10 SEO Tips to Make Your Blog #1 In Search Results

Question 1:  Have you tried everything you can to get traffic to your blog, but not getting much results?

Question 2: Do you ever wonder why your blog is not getting much traffic, while others seem to get hundreds or even thousands of unique visits every month?

Question 3: What makes your blog shrinking and how to get more traffic and #1 place in Google search results.

Curious to know?

Hmm lets get into this topic then…

You can’t do anything without having huge traffic, can you? Then what’s the best way to bring massive traffic to your blog?

Surely with the help of search engines via organic or natural traffic. It’s the easy and smart way to get free traffic to your blog.

Did you notice that only few blogs get #1 search results in the search engine results almost every time?

How to get it done for your blog too then?

You can do this with the help of quality backlinks and better search engine optimization techniques.

First things first, let’s begin from the bottom.

What Is SEO? (In simple words)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality of web traffic to your blog or website from search engines through “Organic/natural” way for targeted keywords.

What are targeted keywords?

Targeted keywords are the “Specific Keywords” which you use to expose your blog content i.e to give more importance to few keywords which people may search most often on Google to reach your blog.

Now coming to the main part..

SEO Tips to Make Your Blog No.1 In Search Results

1. Getting high quality inbound links

Inbound links or incoming links play a major role in making your blog search engine friendly and giving top search results to your blog.

Let’s assume, if a PR 6 blog linked one of your posts, then the chances of getting exposure will be really high.

It will increase your organic traffic, better search results and gives quality backlinks to your blog. Moreover it increases your PR too. One shot, two birds.

That’s why writing high quality content is more important than any other for a blog to get #1 search results.

2. Keep your URL’s short and sweet

Why you need to make your URL structure short?

Smart question..

I will show you in a pictorial way to better understand this, before that you need to know the difference between better URL structure and bad URL structure..

Worst URL structure:

http://www.yourURLsucks.com/20012/04/10/about/p=?5874

Optimized (better) URL:

http://www.yourURLrocks.com/post-title/

If you use the worst URL which is lengthy (in general) then the search engine crawlers find it difficult to find them. It takes extra time to find your content and chances of getting your #1 page search results will be less.

OK then..

How to optimize your URL’s?

Go to:

WP-admin >> Settings >> Permalinks

Now click on, “Custom structure”

and type or paste this:

/%postname%/

You are done! It’s the most optimized URL structure for your blog which gets crawled easily.

3. Always interlink to your old blog posts

Interlinking your new blog posts with the old blog posts is an effective way to reduce the bounce rate. It also increases the chances of getting #1 place in search results.

Don’t use irrelevant links to your blog. Make them relevant and use them effectively.

You may interlink 1 to 3 in least case (for every blog post you write)

Even you can use more than 3 (if your content is too lengthy and where it’s appropriate to interlink with your previous posts)

4. Don’t be selfish, include at least one outbound link to the authority blog in your niche:

Outbound linking means “giving links to other blog(s) from your blog posts”.

This can actually help your blog’s performance in the search engines!! But, how?

Whenever you provide a link to authority blogs or other blogs,  you will get a trackback and in some cases, your search engine ranking and visibility may increase due to that particular post. But, you should consider few things while doing outbound linking.

Precautions while doing outbound linking -

Try to make it “nofollow”

Don’t over link to the external sites/blogs. Even if you want to link, simple include their link without giving the “link address”.

Ex: If you want to link to seomoz.org. Instead of giving a link to it, try to write seomoz.org/5-tips-to-die  Just remove the link and everything else will be fine.

Benefits of doing outbound linking is, you can have a healthy relationship with whom you are linking to and there may be a chance of getting links from them in return (if they are from authority blogs, then your blog ranking, visibility will be up in the sky  but the chances are less though). But, you should have some respect on the authority blogs and be generous to linking them when ever it’s needed.

It will surely help your business in long run.

5. Build quality backlinks

The more quality backlinks you have the more authority it is. Backlinks are  just like ‘votes’. Most bloggers believe that, backlinks from low rated PR blogs is not good – it’s a myth actually.

It’s like ‘voting system’. No matter from where you are getting, but they worth. But, not in the case of buying the backlinks  :P(never buy the backlinks from anywhere – Google penalizes for sure and Google is smarter than us)

How you can get quality backlinks to your blog then?

Few ways are(I will make this as brief as possible)

• Blog commenting: Comment on top blogs in your niche. Try to make useful and insightful comments. Read: 3 Reasons Your Blog Not Getting Much Comments: How to Get Them
• Guest blogging: Guest blog on other blogs in your niche. Try to start from the small blogs like PR1 or PR2 and slowly increase the pace. I would suggest you to guest blog at least on 3 or more blogs in a month.
• Participating in forums: This is another way to build quality backlinks. Try to find out the forums which are related to your blog’s topic and participate there actively and submit your blog posts regularly.
• Article marketing: Submit your best content to article directories like;
• www.GoArticles.com
• www.Article99.com
• www.ValuableContent.com
• www.EzineArticles.com
• www.eHow.com
• www.ArticleDashBoard.com

6. Search engine friendly design

Try to use search engine friendly design. A Better search engine optimized blog design always makes the search results better and effective. The major point here is, you can get better search results if you have search engine friendly design even if you don’t know much about SEO!! That’s the key-point here.

If possible, try to purchase Thesis or Genesis as soon as possible (I will be purchasing Thesis next month – I will tell you why I am going for Thesis instead of Genesis in my next article – hopefully)

Customize yourself(if you know coding) or hire a professional(this is better) or buy a SEO friendly theme skins 

7. Keywords play essential role

Keywords should be used in a smart way. No over usage or less usage!

Title tags are really important. Use Keyword tool to analyze the competitive keywords in your blogging niche. If you find it bit tough to use, then use “Google insights tool”. Here is a screen shot for the keyword “seo tips”..

At the end of the above image, you will see “top searches” which will be useful for your blog article keywords, quite easy isn’t it?

8. Getting unique visitors through quality content

What if your blog is perfectly optimized and has everything except the quality content?

Your blog sucks…

So, try to create quality content. Here are few tips on creating it..

Quality content means, it should be

• Valuable: Your content must be valuable, it should add value to your blog.
• Unique: Your content should not be copied from any other source and it should have compelling content writing skills.
• Fresh content: Most of the times, search engines prefer fresh content rather than the old or repeated content. Try to update your blog often if you can. If not, update it ‘regularly’ (not daily) with engaging content..

9. Make your blog loading time faster

Do you know Google considers blog’s loading time to give higher rankings for specific keywords?

Yes, it does..

It will help to boost organic traffic from search engines for specific keywords which you use for your blog posts. So, try to make your blog loading time faster using the following methods.

• Optimize your images before you use: Many expert bloggers have suggested to optimize the images to make your blog loads faster. What I say  is to optimize them before you use them. Use image compressors to do this.  Instead of uploading your images and compressing them using post editors, this is the best way to go.
• Cut the clutter: Don’t make your blog an ad agency and never use useless widgets and plugins. Use the best plugins, try to clear the clutter in your blog as much as possible.
• Use better hosting: Instead of using free or nonsense hosting providers. Use the top class hosting providers like HostGator. Better hosting ultimately makes your blog’s loading time better.
• W3 Cache: This is the best WP plugin to clear the cache in your blog. This is the gift to WP power users like you and me

10. Use the following methods effectively

Submit your sitemap: Submit your blog sitemap to search engines.

Use the ALT tag always: Search engines like Google, Yahoo! uses separate bots to find the images! But these bots don’t crawl as often they crawl your content. What you need to keep in mind is, they will crawl even the images. So, it’s really a bad idea if you use weird names for your images like “0000155.jpg” or “asdaegljadfg.png” etc. Instead of this, name your images corresponding to your blog posts.

Always use alt tags: Here is an excellent WP plugin on this which I came across:

SEO Friendly Images automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images improving traffic from search engines.

Download

Search engines are blind and deaf – So, use them “smart”: Search engines can’t see your videos as we see, they can’t listen to the podcasts as we do. What they only do is – they perform their crawling in text format.

If you have any doubt – once view “page source” does it include videos or only text?

So, create great and in-depth content for your blog along with the ‘regular’ creation of your videos or podcasts.

Bonus tips:

Use XML sitemap, add rel=”nofollow” to the external links, never buy links to increase your PR, use images to get traffic.

Note: If you are a newbie blogger who have just started, just concentrate on creating the content which is interesting, unique and useful rather than worrying about SEO and search results.

In summary, write quality, unique and authoritative content, try to increase quality backlinks to your blog because Google loves authority blogs.

“Just do your work and don’t worry about the results” – this is my philosophy, quite good, isn’t it? 

Killer Tips to Get Free Traffic To Your Website

Getting traffic is one of the most important tasks for any web master. What is more, you can't get traffic once and then just reap the benefits. Getting traffic is an ongoing task and you must be constantly doing it, if you want to get traffic and keep it. Here are some of the ways to get traffic for free:

1Optimize your site for search engines.

Search engines have always been a major way to get traffic for free. That is why you need to do your homework and optimize your site so that it ranks well for the keywords you target. SEO is still the most powerful way to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and efforts in the optimization of your site.

2Frequently update the contents of your site. .

If you expected some shocking secrets revealed, you might be a bit disappointed. One of the first steps in getting traffic for free is trivial but vital – get great content and frequently update it. In terms of SEO, content is king. If your content is good and frequently updated you will not only build a loyal audience of recurring visitors, who will often come to see what is new, but search engines will also love your site.

3Take advantage of social bookmarking sites.

Social bookmarking sites (especially the most popular among them) are another powerful way to get traffic for free. If you want to learn how to do it, check the How to get Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites article, where we have explained what to do if you want to get free traffic from sites such as Digg, Delicious, etc.

4Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Social networks are also a way to get traffic for free. If you are popular on networks, such as Twitter or Facebook, the traffic you get from there can easily surpass the traffic from Google and the other search engines. It is true that building a large network of targeted followers on Twitter and supporters on Facebook takes a lot of time and effort but generally the result is worth.

5Get links with other sites in your niche.

Another way to get traffic for free is from other sites in your niche. Getting links with other sites in your niche is also good for SEO, especially if you manage to get links without the famous nofollow attribute. But even if the links are nofollow (i.e. they are useless for SEO), they still help to get traffic to your site. If you manage to put your link in a visible place on a site with high volumes of traffic, you can get thousands of hits from this link alone. If you need list of sites within your niche where you could get backlinks from, check the Backlink Buildertool. However, be careful if you exchange links because linking to bad neighbors can do you a lot of harm.

6 Use any chance to promote your site for free.

Free promotion is always welcome, so don't neglect it. There are many ways to promote your site for free and some of the most popular ones include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion in various listings, etc. It is true that not all free ways to promote your site work well but if you select the right places to promote your site for free, this can also result in tons of traffic.

7Create a free product or service.

Content drives most traffic when you offer something useful. There are many types of useful content you can create and they largely depend on the niche of your site. You can have articles with tons of advice, or short tips but one of the most powerful ways to get traffic is to create a free product or service. When this product or service gets popular and people start visiting your site, chances are that they will visit the other sections of the site as well.

8Use viral content.

Free products and services are great for getting free traffic to your site and one of the best varieties in this aspect is viral content. Viral content is called so because it distributes like a virus – i.e. when users like your content, they send it to their friends, post it on various sites, and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit it to a couple of popular sites. After that users pick it and distribute it for you. Viral content can be a hot video or a presentation but it can also be a good old article or an image.

9Use offline promotion.

Offline promotion is frequently forgotten but it is also a way to get traffic for free. Yes, computers are everywhere and many people spend more time online than offline but still life hasn't moved completely on the Web. Offline promotion is also very powerful and if you know how to use it, this can also bring you many visitors. Some of the traditional offline ways to promote your site include printing its URL on your company's business cards and souvenirs or sticking it on your company vehicles. You can also start selling T-shirts and other merchandise with your logo and this way make your brand more popular.

10Include your URL in your signature.

URLs in forum signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums, which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your site. When you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click the link to your site on your signature to learn more about you. In rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an internal page of the site) rather than a link to your homepage and this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page. Unfortunately, deep links are rarely allowed.

Getting traffic for free is a vast topic and it is not possible to list all the ways to do it. However, if you know the most important ways – i.e. the ways we discussed in this article and you apply them properly, it is guaranteed that you will be able to get lots of traffic for free.

Get Traffic From Social Bookmarking Sites

Sites like digg.com, reddit.com, stumbleupon.com etc can bring you a LOT of traffic. How about getting 20,000 and more visitors a day when your listing hits the front page?
Getting to the front page of these sites is not as difficult as it seems. I have been successful with digg and del.icio.us (and not so much with Reddit though the same steps should apply to it as well) multiple times and have thus compiled a list of steps that have helped me succeed:

1Pay attention to your Headlines

Many great articles go unnoticed on social bookmarking sites because their headline is not catchy enough. Your headline is the first (and very often the only) thing users will see from your article, so if you don't make the effort to provide a catchy headline, your chances of getting to the front page are small. 
Here are some examples to start with :- 

Original headline : The Two Types of Cognition 
Modified Headline : Learn to Understand Your Own Intelligence 

Original headline: Neat way to organize and find anything in your purse instantly! 
Modified Headline : How to Instantly Find Anything in Your Purse 

2Write a meaningful & short description

The headline is very important to draw attention but if you want to keep that attention, a meaningful description is vital. The description must be slightly provocative because this draws more attention but still, never use lies and false facts to provoke interest. For instance, if your write “This article will reveal to you the 10 sure ways to deal with stress once and forever and live like a king from now on.” visitors will hardly think that your story is true and facts-based. 

You also might be tempted to use a long tell-it-all paragraph to describe your great masterpiece but have in mind that many users will not bother to read anything over 100-150 characters. Additionally, some of the social bookmarking sites limit descriptions, so you'd better think in advance how to describe your article as briefly as possible.

3Have a great first paragraph

This is a rule that is always true but for successful social bookmarking it is even more important. If you have successfully passed Level 1 (headlines) and Level 2 (description) in the Catch the User's Attraction game, don't let a bad first paragraph make them leave your site.

4Content is king

However, the first paragraph is not everything. Going further along the chain of drawing (and retaining) users' attention, we reach the Content is King Level. If your articles are just trash, bookmarking them is useless. You might cheat users once but don't count on repetitive visits. What is more, you can get your site banned from social bookmarking sites, when you persistently post junk.

5Make it easy for others to vote / bookmark your site

It is best when other people, not you, bookmark your site. Therefore, you must make your best to make it easier for them to do it. You can put a bookmarking button at the end of the article, so if users like your content, they can easily post it. If you are using a CMS, check if there is an extension that allows to add Digg, Del.icio.us, and other buttons but if you are using static HTML, you can always go to the social bookmarking site and copy the code that will add their button to your pages. .

6Know when to submit

The time when you submit can be crucial for your attempts to get to the front page. On most social bookmarking sites you have only 24 hours to get to the front page and stay there. So, if you post when most users (and especially your supporters) are still sleeping, you are wasting valuable time. By the time they get up, you might have gone to the tenth page. You'd better try it for yourself and see if it works for you but generally posting earlier than 10 a.m. US Central Time is not good. Many people say that they get more traffic around 3 p.m. US Central Time. Also, workdays are generally better in terms of traffic but the downside is that you have more competitors for the front page than on weekends.

7Submit to the right category

Sometimes a site might not work for you because there is no right category for you. Or because you don't submit to the right category – technology, health, whatever – but to categories like General, Miscellaneous, etc. where all unclassified stuff goes. And since these categories fill very fast, your chance to get noticed decreases.

8Build a top-profile

Not all users are equal on social bookmarking sites. If you are an old and respected user who has posted tons of interesting stuff, this increases the probability that what you submit will get noticed. Posting links to interesting articles on other sites is vital for building a top-profile. Additionally, it is suspicious, when your profile has links to only one site. Many social bookmarking sites frown when users submit their own content because this feels like self-promotion.

9Cooperate with other social bookmarkers

The Lonely Wolf is a suicidal strategy on sites like StubleUpon, Digg, Netscape. Many stories make it to the front page not only because they are great but because they are backed up by your network of friends. If in the first hours after your submittal you get at least 15 votes from your friends and supporters, it is more likely that other users will vote for you. 50 votes can get you to the top page of Digg.

10Submit in English

Linguistic diversity is great but the majority of users are from English-speaking countries and they don't understand exotic languages. So, for most of the social bookmarking sites submitting anything in a language different from English is not recommendable. The languages that are at an especial disadvantage are Chinese, Arabic, Slavic languages and all the other that use non-latin alphabet. German, Spanish, French are more understandable but still they are not English. If you really must submit your story (i.e. because you need the backlink), include an English translation at least of the title. But the best way to proceed with non-English stories is to post them on where they belong. 

11Never submit old news

Submitting old news will not help you in becoming a respected user. Yesterday's news is history. But if you still need to submit old stuff, consider feature articles, howtos and similar pieces that are up-to-date for a long time.

12Check your facts

You must be flattered that users read your postings but you will hardly be flattered when users prove that you haven't got the facts right. In addition to sarcastic comments, you might also receive negative votes for your story, so if you want to avoid this, check you facts - or your readers will do it.

13Check you spelling

Some sites do not allow to edit your posts later, so if you misspell the title, the URL, or a keyword, it will stay this way forever.

14Not all topics do well

But sometimes even great content and submitting to the right category do not push you to the top. One possible reason could be that your stories are about unpopular topics. Many sites have topics that their users love and topics that don't sell that well. For instance, Apple sells well on Digg and The War in Iraq on Netscape. Negative stories - about George Bush, Microsoft, evil multinational companies, corruption and crime also have a chance to make it to the front page. You can't know these things in advance but some research on how many stories tagged with keywords like yours have made the front page in the last year or so can give you a clue.

15Have Related Articles / Popular Articles

Traffic gurus joke that traffic from social bookmarking sites is like an invasion – the crowds pour in and in a day or two they are gone. Unfortunately this is true – after your listing rolls from the front page (provided that you reached the front page), the drop in traffic is considerable. Besides, many users come just following the link to your article, have a look at it and then they are gone. One of the ways to keep them longer on your site is to have links to Related Articles / Popular Articles or something similar that can draw their attention to other stuff on the site and make them read more than one article.

16RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions, affiliate marketing

RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions, affiliate marketing are all areas in which the traffic from social bookmarking sites can help you a lot. Many people who come to your site and like it, will subscribe to RSS feeds and/or your newsletter. So, you need to put these in visible places and then you will be astonished at the number of new subscriptions you got on the day when you were on the front page of a major social bookmarking site.

17Do not use automated submitters

After some time of active social bookmarking, you will discover that you are spending hours on end posting links. Yes, this is a lot of time and using automated submitters might look like the solution but it isn't. Automated submitters often have malware in them or are used for stealing passwords, so unless you don't care about the fate of your profile and don't mind being banned, automated submitters are not the way to go.

18Respond to comments on your stories

Social bookmarking sites are not a newsgroup but interesting articles can trigger a pretty heated discussion with hundreds of comments. If your article gets comments, you must be proud. Always respond to commends on your stories and even better – post comments on other stories you find interesting. This is a way to make friends and to create a top-profile.

19Prepare your server for the expected traffic

This is hardly a point of minor importance but we take for granted that you are hosting your site on a reliable server that does not crash twice a day. But have in mind that your presence on the front page of a major social bookmarking site can drive you a lot traffic, which can cause your server to crash – literally! 
I remember one of the times I was on the front page on Digg, I kept restarting Apache on my dedicated server because it was unable to cope with the massive traffic. I have many tools on my site and when the visitors tried them, this loaded the server additionally. 
Well, for an articles site getting so much traffic is not so devastating but if you are hosting on a so-so server, you'd better migrate your site to a machine that can handle a lot of simultaneous hits. Also, check if your monthly traffic allowance is enough to handle 200-500,000 or even more visitors. It is very amateurish to attract a lot of visitors and not be able to serve them because your server crashed or you have exceeded your bandwidth!

20The snowball effect

But despite the differences in the likes of the different social bookmarking communities, there are striking similarities. You will soon discover that if a post is popular on one of the major sites, this usually drives it up on the other big and smaller sites. Usually it is Digg posts that become popular on StumbleUpon and Reddit but there are many other examples. To use this fact to your best advantage, you may want to concentrate your efforts on getting to the front page of the major players only and bet on the snowball effect to drive you to the top on other sites.
An additional benefit of the snowball effect is that if your posting is interesting and people start blogging about it, you can get tons of backlinks from their blogs. This happened to me and the result was that my PR jumped to 6 on the next update.