Note: Work-At-Home Success contains advertising along with screened jobs and information. Visit WAHS's Disclosure and/or FAQ page for more information.

Tag Archives: SEO

SEO — Search Engine Optimization Made Easy

June 27, 2011   LTruex   No comments

When I posted Work-At-Home Success online, getting search engine ranking wasn’t that hard. Today, it seems like rocket science. I know people who’ve been online for years, as I have, and don’t bother with search engine optimization just because it’s complicated and the rules are always changing. But other online marketers focus soley on SEO, spending money on software or a SEO consultant to continuously monitors and tweak sites to maintain rankings. (Some people try to trick search engines, which is called black hat SEO, and isn’t recommended).

It’s my opinion that while you don’t want to rely solely on SEO, you don’t want to ignore it either. About 30% of the traffic into Work-At-Home Success comes from search engines, suggesting how important SEO is to a web marketing strategy. So while I don’t spend a great deal of time monitoring my search engine rankings, I do work to make sure my sites are optimized so that search engines can find and rank them.

The basics of SEO involve:

Keywords

These are the words that your target market uses to search for your products or services online.  You use these keywords in the meta tags and content of your site to help search engines index and rank your site. Don’t just rely on your ideas for keywords. Use a tool such as Google’s Keyword Tool that will tell you what keywords and phrases web-searchers are using now to find information on your topic. While it would be nice to ranked number one for all your keywords, odds are you won’t. But, you can rank number one for a few and still rank well for others.

Meta-Tags

Meta-tags are hidden code on your website or blog that search engines use to index and list your site. The most common meta-tags for SEO are “Title”, “Keywords” and “Description”. Each page of your website or blog should have these tags specific to the content of the page. When I first started Work-At-Home Success, all the pages had the same meta tags. Today, each page gets it own title, keywords and description. Your website software should have a feature to let you add meta-tags to your pages. My sites are mostly WordPress with which I use the All-In-One SEO Pack.

Content

Search engines also scan your website page to see what keywords are used there. To ensure relevance, you want to use your keywords and variations of your keywords, without overdoing it. For example, when I’m writing about work-at-home jobs, I also use words like work-from-home jobs, telecommuting jobs or home-based employment. But don’t stuff your content with keywords either or that could hurt your rankings. In most cases, if you write content your visitors want to read, you’ll be using the right words in the right amounts. Be sure to use a keyword in your content title.

Link Popularity and External Linking

One way search engines determine if you offer quality content others want to read, is to check how many other sites are linking to you.  This isn’t just how many sites link to you, but the quality of the sites as well. Further, the search engines want to know what types of site you’re linking out to. Even when it comes to search engine ranking, the quality of company you keep is important. Great ways to increase your link popularity are to write articles and guest posts for other websites that target your market, and social networking and bookmarking. Also, check that all the links you offer that leave your site, provide the same high quality products or information that you do.

Still confused? I believe that if you use the meta tags and offer content people want to read, search engines will find you and like you.  Just remember that SEO isn’t a one time shot. The search engines are constantly finding and ranking new information posted online. To stay at the top, you need to continue to provide quality search engine optimized content.

Read More

Getting Listed in Search Engines 101

March 04, 2010   LTruex   8 Comments

Getting listed in search engines has evolved into a science. The gurus recommend all sorts of tricks and gimmicks to optimize your website (SEO). But some of these tricks can work against you.

Search engines are an important part of your Internet marketing strategy, however you can’t rely on search engines alone to drive traffic to your site. In fact, one of the ways search engines rank sites are how well they market using other methods. So search engines should be one of several marketing tactics you use to help people find your site.

Here are some tips to get you ranked in the search engines.

Step One: Make the Site Ready for Search Engine Spiders

Meta Tags

The first step to search engine ranking is use of your meta tags. Meta tags are information about your site that is hidden behind the scenes (viewable in the HTML view of your site) that lets the engines know what your site is about. At the very least you should have meta tags for the title, description and keywords of all your pages. These tags are placed in the <head></head> section in the code of your site:

Sample Header Code

<meta http-equiv=”Description” content=”Alchemy Copywriting offers results oriented, persuasive copy for internet, non-profit organizations and small business.”>
<meta http-equiv=”keywords” content=”copywriting, copywriter, direct sales, fundraising, sales copy, sales letters, advertising, promotion”>
<title>Alchemy Copy – Internet, Non-Profit and Small Business Copywriting</title>

When using the meta tags, you want to include your site’s name as well as keywords. But don’t over do it. And be honest. Include only the keywords and descriptions that are relevant to the page. For example, I wouldn’t include “work at home job” on a page that is about “home business”.

Text Copy on the Page

Include a heading to lead into the information on the page. Ideally it needs to include a keyword and be placed in heading tags (i.e. <H1></H1>)

Your text copy on the page should also include keywords and variations of keywords. Search engines don’t like pages that are stuffed to the brim with keywords. It likes real pages that offer real content. So your page should provide meaning full content that use variations of keywords. For example, if you were writing about “customer service” and using it as one of your keywords, you might substitute “customer relations” in some places.

Step Two: Submitting to Search Engines

Search Engine Submission

Whether or not you submit your site to search engines, they’ll eventually find you if you provide frequent relevant content and use your keywords. But you might as well help them out by letting them know you exist.

Below are some top search engines and directories at which you can register your website. Once you are at the home page, click on “Add URL” or “Add Your Site” which can frequently be found at the bottom of the site’s homepage. Be sure to have your name, site URL and keywords developed before you apply to add your site to the search engines and directories. You should probably submit your site individually at the top search engines. 

  • Google (many directories and engines pull from Google including Netscape and AOL)
  • DMOZ Open Directory (AOL, Google, Netscape, Yahoo and others use Open Directory)
  • MSN (many directories and engines pull from MSN including HotBot and Live Search)
  • Yahoo

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are XML files that list your site’s pages that are ready to be crawled by search engines. If you use a content management platform such as WordPress, you can add plug-ins to create your sitemap and ping the search engines when they’re ready to be crawled.

If you’re not using a program that offers sitemap functions, here’s a free online sitemap generator from XML Sitemaps to create your sitemap file. It has some instructions on what to do with it when its done as well.

If you’re creating your own sitemap, you can submit the pages directly:

  • Google http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=
  • Yahoo http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=SitemapWriter&url=  and http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=
  • Ask.com http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=
  • Bing http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=

Step Three: Getting Ranked

Meta tags and sitemaps will get your site crawled, but not necessarily ranked on the first page of search engines. For each of your keywords your site is competing with thousands if not millions of other pages. So the search engines use other criteria to determine who gets the top spots. Below are the criteria and how to improve your chances of a good ranking.

Content – Your site content should fit the keywords provided, but also search engines like sites that have new content on a regular basis. That is why you find so many results from blogs and new/info sites that have new information posted several times a week or day. The important thing to remember is that quality of the content not the number of times a keyword is used is important.

Backlinks – Search engines also judge the quality of your site by how many other sites deem your information worthy of a link to your site. There are several ways to create backlinks to your site. The easiest ways include writing articles and submitting them to article directories, posting comments on other people’s sites/blogs, and negotiating link exchanges with other sites.

Search Engine Optimization Tools

A great tool to help with search engine optimization including evaluating your site for ranking as well as ways to improve SEO, check out WebCeo.

Read More

  • Work At Home Success Podcast

    Show 196 Kathy Goughenour Expert VA Training

    MP3 File
    Check out previous podcasts plus get the resources mentioned on podcasts.
  • workingmother.com's badge