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Optimizing Your Website Yourself

How to optimize your website and bring in traffic. Don't pay for SEO. Learn to do it yourself.

Author: Jason Parker

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Optimizing Your Website Yourself: The Basics of Search Engine Marketing

Introduction

In the following series, I will teach you how to drive more traffic to your site than you could ever imagine possible. The best part is that it’s easy and it’s free.

The internet is the perfect place for business for the following reasons: 1) Just about everyone has access to the internet, and 2) Optimizing a site on the internet is the cheapest way to market your business.

Search engine marketing begins with optimizing your website. Optimizing your website means making your website agreeable to major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN—the big three. If your site gets on the first page of any of these major search engines, you can expect to not have to put another buck in advertising ever again.

Let me tell you a little secret. You don’t have to pay $30-$60 per month for someone to optimize your website. You can do it yourself. Frankly, it’s not very hard; it requires the understanding and cultivation of two elements—popular keyword embedding and link popularity.

Stick with me, and you’ll be on your way to a more thriving e-business in no time. Read on to learn the basics and beyond of search engine marketing.

Popular Keyword Embedding

So you’ve decided to make your website more favorable to search engines and thus cheaply market your site to millions of visitors. Good for you!

As I stated in the Introduction, optimizing your site is easy. It requires the understanding and cultivation of two elements—popular keyword embedding and link popularity. In this article, we will focus solely on embedding popular keywords both in between your header tags and within your text.

Search engine robots scan your site for the repetition of keywords in your source code—both on the screen and off. Whenever the repetitive keywords embedded in your site are searched for, your site appears somewhere on the list. Therefore, it would only make sense to implant the most popular keywords in your site.

How do I find these popular keywords?

Many sources exist on the internet that can tell you what keywords were searched for most on particular search engines. The following URLs lead to keyword selector tools. Type in a possible keyword, and you get a list of the most recent and popular related keywords (for that particular search engine).

Yahoo Google

Now that I’ve found popular keywords, what next?

Let’s work on keywords that will go between your header tags— popular keywords here < / h e a d > . We will need to create what are called meta tags to go within the header tags. The meta tags will contain the popular keywords.

Luckily, you don’t have to create meta tags by hand. There are several free meta tag generators on the net. HTML Basix has one such generator.

Let’s go ahead and create your meta tags. While doing so, keep this window open so you can stick to these general optimization rules.

-For “Your page/site title,” use the title of your website, as well as descriptive keywords. This is what will appear at the very top of your screen. See fanStory.com for a good example. DO NOT USE ANY KEYWORD MORE THAN ONCE. This would actually lower your search engine ranking.

-For “Page description,” use 255 characters or about 2-3 sentences and include some of your keywords. Make this catchy! This is what will be displayed in the search engines for all to read. Do not use any keyword more than once.

-For “Enter keywords/phrases,” use term keywords—two or three-part keywords such as “Love Poetry.” Single term keywords are very competitive and less descriptive, which will not result in targeted traffic or a higher ranking. Use a total of around 30 targeted keywords in this section. Do not use any keyword more than once.

-For “Robots,” select “index your page and follow links.”
-Fill in the rest.

What do I do with the meta tags again?

Highlight them, and copy and paste them between your header tags— meta tags here < / h e a d >.

I can’t believe it’s this easy. I’m glad I didn’t pay that search engine marketing company an outrageous price… So what next?

Let’s work on putting your popular keywords in your text. A good rule of thumb is to use your two most legitimate keywords in at least every other paragraph. Keywords can be redundant, but don’t overload your index page with these keywords to the point where your text cannot be easily read; we want it to remain natural, yet optimized.

What else can I do about embedding keywords into my text?

The more attention to the popular keywords, the better. One way to do this is by making your implanted keywords links to somewhere else on your site. For example, if I wanted to use the keywords, “Freelance Writing Jobs,” I could say:

Using RSS technology, GoldenProse.com offers a ten-page list of freelance writing jobs.

Or more discretely:

We at GoldenProse.com know freelance writing jobs are hard to come by on the net.

All right! I’m excited! What now?

Well, you’ve embedded popular keywords into your source code. Great work. Now you can begin submitting your site to search engines.

SubmitExpress will submit your website to 40+ search engines for free, including MSN, Yahoo, and Google.

You can also submit your site to the Yahoo Directory.

Link Popularity

I hope you’re enjoying knowing that your website is on its way to a high search engine ranking. …We’ve discussed the importance of embedding popular keywords and how to do it. Now let’s flip the coin and take a look see at something just as important—link popularity.

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo rank websites based on how many reciprocal links they can find on other related websites—how many times they can find your link on sites with a similar topic. Having your link on related sites is very important; the search engines will actually punish your ranking if they find your link on too many unrelated sites. I’m stressing this because of all the link exchange scam sites out there. Don’t use them.

In the olden days you could swap links with thousands of unrelated sites and get the highest of rankings. These days, however, the search engine people are smarter. In fact, they’re always coming up with mathematical ways to get good content sites on their top pages so that people will keep surfing the web using their search engines.

It’s also important to get your link on already top ranked sites. So we know three critical things right now… Your link must be on many sites, be on related sites, and be on top ranked sites for your site to get a high search engine ranking.

How do I get my link on other related sites?

The three most popular ways I know of are:

-E-Mailing High Ranked Sites
-Having An “Exchange Links” Page
-Getting Listed In Open Directories

E-Mailing High Ranked Sites

Find high ranked sites by typing your popular keywords into search engines and by surfing open website directories; you can also find the open directories by putting “open directory” into search engines—ah, the highest ranked open directories. Once you find top ranked related sites, e-mail the webmasters asking them if they’ll exchange links with you.

Having An “Exchange Links” Page

Create an “Exchange Links” page that is easily accessible from your index page. On your “Exchange Links” page, include your exchange policy—that you only swap links with related sites, etc. Also, include a form e-mail. You can use the form e-mail generator at HTML Basix.

Getting Listed In Open Directories

List in the open directories you find. Do not list in the paying ones, as these will not help your ranking anyway. Find using search engines…

How do I know if my link is popular?

Link popularity checkers will tell you exactly what sites you’re linked to and what major search engine your site appears on. It just so happens there is a free link popularity checker at marketleap.com

How many links do I need on other related websites?

I’ve spoken with the experts at SubmitExpress.com about this, and they told me—for your site to be in the top 20—it’s likely your link needs to be on 50+ related websites. This is, of course, not a completely accurate number. Remember, you must take into account how popular the websites are that have displayed your link.

Anything else I should know?

-Provide good, useful content on your pages, and high ranked sites will want to link to you when they receive your e-mails.
-Use keywords in your link or link description. Let the webmasters of other sites know how you want your link described.

About Author

Jason is the owner and operator of http://www.GoldenProse.com Reader and Writer Community.

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