“A Comprehensive Post on SEO” plus 2 more

A Comprehensive Post on SEO
How I Increased Traffic by 90,000 Hits per Month in 25 Days
How to Get Affiliate Code from E-Junkie to Promote our Ebooks

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 01:08 PM PDT

This guest posst is by Kole McRae of Office Buddha.

I'm a blogger now but in a former life I did SEO professionally. As a part of the industry I've seen first hand the insane amount of misleading information available. Even so-called “professionals” have been known to give out absolutely terrible advice.

That's why I'm writing this article. I want to finally teach you bloggers the truth behind SEO and how to rank well in Google. Some of the following information might be obvious and some of it might seem strange, but stick with me. If you follow my advice you'll be ranking number one in no time.

The information I'm going to give is specific to Google, but the same tips will also help you rank in Bing and all other search engines.

Meta tags

Meta tags are a part of the HTML of your page that appear in the header. There are hundreds to choose from but only two matter when it comes to HTML: the Title tag and the Description tag.

Some people talk about the Keywords meta tag but Google has made it clear that they completely ignore it. It doesn't hurt to have a keywords tag, but don't assume it will help you rank in Google.

The Description tag

This is what Google (sometimes) uses to describe your site in the search results. It’s shown in the screenshot below.

This does not effect your rankings, but it can be used to help entice people to click on your link in the search results. Make sure it is relevant to your site, and describes what people will find when they click your link.

As you can see in the screenshot, the term that was searched for will show up in bold in the results. You can use this to help get more clicks—but don't abuse it.

The Title tag

The Title tag is (sometimes) used by Google as the main text of your link within the search results, as seen in the screenshot below:

The words used here have been proven to help with rankings. Basically, the closer the keywords are to the left edge of the link, the better the result will rank for those keywords. For example, Geek Juice: Canadian Tech News won't rank as well as Canadian Tech News by Geek Juice for the term “Canadian Tech News.”

“Sometimes”?

In both instances I said that Google sometimes uses these tags. This is because they sometimes use other sources. Google may display content from your site instead of your chosen description or title tag if Google's algorithm believes it is more relevant. Google may also use content from DMOZ (the open directory project.)

Keywords

The tips I've seen online for on page SEO range from ill-conceived to downright frightening. People tout keyword densities and other strange points of data as the be-all and end-all of SEO. In reality Google hasn't used keyword density in years. Stuffing a million keywords at the bottom of your page won't help; some believe Google actually penalizes sites for this.

As long as you mention a chosen keyword once or twice within a blog post, you'll be fine. The important thing is that the rest of the post is about that keyword. Google has figured out a lot of very complex ways to make sure your post is about the keyword you've chosen. For example if you're talking about the keyword “Toronto Raptors” you'll probably mention basketball and scores and various other basketball related information.

The best thing you can do when it comes to keywords is simply talk about the things you love.

Building links

Google first built its search engine on the idea of page rank: a page was probably relevant if a lot of people linked to that page. The more links to that page, the better. Early in Google's life this approach was easily spammed, and to this day people continue to try and gain PageRank.

You've probably heard advice such as putting your link into blog comments and forums, and within your profile on social networking sites. The problem is that these days these links are all marked as “no follow” links. “No follow” tells Google not to use this link within its determination of the site’s ranking. So in the end, these links count for very little.

The only real way to build links is to create great content that sites want to naturally link to. The issue is that if you are a new blogger, your chances of getting a link are slim to none. There are ways to build them though…

Guest posts

Guest posts (such as this one) will almost always produce a really high-quality link to your site. Don't guest post just anywhere, though. Google likes it when sites that are similar to yours links to you. So guest post on blogs that have similar themes.

Contests

Running a contest where you give something away is a great way to naturally product lots of links.

Viral content

If a single post or image of yours somehow gets to the first page of Reddit or Digg, you are guaranteed to get tons of links pointing to your site.

Social signals

Both Google and Bing have admitted to using social signals within search results. This is getting more and more prevalent.

However, it’s still a brand new part of SEO, and it hasn't been thoroughly studied yet. What I can suggest, though, is that you make sure you have a Twitter and Facebook account and that you interact with your followers regularly.

Ultimately, all this advice amounts to one tip for achieving good search rank: create great, high-quality posts and interact with your readers regularly.

Are you doing this already? How’s your search rank looking?

Kole McRae started Office Buddha, a resource for those working 9-5 jobs that want to reduce stress, get more done, find more time for the things they love, and all around become happier.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

A Comprehensive Post on SEO

How I Increased Traffic by 90,000 Hits per Month in 25 Days

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 07:06 AM PDT

This guest posy is by M.Farouk Radwan of http://www.2knowmyself.com.

The title of this article isn’t marketing hype—it relates the true story of what happened to me this month. I am not claiming that I’m an expert in increasing traffic, but I’m sure you might find a point or two in this post that might be of benefit of you.

The problem

My website was growing very fast until 2009. It stopped growing when it reached 500,000 hits per month. For two years I was concerned about the growth rate, until one day when I decided to do something about it. I visited ProBlogger and I kept reading continuously for three days (I believe Daren got a traffic spike in that time because of me!).

After reading lots of articles, I discovered that even though I was getting a lot of hits still what matters the most are the recurring visitors, because they are the ones who can help my site's traffic grow exponentially.

A plan of action

After realizing this important fact, here’s what I did.

1. Change the purpose of the newsletter

I had a newsletter, but its only purpose was keeping in touch with people who visited my website. At this point I decided to change the purpose of the newsletter and to use it to bring people back to my website, to increase recurring traffic.

I wrote great articles with very useful content and added them to the newsletter. One is sent each week. In each article, I add many links to related posts on my website—I even add links “between the lines.” For example, if the article contained the word “depression” then I would create a link pointing to an article about depression on my website.

As a result, more than half of those who used to read the newsletter started coming back to the website (previously they used to read it in their mail without coming back!).

2. Generate more recurring traffic

If each person read three articles on my website, then I’d get three more hits. But I thought of motivating each person to read ten pages!

Here is how I did it. First, I created a forum on the website. Then on the bottom of each article I added a link saying "If you have any questions, come and ask me about it in the forums."

Recurring visitors who returned to the website started reading the articles, and some of them headed to the forum after finding the link at the bottom of the article. Success!

3. Attract recurring visits through Facebook

I had a Facebook fan page with few thousand fans, but I was completely ignoring it.

First I created a marketing campaign on Facebook until I added few more thousand people to the fan page. After I did that, I started to post each new article I write to the Facebook fan page, every day.

The reason I didn't do that before was that I was afraid that people would get bored and leave the page, but what I discovered is that the number of fans was increasing, not decreasing.

As a result of the large number of Likes some posts were getting, the friends of the people who liked the posts started reading my articles too. So the traffic I used to get from Facebook increased from 3% of my blog’s total traffic to 10%.

4. Attract more newsletter subscribers

I started monitoring the traffic each page of my blog receives, and whenever I find a page that’s experiencing a traffic spike, I move the newsletter subscription form to a dominant place on that page, so that I capture as many email addresses as I can.

The reason I don't put the newsletter form at the top of the page is that it harms the sales of the books I promote there, as it pushes those promotions downwards.

5. Have one brilliant idea

The forum I installed on my site had the option of sending private messages to users, so I thought of an idea that turned out to be brilliant.

Why not let people contact me using the private messaging system on the forum, instead of sending me a mail?

This way, the person who has a question will have to visit my forums to post the question, and again, to see the answer. While they’re there, they may easily see other forum discussions that they’re interested in contributing to. The forum is only few days old, but already I have 140 active members.

The results

Once I implemented these tactics, daily hits to my blog increased from 18,000 to 21,000—totalling more than 90,000 extra hits per month.

Here are the lessons I learned:

You can do better! If I didn't face this growth problem I would have never thought about such solutions and would have never implemented them in 25 days. When we find ourselves stuck, our true potential appears. Don't wait until you become stuck to take an action. Take it right away. You can do better than you’re doing now!
Darren knows what he’s talking about: read everything he writes!
Hits are not as important as recurring traffic. Even if your blog gets very large number of hits, the only way to grow it really fast is to build recurring traffic.

Have you tried any of these tactics yourself? How have they worked on your blog?

Written by M.Farouk Radwan who is the founder of http://www.2knowmyself.com and who is the author of many books including the book, “How I did it” where he explains how he managed to create a website from scratch that later started getting 500,000 hits per month and became his primary source of income.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

How I Increased Traffic by 90,000 Hits per Month in 25 Days

How to Get Affiliate Code from E-Junkie to Promote our Ebooks

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 06:48 AM PDT

Over the last few years here at ProBlogger we’ve released four different ProBlogger ebooks. We sell most of them to our readers directly, however a growing number of our products are sold through our affiliate program.

By promoting our ebooks, you can earn a 40% commission on the sale price for each ebook sold to your own readers. So on our latest ebook—ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for Your Business—you’ll earn a $20 commission for each ebook you sell. Recommend it, and sell ten copies, and you’ve earned yourself $200. Sell 100, and you’re $2000 better off.

Better still, when you refer someone to one of our ebooks and they then go on to buy more than one within the next six months, you’ll earn 40% on those extra sales, too.

If you’re interested in promoting ProBlogger ebooks, we have a page set up with information on how to sign up and where you can get resources for your promotions here.

How to get the affiliate code to promote our ebooks

We use E-Junkie to serve our products, but a number of readers have found navigating their affiliate system a little tricky. So today I want to walk you through the process for getting the affiliate code you need to use to make sure you get the commissions you deserve.

1. Go to http://www.problogger.net/affiliates/
.

2. Click on the link to sign up at E-Junkie.

3. Once you’re signed up and logged into E-Junkie, look for the “Affiliates” tab at the top of the page and click it.

4. Then click the “Affiliate admin” link in the navigation menu.

5. Next, click the “Get affiliate code” link.

6. Select “ProBlogger” from the drop-down menu, and click the “Get affiliate link” button.

7. On the next page, you can get your link in one of two ways:

a. The common affiliate hop link: Use the code provided there, and you’ll send all the people who click it to a general page on ProBlogger which lists all of our products. This is a good option if you want to highlight the full range of our ebooks so they can decide which is right for them. However I don’t find it converts as well as the second option—promoting ebooks specifically.

b. Get product-specific affiliate links: This drop-down menu will let you choose which ebook you want to promote. Choose the one you want, then click “Get affiliate code,” and it’ll take you to a page that displays that code.

This second option generally converts best, because you’re able to promote a specific ebook that’s relevant to your audience’s particular needs.

Whichever option you choose, E-Junkie gives you some HTML code that you can copy and paste into the blog post in which you’re promoting a product. The code isn’t perfect for every situation, as the call to action is “Click here for further details,” but you could change that to something else to suit your post.

The URL part of the code that is given can also be used to link our banner images (or it can be tweeted, shared on Facebook, or emailed).

If you want to use one of our banners to promote an ebook in a sidebar, go our affiliates page and select the one you want.

Do keep in mind that our best-converting affiliates don’t just use banner ads in their sidebars—the best conversions come from a more specific promotion, either through writing a blog post about the product (a review), through tweets, or through emailing a list with a recommendation or review. These more personal recommendations of specific products convert a lot better.

Google Adsense

Point of Authorithy