Here are a couple links to some noteworthy blogs that I’ve been looking at this week.

Rather than using twitter to “tweet” them one at a time like I usually do, I decided to post a few here.

Defining Search Engine Optimization – Online Marketing Blog

The search engine industry frequently innovates as do consumer behaviors for discovery and sharing. Those changes require search marketers to take a fresh look.

CPA Cost Per Action Online Marketing

CPA online marketing is a type of marketing that is making a lot of waves.

Defining Search Engine Optimization – Online Marketing Blog

The search engine industry frequently innovates as do consumer behaviors for discovery and sharing. Those changes require search marketers to take a fresh look.

SERPS.

You’ll hear that term a lot once you start to dive into what Search Engine Optimization is all about.  When you hear the term SERPS, it means “Search Engine Results Pages”.  In other words, it’s where your site is listed on Google, Yahoo, Ask, and hundreds of other search engines.  Are you on page 1, page 12, page 344….This is your SERPS ranking for your site.

You’ll rank differently on each search engine but the holy grail of TOP SERPS to aim for obviously is Google.  Google, by far, is the most popular search engine so it makes sense that you’ll get a lot more eye balls on your website if it is ranked somewhere on the first page of Google.

So when someone asks, how do you rank on the SERPS, hopefully now you’ll know what they are talking about.

Now, HOW you rank has a lot to do with how your structure your website.

How you structure your website to get higher SERPS is the “science” behind Search Engine Optimization work or SEO for short.  Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today that means utilizing tools and methods to make your site rank as high as possible in the results of search engines (SERPS).

Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

A few days ago I was reading a study that showed over 80% of internet users only access the sites that appear in first page of the search engine results.  Personally, I think it’s way higher than that.  People are so impatient these days.  If they don’t see what they are looking for on their initial search…they search a different term.  So you can see how important it is to get a ranking in at least the first page.

Search engine optimization requires a fair bit of work on a regular basis because the search engines are changing all the time.  Each search engine has it’s own algorithms to determine the order in which they place websites in their results pages for a particular keyword or keyword phrase.

What you do to get a high ranking one month might not work the next month.

But…

There are some basic “rules”  that are universally accepted as “SEO basics” that every website owner should at least pay attention to.  If you don’t have the basics down, you’ll never graduate to more advanced methods.

Keep these rules in mind with every website you publish and you’ll be ahead of the game from the start.

RULE #1

Content is King!  Unless you are paying for traffic of course…then the old rule “Cash Is King” still applies…;-)

Make sure your site has content releveant to what people are searching for.  The more content the better.  As your site continues to grow with more and more content you have a good chance of Google and other search engines liking you.

This is one reason why search engines tend to favor blogs.  Blogs generally have content added on a regular basis.  Blogs usually focus on a theme and that’s really what a keyword is anyway…a theme.  So focus on your theme.

Now, don’t start to think that the more pages you have  the better your chances are at ranking.  Quality is better than quantity.  THAT’S what the search engines are looking for…good quality content.

RULE #2

Keyword research Is Essential!!

When creating content for your website or articles or blog post, you need to think about the keyword search term you’re aiming for.

I’m about to give you a link to a free tool from SEO book for keyword research…

It shows how many searches are made by users and how many search results are in the search engines.  This is extremely valuable information if you are concerned about SEO (which you should be).

Check your competition and make sure you’re not going up against any site too hard.

You’ll want to aim for a search phrase rather than a search term.  Search phrases are commonly referred to as a long tail keyword.  So if you hear the phrase “long tail”, now you know what the heck they are talking about.

In other words, instead of trying to optimize your site for the term “art” you may want to refine your optimization to “best oil paint brush” or “art supplies in Orlando”….

Those terms are related to “art” but they are long tail, specific phrases.  THAT’S what you want to aim for.

But how do you know what phrase or phrases you should have content about???

Well, that depends a lot on what your site is about.  However, it’s something you should consider when you are developing your site or even a blog post for that matter.

Here’s a tool you should be using whether you are paying for traffic (pay-per-click) or trying to optimize your site for natural SERPS.  This will help you determine which keywords or “long tails” you should be focusing on.

Free Keyword Research Tool

Below is a short video demonstration of the keyword tool.

RULE #3

Fresh content rules over old content.

Again, this is one reason search engines favor blogs over static sites right now.

Fresh content will get you higher in the ranks because Google wants to give the users the newest info, not info that is years old.  When it sees a site that is constantly being updated, it will favor it again and again assuming that you keep your content updated with RELEVANT content on a consistent basis.  Always keep in mind your keyword research and build on that…

RULE #4

Use Your Keyword in Your Page Title

This is a big one.  The title of the page is the bit of text that appears in the top of your browser. You can add this to the HTML code of your web pages between the and tags.

Also, you should add in keyword and description meta tags to your document.  This assists the search engines to know more about your site.  Don’t focus too much on the keyword meta tags…they are pretty much ignored now by Google.  It doesn’t hurt you to have the keyword meta tag though because some engines still use them heavier than Google.

RULE #5

Get Backlinks.  A backlink is a hyperlink on someone else’s site pointing back to your site.

The search engines  like sites that appear popular. If a site has a lot of websites pointing to it, it means there is something of value that people want to share.

One way backlinks are the best, but two-way links are fine too. If you can get a link from a high ranking website, it will certainly help in your SERPS.

The absolute BEST way to get backlinks to your site is to comment on blogs. Usually when you make a comment on a blog, you need to enter your name, email address, and website address.  When you enter your website address…that is giving you a backlink to your site from the blog you are commenting on.

Plug….Plug….Plug….Plug

Another highly effective way to get a backlink is to be a guest blogger on this site…”The How To Project”.

When you click  “submit a tip” in the navigation bar you can make a blog post directly to this site.  You don’t even need to register or login or anything like that.  If you’ve got something valuable to share with others (and it’s internet marketing related) please feel free to make a post.  It works similar to making a comment but instead of a comment to an existing post…it’s actually YOUR post.

You will have a chance to enter any site you wish to point back to….so go ahead, get another backlink to YOUR site by making a post here.  I’ll make you famous 

Rule #6

Forget everything you thought you knew about Google Page Rank.  Just forget about it.  Seriously….it means very little any more.  Don’t try to get a “good” page rank.  It really doesn’t matter when it comes to SERPS.  (I’ll write more about this later…it’s a whole different post in itself)

Comments????

Suggestions???

Did you learn anything from this post?