SEO mini Guide
By Allison Rothwell

SEO mini-guide

Before you read, please take a moment to fill in our SEO survey, it’ll only take a minute and it will help greatly...  SEO Survey

Search engine optimisation advice
For more information visit: seo company and seo training where you can join the SEO training club!

This Mini Guide has been put together to give SEO newbies a basic guide to SEO, and practical suggestions that you can start doing now to make a difference to your online presence and increase the traffic to your website.

Firstly, let’s look at basic website optimisation:

Website optimisation comprises two elements...What you say about yourself - on-page elements - meta description, keywords, navigational structure etc..

What others say about you - backlinks - including those from directories, articles and social media platforms/networking sites...

This mini guide has the following sections:

• Tags and keywords - what are they and what do they do?
• Site Content - how should you optimise your site content?
• Back links - what are the best backlinks to have?
• Social Media - Social Networking and Social News Sites - how to use them
• Online advertising

5 Quick Tips To Get Website Traffic Fast!

Online, one of the most significant keys to success is getting website traffic. The more visitors you have, the better your sales and profits. Presumably you have a niche and you know your keywords, and regularly conduct keyword research to stay on top of whatʼs popular. Based on those assumptions here are five quick and easy tips to get website traffic fast!

Tip #1 Make sure you’re actually tagging your keywords.

Do you spend loads of time optimizing your content and then neglect to tag them on your webpage? Tags are where search engines look and if there are no tags theyʼll pass right by your web pages. Here is a quick brief on tags.

There are a number of tag types including,

• Title tags. Title tags are quite possibly the most important place to situate your keywords. Here is what they look like - <title>Primary keyword phrase here. </title>
  Your title tag is where you place your primary keyword or keyword phrase. The sentence will describe your business in less than 90 characters.
   
• Header Tags. Header tags are next in order of importance to search engines. Theyʼre ranked in order of importance and look like this - <h1>Primary and/or Secondary keywords here</h1>
  The “1” designates this header as the most important header on the page.
   
• Meta Tags. Meta tags provide the small descriptive text found underneath the title tag on the search engine results page. Like title tags these should be kept brief, informative and up to date.
   
• Alt Tags. Alt tags are used to provide a text description of a graphic. Each graphic on your site should have a description and an alt tag which describes the image and uses a keyword.

Tip #2 Add content to your site daily

Content is essential for traffic and a top search engine ranking. Content is what search engine spiders look for and index - without it there is nothing to index or rank. Give visitors and search engines a reason to visit and index your site. Make a commitment to provide daily, optimized content and your traffic will soar.

Make sure you have good content on every page of your site. Make sure you include your keywords and keyphrases. Make the content interesting and easy to read :)

Tip #3 Gain valuable and relevant incoming links

The more websites which link to your webpages the more valuable search engines perceive you to be, though not all links are created equal. Search engines give more leverage to links from sites which are popular and credible and from sites which are relevant to your website topic.

There are different types of links.

- A direct link looks like a basic website address, for example, www.yourwebsite.com - A text link occurs when the webpage address is embedded as anchor text. Readers simply click on the link and are redirected to a new website page. Here is an example: in html code, the link is www.domain.com and the anchor text will be bolded as “anchor text”

Here is a typical html link:

<a href=” http://www.domain.com ”> Anchor Text </a>

Or a real life example - my link is http://www.alisonrothwell.com/ and my anchor text is “social media marketing”, so I would write my text links like this:

<a href=” http://www.alisonrothwell.com/”>social media marketing</a>

Again as you can see my anchor text is contained between the > </a> after the domain and quotation mark portion of the link.

- If the link is to an internal web page, for example an article published on a website, rather than the home page, it is called a “deep link.”

You can encourage linking to your website by:

• Adding content to your site.
• Submitting to article directories.
• Publishing press releases.
• Blogging and participating in social networking forums, chat rooms and social networking sites.

Tip #4 Be Social!

Now more than ever before, internet marketing is about building a community. Whether you offer a forum on your website or you participate in social networking sites, social networking is a valuable traffic generating tactic. Sites like Facebook and Twitter can be powerful tools for generating links and traffic to your site. Create a profile and then post comments, links to your site and ideas which generate conversation.

Get involved - many chat rooms and forums are industry specific, find those which cater to your business, and begin participating. Speak to and connect with a highly targeted audience.

Here are some social networking sites to try:

• Facebook - create a profile (known as a Fan Page) for your business
• Myspace - create a page
• Twitter - use Twitter to find conversations with likeminded people
• Squidoo - join a Squidoo group that relates to your interests
• BT Tradespace - Take part in the Tradespace community forums

Tip #5 Advertise for more exposure and traffic

Advertising, when handled strategically, can be used to promote your content and products or services. PPC advertising is often the tool of choice because you control the advertising budget on a daily basis and have the tools to test and track your advertising efforts. Once youʼve honed your PPC ads the return on investment can be phenomenal in terms of traffic and purchases. Testing is the key to success with PPC advertising.

For maximum results, create a traffic and SEO strategy. Outline your plan and your goals and then take the necessary action. Take advantage of these five traffic and search engine tips to boost your business.

ABOUT THE SEO TRAINING CLUB...

Hi - I’m Alison - apart from being a social media geek, I’m a fairly normal person. I live in a village in Lancashire with my husband, daughters and a cocker spaniel called Jedi. I have made my entire income online for over 3 years now.

I launched my internet marketing consultancy in response to other small businesses who wanted to know how I had managed to establish my first business online and build such a strong brand so quickly. I have over 16 years offline marketing and PR experience, but for the last two years I have trained and worked specifically in the art of online and internet PR.

Since starting my own consultancy, Iʼve noticed that thereʼs a real need for a simple DIY solution to empower small business owners to be able to manage their own successful, profitable online marketing.

To fill this gap in the market, I have created the seo training club - a one-stop shop of seo training, advice, tricks and tools to equip the small business to stay ahead of the game.

Successful online marketing comes down to doing what works and doing it over and over again across multiple blogs and websites. Then keeping up to date as technology, techniques and methods develop. Being a member of the SEO Training Club enables you to do just that and more for a very low cost.

The SEO Training Club launches soon...

Alison

Alison Rothwell

Copyright 2009 alison rothwell