Companies pay thousands of dollars to SEO firms to get a high ranking in their main keywords and pass their competitors. I honestly think that SEO is an extremely exaggerated term and anyone can achieve great results applying the techniques which are clearly explained in various SEO books authors by SEO experts and owners of several succesful websites.
SEO by Affiliate Marketing Guru
A detailed SEO bible authored by Kristopher Jones who is CEO and president of successful Pepperjam Network.Over 140 most effective search engine optimization techniques are explained with lots of screenshots in a methodical approach. Starting with analyzing competition in your field, you will continue with the techniques to find the critical main and long tail keywords you will optimize your sites. Developing link building is the next step using several tools of blogging and social networks. An advanced section on Google Adwords and keyword tool is worth to explore. The author also describes the most efficient techniques to make money online with the help of SEO.
Building Findable Websites and SEO
Well, author Aarron Walter not only provides white hat legal SEO techniques but also talks about what you should never do. This book has an interesting real life SEO story about how BMW Germany had banned from Google index completely because of black hat SEO tactics.
The main difference of this book from other SEO books is that it dives deep into the Web Standards HTML realm. Many webmasters are not aware of that usage of correct tagging in HTML seriously contributes to value of the page.
According to Aarron, SEO is just a part of a general findability term. To achieve this goal, he demonstrates real findabality practices at the end of the book as well.
Dominating World's Largest Search Engine with Simple SEO Techniques
Does your site rank at #1 on Google for a popular or semi-popular keyword? If not so, this book prepares you for the white hat SEO fight you will participate to dominate your competitors. The author is owner of MarketingScoop.com website and ranks #1 for many competitive marketing related keywords including "Marketing Expert", "Internet Marketing Expert" etc.
A well written step by step guide which will help increasing your search engine position, even to #1 for those who apply the techniques with ambition.
SEO Book for Beginners
If you are really new to SEO world and know just a little about SEO, this beginner SEO book definitely helps. All vital elements of SEO (Analysing your position and competitors, finding keywords, applying on-site SEO, getting backlinks with off-site SEO, analysing search engine traffic and an introductary chapter on PPC advertising as a bonus). Eventhough, the book is from Dummies series, you can end up regularly reading previous chapters to understand and strengthen your SEO knowledge.
SEO for PHP Programmers
It is a book written especially for PHP programmers who don't apply SEO techniqus while coding. I know many commercial websites which was excellently coded but since they don't have any SEO practice, they don't rank at all on main search engines and eventually fade off to the garbage. Organic search engine traffic is especially important for online shops because of hot competition.
This book shows the real code pieces which solve duplicate content issues, optimized URLs, SE friendly product catalogs with efficient tagging and more.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
What is KEI and How to use it for SEO
The Definition and Formula of KEI
KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) is a proposed standard formula to calculate how competitive and popular a set of keywords in search engines. It was invented by a SEO specialist Sumantra Roy. KEI for a keyword phrase is formulated as ;
KEI = (Number of Monthly Keyword Searches)^2 / (Competing Pages)
Competition
Before explaining why we had the square of searches the formula, we should think ourselves how we basically find the competition and popularity. In SEO world, competition is the number of SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) for an exact keyword phrase. If I open Google and type the exact phrase using double quotes "iphone games", currently I get 1,400,000 results. It is the number of pages we should beat in competition to be ranked in first page results.
Popularity
We can find the popularity of a keyword phrase using free tools like Google Adwords Keyword tool or paid tools like Wordtracker. I prefer to use Google Adwords Keyword tool. It is quite useful and returns relevant up-to-date results.
According to Keyword Tool, there are approx. 140,000 monthly worldwide searches for "iphone games"
We could simply divide these numbers and compare the result with the results of other keywords, but KEI didn't do like this. There is a logical reason for this.
Explanation of KEI Formula
Suppose that we have another iPhone related keyword with monthly searches of 5 and with 50 competing pages. It means that it will be easy to rank at the first place, but it doesn't worth the efforts since there is no demand !
If we simply divide both numbers for both "iphone games" and "our keyword" we would end up with the same result. 1/10. It is certainly apparent that they don't have the same value.
If we would just look at this simple division result, we could be deceived. Because of this, KEI squares the number of searches as a signal to show its popularity.
Actually, you could just use any other power. For example I can write the formula as Power of 3.
KEI = (Number of Monthly Keyword Searches)^3 / (Competing Pages)
But this time, since I have given more importance to popularity (number of monthly searches) I have to give much more efforts to rank better in SERPs. This number depends on SEO skills. I personally use power of 2 as a proposed standard.
Usage in SEO
Actually, it is a systematic and straightforward approach. For example, if you have determined that lets say, Palm Pre related keywords are getting high KEI, you should begin writing articles using the exact phrase in the title of your article and one, two times inside the article text. Do not forget to add a few tags without spamming as well. Then, you should hunt for dofollow backlinks to increase your position in the eyes of search engines. Submitting the article on social networks with dofollow and finding blogs with dofollow comment mechanisms like Comment Luv is not an hard task, but can be time consuming.
A more complicated KEI Formula
Eventhough KEI is a significant indicator, I have developed another formula adding parameters like PageRank of Competitors, Backlinks to Competing Page and Advertisers Competing for Keywords. Read my advanced KEI formula article and see how I derive it using Google Search, Google Adwords Tool, a Backlink Watch tool and a PageRank Firefox widget.
KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) is a proposed standard formula to calculate how competitive and popular a set of keywords in search engines. It was invented by a SEO specialist Sumantra Roy. KEI for a keyword phrase is formulated as ;
KEI = (Number of Monthly Keyword Searches)^2 / (Competing Pages)
Competition
Before explaining why we had the square of searches the formula, we should think ourselves how we basically find the competition and popularity. In SEO world, competition is the number of SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) for an exact keyword phrase. If I open Google and type the exact phrase using double quotes "iphone games", currently I get 1,400,000 results. It is the number of pages we should beat in competition to be ranked in first page results.
Popularity
We can find the popularity of a keyword phrase using free tools like Google Adwords Keyword tool or paid tools like Wordtracker. I prefer to use Google Adwords Keyword tool. It is quite useful and returns relevant up-to-date results.
According to Keyword Tool, there are approx. 140,000 monthly worldwide searches for "iphone games"
We could simply divide these numbers and compare the result with the results of other keywords, but KEI didn't do like this. There is a logical reason for this.
Explanation of KEI Formula
Suppose that we have another iPhone related keyword with monthly searches of 5 and with 50 competing pages. It means that it will be easy to rank at the first place, but it doesn't worth the efforts since there is no demand !
If we simply divide both numbers for both "iphone games" and "our keyword" we would end up with the same result. 1/10. It is certainly apparent that they don't have the same value.
If we would just look at this simple division result, we could be deceived. Because of this, KEI squares the number of searches as a signal to show its popularity.
Actually, you could just use any other power. For example I can write the formula as Power of 3.
KEI = (Number of Monthly Keyword Searches)^3 / (Competing Pages)
But this time, since I have given more importance to popularity (number of monthly searches) I have to give much more efforts to rank better in SERPs. This number depends on SEO skills. I personally use power of 2 as a proposed standard.
Usage in SEO
Actually, it is a systematic and straightforward approach. For example, if you have determined that lets say, Palm Pre related keywords are getting high KEI, you should begin writing articles using the exact phrase in the title of your article and one, two times inside the article text. Do not forget to add a few tags without spamming as well. Then, you should hunt for dofollow backlinks to increase your position in the eyes of search engines. Submitting the article on social networks with dofollow and finding blogs with dofollow comment mechanisms like Comment Luv is not an hard task, but can be time consuming.
A more complicated KEI Formula
Eventhough KEI is a significant indicator, I have developed another formula adding parameters like PageRank of Competitors, Backlinks to Competing Page and Advertisers Competing for Keywords. Read my advanced KEI formula article and see how I derive it using Google Search, Google Adwords Tool, a Backlink Watch tool and a PageRank Firefox widget.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
10 Proven On-Site SEO Methods for Your Website
There is much speculation as to which methods boost search engine ranking. Those who are new to SEO or even many seasoned SEO pros may find confusion as to what the rules really are. Many top SEO webmasters share what they do to climb up in the search engines, but are their methods actually 100% correct? Luckily, the Google patent of August 10, 2006 has cleared up a lot of questions when it comes to SEO. On-site SEO is very important when it comes to obtaining those highly coveted top search engine positions. This guide was written to share what Google has confirmed to be correct SEO methods and contains no speculation as to what could be correct.
#1 The Domain Name
Having a main keyword as a part of the domain name is a huge help to SEO. However, caution should be taken in selecting a domain name with a keyword. Those selecting a domain name should take their audience into consideration. If the keyword is a long-tail keyword like "money making tips for moms," moneymakingtipsformoms.com wouldn't be a friendly domain name for readers. There are two other options in this case, use a partial keyword like moneymakingtips.com or use a completely new name or even a made up word and brand it. Doing SEO for a site with a made up word as a domain name can be a difficult task, but sometimes it's better than using a keyword for the domain name.
#2 Keywords in the URL
Having keywords as a part of a page's URL is different than using them in the domain name, but is still of major importance. Doing this not only helps sites with keywords in the domain name, but also helps those trying to do SEO for a domain with a made-up, brandable name. Imagine there is an article on your doll site about vintage doll dresses. For this article, you're likely targeting "vintage doll dresses" as your keyword. To help this particular page along, you'll want your URL to reflect your keyword. If you own the domain name of dolldresses.com, you'll want the URL of this particular article to be something like dolldresses.com/vintage_doll_dresses. This is the same if you own a brandable domain name. The search engine will see the URL of the article and say to itself, "Oh this page is about vintage doll dresses, I'm going to rank this a bit higher in the search results for that keyword." Different content management systems handle URLs differently, so it's important to look into how URLs are generated. Blogger, for example, uses the title of a post as part of the URL. Drupal, another popular blogging platform uses nodes which are not good for SEO. For example, an article on vintage doll dresses will end up with a URL similar to dolldresses.com/node21. Luckily, there are plug-ins and workarounds for Drupal that will create more search engine friendly URLs!
#3 Keywords in the Title Tag
Having keywords in the title tag is one of the most important factors in search engine ranking when it comes to on-site SEO. When making a keyword a part of the title tag, it's important to make it look natural. A site with keywords crammed in the title can quickly look desperate. It's a good idea to avoid adding too many keywords in the title. Instead of having a title like "Dolls, vintage doll dresses, collectible dolls, antique dolls, and more doll keywords," it's a good idea to choose one important keyword to be a part of the title. In doing this, the site name will flow better and look better to both human audiences and the search engines. It's also a good idea to include part of the brand in the title to help readers remember the site. If a brandable domain like SandeesCollection.com is being use, something like "Sandee's Vintage Doll Dress Collection" would be a great title tag.
#4 Keywords in the Header Tags
The H1, H2, and H3 tags are what make up the headings on a page. Search engines get clues as to the main idea of a particular website from these headings, so it's a good idea to put keywords here. Using keywords in the header tags are perhaps one of the most important aspects of SEO, so it's definitely not something to ignore! However, it is also a bad idea to make headers all about keywords. Sacrificing reader satisfaction in the name of SEO is never a good idea. One other point about headers that I must mention is that it is a travesty when designers rename the tags when working with CSS. When this happens, search engines are unable to tell whether or not they are headers and thus an important aspect of SEO on a site has been lost (until the designer changes the tags back to their default names.)
#5 Link Churn
There are a variety of topics covered in the Google patent which cover outgoing links on a website, which I will cover in tips 5, 6, and 7. The first of these topics is "link churn." Link churn is the rate in which links on a page change over time, thus is basically a measure of outgoing link stability on a site. When a website frequently changes the sites which it links to, Google starts to penalize the links and the site. This is because when links change frequently on a site, the site is likely a part of some linking scheme (such as paid back links.) Thus, it's important to not frequently change the outgoing links on a particular website.
It is also important to link to important sites. When a website links to a spam site or another type of site that Google looks poorly upon, it makes the website look bad. SEO is basically a popularity contest and if a website hangs out with the bad crowd, Google is going to assume the website is a PART of the bad crowd. This doesn't mean to only link to authority sites, it just means not linking to spammy, blacklisted sites.
#6 Don't Link to Spammy Sites
It is also important to link to sites that Google sees as "good." When a website links to a spam site or another type of site that Google looks poorly upon, it makes the website look bad. SEO is basically a popularity contest and if a website hangs out with the bad crowd, Google is going to assume the website is a PART of the bad crowd. This doesn't mean to only link to authority sites, it just means not linking to spammy, blacklisted sites.
#7 Content Freshness
Google loves when a site is constantly adding to its repertoire. Fresh, new content on a site shows Google that the website is important. Nobody wants to read stale, old content from three years ago, so keeping up on the trends and publishing new content on a site is the bee's knees to Google. Also, while it's important for a website to have fresh content, it's even more important that the content be relevant to the site. Google is all about relevancy (that's the whole point behind SEO, anyway.) Thus, it's a bad idea to publish something new on a site just for the sake of content freshness.
#8 Outgoing Link Anchor Text
The anchor text is also of important when it comes to outgoing links. It's important for links to be somewhat descriptive of the site it's linking to. For example, when linking to a site like eBay, it's a good idea to have either "eBay" or "online auctions" as a part of the link text and not something like, "go here" or "Amazon" as the link text.
#9 Site Age
Site age isn't just about how old a domain is (although aged domains are pretty awesome to have.) How long a particular site has been up on the domain is what I'm talking about here. The older a site, the better. Anyone can throw a site up on the Internet overnight, but does this necessarily mean that the website is trustworthy? When a website has been up for a long time, it basically shows Google, "Hey, I'm one of the regulars." It's much easier to trust a regular than the new guy in town. One thing that's nice about having an older site is that when fresh content is added to the site, it fairs better in the search engines than new content on a new site. This is basically Google's way of saying, "I'm new to this content, but the guy delivering it is cool by me, therefore the content is cool." Like I said, SEO is a huge popularity contest.
#10 Domain Registration Time
I seriously argue this point with a TON of people, but seriously, look in the Google patent: it's there! The length of time remaining on a domain is important. The more time left on a domain the better. When a domain is registered for 5 or 10 years, it shows Google, "Hey, I'm going to be here a while." Domains that are only registered for a year make a site look like it may be gone in a year. This doesn't mean those looking to have a successful website need to fork over the money for 5 years on a domain when they register it. The time can be added later and when it is, Google may give a nice boost in the SERPs. It is seriously really important, though. Now, this point is argued with me all the time, but seriously, look it up.
#1 The Domain Name
Having a main keyword as a part of the domain name is a huge help to SEO. However, caution should be taken in selecting a domain name with a keyword. Those selecting a domain name should take their audience into consideration. If the keyword is a long-tail keyword like "money making tips for moms," moneymakingtipsformoms.com wouldn't be a friendly domain name for readers. There are two other options in this case, use a partial keyword like moneymakingtips.com or use a completely new name or even a made up word and brand it. Doing SEO for a site with a made up word as a domain name can be a difficult task, but sometimes it's better than using a keyword for the domain name.
#2 Keywords in the URL
Having keywords as a part of a page's URL is different than using them in the domain name, but is still of major importance. Doing this not only helps sites with keywords in the domain name, but also helps those trying to do SEO for a domain with a made-up, brandable name. Imagine there is an article on your doll site about vintage doll dresses. For this article, you're likely targeting "vintage doll dresses" as your keyword. To help this particular page along, you'll want your URL to reflect your keyword. If you own the domain name of dolldresses.com, you'll want the URL of this particular article to be something like dolldresses.com/vintage_doll_dresses. This is the same if you own a brandable domain name. The search engine will see the URL of the article and say to itself, "Oh this page is about vintage doll dresses, I'm going to rank this a bit higher in the search results for that keyword." Different content management systems handle URLs differently, so it's important to look into how URLs are generated. Blogger, for example, uses the title of a post as part of the URL. Drupal, another popular blogging platform uses nodes which are not good for SEO. For example, an article on vintage doll dresses will end up with a URL similar to dolldresses.com/node21. Luckily, there are plug-ins and workarounds for Drupal that will create more search engine friendly URLs!
#3 Keywords in the Title Tag
Having keywords in the title tag is one of the most important factors in search engine ranking when it comes to on-site SEO. When making a keyword a part of the title tag, it's important to make it look natural. A site with keywords crammed in the title can quickly look desperate. It's a good idea to avoid adding too many keywords in the title. Instead of having a title like "Dolls, vintage doll dresses, collectible dolls, antique dolls, and more doll keywords," it's a good idea to choose one important keyword to be a part of the title. In doing this, the site name will flow better and look better to both human audiences and the search engines. It's also a good idea to include part of the brand in the title to help readers remember the site. If a brandable domain like SandeesCollection.com is being use, something like "Sandee's Vintage Doll Dress Collection" would be a great title tag.
#4 Keywords in the Header Tags
The H1, H2, and H3 tags are what make up the headings on a page. Search engines get clues as to the main idea of a particular website from these headings, so it's a good idea to put keywords here. Using keywords in the header tags are perhaps one of the most important aspects of SEO, so it's definitely not something to ignore! However, it is also a bad idea to make headers all about keywords. Sacrificing reader satisfaction in the name of SEO is never a good idea. One other point about headers that I must mention is that it is a travesty when designers rename the tags when working with CSS. When this happens, search engines are unable to tell whether or not they are headers and thus an important aspect of SEO on a site has been lost (until the designer changes the tags back to their default names.)
#5 Link Churn
There are a variety of topics covered in the Google patent which cover outgoing links on a website, which I will cover in tips 5, 6, and 7. The first of these topics is "link churn." Link churn is the rate in which links on a page change over time, thus is basically a measure of outgoing link stability on a site. When a website frequently changes the sites which it links to, Google starts to penalize the links and the site. This is because when links change frequently on a site, the site is likely a part of some linking scheme (such as paid back links.) Thus, it's important to not frequently change the outgoing links on a particular website.
It is also important to link to important sites. When a website links to a spam site or another type of site that Google looks poorly upon, it makes the website look bad. SEO is basically a popularity contest and if a website hangs out with the bad crowd, Google is going to assume the website is a PART of the bad crowd. This doesn't mean to only link to authority sites, it just means not linking to spammy, blacklisted sites.
#6 Don't Link to Spammy Sites
It is also important to link to sites that Google sees as "good." When a website links to a spam site or another type of site that Google looks poorly upon, it makes the website look bad. SEO is basically a popularity contest and if a website hangs out with the bad crowd, Google is going to assume the website is a PART of the bad crowd. This doesn't mean to only link to authority sites, it just means not linking to spammy, blacklisted sites.
#7 Content Freshness
Google loves when a site is constantly adding to its repertoire. Fresh, new content on a site shows Google that the website is important. Nobody wants to read stale, old content from three years ago, so keeping up on the trends and publishing new content on a site is the bee's knees to Google. Also, while it's important for a website to have fresh content, it's even more important that the content be relevant to the site. Google is all about relevancy (that's the whole point behind SEO, anyway.) Thus, it's a bad idea to publish something new on a site just for the sake of content freshness.
#8 Outgoing Link Anchor Text
The anchor text is also of important when it comes to outgoing links. It's important for links to be somewhat descriptive of the site it's linking to. For example, when linking to a site like eBay, it's a good idea to have either "eBay" or "online auctions" as a part of the link text and not something like, "go here" or "Amazon" as the link text.
#9 Site Age
Site age isn't just about how old a domain is (although aged domains are pretty awesome to have.) How long a particular site has been up on the domain is what I'm talking about here. The older a site, the better. Anyone can throw a site up on the Internet overnight, but does this necessarily mean that the website is trustworthy? When a website has been up for a long time, it basically shows Google, "Hey, I'm one of the regulars." It's much easier to trust a regular than the new guy in town. One thing that's nice about having an older site is that when fresh content is added to the site, it fairs better in the search engines than new content on a new site. This is basically Google's way of saying, "I'm new to this content, but the guy delivering it is cool by me, therefore the content is cool." Like I said, SEO is a huge popularity contest.
#10 Domain Registration Time
I seriously argue this point with a TON of people, but seriously, look in the Google patent: it's there! The length of time remaining on a domain is important. The more time left on a domain the better. When a domain is registered for 5 or 10 years, it shows Google, "Hey, I'm going to be here a while." Domains that are only registered for a year make a site look like it may be gone in a year. This doesn't mean those looking to have a successful website need to fork over the money for 5 years on a domain when they register it. The time can be added later and when it is, Google may give a nice boost in the SERPs. It is seriously really important, though. Now, this point is argued with me all the time, but seriously, look it up.
How To SEO Your YouTube Videos, Optimization Tips For YouTube
Search Engine Optimization doesn't just extend to your content on revenue sharing sites, your blogs, or your Wordpress sites. Anything and everything which relies on search engine traffic is competing on equal terms, and as such needs to be search engine optimized, your YouTube videos included. In order to be accepted into the YouTube Partnership Scheme you need to accrue a certain level of traffic, and in order to accrue that traffic you need to win traffic; a proportion of that traffic will come via the search engines. Once you are successfully accepted or invited into the YouTube Partnership Scheme your revenues are going to be dependant on that traffic, and again organic search engine traffic is going to play an important role. If your intention on YouTube is not to make a direct income, but instead promote a product or direct your viewers to a website, your financial success is still going to measured by thr level of success achieved through search engine optimization.
You should note that YouTube in itself is already the 2nd most used search engine in the world, so optimizing internally probably has more importance than optimizing externally; that said, Google likes pushing YouTube videos to the forefront of their search engine results, so external traffic is there to be won in significant quantities. YouTube and Google are of course the same business.
Keyword Research
Naturally, the most important part of your optimization will be the keyword research that you undertake. It is much easier to find a niche or micro-niche which has not been extensively covered on YouTube than it is to find a niche or micro-niche on Google. The hard part, and one which you must learn to master, is to find a niche or micro-niche which is undeveloped both on YouTube and the wider web. That is where the serious traffic will be won. Perhaps the most efficient way of doing this is to use your favourite keyword tool, preferably something like Market Samurai if you can afford it, to identify gaps in Google before taking your medium or long string terms to the YouTube search and seeing what it throws up.
Video Title
Obviously you are going to use your keyword string in the title, if it is a short or medium string phrase you may get away with discretely using it twice; for example I could identify Optimize YouTube Videos as a keyword phrase and then create the title: Optimize YouTube Videos: How To Optimize Your YouTube Videos. That sounds like a winner to me (no research undertaken).
Video Description
What you do here is highly dependant on what your objectives are, some may start with the URL of a website that they are plugging, I would personally utilise the first few lines of the description to offer a coherent but keyword laden description of the video, before introducing my website and the website URL afterwards. The description is the place to mention your keyword phrase again, but only once, utilise some relevant phrases but do watch your keyword density as we all know that keyword stuffing is detrimental rather than beneficial. I am not a natural at copywriting, but here is a quick attempt with some possible similar keyword phrases incorporated and the URL much less obtrusive:
Want to get more traffic to your videos but don't know how? It really isn't difficult to optimize YouTube Videos, in this video I offer 10 simple search engine optimization tips for YouTube users, for many more easy SEO tips visit my website http://www.example.com.
Tags
People so often underestimate the power of tags, those related videos to the right of any upload are powered almost entirely by titles and tags. I would suggest no more than 15 tags, probably as few as 8-10, but take your time when choosing them. What are competing videos using as tags? The type of videos which are relevant enough for you to want to sit next to in the related videos strip? Find five or six successful videos, and borrow two relevant tags from each.
Video Replies
You would have identified the most relevant successful videos from your analysis of competition, and to find tags to steal. Consider posting your video as a video reply to a few of these other videos, if the owners choose to allow replies that is. Don't go overboard and keep these replies highly relevant as the major benefit is allowing YouTube, and Google Search, to identify the relevance of your video to the wider topic. Posting a video reply to the latest 100 million view Justin Bieber video isn't going to help, and will instead probably hinder, a video which reviews the best inexpensive netbook. You should also allow others to add video replies to your own video, but reject or remove video replies which are not relevant to the subject matter.
Embedding
There is an growing tendancy for those who are members of the YouTube partnership scheme to disable embedding on their videos, for no apparent reason. In my opinion there is nothing to lose and plenty to gain by allowing others to embed your video into their websites and into their blog posts. Whilst it is true that most viewers will play the embeded video without clicking through to YouTube, some will. And that 'some' are almost always people that would otherwise have not have seen the video. Every viewer pushes up the videos view count, and videos with lots of views attract additional viewers (who want to see what the fuss is about), and ultimately a video embed is a free backlink. More often than not a that backlink is a DoFollow one; if you want search engines to view your video as one with importance and authority then that is precisely what you need.... DoFollow backlinks.
Build Links
And that brings me on to my final point, backlinks. Just like your written content, your videos benefit from backlinks. Asides from the usual SERPs beneficial DoFollow backlinks you will also find that YouTube videos can also win significant amounts of traffic from the mainstream NoFollow bookmarking sites such as Digg.
You should note that YouTube in itself is already the 2nd most used search engine in the world, so optimizing internally probably has more importance than optimizing externally; that said, Google likes pushing YouTube videos to the forefront of their search engine results, so external traffic is there to be won in significant quantities. YouTube and Google are of course the same business.
Keyword Research
Naturally, the most important part of your optimization will be the keyword research that you undertake. It is much easier to find a niche or micro-niche which has not been extensively covered on YouTube than it is to find a niche or micro-niche on Google. The hard part, and one which you must learn to master, is to find a niche or micro-niche which is undeveloped both on YouTube and the wider web. That is where the serious traffic will be won. Perhaps the most efficient way of doing this is to use your favourite keyword tool, preferably something like Market Samurai if you can afford it, to identify gaps in Google before taking your medium or long string terms to the YouTube search and seeing what it throws up.
Video Title
Obviously you are going to use your keyword string in the title, if it is a short or medium string phrase you may get away with discretely using it twice; for example I could identify Optimize YouTube Videos as a keyword phrase and then create the title: Optimize YouTube Videos: How To Optimize Your YouTube Videos. That sounds like a winner to me (no research undertaken).
Video Description
What you do here is highly dependant on what your objectives are, some may start with the URL of a website that they are plugging, I would personally utilise the first few lines of the description to offer a coherent but keyword laden description of the video, before introducing my website and the website URL afterwards. The description is the place to mention your keyword phrase again, but only once, utilise some relevant phrases but do watch your keyword density as we all know that keyword stuffing is detrimental rather than beneficial. I am not a natural at copywriting, but here is a quick attempt with some possible similar keyword phrases incorporated and the URL much less obtrusive:
Want to get more traffic to your videos but don't know how? It really isn't difficult to optimize YouTube Videos, in this video I offer 10 simple search engine optimization tips for YouTube users, for many more easy SEO tips visit my website http://www.example.com.
Tags
People so often underestimate the power of tags, those related videos to the right of any upload are powered almost entirely by titles and tags. I would suggest no more than 15 tags, probably as few as 8-10, but take your time when choosing them. What are competing videos using as tags? The type of videos which are relevant enough for you to want to sit next to in the related videos strip? Find five or six successful videos, and borrow two relevant tags from each.
Video Replies
You would have identified the most relevant successful videos from your analysis of competition, and to find tags to steal. Consider posting your video as a video reply to a few of these other videos, if the owners choose to allow replies that is. Don't go overboard and keep these replies highly relevant as the major benefit is allowing YouTube, and Google Search, to identify the relevance of your video to the wider topic. Posting a video reply to the latest 100 million view Justin Bieber video isn't going to help, and will instead probably hinder, a video which reviews the best inexpensive netbook. You should also allow others to add video replies to your own video, but reject or remove video replies which are not relevant to the subject matter.
Embedding
There is an growing tendancy for those who are members of the YouTube partnership scheme to disable embedding on their videos, for no apparent reason. In my opinion there is nothing to lose and plenty to gain by allowing others to embed your video into their websites and into their blog posts. Whilst it is true that most viewers will play the embeded video without clicking through to YouTube, some will. And that 'some' are almost always people that would otherwise have not have seen the video. Every viewer pushes up the videos view count, and videos with lots of views attract additional viewers (who want to see what the fuss is about), and ultimately a video embed is a free backlink. More often than not a that backlink is a DoFollow one; if you want search engines to view your video as one with importance and authority then that is precisely what you need.... DoFollow backlinks.
Build Links
And that brings me on to my final point, backlinks. Just like your written content, your videos benefit from backlinks. Asides from the usual SERPs beneficial DoFollow backlinks you will also find that YouTube videos can also win significant amounts of traffic from the mainstream NoFollow bookmarking sites such as Digg.
Top 10 Common SEO Mistakes: Some Search Engine Optimization Mistakes to Avoid
SEO refers to Search engine optimization and simple is the way to rank your website to top of the search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. Most of the web traffic comes form the seache engine and that's why it's very important to know about the SEO mistakes. If you know these SEO mistakes then you can easily get rank to the top of the rank of the search engines. These type of mistakes can easily hurt your site and you never may realize those. I am not so expert of search engine optimization but I am familiar some of the top common SEO mistakes which will be mentioned here. Look... are you making any mistakes from the following ten mistakes?
1: SEO Mistakes: Irrelevant Keywords
Mistake: Lots of web publishers use irrelevant keywords to refer their contents.
Suggestion:Never use irrelevant keywords for your web contents. Webmaster always should care about to use specific and right keywords which is related to their contents. Always be specific of your web contents and just use the words as keywords which are used to use to surf your website.
2. SEO Mistakes: Empty Back Links
Mistake: Publishers publish lots of contents without any back link(s).
Suggestion: Using some back links really very important for search engine optimization. You may create back-links to your own domain or to other specific domains which are relevant to your web contents. You can easily get back links to ask for them to the related sites to your website and request a link exchange. Back-links always helps for website ranking.
3. SEO Mistakes: Bad Web Design
Mistake: The website design is not good and perfect for the visitors.
Solution: Design your website which is friendly and easy to surf. The screen resolution of your website is really an important factor. First, figure out the targeted visitors of your website and then decide the resolution of your website. Then arrange the contents around the website. Remember, your website must be good looking at first sight and will be attractive to the visitors.
4. SEO Mistakes: Heavy Usage of Flash Contents
Mistakes: To make good looking site web owners are always interested too much of flash content.
Solution: Search engine crawlers are unable to read images and flash contents with no texts. Moreover, using so many flash contents may slow down the website. It's mandatory to look and feel good of your website. So, try to use as minimum to use flash content of your pages.
5. SEO Mistakes: Simple Title Tag
Mistake: Gloomy title always has less value both to search engines and the visitors.
Solution: Title is the king and is the first thing of search engine optimization. Any search engine starts crawling your contents from the title. So, for SEO and page ranking, your content title should be specific and juicy and attractive with some relevant keywords. And when the title contains those qualities that content is really attractive both the search engines and the visitors.
6. SEO Mistakes: Missing Alt Tags
Mistakes: Web publishers always forget to use Alt tag for the images.
Solution: Like humans, search engine can't recognize images. For crawling images, use Alt tag for your images. By using Alt tags for the images, search engine spider can easily crawl your image and thus you can easily optimize your web page.
7. SEO Mistakes: Bad Anchor Text
Mistakes: Web publishers use "Click here" or non-descriptive type of text to link the other contents.
Solution: Create and use descriptive type of anchor text to link to other contents. A descriptive anchor text can easily understandable both for the search engines and the visitors. For example, to link this page, you may use "Ten SEO Mistakes to Avoid for SEO" instead of using "click here to read this page". Remember, anchor text is really important for search engine optimization.
08. SEO Mistakes: Short Time High Traffic
Mistakes: Web owners use excessive search engine optimization software to increase high traffic.
Solution: Many software are available which offers are known as search engine optimization software. These search engine optimization software may brings lots of traffic by republishing your web contents to lots of web sites, blogs or others. Search engine optimization software always offers high traffic of your site by short time. But my personal suggestion is not to use those search engine optimization software so often because it may confuse the search engine which is the original content.
09. SEO Mistakes: Top Ranking for a Particular Keyword
Mistakes: Web publishers are very much interested for top ranking for a particular keyword.
Solution: Professional search engine optimization cost is really much to bear most of the web site owners. But some SEO provides always offer you top ranking for a particular keywords with lowest search engine optimization cost. Please avoid this type of offers because search engine optimization algorithms are changing time to time.
10. SEO Mistakes: Creating User Friendly Articles with Texts, Images and Videos
Mistakes: Publishing contents just plain text.
Solution: Your content must be user friendly and attractive. Writing only good texts does not increase the popularity of the visitors. Your content should be included with relevant images and if possible with relevant images. Creating and publishing contents with images and videos really make attractive article both for visitors and search engine crawlers.
Final Words Related to Common Mistakes of SEO
Search engine optimization is not so hard except avoiding some SEO mistakes. SEO mistakes must be avoided for better search engine optimization and thus it helps better page ranking of your website. The mentioned SEO mistakes are sometimes dangerous for high page ranking. For any mistake out of these ten mistakes, may rank lower of your website to search engines. Hope, mentioned SEO mistakes are easily understandable and easily avoidable during website and web contents creation and publishing.
1: SEO Mistakes: Irrelevant Keywords
Mistake: Lots of web publishers use irrelevant keywords to refer their contents.
Suggestion:Never use irrelevant keywords for your web contents. Webmaster always should care about to use specific and right keywords which is related to their contents. Always be specific of your web contents and just use the words as keywords which are used to use to surf your website.
2. SEO Mistakes: Empty Back Links
Mistake: Publishers publish lots of contents without any back link(s).
Suggestion: Using some back links really very important for search engine optimization. You may create back-links to your own domain or to other specific domains which are relevant to your web contents. You can easily get back links to ask for them to the related sites to your website and request a link exchange. Back-links always helps for website ranking.
3. SEO Mistakes: Bad Web Design
Mistake: The website design is not good and perfect for the visitors.
Solution: Design your website which is friendly and easy to surf. The screen resolution of your website is really an important factor. First, figure out the targeted visitors of your website and then decide the resolution of your website. Then arrange the contents around the website. Remember, your website must be good looking at first sight and will be attractive to the visitors.
4. SEO Mistakes: Heavy Usage of Flash Contents
Mistakes: To make good looking site web owners are always interested too much of flash content.
Solution: Search engine crawlers are unable to read images and flash contents with no texts. Moreover, using so many flash contents may slow down the website. It's mandatory to look and feel good of your website. So, try to use as minimum to use flash content of your pages.
5. SEO Mistakes: Simple Title Tag
Mistake: Gloomy title always has less value both to search engines and the visitors.
Solution: Title is the king and is the first thing of search engine optimization. Any search engine starts crawling your contents from the title. So, for SEO and page ranking, your content title should be specific and juicy and attractive with some relevant keywords. And when the title contains those qualities that content is really attractive both the search engines and the visitors.
6. SEO Mistakes: Missing Alt Tags
Mistakes: Web publishers always forget to use Alt tag for the images.
Solution: Like humans, search engine can't recognize images. For crawling images, use Alt tag for your images. By using Alt tags for the images, search engine spider can easily crawl your image and thus you can easily optimize your web page.
7. SEO Mistakes: Bad Anchor Text
Mistakes: Web publishers use "Click here" or non-descriptive type of text to link the other contents.
Solution: Create and use descriptive type of anchor text to link to other contents. A descriptive anchor text can easily understandable both for the search engines and the visitors. For example, to link this page, you may use "Ten SEO Mistakes to Avoid for SEO" instead of using "click here to read this page". Remember, anchor text is really important for search engine optimization.
08. SEO Mistakes: Short Time High Traffic
Mistakes: Web owners use excessive search engine optimization software to increase high traffic.
Solution: Many software are available which offers are known as search engine optimization software. These search engine optimization software may brings lots of traffic by republishing your web contents to lots of web sites, blogs or others. Search engine optimization software always offers high traffic of your site by short time. But my personal suggestion is not to use those search engine optimization software so often because it may confuse the search engine which is the original content.
09. SEO Mistakes: Top Ranking for a Particular Keyword
Mistakes: Web publishers are very much interested for top ranking for a particular keyword.
Solution: Professional search engine optimization cost is really much to bear most of the web site owners. But some SEO provides always offer you top ranking for a particular keywords with lowest search engine optimization cost. Please avoid this type of offers because search engine optimization algorithms are changing time to time.
10. SEO Mistakes: Creating User Friendly Articles with Texts, Images and Videos
Mistakes: Publishing contents just plain text.
Solution: Your content must be user friendly and attractive. Writing only good texts does not increase the popularity of the visitors. Your content should be included with relevant images and if possible with relevant images. Creating and publishing contents with images and videos really make attractive article both for visitors and search engine crawlers.
Final Words Related to Common Mistakes of SEO
Search engine optimization is not so hard except avoiding some SEO mistakes. SEO mistakes must be avoided for better search engine optimization and thus it helps better page ranking of your website. The mentioned SEO mistakes are sometimes dangerous for high page ranking. For any mistake out of these ten mistakes, may rank lower of your website to search engines. Hope, mentioned SEO mistakes are easily understandable and easily avoidable during website and web contents creation and publishing.
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