SEO News
7 Advanced SEO Tactics
If you're like most online webmasters, then you have probably read one article after the other about search engine optimization.
Most of them rehash the same old information and you end up wading
through tons of fluff. However, this isn't one of those articles.
Listed below are 7 advanced SEO tips that you won't find on every
digital corner.
1. Syndicating Articles that Link to Your Sitemap
As you probably know, syndicating articles is one of the best methods for obtaining one-way backlinks.
They are also valuable pieces of search engine bait because search engine crawlers are frequent visitors to many
high-profile article directories. If you want to get the spiders
quickly crawling your site, simply submit an informative article to a
site like EzineArticles, GoArticles, or ArticleCity.
However,
there's another article marketing strategy that isn't mentioned much in
marketing circles. This tactic can get the crawlers searching deeper
into your site and indexing more of your pages. Simply link to your
sitemap within the resource box. This will send the spiders straight to
a content buffet where they can quickly slurp up all of your pages.
2. Translating Your Website Into Other Languages
Are
you marketing in just one language? If so, you are missing out on 64.8%
of your marketing potential. This is because 64.8% of the world is
surfing the internet in a language other than English. By becoming a
multilingual marketer, you immediately open up a stream of new markets.
Google alone crawls web pages in 35 different languages.
One
of the best ways to attract worldwide traffíc is to translate your site
and register it with both English and foreign-language search engines
and directories. If you are a seasoned SEO, you'll be happy to hear
that the competition in foreign search engines is much less than in
those of the United States.
In addition, online foreign language markets are currently growing at a much faster rate than English speaking markets.
You have the opportuníty to tap into this market while it's in an exponential growth phase.
3. ROR Sitemaps
As
you probably know, sitemaps are important for making sure your site can
be completely spidered and indexed by the search engines.
Unfortunately, many of these sitemaps are specific to one search engine
or another. For this reason, there have been a number of Google and
Yahoo site map generators produced in recent years.
However,
there is an alternative that is even more exciting. These are ROR
sitemaps and they are readable by all search engines, not just by
Google or Yahoo.
ROR is an exciting new sitemap tool
that uses XML feeds to describe your website. These sitemaps are
structured feeds that enable search engines to complement text search
with structured information to better interpret the meaning of your
site. With a ROR sitemap, search engines can better understand your
products, services, images, newsletters, articles, podcasts, and
anything else that you want to describe.
For example,
if you are selling products, a ROR file enables you to document your
product names, descriptions, prices, images, availability, affilíate
programs, and any other
relevant information. Search
engine crawlers like the Googlebot have an enormous job to do. It's
time we start helping them to better understand our content.
4. Keyword Phrases that Convert
Selecting
the right keyword phrases is the single most important aspect of any
SEO campaign. Unfortunately, many webmasters target the wrong keywords.
Too many of us target very general keywords like "real estate" or
"internet marketing". Although these terms get lots of visitors, it is
unlikely that you will be able to rank highly for them. Then, even if
you do, this type of traffíc produces very low conversion rates because
it does not target prospects.
You will be much more
successful, if you target keyword phrases that are 3-4 words long.
These terms are much less competitive and have been proven to convert
much better than keywords that are 1 to 2 words long.
Who
do you think is more likely to buy; someone who goes to Google and
searches for "ipod" or someone who searches for "4gb black ipod nano"?
Obviously, the person who searches for a more specific phrase is much
closer to making a buying decision.
5. GoogSpy
Would
you like to get an in-depth view of how your competitors run their
business? Well, you can do exactly that with an online service known as
GoogSpy. GoogSpy is a free research tool that will tell you what
keywords your competitors are bidding on.
This tool
tracks over 500,000 keywords every day from Google and then loads this
goldmine of information into the GoogSpy.com database. Using this tool,
you can browse by company or by search term.
This tool
is extremely powerful. Unfortunately, many people take it for granted.
This service basically hands you a business strategy on a silver
platter. Maybe we should just keep this one to ourselves and enjoy the
benefits of being one step ahead of our competition.
For
example, let's say you wanted to do some in-depth research on
Overstock.com, one of the largest companies online. You would simply go
to googspy.com and type in overstock.com. You will then be shown
thousands of words that this company bids on. These keywords are proven
profít generators. Research like this would normally cost thousands of
dollars, but they are providing it free of charge.
If
you want to find keywords with high conversion rates, simply type in
words such as buy and purchase. You will be shown keyword phrases that
are bid on that include the words buy or purchase. These are very
lucrative keyword phrases because the person who types in "buy sony
playstation 2" knows exactly what they want. They're not just looking
around, they are in buying mode. These are the type of keywords you
want to bid on. Using GoogSpy, you can uncover these hidden gems in
seconds.
Other high-converting keyword phrases include
brand names and product names. Type in the keyword "camera" and you
will find thousands of different brands and product names for cameras.
These keywords are some of the best keywords because of their high
conversion rate.
6. Internal Links Within Content
The
navigation of your site is a crucial element of your search engine
optimization campaign. Each link within your navigational structure
should correlate with a keyphrase that you are trying to rank for.
However, you can also include internal links within your content. For example, let's say you have written an article about online marketing.
Within the article are a number of keyword phrases. Some of these
phrases include "link popularity" and "web site traffíc". If you have
other articles within your site that pertain to these topics, then you
should definitely link those keyword phrases to those articles. By
doing this, you can increase the link popularity of other pages within
the same site.
There are very few sites that take
advantage of this optimization technique. By doing this, you enable the
search engines to find and index much more of your site. These internal
links also contribute to a higher ranking because of the anchor text
that is used.
Many people only think of inbound links
from outside websites when trying to raise their link popularity.
However, the internal link structure is also a major ranking factor.
7. Using Your Log Files for SEO
Your
server logs reveal very important information about your site. If you
learn to use them properly, they can quickly help to maximize your
site's traffíc and conversion rates.
One of the most
valuable pieces of information found in your log files are search
phrases. The log files will tell you exactly which keywords people are
using to find your website.
Once you have optimized a
page, the log files will tell you how people are finding that page and
what keywords they are searching for to get there. If you find that
people are using keywords that you hadn't thought of to get to a
certain page, it would probably be in your best interest to further
optimize that page for those keywords.
You might also
want to create a new page optimized for that particular term. This is
especially true if a new page would enable you to serve better
information on the phrase being searched for.
In addition, by looking at how your site is found organically, you can determine whether the same keyword phrases belong in your paid search campaigns. Only choose the ones that are highly relevant. You will find that these keyword phrases have the best conversion rate.