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The Whole Package Approach: On-Page and Off-Page Optimization – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Jason Monroe in Featured

Not too long ago, a visitor to my blog posted the question: “What’s more effective, off-page or on-page optimization?” He had just finished optimizing his webpage using SEOPressor, and was understandably annoyed that the expected increase in traffic had failed to appear.

Unfortunately, the most definitive answer I have to his question is – it depends.

If you want to increase your site traffic by ranking well for lots of less competitive, long-tailed keywords, then on-page optimization is your best bet. If you are choosing to improve your ranking in the Google search results for shorter, more competitive keywords, then you should optimize off-page.

If you simply want a healthy and profitable website, then you need to engage in both kinds of optimization.

Google Ranks Pages Based on Content, not Sales Pitches.

Google uses a mathematical formula to rank your webpage based on its relevance to a particular user. That formula uses information found both off your page and on it, which explains why both on-page and off-page optimization are important.

The off-page information that Google looks for is the number of people or reputable sites that have found your web page useful and have linked back to it. The on-page information they look for consists of navigation aids like well-placed keywords and article descriptions, as well as quality content.

Both kinds of information are important, and therefore both on-page and off-page optimization are important, but they are not equally important. It’s been said that on-page optimization only influences about 20% of your Google search page ranking, while the other 80% of that ranking is influenced by off-page optimization.

That piece of information should tell you where the bulk of your efforts should be applied.

Off-Page Optimizing: Choose Your Friends Carefully

Long before the folks at Google publicly confirmed this, I and a few other internet marketers were already aware of it; Google takes a lot of stock in other people’s opinions. Those other people, by the way are the webmasters, bloggers and researchers who choose to link to your site.

Google keeps track of who links to you and determines the quality of your site based on the quality of those backlinks. For instance, if your website sells high-end cookware and you have backlinks from sites like BetterHomesandGardens.com or CooksIllustrated.com, than you’ll be ranked fairly well based on those sites.

However, if that same site has a few backlinks to BubbaJakesRoadkillCuisine.com or VegansforMao.au, you may find your site being punished because of the association with lower quality websites. Guilt by association isn’t necessarily fair, but you need to keep in mind that this is how the internet works.

Consequently, whether your website sells one of a kind children’s clothing, offers free online car insurance quotes or acts as a resource for geocaching in Kentucky, it’s important to pay attention to off-page optimization. This will ensure that you’re keeping good company, and enable your site to rank well for the highly competitive keywords.

On-Page Optimization: The Principal of Low-Lying Fruit

Although off-page optimization will influence the lion’s share of your Google ranking, you can’t afford to ignore your on-page optimizing, either. When deciding where to place your page in terms of a search for a particular keyword or keyword phrase, Google will look in three areas on your webpage:

- The title
- The first or second paragraph
- The meta description

The title of your article should contain your primary keyword or keyword phrase. This should be a natural result of matching the keyword phrase to the content of your article. If you’ve targeted a keyword phrase which doesn’t seem to fit in your title, perhaps you should re-think your approach to the topic.

That keyword or keyword phrase should also be in your first or second paragraph. One of these paragraphs should also contain a concise but detailed description of the article.

This is simply a more stringent standard than the one set by your fourth grade teacher when he or she taught you to write an introductory paragraph for a term paper.

The meta description gives you a second, more targeted area in which to provide a detailed article description to your potential readers. Because this description will often appear as a blurb under your site name on the Google search results page, it will not only affect where Google places you, but it will directly affect the amount of traffic on your site.

While directing more traffic to your site will not immediately result in stratospheric Google rankings, it will bring other, more direct benefits. Direct site traffic is referred to as low hanging fruit, because it’s easy to gather and, while it represents only a small portion of the whole crop, it is certainly enough to live on.

One final way to bring in this fruit is remarkably simple and therefore is often overlooked; simply provide your readers with quality content. If you purposely write informative, understandable information which is meant to be read by humans and not just analyzed by a search engine, your webpage will naturally contain many long-tailed keywords which are less competitive and easier to rank well for.

Tying Up The Package

A well-written webpage which has been properly optimized on-page may not rank particularly well for the shorter, more competitive keywords, but it will rank better for the longer tailed, less competitive keyword phrases.

If you want to – and you should want to – help your page rank well for the shorter, more competitive keywords, your off-page optimization will be far more effective for that task.

Whether your site helps folks compare auto insurance quotes or provides them with a comprehensive index of every film Kevin Bacon has been in, the same rules will apply for improving your search engine rankings. Both on-page and off-page optimization is necessary to keep your webpage visible and visitor-friendly.

That’s one man’s opinion, anyway. I’d be interested in hearing yours. Please share your thoughts in the comment box below.

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Jason Monroe is one of the young guns in affiliate marketing loving life in his mid-twenties with all the luxuries that come from being single. But even this young gun knows how to get serious when it comes to affiliate marketing, a career that was born from his innate tendency to be a research hound.

Do Not Make These 10 Common SEO Mistakes

By Martin Sejas in Featured

The time has come to list the top 10 SEO mistakes committed by website owners worldwide.

If you are not too happy about your website’s rankings on the search engines, then look through this list and make sure that the website is not committing any of these mistakes.

I’ve decided to divide this article into 2 sections: on page SEO and off page SEO mistakes. As you read through this article, you will realise that the mistakes covered here are all based on my previous articles about SEO.

On Page SEO Mistakes

This section refers to SEO mistakes made on your actual website.

1. Not Targeting 1 Keyword Per Page

This is the most important facet of on page SEO yet so many people are either unaware of its importance or forget to do it. It’s heaps easier to target a single keyword per page than to target 10 keywords per page. At the very maximum, you can target 2 keywords but you should try to keep it to just one. Focusing your efforts on 1 keyword per page will get greater results quicker. I can guarantee it.

2. No Keyword In URL

The URL of each page should have the keyword you are targeting for that page. If it doesn’t, then it’s just going to be harder for you to get that page ranking for that target keyword. Fix up your URL if you have to because this is crucial to SEO success.

3. No Keyword In Title Tag

I cannot count the number of pages I’ve been webpages not have their target keyword in the title tag. Just in case you’re not aware, the title tag is what appears at the top of your browser when you’re on a webpage. This is the one mistake I see the most because it is so obvious when I visit a webpage. It’s amazing how many home pages of websites have the word “Home” in their title tags. You MUST have the target keyword in your title tag because it will make a huge difference to your SEO efforts. This is certainly one of the top 10 SEO mistakes out there today.

4. Bad Use Of Meta Description And Meta Keywords

The most common mistake regarding meta description is people not using it at all. Just in case you weren’t aware, the meta description is a short description which is used to describe your website in search engine result listings. You should use it to encourage people to visit your website when they find you on the search engines. It’s also doesn’t hurt to have your target keyword there.

Regarding meta keywords, the most common mistake people commit is putting too many keywords there. You should limit yourself to a maximum of 5 to 8 keywords because putting more will only get you punished by the search engines for keyword spamming.

5. Bad Keyword Density

Unfortunately, many people are still committing this grave SEO mistake. Some are mentioning their target keyword as much as possible on their webpage to try and get it to rank highly. It used to work in the early days on the Web when engines were not intelligent but these days it can only guarantee your websites getting punished or even banned.

On the other hand, there are also people who do not use their keyword enough on their webpages. This is equally bad because it means that the search engines have no idea as to what keyword your webpage is trying to rank highly for.

When it comes to keyword density, your goal should be 3% which is not too much and not too little for good SEO results.

Off Page SEO Mistakes

This section refers to SEO mistakes made outside your website, but which hamper your website’s ability to rank highly on the search engines.

6. Bad Keyword Research

Keyword research is the basis for SEO success. If you target keywords with a high level of competition, then your ability to rank highly and get traffic will be diminished in the short term. On the other hand, you should not simply target keywords because of low competition because there may not be enough people searching for that keyword. It’s all about finding a balance between the number of searches and the number of websites competing for that keyword. Using tools such as Google Keyword Tool can help you achieve that objective.

7. No Keyword In Anchor Text

Off page SEO is all about building backlinks aka links back to your website. Nevertheless, while doing that, most people forget to put their keywords in the anchor text of the backlink. For example, if “computer repairs” was the primary keyword of your website, then you want to be sure that computer repairs is in the anchor text, just like in the following:

“Visit the best computer repairs service in town.”

Please note that the above is just an example.

This must be one of the most simple top 10 SEO mistakes committed today.

8. No Anchor Text Variety

While it’s great to use your target keyword in the anchor text of your backlinks, you must also mix and match with other keywords. In other words, if you use the same keywords in the anchor text of 100 links, then the search engines will regard this as suspicious and will punish your website. For this reason, you should find about 5 other related keywords and use them in your anchor text too. The greater the variety, the better your SEO results will be.

9. No Link Source Variety

There are plenty of ways to get backlinks, however, one of the top 10 SEO mistakes committed by people too often is by using only a minimal amount of link sources. For example, some people simply use article marketing to get their backlinks. Others just use social media. You need to be using a large range of sources to get your backlinks. The reason why this is the case is that the more sources you utilise, the more natural the backlinks will appears to the search engines, and the higher it will rank.

10. No Natural Build Up Of Links

Building on the previous mistake, you have to make sure that the amount of backlinks your website gets takes place in a natural, human-like manner. For instance, getting 300 links in just a single week will certainly grab the attention of the search engines and as a result, they will punish your website accordingly. However, if you get 300 links over the course of a month, then that will appear to be more natural and they will more than likely than not reward you.

Fix Them And Then Avoid Them

I suggest that you go through all of your websites and see whether they are committing the SEO mistakes covered in this post. After correcting them, it’s all about avoiding these common SEO mistakes so that your website get the rankings and traffic they thoroughly deserve.

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Martin Sejas – If you are looking for an SEO consulting service based in Sydney which can guarantee results for your website, don’t forget to register for your free consultation.

On Page Search Engine Optimization

By Sharon Housley in Featured

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become a fine science. Tweaking, changing, and measuring is all part of the ongoing optimization process. SEO truly is a process that requires constant monitoring and attention. In order for a website to perform well, its managers and webmasters must adapt their SEO techniques as the search engine algorithms change.

Use the following “on-page” optimization techniques to improve your website’s search engine ranking…

On Page SEO at The Roots of Relevance

By Jeffrey Smith in Featured

On page SEO essentially represents the root of relevance when it comes to search engine optimization and is where the staging grounds of shingle analysis and contextual relevance are optimized. After the on page SEO is done, then after getting crawled and indexed you can get the feedback and popularity mechanism of off page links and off page synergy working on your behalf. When links and content collide in a coherent fashion, rankings are produced…and that is the basis of organic SEO.

The formula of page strength + links / time = landing page authority

In other words, there are essentially three ways to acquire or create a competitive search engine position (1) through sculpting and honing the on page metrics (2) through off page link density and IP diversity or (3) the combination of both. The sum of any of these two metrics is web page or website authority. As a result this effect is like a self sustaining dynamo. Eventually a page becomes buoyant and achieves enough relevance and velocity to breach the barrier to entry and fling past complacent websites.

SEO is all about understanding the correlation of specific ranking factors and then applying a system to identify and remove inconsistencies (such as off topic internal links, insufficient internal link flow or lack of sufficient deep links from other sites to produce a ranking).

Although an experienced SEO practitioner can isolate the ranking equation intuitively or know with a great amount of confidence what is required to topple a competitive keyword (like a doctor prescribing a remedy). Until you develop that degree of precision, you can always use a combination of SEO tools to perform a competitive analysis and reverse engineer or surpass a competitor’s position.

They say everything leaves a trail and if you know where to look, you can decipher a great deal from the path that others leave behind. Having said that, you will need to know which metrics to focus on by studying (a) your own websites SEO ceiling and (b) using content to reach a high enough term frequency within your content to elect a champion page and rise above competitors.

Metrics to observe are:

The amount of content required to resonate with the keywords (theme density) and how concentrated are the top 3 websites that occupy the top ranking search results for that keyword. The necessity to increase (1) content and (2) the crawl rate to expedite indexing / changes is paramount. In addition, you need to factor the time required to build a sufficient amount of trust to acquire a targeted ranking which may take 3-9 months for a competitive keyword.

Finding the tipping point for any keyword in contrast to competitors is the first quantifiable benchmark. Aside from that it is merely a matter of (a) getting a higher quality of links (and letting them age) in tandem with (b) creating a page or series of pages strong enough to offset the contenders algorithmically for the targeted search result.

The first benchmark is to get in the top 100 search engine results. Depending on your website, this can take anywhere from one week or several months depending on the amount of competing pages and the authority of the websites occupying those positions. The next benchmark is to get into the top 30 results. From there, it is time to revisit your on page SEO to determine if the fact that you are stuck on the outskirts of the top 20 and top 10 results is because of on page or off page variables.

The top 15 results and higher are all about finesse. By using the some of the tools elaborated in the next post “is your on page SEO strong enough” we will provide tactics and techniques that you can use to conduct a thorough on page and off page analysis.

Competitive keywords represent a quest to achieve, but the stronger the foundation of relevance is integrated into the On page SEO, the less off page popularity your website requires from other sites.

This means that, essentially, after a certain point, your website can perpetuate its own authority and stem across multiple topics (much like Wikipedia) to devour market share, short-tail and long tail keywords alike. Short tail and long tail keywords implies desirable 2-3 keyword phrases and more broad or nebulous key phrases with 4 or more words, as a side effect of website authority.

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Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

How to Transfer On Page Authority

By Jeffrey Smith in Featured

There are many ranking factors, but when it comes to SEO, certain on page changes are more significant than others.

For example, with the lingering impression of legacy content, links, and the search engine / cloud computing bin (the cumulative summary of each page in a website since it was first indexed) certain benchmarks are built into a pages quantitative SEO ceiling. Hence, the introduction of new content is paramount for exceeding the previous topical relevance for a websites global keyword density.

In other words, Google and other search engines are transparent in their approach. Essentially, the website with (a) the most coherent amount of information on a topic (b) the most relevant and authority links from other websites and (c) the most favorable on-page site architecture (to ensure frequent crawling and indexing) has the highest propensity for long-term search engine visibility.

For a site with such magnitude (over 500 pages) ranking is more of a side-effect than an objective. In fact, developing an authority site is an endeavor that makes perfect sense in a word riddled with pay per click advertising, which is like renting when when you take away the mask.

If you are still obsessing over keywords vs. looking at the big picture of market share, it’s not too late to stop throwing away time, money and resources for short-term gains only to forgo the big picture of long-term search engine prominence.

Knowing this, if your website is light in the pants and only has a few targeting keywords appearing sparsely in context, your chances of ranking higher for select keywords diminish. In fact, each page represents another opportunity for sculpting on page relevance (which can be transferred) or leveraged across multiple pages to fine tune specific rankings for specific keywords.

Your primary naming conventions and navigation play a much larger role as far as aggregate ranking factors are concerned. A thematic page consists of (1) a clear ranking objective (2) a sufficient amount of internal links (3) a sufficient amount of external links to that page with the primary root phrase (and or link flow) and (4) the culmination of trust that occurs when you have maxed the page out as far as the tipping point is concerned.

In the past, it was possible to leverage a page within a site with hundreds of thousands of inbound links to cross the threshold. Now, with the onset of pliable content management systems, once domain authority is produced, the approach for producing top rankings has shifted from the old (80% off page factor) to (80% on page SEO / 20% domain reputation) which is somewhat divisible by links.

The objective is not TRYING to rank for a specific series of keywords as much as it is gaining an authoritative position in a market or niche. It is the websites that have clever underpinnings that refer to a much larger piece of the pie / industry that exceed the smaller GEO specific / targeted niche sites when it comes to devouring and exceeding short term keyword benchmarks.

Instead of ranking for A, B and C in a niche, why not rank for hundreds of keywords, modifiers and thematic synonyms with the same effort. Obviously the old method of applied SEO (static pages and meta tags) is still appealing for some, the new SEO method is more about using a collective series of layers to meet and exceed the necessary ranking factors exhibited by (a) the competition and (b) the search engines yardstick when it comes to assessing who is THE AUTHORITY on the topic.

Back to the subject, which is how to transfer on page authority. First creating it is the main objective, which means understanding the range of phrases a page can funnel back to itself while remaining optimal. Second, understanding that once that page has achieved its ideal synergy, how does it fit into the big picture as a hub for producing additional leverage and rankings for other key landing pages.

Each page is an opportunity to unify a theme. A theme meaning at the helm is a one word vertical market whereby once all of the silos (key phrases that stem and comprise the topic) are appeased and present, become buoyant and the site ranks for the root phrase and everything in between.

By constructing your content in this fashion and merging the themed and siloed elements with static flat site architecture (where pages are isolated deliberately). You can produce phenomenal keyword coherence and rankings for specific keywords and pages while still maintaining broad match funneling capabilities which means you capture the long-tail of search as well as the more moderately competitive keywords by default.

To funnel the on page authority a page has you simply do two things.

1) cap the outbound links to relevant anchor text. Each link leaving a page is like a leak unless the link weight moving in to the page and leaving that page are stabilized.

2) Make sure the target page is linked prominently from pages with the highest authority on the topic.

I have provided a link to an in depth post about funneling link flow to key landing pages. But the initial process begins with creating a phenomenon similar to a cross-pollination of keywords within your site by (a) identifying pages with the most on page and off page relevance and then (b) linking out from them to the new preferred landing page.

Over time, the process matures to multiple pages equally capable of enforcing SEO defense on your behalf (whereby one page fights with another for a top ranking or indented double ranking) to stave off competition on your behalf.

This tactic is also ideal for producing the double listing which can increase site conversion by 200% for every keyword nestled within this optimization tactic.

If a page ranks for a main keyword (higher up the ladder of relevance) then it is a candidate to pass on page authority to another area of the site. If that page exceeds 10 outbound links, then the chance of it passing its ranking factor is also diminished.

So, the exercise is one of (1) knowing or understanding the cycles of authority (which could be 2-8 months to produce for each competitive keyword) and then (2) knowing when to harvest that authority by going back to edit key pages in the site to stem and produce multiple pages ranking for a plethora of related synonyms or related searches.

Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

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