t follow its links. Create a 404 error handling page and place a sitemap on the 404 page. Use absolute links not relative links. rankmaniac 2012 Donts Dont embed your copy within a graphic Dont use frames Dont use internal JavaScript or Flash Dont use id as a parameter if you want maximal Googlebot crawlage many sites use id with session IDs that Googlebot usually avoids urls with that parameter SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 25 Step 4 Optimize Your Website for Search Engines 25 Redesigning an existing rankmaniac 2012 site If youre redesigning an existing site make sure you pay close attention to your file structure. If you move one of rankmaniac 2012 your pages from one directory to another its address will change. E.g. If you move your Cheap Second Hand Macs page CheapSecondHandMacs.htm from PagesProducts to PagesProductsMacs its address will change from httpwww.MadeUpWidgetComputers.compagesproductsCheapSecondHandMacs.htm to httpwww.MadeUpWidgetComputers.compagesproductsMacsCheapSecondHandMacs.htm. This change will mean that any links to the page from other websites will no longer work. It is vital that rankmaniac 2012 you do not let this happen. Remember backlinks are the key to a high ranking. There are two solutions rankmaniac 2012 to this problem i Dont change rankmaniac 2012 your directory structure or ii If you DO change your directory rankmaniac 2012 structure make sure you do 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones. Your web rankmaniac 2012 designer will know what youre talking about when you instruct them to use 301 redirects. Also if your site already has a decent ranking or youve worked hard on your meta tags and youre happy with them make sure your web designer doesnt change your meta tags. Paying an SEO company to optimize your site If you decide to pay an SEO company to optimize your site for you always ask them exactly what they will be doing. Ask them what keywords they will be targeting and how will target them. There are no secret methods so if they can't or won't tell you rankmaniac 2012 DO NOT engage them. There are also some companies which will make grand claims about top 10 rankings in a week but don't specify which keywords you will rank highly for. Instead of ranking highly for the words that your customers are searching for you rankmaniac 2012 end up ranking highly for extremely obscure meaningless keyword phrases like red brochure book printing in Jamaica. Also always be clear in your own mind on exactly what you're paying for. Remember that there are two parts to obtaining a high ranking optimizing your site and generating links back to your site. Always get your SEO company to explain exactly which parts they will do for you and how they plan to do it. Chapter Summary Use your keyword frequently but not too frequently. Go for a sitewide average keyword density of around rankmaniac 2012 2. Only target one keyword per page unless there is very little competition for your keywords. If you need to target more than one keyword create a new page for each. Use keywords in links and headings. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 26 Step 4 Optimize Your Website for Search Engines 26 Try to use keywords more often at the start of the page than at the end. Use your keywords in the Title Description Keywords and Alt meta tags. Structure your site around your keywords. Ensure spiders can traverse your entire site via text links. Create a text based site map which links to every page and which every page links to via text links. If your web designer is not an SEO expert make sure you provide them with some optimization rankmaniac 2012 rules. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 27 Step 5 Generate links back to your site 27 Step 5 Generate links back to your site Links are the single most important aspect of SEO. Generally speaking the more links you have back to your site the higher your ranking will be. Of course nothing is ever that simple. There are links and there are links. Before launching into a discussion about the best ways to generate links lets first discuss what kind of links you should be trying to generate. When deciding whether to display your site in its search results a search engine looks to see if youre part rankmaniac 2012 of a credible network of related sites. This means that the ideal kind of links are those that come from relevant sites sites which use the same keywords come rankmaniac 2012 from important sites have a high ranking include your keyword as part of the visible link text include varying link text not the same link text each time and come from a page that links to few other sites. When a search engine sees a link which satisfies most rankmaniac 2012 or all of these conditions it says Hey this site must be credible and important because others in the same industry are pointing to it. How do I generate lots of ideal links There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are dubious rankmaniac 2012 like autogeneration software and sites set up by webmasters simply to host links
to their other sites and I wont be discussing them here. Others like those discussed below are legitimate. NOTE Link generation is an ongoing often tedious task. You need to be rankmaniac 2012 dedicated and systematic. In other words you need a strategy. Take a look through the link generation
alternatives discussed below to see what suits you best. Then put your thinking cap on and get SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 28 Step 5 Generate links back to your site 28 creative. Its a new and very exciting field there are undoubtedly many undiscovered ways to generate links. This chapter is just a starting point. Add your site to DMOZ Yahoo Directories The first thing you should do is add a link in the following two directories DMOZ Open Directory Project httpwww.dmoz.comadd.html the largest most comprehensive humanedited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast global community of volunteer editors. DMOZ does not charge for submissions. rankmaniac 2012 NOTE rankmaniac 2012 This is the same as the rankmaniac 2012 Google Directory. Yahoo Directory httpsecom.yahoo.comdirsubmitintro Yahoo charges for submissions at the time of writing the submission fee was USD299. The search engines regularly crawl these directories in search of
new links and they value these links quite highly largely because the directories are humanedited. Check where your competitors links are coming from Next check who is linking to your high ranking competitors. This method takes a long time
but youll be surprised where some of their links come from. To check on the links of your competitors STEP 1 Go to Google and search for your keyword. STEP 2 Make a note of the top 5 competitors who appear write down their domain name. STEP 3 Return to Google and search for the first domain name in the list i.e. type www.competitorsdomainname.com in the search field. STEP 4 Google will then display a screen which says Google can show you the following information for this URL At rankmaniac 2012 the bottom of the list of option is Find web pages that contain the term www.competitorsdomainname.com. Click on this option. STEP 5 Google will display rankmaniac 2012 all the pages it can find that link to your competitors website. TIP If there are many results rankmaniac 2012 bookmark the search results page as this process will take a long time possibly months. STEP 6 Visit each page TIP Right click on the first result and select Open in New Window. By opening a separate window to see the page you wont lose your search results page. STEP 7 Try think of a way to get a link to your website on rankmaniac 2012 the same page TIP rankmaniac 2012 Avoid sending them an email as webmaster receive a lot of SPAM and your email will likely go unnoticed. Try calling them instead. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 29 Step 5 Generate links back to your site 29 STEP 8 Repeat for each of your top 5 ranking competitors. TIP In the list of results the sites which appear high up in the list of results are likely to have a higher Google PageRank PR see Glossary than the sites which appear toward the end of the list. You should be more interested in obtaining links to sites with a high PR assuming theyre also relevant. Article PR Write and submit articles for Internet publication Next write articles and do some article PR Ive always found this to be the best way to generate inbound links. Write helpful articles and let publishers of newsletters and ezines use them for free on the proviso that they link back to your site. People who publish ezines and newsletters are always hungry for quality content. And there are many websites out there dedicated to giving them just that. If you submit a well written relevant helpful article to one of those sites you can have thousands of newsletter publishers ready to snap it up. Then you just sit back and watch the links multiply rankmaniac 2012 TIP The article PR method is beneficial in other ways too. Readers of your article will see that you know what rankmaniac 2012 youre talking about and because youre published theyll see you as an authority. Youll find web traffic and requests for quotes increase after every article. Heres how article PR works STEP 1 Youre an expert in your field so you possess knowledge that other people want. STEP 2 You write a helpful article sharing your hardearned knowledge and expertise without compromising your income stream. STEP 3 You submit your article to recognized and highly trafficked Article Submit sites on rankmaniac 2012 the World Wide Web. STEP 4 Publishers of online rankmaniac 2012 newsletters ezines etc. gather content from these sites for free. STEP 5 Helpful well written articles are snapped up by thousands of publishers from all around the world in virtually every industry. STEP 6 The only condition is that they must publish the article with a functioning link to rankmaniac 2012 your site.