In the coming weeks, I’m going to establish a free SEO tutorial series in our blog. Today is part 1 of the SEO tutorial. I hope this free tutorial series will give you a clear idea how to get your website rank top in Google search engine.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Practicing SEO means getting your website to rank top in the organic search engine result for a particular keyword phrase so as to get endless flow of free traffic to your website.
Imagine if you sell gifts, and you rank #1 in Google’s search result for “buy cheap Christmas presents”. What can that do to your sales?
Different search engines have different search algorithm. In the SEO industry, we are mainly concerned about getting top ranking in Google because Googles owns more than 80% of the search engine market share.
Who am I to teach SEO?
If you are new to this blog or LeadsLeap, you may be wondering whether I’m qualified to teach you anything about SEO. If you have the same doubt, just google for “free leads generation system” or “leads generation system” and see who is in the top 10. These are just two of the thousands of first page I have on Google.
How to get my website rank top in Google?
This is the most common question, but it is a poor question. Why? Because you are likely to be ranking top in Google already. Just type your entire domain name in Google. Is your website in the first page? Better question please…..
How to get my website rank top for a particular keyword phrase in Google?
Technically, you can get any web page (not just website) into the first page of Google by building lots of backlinks to that web page using that particular keyword phrase as the anchor text.
For example, if you want to rank top for the keyword phrase “buy cheap Christmas presents”, you need to have lots of backlinks to your web page using “buy cheap Christmas presents” as the anchor text.
For more understanding, read this classic example.
If so, can I forget about all other things and just focus on link building?
You can, but if you work on ‘other factors’ at the same time, you don’t have to build that many backlinks. And the ‘other factors’ are definitely easier to accomplish than link building.
What are the ‘other factors’?
The ‘other factors’ basically involve making your web page more relevant to the keyword phrase you are optimizing.
By the way, did you notice that I always use the word web page instead of website?
Google views every web page as independent content, meaning technically, if you have a website about dog, you can add a web page about stomach pain and get that web page to rank top for stomach pain, even though your website is about dog!
Don’t agree? Just look at Wikipedia.com and Ezinearticles.com. They have articles in all kinds of categories. But almost all of them are ranking well in Google.
Ok, back to the ‘other factors’. Here are a list of the other factors that are fundamental in boosting your search engine result.
‘Other factors’ #1 – The title tag
In a html source code, a title tag looks something like this:
<title>Title of your web page</title>
If you want to optimize for “buy cheap Christmas presents”, you must include “buy cheap Christmas presents” in the title tag, as near to the starting line as possible.
‘Other factors’ #2 – Keywords in the description meta tag
In a html source code, a description meta tag looks something like this:
<meta name=”Description” content=”Your Description About The Page.”>
If you want to optimize for “buy cheap Christmas presents”, you must include “buy cheap Christmas presents” in the description meta tag, as near to the starting line as possible.
‘Other factors’ #3 – Keywords in the url
The best is to have a website named buycheapChristmaspresents.com. But if you have many keywords to optimize, buying a domain name for each of them can be very costly. If so, you should at least name the web page as yourdomain.com/buy-cheap-Christmas-presents.html
‘Other factors’ #4 – Keywords within the content
If you want to optimize for “buy cheap Christmas presents”, try to include “buy cheap Christmas presents” at least once in the first paragraph, once in the last paragraph and a few within the content.
Actually there is no strict rule on this but minimally, you should include the exact keyword at least once in the entire content.
‘Other factors’ #5 – Website authority
If you have been reading up on SEO, you must have heard of Authority Site. The idea is if your site is an Authority Site, the search engine will send tons of traffic for all kinds of keyword phrases to you, pretty much like what Wikipedia and Ezinearticle have established now.
Website authority is at domain level. Meaning if your domain is an authority site, all other web pages in this domain will benefit.
2 important factors that affect website authority are
1) The age of the site
There is nothing you can do with the age of your site. You just have to be patience, and you need to have a long term vision for your website. Don’t build one site, chuck it away after 3 months and start another one.
2) The amount of backlinks to the homepage and internal pages, especially backlinks from other authority sites.
The difference between SEO backlinks (as discussed earlier) and backlinks for site authority (as mentioned here) is that the former is keyword specific, i.e., you have to include the keywords in the anchor text. For backlinks to boost site authority, any dofollow backlink will count. They can be keyword-specific anchor link or simply a URL link. Of course, all the SEO backlinks that you’ve established will help to boost your site authority.
Fundamentally, that’s all you need to know about SEO. I’m serious! Armed with these basic knowledge, I already gained hundreds of top positions in Google.
In the next SEO tutorial, we will look at some common SEO mistakes webmasters make. Who knows, you can be making those mistakes too.
An interesting article for people new to SEO. These fundamentals is a must for every webmaster who wants to rank well with search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, MSN. Getting on top of search engines is also a means of getting free traffics to our website.
Forget about link building for search engine ranking. Just ask yourself, by distributing your articles, with a backlink to your website, will it help you to get traffic even if search engine doesn’t exist? The answer is YES! So if the answer is yes, just do it.
Nicely said katrina :) I definitely concur that traffic is everything!
IMO, you should always start with an optimized system. Identify on-page optimizations and follow the best practices. I’d suggest WordPress as a CMS and add Yoast’s SEO Plugin. They work great out-of-the-box.
I would also suggest that content is still king. Make good content, post a snippet of that content in your Facebook or Twitter. If the content is good and relevant, people will link to it.
This article already point out most best practices you will need. Follow the basics and it’ll work.
Hi Kenneth,
Can you clearify the anchor text for me?
I keep getting different opinions on using anchor text. When you submitt an article to an e-zine and at the bottom where your resource box would be you use anchor text for the keyword your targeting to redirect to your main website. Is this considered blackhat?
It’s definitely not blackhat. But please note that blackhat, whitehat, greyhat are terms coined by SEO marketers. Google never recognize these terms. To them, DON’T BUILT LINKS! They want you to produce excellent content, get people to VOLUNTARILY link to you, not YOU actively building them. That’s why they value backlinks so much. Other than that, they say you should not engage in any form of link building activities.
But Google did say one more thing, whatever you do, ask yourself, if there is no search engine, will you still do it?
Forget about link building for search engine ranking. Just ask yourself, by distributing your articles, with a backlink to your website, will it help you to get traffic even if search engine doesn’t exist? The answer is YES! So if the answer is yes, just do it.
Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil”. As long as you follow their motto, you are pretty safe. What they don’t like to see are some unethical, deceptive SEO techniques, and that, in industry term, is called Black Hat.
This is excellent information for the 1st tutorial. Many don’t want to share such info without a price. I practice everything that you’ve stated and it works! Good Stuff again
Comprehensive for a part !
Makes one look forward to the second part
SEO is so crucial to long term traffic to nes sites. And I find that it is doing the basics well that makes all the difference
Hi Kenneth, An excellent post!
I have had 3 different SEO experts look over my main website in the past 2 weeks and they all told me the same thing.
So I guess I really got my money’s worth with these 3 FREE consultations.
Now, I have all the tools I need to improve my site’s ranking and to get it optimized for certain keywords.
My next step after that will be to optimize my copy for maximum conversion once they get to my website.
I feel fortunate that I am able to do all of this myself, but for those who are not, let me know and I will share with you what I learned from them or give you the links so that you can get a FREE consultation also, if you like.
Hello Kenneth,
thanks for the basic SEO tips. Honestly speaking, I have tons of webmasters wrote me tips which I do not bother to read. But for you, I always see that your tips are worth every single sec to read.
However, I do have a doubt at the moment which I may need you to clarify for me.
Question 1: When building backlinks, say example, my keyword is “buy cheap Christmas presents”, do you recommend I always use the exact phrase for each of them? Or should I try to play with the wordings within?
Example “buying cheap Christmas presents”, “buy Christmas presents that are cheap”, “buy cheap presents for Christmas”
Question 2: Is there a limit to how many words can we have for each keyword? Example “buy cheap Christmas presents” have 4 words.
Thanks for the clarification.
1) You should put most of your emphasis on the main keyword and some on other variation. For long tail keywords, the same is quite simple. Say your keyword is “buy cheap Christmas presents”, besides this keyword, you can also build links for short keywords such as “cheap Christmas presents” and “Christmas presents”. You can also play around with singular and plural as well as synonyms such as “gifts”. But don’t vary too much. The main focus should still be the root keyword.
2) No limit. It all depends on the search volume. If no one search for “buy cheap Christmas presents” but thousands of people search for “I want to buy really cheap Christmas presents for my friends”, then your keywords can be THAT LONG. I’m not giving an extreme example. In most cases, the longer the keywords, the lesser the search volume.
Thanks Ken ,
Always putting up Great Ideas all for free to all,
Not many people are getting so well with SEO, Results that comes from a good Optimized webpage is greater than just trying to push normal traffic to ones Sites as most people use Search engines to search for particular items and if ones page is well optimized and gets on forefront of the results, you are sure of getting targeted traffics which might result to sales or having a new lead,
Just work on your Onpage and Offpage Optimization and your Site will start getting Search engine traffics, this works as i have one of my Blogger blog i abandoned long ago still ranking high and getting on first page for the keyword get paid to write.
Just
Fantastic SEO teaching blog in a series I am sure will include everything that is needed to know. I love the way you are always to the point and cut out the unnecessary fluff. Keep up the great blogs!
Hi,
Every time I read one of your posts I learn something new. Keep it up.
Great tips and I have been looking for a tip for blogger users to rank higher and get a ton of backlinks. I found out how two super affiliates are using an underground method but wow it works. You can find the article I posted on my blog. http://eznlegl.blogspot.com
For the past few months a concentration on SEO has made a huge difference on the number of search engine hits.
Layout does play a role in how you hold the attention of someone who does stumble across your page during a search on a particular subject.
Just in the last couple of weeks with changes to the blog layout, alexa, google, have both looked at this site completely different.
Great tips Kenneth
Regarding keywords in the url, why not use blogs?
Because you can build as many blogs as you want for free…
Prosper 324 is recommending you use blogs as they are free. They may be free but there are several disadvantages. You have no control over a free blog hosted by another company. They can delete your blog anytime they choose. Time spent getting backlinks to a free blog is wasted because if your blog gets deleted you loose your backlinks. Blogs are great if they are hosted on your own website with your own doman name. When having your own business control is more important than money. Read the Carpetbaggers.
How about stealing popular keywords from our competitiors? Do you think it is a smart work or unethical job. Click the above link (“keyword spy”) to get more advice!
Hi Kenneth,
Thanks again for your great knowledge sharing.
My question on the title:
http://www.yourdomainname/buy-cheap-present.com or http://www.yourdomainname/buycheappresent.com is better?
Thanks
Technically, both urls are invalid. .com is used for domain name, not in a file name. Assuming what you wrote is a typo, then both url are okay. They have the same effect. But personally, I prefer the first one because visitors can easily see what this webpage is for.
Hi Kenneth,
Thanks for your reply.
Yes, it is typo error..:).
Thanks again.
Thanks….I look forward tot he info here
thanks again
This tutorial contains some basic SEO info as well as some more advanced tips and tricks. Thanks for the sharing this post.
How do I add a link to this comment as I’ve seen the other commentators accomplish and what do the coding instructions at the bottom of this field mean?
This was probably the clearest explanation of key word optimization that I have read. I have only understood bits and pieces up to this point. I’m still not expert, but my understanding just jumped. Thanks for the great article.
Nice Free SEO Tutorial i bookmarked your page. Thanks for sharing.
I learned some good tips for keyword optimization. Your article really helped me a lot. I am a new seo learner. seo tutorial
very informative post, learned a lot from it, you have explained it in simple and easy to understand way, browsing your “classic example” section now :)
Great article! You have answered a few of my questions. The only thing which should be added is that Google doesn’t like too much repetition in links’ description.:)
Nice tutorial for learning the basics of Search Engine Optimization. You explained the fundamentals of SEO very well. I hope there are sites like this that will tackle on how to do Blackhat SEO.
This SEO tutorial is very good. It explained the fundamentals and some basics of SEO very well. It also share some SEO advanced tips and tricks as well.
How about stealing popular keywords from our competitors? Do you think it is a smart work or unethical job. – You can do that, but you have to be ready for the competition!
Is it okay to steal keywords from a competitor? Do you think it is a smart work or unethical job.
Thank you for sharing this information. Most self proclaimed SEO experts don’t want to share this without a price. You are really generous.
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Thank you for sharing this tutorial. Most SEOs don’t want to share such information without a price.
Real clear web site , thankyou for this post.
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The tutorial is really admirable. It is very useful for the freshers. thanks for sharing it with us.
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Most self proclaimed SEO experts don’t want to share such information without a price. Well, Thank you for sharing this tutorial.
on-site SEO optimization is as important as off-site SEO. Dont underestimate it.
Dont forget to use Author text on your baklinks, it will definitely allow you to rank higher on your keyword.
Definitely building backlinks is the main aspect on off-site SEO.
Social bookmarking, ghost blogging, rss submitting, blog comments are the way to promote your website.
Great tutorial. What is your opinion on buying one way links? Is it a worthy tactic or not? I’ve heard that Google got “smarter” and is beginning to damp websites which have purchased links. I’d like to get a really independent advice on that. Thanks
Really effective and detailed way to get the uninitiated started on the concept of SEO. Hope you don’t mind but I’m going to forward this url around to a number of my clients as a good way of getting acquainted to this vital aspect of web marketing.
The first preference is given to the URL by google and then the title and then keywords. Remember that the keywords in meta tags should be in the content.
SEO will definitely help your website’s PR and increase the traffic. Sometimes it will take time for the search engines to index your site. The effect of good article and directory submissions is a better ranked page and higher PR.
Dear Sir
SEO was rocket science after reading this article just crystal clear . thank you so much.
Warm Regards
Anand
i am new to Seo and your tutorial was very helpful in giving me insight about SEO. Thanks
You really touched the fundamentals of SEO