Rank your site in the Search Engines using Free Blogs

If you are inexperienced in SEO than you may not understand how to rank your site in the search engines using free blogs and other web 2.0 properties. This method works very well because you are able to generate your own related content and place a hyperlink to your site using the url in the anchor text for the keyword you’re trying to rank for in the search engines.

1. Anchor Text
anchor text -> niche marketing
url -> http://nichetitans.com
This would be an example of anchor text used in a link to help rank this site http://nichetitans.com for ‘niche marketing’ in the search engines.
2. Related Content

It is best to create related content to the keyword you are trying to rank for in the search engines. For example, if you’re trying to rank for the keyword ‘marketing examples’ then you want to create a blog post or article that focuses on examples of marketing or a related topic that mentions the keyword you want to rank your site for in the search engines.

3. Free Blogs

Essentially any respected web 2.0 property such as blogger.com, wordpress.com, squidoo.com and other free blogs can be used to rank your site in the search engines. These sites allow you to register and create your own content and host it on their site.

How often should you update your blog for SEO

This isn’t a new question, webmasters continue to ask how often should you update your blog for seo to increase your rankings in the search engines. Most niche marketers would probably agree that the more you update your blog with fresh relative content, the more frequently you’ll be indexed by major search engines and they may increase your ranking accordingly. Also the more you update your blog the more content you’ll have on your niche site – which means more pages to be indexed, more content for your visitors and more ways for you to be ranked.

Now even blogs that are full of computer generated content such as autoblogs, niche article feeds, and spun content will get traffic eventually. If you generate your content you’ll have more pages indexed and a lot more content but to the search engines it won’t appear to be high quality content or at least it shouldn’t according to them. Usually the more often you update your blog the more SEO benefits your website will receive in time.

Some things to consider when updating your blog

- Do it as frequently as you have time.
- If you don’t have time, consider hiring cheap labor to do it for you.

- Quality is better than quantity, I have sites with 10 pages that rank at the top spot for multiple keywords.

- Try to create your own unique content and make it relevant to your niche market.
- Once you’ve updated your blog with new content, build links for SEO benefits.

If you don’t update your blog, will you still gain an seo benefit?

The answer to this question is most definitely yes, all the major search engines take in to consideration how long your sit has been indexed and factor this in their SEO algorithm. It’s better to have your site hosted and indexed on the web, even if you’re not actively building links for seo for this reason alone. Getting your site setup, creating your first content and backlinks is the single most important thing you can do in niche marketing.

Update your blog for SEO and relative content: So the more you update, the more chances you have to rank on Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc and the more relative content you’ll have on your site related to your niche. I hope this answers your question on how often to update your blog for seo because I’m ready for bed but I wanted to get another update on this blog – if you know what I mean!

Do You know the Importance of Updating your Blog Regularly?

Blogging can be a productive part of any search engine optimisation campaign. It has many advantages including helping businesses to communicate with their target audiences more effectively and driving targeted traffic to websites.

There are many different factors to consider when using a blog within an SEO campaign and how often you update your blog with new content is one of the most important for consideration.

Blog readers expect blogs to be fresh and regularly updated as a blog is supposed to have new content added to its pages on a regular basis. This is so over a period of time, more and more information is added and the blog developed. This is the basis of blogging and is important. Blogs are supposed to be up to date and recent and the only way to keep this being the case is to regularly create new blog posts.

If you regularly update your blog with relevant content related to your business subject, this will keep your readers returning. If you don’t create new content, there will be nothing new for them to read and so they will visit an updated blog instead. Encouraging your readers to return is of great importance and will help relationships with your potential customers to develop. The more they visit your blog and read what you have written, the more they will know about your company and what you offer.

Updating your blog regularly is also hugely importance when trying to gain exposure for your business through high rankings. The search engines are constantly looking for new content available online. The search engines have a responsibility to provide their users with the most up to date and relevant information as possible. Therefore, they must remain informed of as much new content as they can so they are able to offer their searchers the best results. The web crawlers look for new online content and will visit pages featuring new information regularly.

If you can get the web crawlers to keep returning to your blog and exploring your content, you will be more likely to have your content ranked highly in the search results. This could mean more traffic to your blog and to your website too.

If your blog is correctly linked to the website of your business, this will also encourage the web crawlers to visit these pages. This will increase the potential for other high rankings in the search results too.

Updating your blog regularly is of utmost in search engine optimisation and is something all the most successful bloggers do. You need to be creating new content continuously for your blog if it is going to be effective within your campaign.

At SEO Consult, we know how to use blogs successfully as part of a search engine optimisation campaign. We can provide you with useful tips and assistance and our professional writers can even create high quality content suitable for your blog. Work with us if you would like to have a successful blog for your business.

Video - Fundamentals of SEO Copy Editing

I recently came across a great and simple video which outlines how to conduct SEO copy editing as opposed to SEO copywriting.

SEO copy editing allows you to fix the existing copy on your website pages to include more key phrases in the copy. This will make the website friendlier to the search engines and users.

SEO copywriting, on the other hand, is where you start from scratch with the copy of the page. You must create content geared towards the customer including calls to action, tone and feel of the site, while also throwing in keywords and keyphrases for the search engines.

The key is to know when to use copy editing as opposed to copywriting. In the video, the presenter suggests to only edit copy on pages of your site that aren’t crucial to the sales process (do not edit your home page – you are better off starting from scratch and completely re-writing the copy). Pages on your site that might benefit from some copy editing are information pages such as FAQ’s, press releases or blog posts. While these pages are likely to be performing well now, they may do even better with some additional key phrases.

The video is present by SEO copywriter, Heather Lloyd-Martin. So without further ado, here is the video for you to learn more.

Top Six SEO Myths – Believing Them Will Get You Nowhere

Every business owner wants Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to work for their site. However, the field is constantly changing, and it’s hard to know what advice is still valid.

Every day a new SEO myth is born and unfortunately, not all old SEO myths die off. To help you avoid some of the more common SEO and marketing pitfalls, here’s my list of the top 6 myths that you can safely steer clear of:

1. Don’t use Google Analytics because Google will spy on you and use the information against you : I think this idea comes from the conspiracy theorists who want you to believe Google is evil. Google has made numerous assurances that they aren’t using your traffic or conversion data. Mr Google himself, Matt Cutts, has gone on record to say his team doesn’t get access to Google Analytics, and the Google Analytics team doesn’t have access to their information. So they don’t use Google Analytics against anyone.

2. Having an XML Sitemap will boost your Google rankings : This is false. SEO expert Stephan Spencer suggests that Google won’t give a URL any more “juice” just because you include it in your sitemaps.xml, even if you assign a high priority level to it. Google will use your sitemaps file for discovery and potentially as a canonicalization hint if you have duplicate content.

3. Submitting your site to search engines increases your ranking : Submitting every page of your website in Google and Bing by using their submission forms will neither help you speed up the indexing nor improve your rankings. The search engines use web crawling technology that continually scans the Internet to find and rank pages.

4. PageRank determines ranking success: This is the most widespread myth in SEO. PageRank is a number which treats links like votes to determine how important a website is. However, it doesn’t have a direct correlation with search results, despite being calculated by several of the same signals.

Having a high PageRank is nice but it doesn’t automatically mean high rankings for everything, and it certainly doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to get tons of traffic and sales. More important is building a site which meets consumer needs. That means functionality, information, ease-of-use, and relevance.

5. No-follow links are useless: “No-follow” was introduced as a way of linking to something without passing any value onto the site. Although the traditional meaning of no-follow was that the search engine crawlers didn’t actually follow the link (ignore it and move on) that isn’t what actually happens.

The crawlers do follow no-follow links, and crawl the content, but they don’t always pass on value. This means that there is still value in the links, because they can increase crawl rate and indexation.

6. Keep a High Keyword Density : The search engines don’t care how long your pages are, there’s no specific number. The goes for keyword density. There is no magical number of keywords you should have on each page on your website, you have to use your judgment. Your copy should be persuasive, informative and punchy: you’ll only serve to limit your copy’s punch by simply stuffing keywords into the text.

There are plenty more myths that need to be debunked, and I’m sure our team will revisit this topic again in the future.

Eighteen SEO Fundamentals According to Bing

When there are too many versions of the same advice available, people often feel confused when it comes to deciding on which version is the right one. This applies especially to SEO. So the big question remains how can website owners crack the SEO code and make the most out of it?

The team at Bing has stepped up with a list of 18 SEO fundamentals for webmasters and website owners who want to optimize their sites for better rankings on Bing. This list includes some vital pieces of information that are useful, especially to all those who wish to set a firm foot in the SEO world and want to benefit from search marketing.

The list delves into some basic principles that will help anyone plan and put together a website from scratch or improvise an existing website, before actually marketing it on Bing.

Here is the full list:

The Do’s

Crawlability: Make sure your site is crawl able by using an XML sitemap, a robots.txt file, and well-structured on-site navigation.

Create an RSS feed.

Use schema.org markup.

Improve your site structure by using an HTML sitemap and linking to trusted sources both within your site and outside of it.

Create a solid content hierarchy by doing basic keyword research and avoiding placement of your content in rich media such as Silverlight and Flash.

Use a short meta title that has fewer than 65 characters and that’s unique to each page, and try to include the targeted keyword toward the beginning of that title.

Use a unique meta description tag.

Create quality content (following the guidelines Bing provided earlier).

When you build links, focus on keyword-relevant anchor tags that link back to quality content on your page.

Create a page that is user friendly. Page load time (PLT) is a crucial factor here as Bing states that website with PLT of ¼ second and above leads to loss of visitors.

Encourage social sharing with the use of social buttons.

The Dont’s

Don’t cloak your website.

Don’t use link farms.

Don’t engage in three-way linking.

Don’t duplicate content.

Don’t use auto-following on the social front.

Don’t use thin content.

Don’t buy links in bulk. Slow and steady link building is any time better than buying some hundreds of low quality back links.