What is KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index)?

seowhitehats — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:29:22 +0000

KEI is definitely a good metric to look at when doing keyword research, here is a quick definition:

Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) attempts to characterize the value of a keyword based upon its popularity and the number of competing websites. Higher KEI values are “better” in that they represent more searches per website.

Typically KEI is the the ratio of the square of the searches upon a particular keyword in a day divided by the number of websites that are listed for that keyword. For example, a keyword that has 100 searches a day and for which Google shows 5000 websites would have a KEI of 2. (100 * 100 / 5000)

We have found that it is hard to use KEI, not be cause of the calculation, but because it is hard to get reliable data from online searches. The tools that use KEI, such as Keyword Tracker, Wordze.com, and others, do an absolutely great job at collecting useful data from available sources, but the source isn’t Google (which owns 70% of the marketplace). To illustrate this point, here is a FAQ from Wordze.com

Understanding the search industry data collection methods is very important for search professionals to be able to do their jobs. If you have not already noticed, each keyword research service’s data (search count) is never the same. Services like Google or Yahoo always show much higher numbers for most keywords, but fail to include lower keywords with substantial traffic. In contrast, services like Wordze normally show a lower count, but include more long tail keywords than services like Google or Yahoo keyword services.

The general rule of thumb is to use a paid keyword tool like Wordze along with a free service like Google keywords to guide you in your keyword selection. Google’s search service (Yahoo’s service is now defunct) is built for searching for keywords under Google’s Adwords program. This service includes data from Google’s search results, ad placement on affiliate sites (Adsense search), as well as other 3rd party sites like AOL, YouTube, etc. The problem with this method is Google does not show keywords that have good traffic, but don’t make it into the top percentile of their search data. It also means that their search data is normally over estimated for search engine optimization research. On the other hand, services like Wordze will normally show lower count, but provide long tail terms along with ranking data that Google will never show. This typically has to do with the fact that such services do not have all the data, but a fraction of it.

So, like many other tools and services, we use a product like Wordze.com to help gain insight on a particular question, but rarely does a calculated KEI become more than another input point of data for our consideration as we are putting together strategy. It helps us see outliers, but we often find other Keyword Difficulty Tools (i.e. SEOMoz.org) and a manual review of the Top 10 of Google to be just as useful as KEI.

6 SEO Trends for 2009

seowhitehats — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:04:27 +0000

Following the pace of change relating to search engine optimization — or SEO as it’s often called — can be dizzying. Here are 6 important SEO trends you should know about as we close out 2009.

1.) Increased SEO Awareness

SEO used to be something akin to voodoo; the only people who understood it were the ones doing it. But now it seems everyone knows about SEO. As more small business owners become aware of what SEO is and why you should be doing it, competition should increase and put a premium on smart decision-making when it comes to doing SEO in-house or hiring a consultant.

2.) Moving SEO In-House

In-House SEO has never been more popular than it is now, and that trend should continue into 2009. Companies big and small are recognizing the need for and value of having dedicated staff to recommend and implement SEO strategies.

3.) SEO Consultants and Firms Booked Up

Many of us who don’t work in-house have never been busier than we are now. Because of trend number one above, small business owners are hunting far and wide for SEO help. Purely anecdotal evidence, but something that many fellow SEO friends are experiencing. There’s big demand and a lot of SEOs will be booked up.

4.) It’s Google’s World

Google has dominated the SEO landscape for years, and their lead over Yahoo and Live Search is only getting bigger. There are several companies that try to track market share, and their numbers differ. But they all agree that between 60-70% of searches happen at Google. That doesn’t mean you should put all your SEO eggs in Google’s basket, but it does mean if you’re not being found on Google, you’re not being found.

5.) SEO Tools and Automation

Hoping to take advantage of the growing interest in SEO, and the difficulty in finding the right consultant, more companies and individuals are creating online tools that automate portions of an SEO analysis. While some of these tools offer helpful data at a basic level, what matters most is how you use the data they provide.

6.) SEO Scams

The downside of increased interest in SEO is that many small business owners will continue to spend money making unethical scam artists rich. $99/month for 500 directory links? $200 for search engine submission services? Don’t do it. Read what several search industry leaders had to say about SEO scams, and make sure this is one trend you avoid in 2009.

Writing for Search Engines

seowhitehats — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:36:18 +0000

Much of the time when we take on a new client, one of our recommendations is that they íncrease the amount of unique, keyword-targeted, text content on their site. We generally recommend having at least 250 words of content per page, a number that continues to grow as the years go by. Ten years ago our minimum was 75 words. However, as competition on the Web becomes greater, the barrier to entry gets higher as well. Search engines are seeking even more expert content as a way to determine the most relevant sites for a particular keyword.

Conversely, there is no maximum number of words you can put on any one page so long as you are adding quality content. You’ll notice that some BruceClay.com pages are over 5000 words. However, before you go after a strategy of building lengthy pages, remember that you want to build depth of content in your site. It’s not about saying everything you have to say on one page. While it is possible to rank for a one page site, it is very difficult. It is much easier to establish a site wide theme, supported by depth of content and good internal linking.

Pages should be structured to address customer questíons or product information as they become relevant. This can seem to be a daunting task for many people, but it’s actually quite manageable as long as you start your copywriting project off in the right direction.

Search engines want to be treated like any other visitor to your site, but while they are coming closer to the ability to mimic human judgment, they’re not there yet. Search engines can still have trouble trying to accurately define what a page is about if the content is written in anything but a clear and well-defined style.

To understand what you should be writing, you first need to understand a little bit about the history of the search engines. The first search engines were set up for the people who were using the Internet at the time. Because the population of the early Web was largely researchers, scientists and educators, the focus of search engines was to bring back pages that fit the thesis model. This model persists today in the way Web pages are written: a title, description and some keywords that help define what the focus of the paper or page is.

In order to write effective pages to support your search engine optimization goals there are a few guidelines you should keep in mind. Assuming that you have generated a solid keyword líst (See Lisa Barone’s article, Five Steps to Effective SEO Keyword Research, and have assigned the words to pages, your next step should be to brainstorm the best way to represent the keywords in an informative way.

Brainstorming works best if you throw out all your filters. Don’t critique any of your ideas, just write them down. The idea is to get out everything–great ideas and garbage alike. At this stage, no idea is too stupid. You can narrow it down later.

If you are writing content for your own Web site, your first response might be to feel frustrated. What on earth are you going to write about? Everyone knows everything that you could possibly tell them and you’re not a writer anyway. But that’s just the thing, they don’t and you are.

Let’s pretend that your business is selling cowboy boots.

Brainstorm everything you can think of that relates to cowboy boots, even if it’s only somewhat related. Once you have all your ideas down, pick a few of the best. For example, you’ll want to focus a section of your site on the keyword “buy cowboy boots”. Everyone, you think, knows about how to buy boots. It’s just a matter of finding the right fit and style. You don’t need to explain it to your site’s visitors. But it’s one of your keywords so you sit down and simply write all the obvious information.

You are an expert in your area. Of course you know how to chëck the fit of your boots and which styles will work best for which people. It’s obvious to you that your jeans should be tucked inside your boots if you’re working outside and that you should take certain steps to care for your boots. But for most people, that’s not the case.

That’s why they’re coming to your site in the first place. Your expertise is a valuable resource for the development of content. Explaining something that is obvious to you is probably the best way to introduce new customers to your products.

When I write my first draft, I like to keep the keywords that I want to incorporate on the page in mind. I’ll tape them to my monitor or put them at the very top of the document. However, I don’t worry about densities or forcing them in. If it doesn’t sound natural to use the keyword, I don’t use it. The first draft is just to get the information out. Use your keywords as a guide for the content.

Once you have a first draft, take a look at the tone of your piece. Are you writing to the right audience? Is your content engaging and informative? Does your content solve a problem or help the customer make a decision? If you’re in a highly technical area where your customer isn’t likely to know enough to ask intelligent questíons, have you educated them enough to feel comfortable?

Revise your draft with these ideas in mind. Knowing your audience means putting in the kinds of words that they will be looking for, the same kinds of words that will help them understand what the best choice of products will be for them.

After your next draft, the best thing to do is ask someone else to read it over for you. The best person for this task is someone who fits the profile of a site visitor. Have them read it to see if it answers their questíons in an easy to understand way. If not, revise the content to meet their understanding.

Once you have a final draft, incorporate your final product into the destination page and use the SEOToolSet’s KDA or any other page rating tool to determine the strength of the document. Tweak it if necessary. Keep in mind what your linking strategies will be and how the content will support the Web site theme as a whole.

The final thing to remember about writing for search engines is that there is no magical formula for writing the perfect copy. It takes work and attention to detail to meet the needs of both the search engines and your human visitors. The best thing to do is start writing and go from there.

Tracking the Success of Your Website – Google Analytics

seowhitehats — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:30:00 +0000

How successful is your website? Do you really know how well it is performing for your business?

Many website owners make the mistake of thinking that the more traffíc they get to their website the better, and they work towards this end. It is better to focus efforts on bringing in targeted traffíc that will convert to sales or enquiries. To understand more correctly how well a website is performing, and who is visiting the website, a good website statistics package is required, as well as an understanding of the data these website reports produce.

With many website hostíng packages free, website statistics are available. However, the information is not always easy to understand or doesn’t always give you the information in a way that is easy to understand.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great application that Google provides absolutely free. It tracks all activity on your website, not just visits through Google. All you need is a Google Account, and FTP access to your website to insert a small amount of code in your website, and away you go. If you don’t already have a Google account, I encourage you to set one up as soon as possible! You can do so at: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount . Not only will you have access to Google Analytics, but having a Google account gives you a whole host of other tools.

Visitors

As a start, it is a good idea to find out how many visitors are coming to your website. Visitors are broken down into new and returning visitors. While it is great to attract new visitors to your site, you should aim to see a decent percentage of returning visitors as well, as this gives a good indication that people find your site interesting enough to come back to.

Depth of Visit

How many pages are viewed during a visit to your website?

Length of Visit

How much time do visitors spend on your website? If they are spending very little time on your site when you have an information-rich site, then you need to start looking at the navigational report to find out where you are losing them.

Keywords

The Keywords that people are finding your website through, are a good indication of what keywords are performing well for you in the search engines. Are the keywords that are displaying for you truly reflective of what you offer? If not, then it is time to revamp the content on your website.

Referrals

Which referrals drive the highest quality traffíc? This report lists activity coming via referrals from other websites. This is useful for tracking links that you cannot control. You can gauge the overall effectiveness and importance of PR activities, partnerships, etc. The referrals are compared to the number of visits, page views per visit, conversion rates and average value per visit.

Navigation

Which navigation paths resulted in conversions during the visit? For each navigation path, this report shows conversion rates and the value per visit.

Exit Pages

From which pages do visitors commonly exit your site? This report shows the number of exits from pages on your site. If you notice a high number of exits for specific pages, it is time to seriously analyze these pages and try to improve them, because it is very likely that people are not getting the information they expect or want.

Conversion data

Arguably this is one of the most important pieces of information. Conversion data gives you a true understanding of how successful your site really is.

Conversional goals can be set up through your Analytics settings. Take time to think about what goals you want to track. These may be sales or web enquiries you are receiving, or specific pages in your website that you want to focus on. Keep in mind that if your visitor contacts you by telephone or fax, this will not be reflected in the goal conversions. However, you can set your contact page as being a goal to get a feel for how many people are looking for your contact details.

By monitoring the changes in conversion rates for your primary goals, you can monitor the overall effectiveness of website changes, marketing roll-outs and other events.

Organic vs Pay-Per-Clíck comparison

How does paid search compare with organic search in driving high quality traffíc to my site? This report compares paid and organic referrals with respect to number of visits, page views per visit, conversion rates and average visit value.

Date Range

Throughout the report it gives you the ability to track your website statistics between various date ranges. At this time it only allows you to see a maximum of a month’s data at a time. The reports also allow you to compare data, so you can find out how your site is tracking against a previous date period.

Beta Version

The current Beta which is just in the process of being released, provides a lot more flexibility, and one of the most exciting things about the new version is that it allows you to schedule reports, daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. This is great news as it makes the process of accessing your website reports even easier.

Google Analytics Features

There are many other features that Google Analytics offers, and it is worth spending the time having a good look at them and trying to understand what they have to offer you. Alternatively, speak to your webmaster or SEO specialist and get them to help you understand how Google Analytics can help improve your website performance. By having a better understanding of it, you can potentially íncrease your profíts significantly.

Final Note

When you analyze the data from your website statistics with the intention of improving your site, or getting a good indication of how your site is performing, it is important that you have a decent snapshot of the data to work from, i.e. make sure that you are not making assumptions based on the data of a single day, as trends vary over time, and even from day-to-day. IMPORTANT- never become complacent! Make sure you review your website reports at least weekly or monthly–if not daily–to make sure that your website is performing to your expectations.

Why is Keyword Research Critical To SEO?

seowhitehats — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:54:46 +0000

Like a foundation for a building, there is one aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that is more important than any other. Without this foundation, you may be wasting all your time and resources. Proper keyword research should be the basis of your optimization.

Keyword research is the practice used by SEO professionals to find actual “search terms” people tend to enter into the search engines when conducting a search for a specific thing. Keyword research is a very vital procedure in SEO. It’s where search engine optimization starts.

Keyword research determines which keywords you should be targeting with the SEO. Most people think that they know which keywords they should target. Instinct can be a great resource, but it can also be misleading and is almost always not enough. For example, “search engine optimization” gets an estimated 16,000 searches a day while “search engine marketing” gets an estimated 8,800 searches a day. If your gut tells you to target “search engine marketing”, you may get great rankings, but it would only get you half of the traffic that you could have had if you had targeted and ranked well for “search engine optimization”. There are also keywords that you may not be able to rank well for without a lot of time and significant amount of link building regardless of how well you optimize your site. In addition, there are keywords that other people will use to search for what your site offers that you would never even think of. So, in addition to letting you know which keywords are more popular, the research can also provide new keywords to target.

Drawing on the analogy in our search marketing parable, optimizing your website without first doing keyword research is like trying to pick apples from a tree without first checking to see if there are any apples on it or if the apples are within your reach. You could end up putting in a lot of effort but going home with little fruit from your labor. So it’s a key component of search engine optimization.

Without good keyword research, your search engine optimization efforts will be like firing a gun into the dark. You may hit something, you may not. You may choose keywords that are not searched for or keywords that are way too competitive for your site at that time. It’s best to know what you need to be targeting.

Local Search Engine Optimization Tips

seowhitehats — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:42:42 +0000

Whether or not you have a brick and mortar store, it is vital to ensure your website is ranked well in searches for your local area. What does this mean?

People aren’t just searching for ’widgets’ anymore, they are searching for “widgets AND my town” more and more trying to narrow their searches to their own neighborhood. Why is this?

People want to know whom they are dealing with online. They want to be able to visit your business location for your offerings, or at least have the peace of mind that they could if they wanted to.

For example, if you own a dry cleaning business, potential customers want to not only see your prices; they want directions and a map to get to your store. Even in the face of a global economy more and more people are realizing the importance of community and want to give their business to local merchants.

Here are some additional ideas to think about when adding your website to directories on the web.

Community: Yahoo! definitely excels when it comes to including community in local search. They are combining their Yahoo 360 social networks with local listings. The results are most helpful for people who wish to find information relating the their own area.

When you select a listing for a restaurant, for example, you will see all of the consumer-generated recommendations. If a recommender is in your group of contacts, a star is placed next to their recommendation. You know not only other consumers’ opinions, you know when those opinions are from people you know.

Mobile: Do not neglect the mobile search market. With the advent of systems like Verizon’s new technology and the BlackBerry, people search for the nearest theater using their hand-held device. Then they will search for that great martini bar that is nearby and open after the show.

Press Releases: Is your business doing something new and exciting online or offline? Are you you’re promoting it? Take advantage of free press releases from services.

Local City Searches: CitySearch is a major provider of local information for sites including MSN, Ask.com, Expedia.com, Ticketmaster.com, and many others.

Contact Information On Your Website: Have a physical address and phone number within an address tag at least on your contact page and one other page; the best option would be the homepage. By far the best option is to have your address on all pages of your website. Such information builds trust rank value for your website too.

4 SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid

seowhitehats — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:37:06 +0000

Are you getting mediocre results from SEO? To achieve success with SEO, you must target the right key phrases and build links consistently. It is a continuous process – not a one-time effort. With this in mind, let us take a look at the 4 SEO mistakes that you must avoid:

1.) You do not tag your pages with relevant keyword phrases. This is the most common mistake that many webmasters made. I believe you have seen websites that place only their company names in their Title tags. Title tags are words that appear on the top left hand side of your Internet browser. You must place keywords in your Title tag because search engines give a lot of weight to it. The title tag is like the Title of a book. It tells readers what the book is about. Likewise, the title tag tells search engines what your website is about. If you are trying to get higher rankings for a keyword but it is not present in your title tag, it is very hard for search engines to award you with high rankings. Therefore, make sure that your title tag describes the content of your page and place important keywords right at the front of it.

2.) You do not have enough content or your content is outdated. SEO is more than just tagging your pages. You need to have enough content for search engines to read. To rank high on search engine listings, you must place keywords in your content. Moreover, if your website content is outdated, search engines will visit your site less often, and thus view it as less important. This also prevents your site from getting higher rankings in search engine listings.

3.) You optimize the wrong keywords. If you are trying to optimize keywords that are too generic, it is very hard for you to achieve success from your SEO effort. This is because you will get yourself into a more competitive battlefield with other optimizers. So, spend some time to do your research and look for key phrases with lesser competition but relevant to your business. Remember that if you optimize keywords that are not relevant or too generic, even if you achieve high rankings for them, there will be no conversion.

4.) You do not build links consistently. Link building is a process of getting more incoming links to your website. Quality inbound links will help your website to achieve higher rankings for competitive keywords. But link building is a continuous process. If you never do it consistently, you will not achieve good result from SEO. So, always build links consistently by using article marketing, blog commenting, directory submissions, and other common strategies that optimizers are using.

Google Algorithm Update Analysis

seowhitehats — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:47:19 +0000

Anybody who monitors their rankings with the same vigor that we in the SEO community do will have noticed some fairly dramatic shifts in the algorithm starting last Thursday (July 5th) and continuing through the weekend. Many sites are rocketing into the top 10 which, of course, means that many sites are being dropped at the same time. We were fortunate not to have any clients on the losing end of that equation however we have called and emailed the clients who saw sudden jumps into the top positions to warn them that further adjustments are coming. After a weekend of analysis there are some curiosities in the results that simply require further tweaks in the ranking system.

This update seems to have revolved around three main areas: domain age, backlinks and PageRank.

Domain Age

It appears that Google is presently giving a lot of weíght to the age of a domain and, in this SEO’s opinion, disproportionately so. While the age of a domain can definitely be used as a factor in determining how solid a company or site is, there are many newer sites that provide some great information and innovative ideas. Unfortunately a lot of these sites got spanked in the last update.

On this tangent I have to say that Google’s use of domain age as a whole is a good filter, allowing them to “sandbox” sites on day one to insure that they aren’t just being launched to rank quickly for terms. Recalling back to the “wild west days” of SEO when ranking a site was a matter of cramming keywords into content and using questionable methods to generate links quickly I can honestly say that adding in this delay was an excellent step that ensured that the benefits of pumping out domains became extremely limited. So I approve of domain age being used to value a site – to a point.

After a period of time (let’s call it a year shall we) the age should and generally has only had a very small influence on a site’s ranking with the myriad of other factors overshadowing the site’s whois data. This appears to have changed in the recent update with age holding a disproportionate weíght. In a number of instances this has resulted in older, less qualified domains to rank higher than newer sites of higher quality.

This change in the ranking algorithm will most certainly be adjusted as Google works to maximize the searchers experience. We’ll get into the “when” question below.

Backlinks

The way that backlinks are being calculated and valued has seen some adjustments in the latest update as well. The way this has been done takes me back a couple years to the more easily gamed Google of old. This statement alone reinforces the fact that adjustments are necessary.

The way backlinks are being valued appears to have lost some grasp on relevancy and placed more importance on sheer numbers. Sites with large, unfocused reciprocal link directories are outranking sites with fewer but more relevant links. Non-reciprocal links lost the “advantages” that they held over reciprocal links until recently.

Essentially the environment is currently such that Google has made itself more easily gamed than it was a week ago. In the current environment, building a reasonably sized site with a large recip link directory (even unfocused) should be enough to get you ranking. For obvious reasons this cannot (and should not) stand indefinitely.

PageRank

On the positive side of the equation, PageRank appears to have lost some of it’s importance including the importance of PageRank as it pertains to the value of a backlinks. In my opinion this is a very positive step on Google’s part and shows a solid understanding of the fact that PageRank means little in terms of a site’s importance. That said, while PageRank is a less than perfect calculation subject to much abuse and manipulation from those pesky people in the SEO community it did serve a purpose and while it needed to be replaced it doesn’t appear to have been replaced with anything of substantial value.

A fairly common belief has been that PageRank would be or is being replaced by TrustRank and Google would not give us a green bar to gauge a site’s trust on (good call Google). With this in mind one of two things has happened; either Google has decided the TrustRank is irrelevant and so is PageRank and decided to scrap both (unlikely) or they have shifted the weíght from PageRank to TrustRank to some degree and are just now sorting out the issues with their TrustRank calculations (more likely). Issues that may have existed with TrustRank may not have been clear due to it’s weíght in the overall algorithm and with this shift reducing the importance of PageRank the issues that face the TrustRank calculations may well be becoming more evident.

In truth, the question is neither here nor there (as important a question as it may be). We will cover why this is in the …

Conclusion

So what does all of this mean? First, it means that this Thursday or Friday we can expect yet another update to correct some of the issues we’ve seen rise out of the most current round. This shouldn’t surprise anyone too much, we’ve been seeing regular updates out of Google quite a bit over the past few months.

But what does this mean regarding the aging of domains? While I truly feel that an aging delay or “sandbox” is a solid filter on Google’s part – it needs to have a maximum duration. A site from 2000 is not, by default, more relevant than a site from 2004. After a year-or-so the trust of a domain should hold steady or at most, hold a very slight weíght. This is an area we are very likely to see changes in the next update.

As far as backlinks go, we’ll see changes in the way they are calculated unless Google is looking to revert back to the issues they had in 2003. Lower PageRank, high relevancy links will once again surpass high quantity, less relevant links. Google is getting extremely good at determining relevancy and so I assume the current algorithm issues have more to do with the weíght assigned to different factors than an inability to properly calculate a link’s relevancy.

And in regards to PageRank, Google will likely shift back slightly to what worked and give more importance to PageRank, at least while they figure out what went awry here.

In short, I would expect that with an update late this week or over the weekend we’re going to see a shift back to last week’s results (or something very close to it) after which they’ll work on the issues they’ve experienced and launch a new (hopefully improved) algorithm shift the following weekend. And so, if you’ve enjoyed a sudden jump from page 6 to top 3, don’t pop the cork on the champagne too quickly, and if you’ve noticed some drops, don’t panic. More adjustments to this algorithm are necessary and, if you’ve used solid SEO practices and been consistent and varied in your link building tactics – keep at it and your rankings will return.

10 Ways to Get Free Traffic

seowhitehats — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:32:20 +0000

Getting traffic is one of the most important tasks for any web master. What is more important is understanding you can’t get traffic once and then try to reap the benefits. Getting traffic is an ongoing task and you must be constantly doing it, if you want to get traffic and keep it. Here are 10 ways to get traffic for free:

1.) Optimize Your Website For Search Engines.

Search engines have always been a major way to get traffic for free. That is why you need to do your homework and optimize your website so that it ranks well for the keywords you target. SEO is still the most powerful way to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and efforts in the optimization of your website.

2.) Frequently Update the Contents of Your Website.

If you expected some shocking secrets revealed, you might be a bit disappointed. One of the first steps in getting traffic for free is trivial but vital – get great content and frequently update it. In terms of SEO, content is king. If your content is good and frequently updated you will not only build a loyal audience of recurring visitors, who will often come to see what is new, but search engines will also love your website.

3.) Take Advantage of Social Bookmarking Websites.

Social bookmarking websites (especially the most popular among them) are another powerful way to get traffic for free.

4.) Use Your Facebook and Twitter.

Social networks are also a way to get traffic for free. If you are popular on networks, such as Twitter or Facebook, the traffic you get from there can easily surpass the traffic from Google and the other search engines. It is true that building a large network of targeted followers on Twitter and supporters on Facebook takes a lot of time and effort but generally the result is worth.

5.) Get Links with Other Websites in Your Niche.

Another way to get traffic for free is from other websites in your niche. Getting links with other websites in your niche is also good for SEO, especially if you manage to get links without the famous nofollow attribute. But even if the links are nofollow (i.e. they are useless for SEO), they still help to get traffic to your website. If you manage to put your link in a visible place on a website with high volumes of traffic, you can get thousands of hits from this link alone. If you need list of websites within your niche where you could get backlinks from, check out a backlink builder tool. However, be careful if you exchange links because linking to bad neighbors can do you a lot of harm.

6.) Use Any Chance to Promote Your Website For Free.

Free promotion is always welcome, so don’t neglect it. There are many ways to promote your website for free and some of the most popular ones include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion in various listings, etc. It is true that not all free ways to promote your website work well but if you select the right places to promote your website for free, this can also result in tons of traffic.

7.) Create a Free Product or Service.

Content drives most traffic when you offer something useful. There are many types of useful content you can create and they largely depend on the niche of your website. You can have articles with tons of advice, or short tips but one of the most powerful ways to get traffic is to create a free product or service. When this product or service gets popular and people start visiting your website, chances are that they will visit the other sections of the website as well.

8.) Use Viral Content.

Free products and services are great for getting free traffic to your website and one of the best varieties in this aspect is viral content. Viral content is called so because it distributes like a virus – i.e. when users like your content, they send it to their friends, post it on various websites, and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit it to a couple of popular websites. After that users pick it and distribute it for you. Viral content can be a hot video or a presentation but it can also be a good old article or an image.

9.) Use Offline Promotion.

Offline promotion is frequently forgotten but it is also a way to get traffic for free. Yes, computers are everywhere and many people spend more time online than offline but still life hasn’t moved completely on the Web. Offline promotion is also very powerful and if you know how to use it, this can also bring you many visitors. Some of the traditional offline ways to promote your website include printing its URL on your company’s business cards and souvenirs or sticking it on your company vehicles. You can also start selling T-shirts and other merchandise with your logo and this way make your brand more popular.

10.) Include your URL in Your Signature.

URLs in forum signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums, which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your website. When you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click the link to your website on your signature to learn more about you. In rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an internal page of the website) rather than a link to your homepage and this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page. Unfortunately, deep links are rarely allowed.

Getting traffic for free is a vast topic and it is not possible to list all the ways to do it. However, if you know the most important ways – i.e. the ways we discussed in this article and you apply them properly, it is guaranteed that you will be able to get lots of traffic for free.

Writing SEO Articles To Advertise Your Business

seowhitehats — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:06:06 +0000

There are so many tools available on the Internet to advertise your business and a number of ways to use them to your advantage. Because the World Wide Web is such a vast place, it is absolutely crucial to utilize all available resources in order to receive high website rankings in the search engines. Writing SEO articles to advertise your business is one tool that will help you gain readers who will then become potential customers. SEO articles are also written to inform, educate and to sell a product. The average SEO article, the type of article that earns a website a higher search ranking, communicates some educational information to the web reader.

There are many websites that have been built for the sole purpose of posting articles. Such websites allow writers to submit articles so that a large number of people will see them. Various other promotional tools are also available to help link the articles to other pertinent information. It all ties in together so the more you learn the better off you’ll be in the future.

Effective SEO articles are comprised of informative content and effective keywords. The first factor you should consider when contemplating an effective SEO article is its content. If it is not informative you can bet people won’t be interested in reading it. If they bypass one of your articles and happen to catch your name on the byline, you can also bet they’ll remember it and not even bother trying to read the next article of yours they encounter. This is why you want to make sure all content you submit is interesting and useful. You want to capture the attention of your readers in a way that makes them want to know more about you and your business and why your business can help them.

Use effective keywords. The more relevant the keywords are to the topic the more success your article will bring. The keywords you choose should relate directly to your topic and should be integrated into the article, not forced in where they sound appropriate. Readers will pick up on this and again, may skip right past your articles and move onto someone else’s.

Always keep your target audience in mind. Whenever you write an SEO article think of who will most likely benefit from the information. Here you will consider demographics just like you did when you conducted the market research for your initial business plan. You are writing for your target audience in hopes of enticing others to take an interest in your business so never lose sight of this no matter what.

Make sure you have an even balance between not enough and too much. You want to provide the right amount of information without leaving anything important out, but want to be careful not to include words or phrases that could be construed as fluff. After all, you’re not filling space, you’re grabbing attention and hopefully gaining new customers in the process.

Lastly, proofread your SEO article and make sure it flows well. You’ll then need to re-edit and proofread again to ensure that everything is completely correct.