Things That Help SEO
Small Biz Domination – Part 21
If you have not read the articles linked to in the previous post, please take a moment to do so before you read things that help SEO. You will have missed a lot of important information if you do not.
Things That Help SEO (On Page)
In previous posts we looked at the make up of titles, headings and page content etc, in a way that makes the page relevant to certain keywords. When you think about it, this is just common sense. Another thing that helps with on page SEO is the amount of content.
Content is king is a popular saying in the world of SEO. This is true for a number of reasons. As well as being relevant, the amount of content that you supply also makes a difference. By far the biggest winner though is the quality of content.
Things That Help SEO (Off Page)
One of the next things that we will cover is getting other websites to link to yours. This can be a time consuming and at times a tedious task. Providing quality content will help to encourage people to link to your content. This can save a lot of work when it comes to getting links.
More On Links
Inbound links are links pointing to the pages of your website from other websites. Links are extremely important in relation to how your website will get ranked and placed in the search results. We will be looking at several easy ways to get links to your website but before we do, there are a couple of important things that you should note.
- There are plenty of people and companies that will sell you links so a quick word of warning. At this stage of the game, do not under any circumstances buy links.
- If your website is new or does not currently have many links pointing to it, do not rush to get too many links at once. Start with just one or two a day.
- Do not waste too much of your time getting links until you are a few posts further on in this tutorial because some links have no real value.
As you would have read in the previous post, the search engines use links to gauge how popular your website is. If your website is seen as popular, it will be given more authority than a website that is deemed less popular. This is a simplistic explanation because different links carry different value but the rule of thumb is, the more inbound links, the better.
Link Relevance
Just link your page is ranked for a keyword according to on page relevance, links carry a relevance factor also. If an inbound link comes from a page that is relevant to the subject matter of your page, the link should add a little more strength to your SERPS for your keywords.
Even if the page itself is not related to your page or keywords, some effect can still be gained from having a keyword optimised link and keyword rich text close by. To better explain this, let’s look at an example.
Going back to our locksmith at the beginning of this tutorial, you may remember that his business was located on the London Kent border. His target keywords related to his trade and the locations in which he worked.
The on page SEO for his website is focused on keywords like:- Locksmith Eltham, Locksmith Bromley, Locksmiths Chislehurst, Mobile Locksmith Eltham etc, etc.
Our locksmith can post a diverse range of links containing keyword rich “anchors” and text. An anchor is simply the click-able element of the link.
To target the phrase “Locksmiths Eltham” on a non related page, he could do something like this:-
Locksmiths Eltham
Need a locksmith in Eltham. Crusader Locksmiths is an Eltham based mobile locksmith, also covering Bromley, Chislehurst, Sidcup and surrounding areas. We can bla bla bla……….
You can see from the example above that the primary keyword is present in the clickable element of the link. There are also other keywords and keyword combinations scattered throughout the text. The text is close to the link so bares some additional relevance.
we can take this a step further with another element of the link that can only be seen when the mouse pointer is hovered over it. The link can be given a title attribute and this can also be keyword optimised. Try hovering your mouse pointer over the link and see for yourself.
Anchor Text Links
The above link is shown below in its code format.
<a title=”Locksmiths Eltham Bromley Sidcup Kent And london” href=”http://crusader-locksmiths.co.uk/” target=”_blank“>Locksmiths Eltham</a>
Need a locksmith in Eltham. Crusader Locksmiths is an Eltham based mobile locksmith, also covering Bromley, Chislehurst, Sidcup and surrounding areas. We can bla bla bla……….
Nearly all HTML code is simply text between an opening and closing tag. The above example is an anchor tag. This is signified by an opening <a> and a closing </a>. The closing tag has a single forward slash in it.
The title attribute (in red) is:- title=”The title goes between the quotes”.
The address of the web page (in blue) is:- http=”Web page address goes between the quotes”. This is all contained within the opening <a> tag. The target=”_blank” attribute tells the browser to open the link in a new window.
The click-able text shown on the page (in yellow) is:- Whatever you choose. This always sits between the two tags:- <a>The click-able text</a>.
If you find that confusing, let’s simplify things. Copy the link code above and save it to a notepad file on your computer. If you ever need to create an anchor text link, just take that one and replace the title, (url) web address and the click-able text with your own.
Still too complicated? OK then just make a link using your WordPress text editor, switch from visual to HTML mode and copy the link.
Still To Complicated? Well if you don’t mind investing a little money in your venture, theres an on page SEO plugin that will take care of it for you. You can watch a video for more information here.
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About Steve Hippel
+Steve Hippel is into web design SEO and web marketing. He specialises in helping SME's get more from there websites and online marketing efforts. View all posts by Steve Hippel →6 Responses to Things That Help SEO
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Thanks for sharing this Steve all I know about SEO is they are the one who responsible for improving the search engine results placements quickly and efficiency. I think that without this, all the things listed SEO will do nothing.
Kate Brown Wilson recently posted..Glock Sights
Hi Kate.
There are many things that you can do to improve SEO. You can find plenty more information around the blog.
Hey Steve,
Understanding SEO is a huge deal if you really want to gain targeted traffic to your blog or website. Thanks for outlining it in an easy to read format.
Take care,
~Jeremy
Jeremy Ruggles @ Internet Marketing Tips recently posted..How To Not Succeed Online! How You Can Easily Fail With Internet Marketing…
Hi Jeremy.
Thank’s for sharing your thoughts and for the compliment. While we are on the compliments, I liked your frank and honest post about Internet marketing. Nice to see someone telling it like it is. I have a product launch on the horizon and will be spilling the beans about it here soon.
I.M is just awsome in my opinion but there are a lot of people damaging its reputation with false promises of easy riches.
Google is wreaking havoc now with Panda and Penguin though.
I think at the end of the day, we can do everything right but if the big G wants to shake things up, we’re at its mercy.
It’ll still be best to make sure to provide relevant and high quality content that creates loyal followers automatically and that will help build one’s list.
Thanks for sharing.
Quality content always has and always will be the best way foreward Sean. It saves time and effort in the long run as people will always link to good content.
Another good piece of advice is to build a diverse range of traffic sources. SEO is the best in my opinion because it brings very targeted traffic but blogging, social and the many other traffic generation methods will ensure that no matter what Google does, you always have traffic.
Thank’s for dropping by Sean.