Using Keyword Research To Race Your Blog To The Top of Google's SERP

SEO is an ever changing concept.

Today, as far as SEO is concerned, the importance of content has increased and the importance of keywords and other things are tending to decrease.

But even after all those Penguin and Panda updates by Google and after all those improvements in its algorithms, any experienced SEO consultant or blogger would agree that even today the most important factor for SEO is - keyword research.

Keywords are still the most important factor around which the concept is SEO is based.

So if you are not utilizing the real value of 'best' keywords for your articles, you are missing a lot of SEO right from the beginning.

This article is targeted for both beginners as well as intermediates. So first we will look at the meaning of keyword research and the idea behind it. Second, I will give you the chance to peep into my secrets of keyword research that I use to get my blog posts rank high on Google's (and other search engine's too!) search engine results page.

And third ... is a bonus for all of you. At the end of this post, you can get another tutorial which will help you achieve something more out of your SEO efforts.

But don't scroll down to the bonus now! Read this entire post to learn the secrets to get your blog posts on top of the SERPs by utilizing the maximum out of keyword research.

So What is Keyword Research?

I had explained in my previous post that search engines rely on algorithms to determine the key points of your content and to decide the topic about which you have written.

These key points are your keywords.

Now let us see the same thing from a common visitor's point of view.

Suppose someone wants to find a web page about 'Blogging Tips'. So what does he do? He heads towards a search engine and enters those 2 words in the search field. Now all the relevant web pages with the content related to 'blogging tips' will be shown.

So here 'blogging tips' are the key points in the content of those web pages shown in the results page.

So here 'blogging tips' is the keyword!

Now suppose a web page is better optimized for the keyword - 'Blog Tips'. So he would lose rank (and traffic) for the previous keyword. Now what if 'Blog Tips' is a more searched term than 'Blogging Tips'?

The second web page would get more traffic?

But what if there are thousands of top blogs optimized for 'Blog Tips' and they secure the first 2-3 pages in Google? If would be too difficult for you to get ahead of them!

In short there are 2 things that define keyword research - Traffic level and competition level.

What do you want?

The maximum traffic and the least competition, isn't it?

That is what keyword research is all about! Even for the same content, there are different combinations of keyword phrases and all those combinations have different search levels and competition levels.

Keyword research is the art of finding out the keyword phrase related to your content with the maximum traffic potential and the least competition!

What Can You Achieve With These Keywords?

Let us get back to the example of 'blogging tips'.

Someone search for that keyword phrase on a search engine. That person gets to see lakhs of results.

What differentiates the top few with the last few? The top results have the best content full of useful information and... has... proper SEO...when it comes to keyword.

The top sites are said to be ranking high for their desired keyword phrase.

Got it?

So you need to choose the best keyword phrase and optimize your post for it (Remember the maximum traffic and least competition part). The choosing part is known as - keyword research.

How to do this? We will see later on. Before that, let us discuss what one can achieve with keyword research.

You must have got an idea yourself too, isn't it?

If not, think this way - You are writing about suppose 'how to make money', and you know too many people search for it everyday, now what would happen if you get on first page of Google for that keyword phrase? Large traffic isn't it?

So what would you get by mastering over keyword research? High rank on search engines for your targeted keywords, that directly means traffic that can be converted into conversions and sales for you!

No need to explain any further I guess!

Basic Idea Behind Keyword Research And SEO

Below are the things you would be doing with keyword research in order to get high rank in SERPs.

You are going to write a blog post - You research for the best keyword phrase for your content (Maximum traffic and least competition) - You create your useful content according around that keyword phrase - You optimize some special areas with your keyword phrase.

Now let us see how!

How To Do The Research Part In Keyword Research

I have already explained this thing a lot of times in this post that you would be researching for the keyword phrase with the maximum traffic potential and least competition.

Now let us get deep into the method.

There are some free as well as some paid tools that can be used for keyword researching.

The tool that I primarily use is the free tool- Google Adwords Keyword Tool

This tool is easy to use, free and accurate.

Now let us try to find out the best keyword phrase for an example of a blog post about some methods for making money online using blogs.

Follow the screenshot below:

Enter all your keyword thoughts in the given box and make sure to select 'Exact' in the 'Match Types' section on the left side of the page. Hit the search button and you will get the analysis of your chosen keywords as shown in the screenshot.

Check that 'make money' keyword has a lot of traffic! 33,100 global searches! Nice, isn't it?

Wrong. See that I have encircled the word 'High' which shows that it has a high competition that means a lot of web sites are competing for that keyword phrase. And as I said before, your target must be to find the least competing keyword with the maximum traffic potential.

So moving ahead, see the other two keyword examples, they have medium competition and have some nice search levels. Finding a low competition keyword might be difficult and especially for this example here, I couldn't find any good low competition keyword myself!

Now see that both these phrases have the same meaning and sense, still they differ in traffic levels. The 3rd keyword has a greater search than the 2nd one, with the same competition.

So that means you have got a better phrase to focus on, got it?

Exactly. Keyword research is all about finding the best available phrase for your content.

There is one factor that would help you in finding low competition keyword and that is - Long Tail Keywords.

What exactly are Long Tail Keywords?

Long tail keywords are a combination of a somewhat larger number of words that form a profitable keyword phrase. Check the screenshot below for an example:

See the two keyword phrases in the screenshot. The second one is actually a more targeted one and at the same time has low competition and see the global searches! 14,800!

So it would be easier to rank yourself for the keyword phrase 'How To Make Money On YouTube' rather than just 'How To Make Money' and at the same time, you would get good targeted (that means interested or engaging) traffic who seriously want to make money from YouTube and not by other methods.

That is the meaning and importance of 'long tail keywords'.

In this example, I had used Adwords Keyword Tool for the keyword research work, which is a free tool. Apart from this there are many paid keyword research tools which make your work a lot easier and some of the paid tools have a long list of features that are completely out of scope with Adwords keyword tool.

One such professional keyword research tool is - Market Samurai.

First of all - Have I used it?

Yes.

Just few days back I had started using it's trial version and I am happy with the results. Also there are many features which make me think of buying the full version. But still I use Adwords as the primary tool for my research work.

Second - How is it better than Adwords and should you buy it?

In a lot of ways, Market Samurai is better than Adwords because it has some extra features and it makes your work a lot easier by doing all the finding work itself.

I won't tell you if you should consider purchasing it or not because it depends on your skills and your comfort. There are some people you exceptionally like this tool and there are also some who have a hard time understanding this tool. So you should consider trying out a trial version to test it and if you are happy with its results, then and only then buy the full version.

Now let us get back to keyword research.

Now you know that you have got to work on finding long tail keywords with low competition and high traffic potential. Then you would have to optimize your content according to that keyword phrase.

How?

Let us see.

Optimizing Your Content For Your Desired Keyword Phrase

In my previous post (read here), I had written about what is SEO and how to implement it.

The same points are application here too.

• You need to create a decent keyword density (about 2-3%) along with using the exact keyword phrase 2-3 times in the content. 
• Place your keywords once in the first 100 words and once in the last 100 words.
• Bold, underline and italic your keyword parts once or twice in your content.
• Use your keyword phrase in the title and URL.
• Use your keyword phrase in H1, H2 etc heading tags
• Optimize alt and title tags in images with your keyword

But whatever you do, make sure that you don't overdo it. Because over SEO would be considered spam and the content will lose its importance and value.

Bonus - SEO Checklist

Here is the bonus I had promised to give you!

Its a checklist for not just optimizing your posts, but for publishing a master content. This is the checklist I personally follow and I am sure this would help you if you struggling in terms of SEO.

So go ahead and download this checklist by doing a small favor to me. The favor is of subscribing to my blog's newsletter which would let you get more blogging tips and SEO guides right into your inbox.

A healthy deal, isn't it?

So subscribe now and download the SEO checklist right now!

What did you learn here?

People would say that today the importance of keyword research, those professional keyword tools and even SEO is decreasing. But according to my thinking and my experiments, the whole idea of SEO would never die because however intelligent those search engine robots become, they are still robots and not humans.

So ever after all those algorithm improvements, there would still be the need to optimize web pages for them, to make their work easier and keyword research is the base for SEO, not just the base but also the skill, which once mastered can help you achieve success in the world of search engines.

Keyword research, even though is the most important factor is SEO, still it is something a very new blogger won't be able to understand easily and properly.

If you are one of the beginners and did not get the points here, then don't worry. Day by day you would get to learn everything from your experiences in this blogging world. And do remember that you can comment your questions and doubts anytime!

For experts who read this post to get something unique out of it, let me know in the comments if I did a satisfactory job or not.

Finally I would like to ask you a question - What do you think about keyword research and how important is it according to you?

Do comment and share your thoughts!

Image courtesy of Kromkrathhog/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Question By Every Beginner - What is SEO and How To Do It?

If you are one of those regular visitors at this blog who are learning the basics of blogging through my "How To Start A Blog" section, you would have learned the basics of writing and gathering traffic by now.

So now is the best time to start learning about the basics of SEO too.

Now the first question in every beginner's mind is - What is SEO?

Then there are the questions like - What is its importance and how to perform SEO?

Before diving deep into the sea called SEO, let us have a look at the follow infographic to understand the meaning of SEO.

What is SEO?

This infographic would have already made the concept clear.

Now let us try to understand SEO with the help of an example.

Suppose you search Google for the term 'What is SEO'.You would get many lakhs of websites in the results. All the results are distributed in thousands of results pages.

So how do you think Google distributes all these websites? I mean how do you think that Google ranks all these websites and blogs for your search term?

Alphabetically??

Not at all!

Google (and other search engines too) ranks all those results in the decreasing order of their quality, importance and value decided by them. Now you might be aware that search engines are not handled solely by humans! They mostly rely on robots (or you can say bots, they are like super computers) to determine the quality of a web content and to rank it for all those millions of search queries among those millions of other websites.

So how do they do it?

As shown in the infographic, robots use certain set of algorithms to determine the relevancy and quality of a web content.

For major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. these algorithms count to thousands or maybe lakhs!

And SEO is the art to optimize your blog and blog posts according to those algorithms.

So in simple terms -

SEO is the art to create such a web content that convinces the search engine robots that your content is good in terms of quality as well as relevancy.

Importance of SEO

I think there isn't any further need to explain the importance of SEO to you, is it?

With proper SEO you can get your blog to rank high for the targeted search queries (keyword is a more proper term for this) and can get a lot of traffic.

Common Practices in SEO

As mentioned earlier SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is based on optimizing you content for search engines.

So to understand what you really need to do for SEO, you must understand what a search engine robot can understand. The more easily and the better those robots can understand your content, the better is your SEO.

So let us understand the basic funda behind the working of robots and understand the common practices related to it.

The last point that I have mentioned here is the most important one. So make sure that you don't skip through these points!

1. Robots understand a content by its keyword density.

Check again - I said 'understand' and not 'rank' or 'evaluate'

You know what? I think those robots don't understand the meaning of any word. They can't understand what I say, they can read my words but can't understand the meaning of any single word.

The above statement may be wrong but try to assume that it is true. This will help you in understanding my point.

Robots scan through the whole content and decide the topic by those keywords in your article which are repeated most frequently. Now it is obvious that if you are writing about 'SEO' then the words like 'SEO' and 'search engines' will be used more frequently. So by determining the density of some set of words among the whole content, those search engine robots determine the real topic discussed in an article.

So how to apply SEO here?

Yes you got it right!

Maintain a good keyword density.

You need not to worry much about it because if you have been writing naturally and are focused on the real topic then the keyword density would be managed on its own.

2. Robots respect authority sites

Just like humans, these robots also respect high authority people and their sites.

That is why even for the most simple to the most complex search queries, you see sites like Wikipedia on the top.

Focus on building a good authority, respectful blog. Do not indulge in spamming activities or go on distributing copyright protected stuff.

Focus on building good quality backlinks only (don't know what are backlinks? Read the next point!), work on increasing your domain authority and Page rank (no, I am not talking in any alien language, domain authority and Page rank are two of the many systems used for ranking a blog's authority.)

3. Robots know that if more people link to you, you are better!

Now let us talk about links.

Whenever some other site links to your site, it creates a good impression in the minds of search engine bots. So more the sites link to you, more is your reputation and more is your optimization.

But sadly, today most of the bloggers won't link to you without any reason :(

So you have to build backlinks to your site yourself!

Guest authoring and blog commenting are the two best ways to build backlinks to a blog according to me. There is another method of reciprocal link exchange but it has been dying and can be dangerous to practice now.

4. Robots can't see images :(

This is true.

Robots can't actually see images and so they can't understand any content that is hidden in a image.

That directly means that robots can't use images to judge or grade your content :( They can't even see the lovely infographic used in this post!

But there is one HTML tag specially designed for bots - the 'alt' tag.

This alt tag is used to describe the image to a robot...usually in less than 5 words. But use of this alt tag can be very beneficial in terms of optimizing your images.

5. You have to explain everything to the bots

Just like images, search engines can't understand the real value of many other things like your links and sometimes the basic description of your articles, etc.

So you need to explain everything to these robots in short, to make their work easy and to improve your optimization.

Use of title tags in links and images are preferred. Use of meta tags are still important even though they are losing their popularity and importance. Title tags are used to describe your links as well as images. Meta tags are also HTML tags used to describe your blog or blog posts to these robots.

6. The king of all SEO - Keyword Research

Keyword research is actually a very advanced form of SEO, the most skill consuming, the skill which we normally get to understand and learn after having some experience with blogging, but at the same time is the most important skill.

Once you understand the real value and magic of keyword research, you will be using it before writing any blog post without any hesitation and with real pleasure.

For now all this may seem confusing and time consuming.

Once you get familiar with the basic SEO skills, try to focus on learning about keyword research.

Can't wait? I can understand... Here is an in-depth article about using keyword research and getting ranked high on Google's results.

Basics of SEO - Summary

Let us have a quick look at what we discussed here:

Your blog - your sample post - want traffic from search engines - Optimize your post for search engines - keyword research, keyword density, optimizing images, etc - Getting high rank on Google - Enjoying the traffic

This was the answer to one of the most important questions by every beginner - What is SEO?

Did you get to learn something from this post? Did you get confused anywhere? Do comment and share your views!

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Website Analysis - Why is it Important for You?

Performing website analysis time-to-time not only proves helpful to the search engines, but also to the users, as it helps to get a website analysis report. Having any sort of technical error in a website can affect its viewership, which in turn can bring down the ranking of the website.

This is not good for the website, the website owner wishes to trade fairly in the business of online marketing. By understanding the minute aspects of checking a website, it can be made to run smoothly.

What is Website Analysis for SEO and Why is It So Important? 

Analysis of various websites done for the purpose of search engine optimization (SEO) proves extremely useful for the optimizers.

In fact, it is an important aspect of a scheduled SEO campaign that helps to find out the actual working status of a website. In case, if any loopholes are found out, they are repaired by implementing various methods of optimization. By performing website traffic analysis in a proper way, all the visitors of a website, new visitors, exact ranking of a page over the results of various search engines, etc can be counted.

Besides, one can also find out the exact sources of the visitors.

For example, whether they come from the usage of inbound links or directly through the search engines can be found without difficulty. 

What is Website Content Analysis? 

Analysis of web content acts as an ideal tool that helps to allocate comprehensive arbitrary Boolean amalgamation of various keywords as well as phrases. Besides, it helps to have the actual count of the hits concerning the words and phrases that gets used over the web.

However, the hits count given by various search engines can differ, and depends largely upon the exact number of hits that gets displayed as per the request.

To have more reliable results, making use of search engines that helps to have consistent hit counts proves helpful. For example, Yahoo search engine. Besides this, application of competitive analysis of websites can help to derive more beneficial results. 

Benefits of Website Competitive Analysis

1. Doing practical analysis of websites helps to identify the products or the services offered by the competitor of the client. Crafting an exclusive market offering can be enhanced by making desired improvements. 

2. Conducting the competitive analysis helps to find out whether the competitors have been offering more novel and high-quality things in a trendy way. Also, the prices at which the services offered by the competitor can be found out as per the geographical distribution. 

3. Finding weaknesses of the competitors becomes possible, which in turn helps to build up a good defense. 

4. Correct competitive analysis helps to find out various ways of improving a website. 

5. Defining ones unique value proposition becomes probable, which helps to set apart from the competitors. 

At-times, website analysis tools can be used.

Some handy tools that can be used by optimizers for website analysis to check the reputation of their websites, statistics, exact ranking status and feeds are as under: Alexa, BizShark, BuiltWith, Compete, Dataopedia, Feedcompare, Quarkbase, Quantcast, Popuri.us, Website Grader, etc.

Image credit: Digitalart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Guest Author:

Numero Uno Web Solutions is an SEO company in Toronto that provides affordable SEO and internet marketing services to its clients in GTA and over the globe.

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Enjoy Your Holidays With Proper SEO Activities

This time of the year is really a time to be engaged with shopping and holidays. All the festivals from Halloween to Thanksgiving, from Christmas to New Year surrounds throughout this season. It is obvious that holidays will slow down your natural traffic. But if few activities are taken care of properly, then your SEO efforts will not go into vain.

Credit: photostock/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Get Suitable holiday keywords using Google Trend:

The ‘Google Trend’ tool will help you to get suitable keywords that match your requirements in this special season. This analytic tool will also help to provide keywords that were successful for the previous year. You will also have to look out for the keywords that lead to conversion for getting your desired result. 

Create content which is holiday-focused:

Holidays are filled with fun, gifts, shopping, planning etc. So the content can be focused on keywords like ‘presents’, ‘gifts’, ‘fun ideas’ ‘best buys’, ‘holiday plans’ etc. Some specific festival can be aimed by focusing on a specific content for ‘Christmas’ or ‘Thanks giving’. That fun-filled content will definitely attract more and more visitors. 

Create special gift set:

Few target groups can be created like children, mother, grandmother, uncle etc and then gift sets can be created for them keeping their age in mind. The company can send the gifts directly to their clients or can club the gifts with their products with special offers. Now this gifts and offers can be highlighted in the company site which will draw attention of the online visitors. 

Linking tactics:

Internal linking in the pages will be helpful in this case. Only highlighting the gifts and offers in the site content will not suffice. Linking them internally will help in increasing the page rank. You may follow the Pareto Principle of Link Building, which says that 80 percent of the effect/value comes from 20 percent of the causes. So that means 80 percent of page rank comes from 20 percent of the back links of the site. Re structuring your internal links with specific keywords targeted according to location or specific industry will be noteworthy for boosting up your page rank. But never overdo internal linking because Google suggests keeping your internal links in a page to fewer than 100. 

Use Blogs to attract traffic:

Publishing blogs with the content having a touch of this festive mood will surely attract more visitors. The content should be very lively and fun filled so that it easily connects the mood of the readers. You may share your own holiday plans or may describe the gifts you have received in these festivals. You can also share any gift ideas with your readers or can upload any video of making fun toys for children. 

Do not forget to update your Meta description:

Neglecting the on page activities will not give the desired result. So your meta description should also be updated with this festive mood. The meta description should also contain keywords like gifts, presents, holidays, Christmas, thanksgiving etc. It will certainly draw your visitor’s attention and will be advantageous for your SEO Company. Keep a list of all the pages you have updated and do not forget to change it back after the festivals. 

Use your Social Networking:

Use the social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter , Youtube etc to send your wishes or messages to the online visitors. This will help to spread the messages very rapidly to a large number of visitors. 

In this festive season, enjoy your holidays keeping in mind these few activities and never forget your own SEO best practices with a slight touch of ‘holiday’ flavor. 

Author Bio: Arpita Bhowmik is an SEO analyst and also a passionate blogger who likes writing about digital marketing, SEO tips, blogging tips etc.

This post was written by one of our guest contributors. If you would like to contribute to our blog as a guest author, you can contact us.

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4 MUST Seo Tools For Your Site

When you want to create something efficiently, you need to use right tools. This also applies when you are building your SEO strategy. To build an efficient SEO strategy to rank high on search engines like Google you must have right SEO tools. 

Image courtesy to Kromkrathog/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

SEO tools enable you to evaluate your website and analyse its position. To do this for your site you can approach an online marketing agency that implements best SEO and SMO practices to improve your website rankings. Below are some of the best SEO tools which help you in assessing your site. 

Google webmaster tools:

This tool provides you with the details of your pages’ visibility on the search engine. This will help you in identifying the crawl errors like 404 pages and redirection problems. You can also find out the duplicate content issues and site indexation status. You can also find out how many click-throughs and search queries your keyword is receiving. It is a free tool and works with mobile sites also.

Google Analytics:

This tool allows you to monitor your site. You can easily track the visitors and identify which page has been visited and in what order. You can also find how much time the visitor had spent on each page. You can track which page gets more traffic and which keywords are most popular. If your site is a sales site then you can track the complete process from the time the visitor searches the keyword to the point when they complete their transaction.

Screaming Frog SEO spider: 

This tool is marketer’s best friend. This tool will analyse titles throughout your site. If your site is filled with more lengthy titles then Google and other search engines ignore those titles. Screaming Frog SEO spider provides you with a quick snap shot giving quick reference to where the changes should be made and help to optimise the page. 

Hub Spot’s Marketing Grader:

This tool helps you to differentiate between B2C and B2B. It also allows you to analyse the social media activities. This tool offers you tips to increase your website’s rankings. This tool grades your site based upon 2 key areas of the sales funnel namely TOFU (The Top of the Funnel) that examines the efforts made to grab the customer’s attention and MOFU (Middle of the Funnel) that checks how good your conversion strategies are working.

Now your turn!

What are your views on these SEO tools? Do comment and share your views here.

About the Guest Author:
This guest post was written by Jessica Williams, a blogger who is currently focusing on ppi claims. Catch her at @financeport.

This post was written by one of our guest contributors. If you would like to contribute to our blog as a guest author, you can contact us.

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Google Launches Disavow Tool to Filter Unwanted Inbound Links

Google has finally released their disavow tool which was much anticipated ever since Bing's release. This new tool lets you disavow (filter or you can say remove) low quality incoming links to your site that have a negative impact on your SEO. Thus Google has launched a new gift for webmasters. So what actually it is and why should you use it?

Credit: techwyse.com

SEO is an ever changing concept. The definitions and methods of SEO keep changing, improving and dying. Some SEO methods that we choose can prove beneficial while many can lead to a negative impact also. One of the most important factor that affects our positive SEO is the quality of inbound links ie. backlinks to your site. Whenever the term 'link building' is discussed, quality is given preference instead of quantity. If there are 100s of links to your site from a spam site, then it creates a negative impact on your site's SEO. But there are times when you can't control which sites link to you. And here is when Google's new disavow tool comes into play. With the disavow tool, you can submit the links of those web pages to Google which contain a link to your site that you do not want. After accessing your request, Google starts neglecting those links to your site while considering your backlinks. The disavow tool can be accessed here.

Here is the video by Matt Cutts which tells more about the disavow tool:

How to Disavow Links

First of all, keep in mind that the use of disavow tool can be very helpful as well as can be very devastating. An unknown mistake here can lead to a downfall of your SEO strategy. The disavow tool is not complicated for use but it's impact can be very complicated. So before using this tool, think about 10 times or even more. And use it at your own risk.

Visit the disavow tools page. Here you will find your sites that are listed in Google webmasters tools as shown above. Select you site and then proceed to the next page where you will be prompted to submit a list of links you want to disavow. You have to prepare a plain text file with all the links you want to disavow. An example is as follows:

The lines starting with # are considered as comments and neglected by Google. It is not necessary to add comments. You have to write each link in a seperate line as shown above.

Now submit this file to the disavow tool and let Google access your request and crawl to the sites. It can take weeks to come in action and Google also has the right to reject your appeal if they do not trust your appeal.

Conclusion

The disavow tools tells Google to neglect specific backlinks to your site. This tool can be very helpful if you have a lot of unwanted inbound links to your site from spam and low quality sites. But general use of this tool is not recommended by me because this tool is newly released and may contain faults. A few number of low quality inbound sites do not have a major impact on your SEO and reputation.

So go for the disavow tool only if you are sure that a large number of low quality inbound links to your site is causing a major negative impact on your site's SEO and reputation. Or use it if you have been penalized due to low quality inbound links.

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Is Reciprocal Link Exchange a Dying SEO Art?

Not so long ago, when many versatile and easy methods for SEO were being used, reciprocal link exchanges were very popular. You place a blogroll on your blog with a link to your friend's blog and they place a reciprocal link to your blog on their blogroll. Not only you get traffic, but also if you get a reciprocal link from a high PR site, then it increases your reputation in the minds of Google.

Credit: 123rf.com

Easy, huh? But this was so easy that it caught attention of spammers and the method got downgraded. Spammers with a usual hundred sites exchanged links between all their sites to get the maximum of link juice. So this shortcut method for SEO got spammed. 

Now very few reputed blogs use blogroll. So, the question in mind, is it still advised to use a blogroll and exchange reciprocal links for SEO factor?

Or is the reciprocal link exchange just a dying SEO art?

Google Algorithm Updates - A Danger to Shortcut SEO

Google keeps updating its algorithms to improve site listings and search results. These constant updates are focused on removing spamming content and downgrading spam sites. The shortcut methods for SEO are most widely used by spammers and so Google constantly reduces the effect of these shortcut SEO by updating its algorithms. Keeping a link to a friend's site in a blogroll is now not that effective in terms of link juice as it was earlier. More emphasis is given on in-content links that refer to related contents on the same site or another site wherever the link follows to. The reason is simple. If you write a blog post about SEO techniques, and you link to a site where you can read more about a specific SEO technique, then the link would be more important for a visitor. And a link kept at the bottom or sidebar of the page which links to 10-20 sites seem to be of no importance. And Google constantly updates its algorithms to match visitor importance. More the importance, more valuable the link in terms of SEO.

Lot of Spam

As I said earlier, a lot of spammers use this shortcut SEO method by building excessive reciprocal links. So this linking method got spammed. And whatever SEO methods have got the 'spam' tag on them are finally downgraded by Google. A site with a large blogroll is also looked at as a spamming site. Too many links on your blogroll can make a site look spammy. And these links do not pay much unless you have PR1 and the reciprocal linker is PR6 or something. So the cost is not affordable. 

Credit: tobeapilgrim.files.wordpress.com

You won't like if your site has an impression of spam-site in the eyes of your visitor. Yes you can overcome this impression with your unique and good quality content. I have seen many sites with a blogroll of over 20 links but still I am subscribed to them because of their high quality content. But unless your site is well appreciated by your visitors, you shouldn't play a bet on reciprocal link exchange.

Bondage and Reputation Factor

Whenever you agree to exchange reciprocal links with some site, you have to follow the agreement even if you want to walk back with your decision unless you are ready to have your link removed from the other site. 

Credit: realtruthmatters.com

This can be a problem sometimes. Suppose you are a new blogger and exchanged links with a new blogger like you and you progress in the next months to gain good traffic, Alexa rank and PR but the other blog lags behind. Now you know that linking to a site with lower quality than you can be ummm-not the best at least. So what would you do? Remove the link and wait for the other site to remove your link too? Not many would agree. If you feel a slight bondage with the other site, then you wouldn't like to remove the link and leave them behind. Also if you keep the link, your reputation can get downgraded. You are the owner of your blog but still you have to think before editing a link on your blog! This is the bondage that is created with reciprocal links.

Being Innocent and Trustworthy in the Eyes of Google

Linking to low quality sites decreases your reputation. Quality outbound links are the key to real, proper SEO. Links on the bottom of page in a box called 'blogroll' are given less importance. Moreover Google checks every outbound link from your site for spammy content. Linking to related sites have never been dangerous and would never be, but linking to low quality sites can be a danger. So you have to be careful while exchanging link with a partner site. Here is a video in which Matt Cutts answers to a common question regarding keeping a blogroll:

As stated in the video, linking to good quality and related sites can never be harmful but linking to spamming and low quality sites can be dangerous to your site's reputation and rankings. Whatever you do, just keep in mind that you don't lose the trust of your audience and Google.

Other Alternatives to Reciprocal Link Exchange

• Do-follow blog commenting
• Forum posting
• Guest posting

According to me, these three are the best methods to get links from other sites without harming yourself. They are even much better than reciprocal link exchange in many ways. By guest posting, you provide good quality content to another site's audience, thus gaining reputation in minds of audience as well as getting a link from the site.

Placing your site's links in your signature at forums can bring good traffic to your site as well as get quality backlinks. By commenting on other blogs, you get a chance to place a valuable feedback as well as get a link to your site.

From my point of view, reciprocal link exchanges have always been a forced link gaining SEO method. And anything that is forced is never going to end well. The more links you get naturally, the beter it is. Though reciprocal links are still prominent in this SEO world and would not lose popularity so easily, we should look forward for better link building SEO methods.

Have I missed something? Do share your views with me and everyone by placing a valuable comment.

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Essential SEO Tips for Startups

As a start up business, you will want your company to grow. There are many ways you can achieve this. One of the best ways to do so is to design an amazing website. The website becomes your companies identity in the virtual space. It is not just enough having a good website in place. As a startup company you might require is a few Search Engine Optimization, (SEO) tips. 

SEO is all about getting your business website ranked among the top search results on various available search engines. When customers on the internet type in some key words to search for products or services, the search results should pull up your website. Having the right target audience diverted to your website is one part of the SEO job. It is necessary for you to design your website in such a way that customers do not jump to any other website from yours. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to SEO tips. However, there are a few essential SEO guidelines you can follow. Few of them have been discussed.

Image courtesy of Kromkathog/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Do an extensive research on keywords 

The first and the most important step in the entire process is to do an extensive research on the words and phrases that users use to search for stuff on the Internet. Once you are aware of the choice of words that users commonly use, your job is half done. You can work on the keywords researched upon. You can incorporate such keywords in the URL name of your website and in your website content. You can use tools like WordTracker or Keyword Discovery to enhance your keyword search. You can get your hands on paid versions of such tools as they are worth the price you pay for them. 

Create a great website 

This might sound a little strange but it is very important that you create a great website. This is the first step in attracting many visitors to your website. Users visit a website for a purpose. You must design your website in such a way that you gratify the needs of various visitors. This will make them visit your website again and again. Having built a good website, you have high chances of your website showing up on top search results. 

Always use easy and friendly URL’s

Great care must be taken to ensure that the URL’s you create are easy and friendly. A URL which has 3 or more hyphens is looked up as spammy by internet users. So carefully design URL of your website. Easy and friendly URL’s are not difficult to forget. This is yet another advantage of having easy and friendly URL’s. 

Make sure that keywords flow naturally in the content of your website

When you write content for your website, great care must be taken to ensure that the keywords flow rather naturally in the content. You must avoid making your content sound artificial. You must also avoid beating round the bush and exaggerating stuff. Make your content original and authentic. 

Be patient

SEO tips do not generate results overnight. You must have used the right keywords and you can have a good website in place. However, the results can sometimes take months to show. While handling SEO for your startup business, patience is the key. These were just a few of the many SEO tips that you can follow for your startup. There are many more such tips you can use to improve your business. Good luck.

This is a guest post by Lance Goodman of www.dishtvoffer.com, a site that offers savings and current information on Dish TV.

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Optimizing Blogger Post Title With H1 Tags

Heading tags and SEO:

Proper SEO is the first and the major requirement to rank high in Google. One very such very important factor affecting on-site SEO is the use of heading tags. Heading tags rang from H1 to H6 in decreasing order of size and importance given by robots. With a good number of H1, H2 and H3 tags, you can attract robots and get good response from them. How? The following explains it:

Image courtesy to Kromkrathog/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Suppose you visit a company site. You see a large (not too large!) heading which stated about their latest product release. That large heading attracted your mind, right? Now what if the heading is replaced by a small link. It would remain unnoticed. Same is the case with heading tags used at our blogs. H1 and H2 tags create a feeling of importance to robot bots who visit your site. With a good number of heading tags, the real importance of your site furnishes out. But excessive use of headings can cause side-effects. Your site can be considered as a spam or low quality site if it has innumerable H1 tags.

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