10 Search Engine Optimization Tips

Marketing
1

Dear Sitepoint, I am new to this forum but been a long standing member of Digital Point and Webmaster Talk. I always like to start a forum with sharing something of use before talking knowledge away.

I have recently created a 10 search engine optization tips guide for my blog and wanted to share. I have cut all the crap out and just posted to make it easy access for sitepoint members. Hope it helps.

And by the way - I have use all of these techniques myself and they really do help. If you are unsure of anything ask and I will try to be more detailed for you.

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Anchor Text: This is basically the words used that link to another URL. For maximum benefit of any backlink you need to have the correct anchor text. The text needs to include keywords of whatever your linking to. An ideal example would be my website, if I was linking my homepage in a forum I would use “how to make money online” as the Anchor text. If you don’t do this the SEO benefit will be minimal

Blog Directories: Blog Directories can be useful but it depends on how much time you have whether it’s worthwhile doing or not. For the average person I would never recommend submitting to more than 30 sites simply because there are other actives that will have a far greater effect for your time. Firstly the PR is shared around each outbound link so if you have a directory with 200,000 sites indexed; your section of the PR pie is going to be minimal. Secondly even a PR8 directory will only give you a tiny amount of PR because the page you have your website linked is probably PR0. So it’s worthwhile as part of SEO is about variation but avoid doing more than 30.
Outgoing Links: The more outgoing links on your page the less Google will like you. If you stick to links that are good quality and relevant to your content, the better it will be. I see too many blogs with 100’s of outgoing links just for the sake of it that are not often content relevant and it’s a complete waste of time. Only create an outbound link when it’s necessary and not just for the sake of it.

Internal Links: This is an absolute must yet very few people do it. Having a good internal link system will be very effective search engine optimization. Every link you create is internally is like having a good backlink. Just make sure you use the right anchor text as mentioned in point 1, otherwise this exercise is pointless. (Think Wikipedia…internal links = 2 trillion gazillion)

Keywords: This is not an absolute definite but generally believed that you should include your keywords no more than 7 times per 100 words. The reason for this is because Google’s spider will thing you are spamming for the sake of SEO. I am unsure of how accurate those numbers are but be wary of it.
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Subject Relevant Link Exchange[/B]: Link Exchanges are a great way to get your blog/site off the ground and also for the more established ones as well. For best effect be sure to exchange with subject relevant sites otherwise it’s pointless and Google wont respect you for it. Take your time when finding the right exchange and it will benefit you greatly.

Quality Link Exchange: As I mentioned in point 2 about blog directories. PR “juice” will be shared between every outbound link on a site. With that in mind, when acquiring a link exchange be sure to trade with someone with a blogroll bigger than the empire state building. Otherwise your backlink will count for much less than your much more respectable size 10 of the most blogroll.

Good Traffic: When going on a quest to gain more site traffic, it is important to try and get “good” traffic. This may sound obvious but so many people will spam sites with their URL and get a few clicks, but it will bare rare that any bookmark the site because they just don’t care about what you have to say. Try to focus your precious time on gaining good quality traffic by submitting your link to places where they will find your site of interest.

DoFollow: DoFollow basically means it will most likely have a positive effect on your Search Engine Rank. NoFollow means the chances are it won’t have a positive effect on your Search Engine Rank. With that in mind if you want to post your link on forums/blogs ensure they have the status “DoFollow” otherwise it’s most likely your efforts will be futile. <snip>

Your Reputation: Although this is not directly Search Engine Optimization, it is still very relevant. Your site reputation is everything, be sure you keep it as high as possible. Avoid link dropping just for the sake of gaining a cheap backlink; take your time to give a positive input with quality info. This will gain you much better results and have a much higher chance in people wanting to view that link in your signature or give you higher forum reputation.

Regards all I hope that helps.

Chris

2

It’s really amazing that you have all this SEO information but you don’t know how to do a 301 redirect or even find out how to do one.

3

thanks for sharing, how about adsense?

4

You make a good point and I understand why you raise it. But The answer is I run blogs, not websites. I have never needed to do a 301 redirect but thought I would ask on sitepoint and get an honest response…

5

Can you be a bit more specific as to what you want to know?

6

Point 9 is that point, but you need to use DoFollow Forums, as I said there is a link to a big list of 120 DoFollow Forums. Just read point 9 again…

7

Forum links are not given much of any credit by Google. Google knows that it’s an easy way to try to manipulate their search engine. So those links are worth pretty much zip. Your time would be much better spent getting relevant backlinks.

8

You run blogs and have never had to do a 301 redirect?

9

No.

10

Not only is SitePoint, which is on your list, not a “dofollow” forum (search engines don’t see your signature, and the homepage link is nofollow)… but there are over 300 links on the average forum page.

Go ahead, view source and start counting.

The PageRank passed to any link from a source page is the PR of the page divided by the number of links. The average forum page has no PageRank, so that’s something like 0.01 / 300, meaning you’d need several thousand posts with relevant, followable links to equal just one link on a PR1 page. That’s months of steady work for the SEO equivalent of publishing an article on a second rate blog.

There is plenty of empirical evidence to back this up. This wasn’t always a “nofollow” forum, and when those 19000 copies of my signature links disappeared from the search engines, my PR and actual search traffic did not drop one bit. Forum posting is NOT an SEO technique. You’re doing Google a service by teaching people otherwise, distracting them from doing anything that might actually effect search results.

This is ignoring the very likely fact that Google can tell the difference between a forum signature and a newspaper citing you in an important article. There’s a major quality and motive difference and it’s not too hard to algorithmically identify it. So let’s take that months of work and make it years, to equal what you could do in a day doing some meaningful SEO.

If you’re joining forums hoping it will help your search ranks, it won’t, so don’t waste your (and everyone else’s) time. On the other hand, if you venture out of the SEO forum and become part of the community, you might well form some relationships more valuable to you and your sites than the SEO boost you hoped for could provide.

11

nice seo tips but can you send tips more important to seo vbulletin forums?

12

Did you write this yourself or have you just copied it from DP???

13

Perhaps you didn’t notice that the username that posted this on DP is the same as the username here.