Search Engine Optimization Cheat Sheet

Ok, here is exactly what you need to know in order to be successful optimizing your sites for the search engines. Yes, many people have talked about it, and it’s probably been rehashed many times, but this article is a nice, neat, little package. Nowadays, getting listed in the search engine is more than just making optimized webpages (you actually need to do promotion as well) – but if you follow these guidelines, it will help to ensure that you get the maximum benefit and search engine exposure out of your promotional efforts.

When designing a specific webpage, you need to do the following:

1. The first thing is to decide what your particular webpage is about, and then pick keywords/keyword phrases associated with that content. Nowadays, something called ‘long-tail keywords’ is also important (which simply means 4-5 word keyword phrases). Although the traffic you can get from this keywords is very small, it is highly targeted traffic, and if you have an offer in line with what someone is looking for, you are likely to be successful. So for example, for AffiliateInAbox.com, “affiliate” is a keyword, “how to make money through affiliate products” would be a ‘long tail’ keyword. You want to sprinkle both types of keywords through your article. For reference in the rest of this article, I will simply be using “how to make money through affiliate products” as an example of a keyword phrase.
2. Make sure you have these keywords in your webpage title (the title appears in the top left hand corner of your webbrowser). Generally it is found in something called a ‘title’ tag. If you are using WordPress, you can generally find some good plugins such as the SEO all-in-one pack that will take care of this for you. So, using my example, you might have “AffiliateInAbox.com – How to make money through affiliate products”
3. Make your URL/directory contain keywords. Again, if you have a wordpress site, there is a plugin that will take care of this automatically for you (SEO All-In-One pack). So instead of “/mystuff/”, you might have it called “/How-to-make-money-through-affiliate-products/’

4. Make sure your HTML page filename contains keywords. Again, “how-to-make-money-through-affiliate-products.htm” is much better than “stuff.htm”.
5. Include keywords within anchor text. This simply means that if you have a link to something, describe what it is using keywords. So for example, instead of “Click here!” as a link title, you might call it “Click here to leanr how to make money through affiliate products!”
6. Include keywords within your image tags. Again, this is just the “alt” tag you find in HTML source code. So instead of something like “alt=image.gif”, you might have it something like “alt= How to make money through affiliate products!’”.
7. Interlink your websites. If you have more than one website domain, it is wise to contain links or references to it on other sites. If you can get other people to do a ‘link swap’ (i.e., you put your link on my site, I’ll put my link on your site), that works even better. Reasoning is, is that eventually as your site builds authority, when it is on a bunch of different sites, search engines like Google will figure it is more important.
8. Localization. Although this is more of a programming thing, if you can localize your content (whether by translated versions of your site, or have content specific to particular cities or towns), you are more likely to rank higher for particular terms. This is one thing that is becoming especially popular in Google, as you’ll find if you search for something, “local” results are more likely to rank higher than some generic run of the mill website.
9. Name your images/documents with keywords in them. Google does archive various other document formats (i.e., .swf, .pdf, .gif, .jpg, etc, etc), and if you name your documents accordingly (i.e., instead of “ebook.pdf”, call it “How_to_make_money_through_affiliate_products.pdf”), you are more likely to rank higher for those particular terms as well.

10. Include a google sitemap. This simply makes it easy for google to find webpages on your website and make sure that it doesn’t ‘miss’ anything. If you are using WordPress, look at something like “Google XML Sitemaps”
11. Include keywords in your domain. Obviously since my domain is about affiliate products, affiliate marketing, etc, etc, it is called “http://www.affiliateinabox.com/”. So if you are creating a niche specific website, make sure you include related keywords.
12. Keep your content fresh. If you post a new blog posting, say, once a week, search engines like Google are more likely to figure that you have a ‘quality’ site (because you, or at least an automated program), has taken the time to make sure new content is updated, as opposed to having nothing say for a year or so. Kind of like google thinks if you don’t care about your site, why should they? So make sure you have something new every now and then.

Anyways, these are a couple quick things you should have in your search engine optimization checklist. Of course I know there are more, but this should help give you a good start for any new site you create, and making sure your maximize the benefit of any of your promotional efforts.

Good luck!

Search Engine Optimization Checklist is a post from: AffiliateInABox

(a) More people wanting to get rich ‘quick’ on the Internet, & live the ‘internet’ dream (“working” when you want to, etc) (b) Improvements in technology & submission processes (c) Media playing up the major ‘overnight’ successes (d) Big businesses that are already successful in other markets, that have no problem ‘dropping’ a million dollars on a project to ‘see’ if it works, that competes with the ‘little’ guy worried about whether he/she should spend $5 on this e-book, or $10 on that e-book.

One thing I’d say before I get into some of the actual steps you can take to promote your site is this: don’t promote junk, and don’t resort to junky methods of promotion.

Why shouldn’t you promote junk? Reasoning is this: If you promote junk — sure — you might make some sales, might even make a lot. But once people realize what you are promoting is junk, not only are they likely to try and get their money back (& you have to deal with subsequent customer service issues/e-mails/etc), but if you try promoting again, no one will probably will want to buy from you. (I.e., the story about ‘crying wolf’, how a guy was lonely while looking after sheep, so ‘cried wolf’ to get attention from the townspeople. The first few times they ran to help, then walked away annoyed after they realized they were duped. Then, when a wolf did actually come, none of the townspeople came simply because they didn’t believe him. Likewise, make sure you stick with quality products. On my site/affiliateinabox, I do precisely that.).

Furthermore, what kind of legacy do you want to leave? Do you want to say “Hey son, here’s my army of autoblog sites where all I simply do is take other people’ s content, rehash it, and hope that someone clicks on an advertisement so I can get money off of their efforts?” Or… wouldn’t it be more fulfilling and satisfying to say “Hey son, here’ s a list of products I created, and here are the testimonials from the people it has helped. Here is the customer list of happy and satisfied buyers. All you have to do is build on that now…”?

Why not resort to junky promotion methods?

Quite simply, because they won’t last. Yes, it’s true, that they might work temporarily, but then it becomes a ridiculous ‘arms’ race, where you are trying to keep up with the jones’s. Furthermore, it is becoming easier and easier through computer technology to filter out ‘junk’ results, and when that happens, the hundreds of hours used to promote that way go down the drain). People complain about the “google slap”, or the something or other “slap” — but usually this is quite simply because Google (or equivalent traffic source) has decided that the means of promotion were junk, and filters out those results. Although it’s possible now, probably when google more fully implements the context sensitivity algorithm into their search results, the thousands of ‘spun’ articles, copy-cat auto-blogging sites, and so forth, will drop like a stone from the search results.

As another example, a little while ago some people were upset because they had found an exploit using squiddoo pages to rank highly to promote products. Squiddoo decided that the means of promotion were junky, so deleted the tends of thousands of man hours setting up these ‘lenses’ with the click of a button.

I have a site from 10 years ago that still gets traffic, and still gets sales, simply because the strategies to promote it were solid. I’ve also had another site which has gone through several ‘google dances’ (when google changes their ranking algorithm), and the net effect is that my site seems to receive exactly the same amount of traffic it did before the dance.

So… what are some promotion methods you can implement today?

Promotional Methods:

• Article Submission. Write articles, and then use automated software to submit them to article directories. Make sure you resort to quality articles, and not thousands of respun/rehashed articles, because once the traffic sources get wise to your tactics, all they have to do is press the ‘delete’ button and you are gone. You have to spend hundreds of hours to try and achieve the same results you did before.
• Blog commenting. Post useful/insightful comments on blogs, and the owners will love you for it. It will give them a sense of pride, realizing they have contributed value to someone elses life, and that someone else has recognized those efforts. If your post is relevant, of course they don’t mind if you have your website URL listed. What they object to is the ‘spammy’ comments (i.e., ‘buy my product now, visit my site now’) which really contribute absolutely no value to the original post. Of course, blog commenting can be automated as well, but you need to make sure you find relevant blogs & post relevant comments on those blogs to see maximum results. Again, no one has a problem if you comment on their blog and happen to have your URL listed, so long as you are adding some kind of value.
• Forum discussions/signatures/etc. Again, a great way to build credibility & also get residual traffic. In fact, participate in a number of forums, and see your traffic multiply. But again the key is, providing on-topic, valuable information. If all you do is post a “yeah me too!” type comment, not only do people probably not really care what you have to say, but when you actually do have something to say, they will probably pay very little attention to it simply because previous comments had absolutely no value. Furthermore, forum owners can very quickly get annoyed by the barrage of ‘me-too’ comments, and again, it only takes them 1 second to press the ‘delete’ button, whereas it might have taken you 30 minutes to type in 30 ‘me-too’ comments.

Above are a few of the immediate steps you can take to start seeing an increase in your traffic, and subsequent business.

And be patient. I know this is the age of instant gratification. Microwaveable ‘instant’ meals, ‘instant’ cash if you don’t have it (credit cards), ‘instant’ entertainment (television), etc, etc. But building a business takes time, dedication, & patience. There is a reason the expression “Do what you love and the money will come” is so true. It’s not necessarily simply because people will pay you to do what you love. It’s usually because (a) you stick with it for a long time (patience), and (b) you actually like what you are doing, so are constantly trying to improve, which results in ‘quality’, which are two important steps to success.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed the post!

How to Promote your Website is a post from: AffiliateInABox