Publishing great SEO content is harder than you might think. After all, you need content that wows readers, teaches them something new, and convinces them that you’re a bona-fide expert – all while letting the search engines know exactly what keywords you’re trying to rank for.

Anytime you’re dealing with SEO content, you’re walking a fine line. That next article or blog posting you publish has the potential to make you stand out, make you blend in with the rest of your competitors, or make you look downright bad.

Making matters even more difficult? There are a ton of SEO content myths floating around out there. On the surface, many of them look legitimate – so it can be tough to separate the wisdom from the rubbish. In fact, you may not even know that you’re operating your entire content writing philosophy under a myth!

Are you falling victim to any of these 5 popular SEO content myths?

1. The Best SEO Content is 1,000 Words. (or 500 words, or 250 words)

This is a common sentence uttered by people who just don’t know a whole lot. You may be inclined to think that longer is better, or that shorter content will leave people yearning for more – but the truth is, there is no “magical” SEO content length.

Instead, the best length for your SEO article, blog posting, or sales copy depends on your topic. Sure, it may be easy to create 1,500 compelling, well-researched words about getting over a divorce – but imagine what it would be like to read 1,500 words about heartburn medication or pipe welding. Trust me, your readers won’t want to do it, either!

Great SEO content writing leaves readers feeling like they’ve learned something new, and it instills enough trust in you that readers want to see what else you have to offer. Sometimes, you can do that in 400 words. Other times, it takes 1,200 words to do it.

2. If Your SEO Articles Get Re-Published on a Bunch of Different Sites, It’s Duplicate Content

This might be the biggest SEO content myth out there! If one of your SEO articles gets picked up (either from your site, an article directory, or from a site you published a guest post on), it’s called “syndication,” not “duplicate content.” That’s because “duplicate content” refers to have the same content on multiple pages of your own site. Syndication, on the other hand, is a great way to build links and get exposure.

Anytime you publish SEO content, the goal is to get it syndicated. That way, it winds up in front of the eyeballs of people who are going to do business with you.

3. Your SEO content Isn’t as Important as Your Backlinks

The high-quality links out there – you know, the ones that are going to boost your ranking in the search engine results – are not the ones that you trade for, or buy. Instead, the only way to get those high-quality links is to offer something that other people WANT to link to. That means coming up with SEO content that knocks people’s socks off. If you publish content that people can’t help wanting to share with their friends and colleagues, you’ll wind up getting a ton of high-quality backlinks.

4. Your SEO Content Has to be Updated All the Time

Actually, this is a half-myth!

Yes, the search engines like websites that are updated on a regular basis. That’s why your new SEO article or blog post can bump you up a few spots in the rankings right after you publish it.

However, that doesn’t mean that you have to edit your existing content. For example, if you have a great homepage that’s generating results, don’t change it just to appease the search engines. Instead, add new content to the internal pages of your site.

5. Optimizing SEO Content Properly Means Having a High Keyword Density

Of course, you need to have your target keywords sprinkled throughout your article, blog posting, or sales copy. After all, that’s how the search engines know what you’re trying to rank for.

However, if you use your keywords too frequently, all you’ll do is turn off readers and search engines.

The right keyword density for your content depends on the keyword itself. Some keywords lend themselves nicely to a density of 1.5% or 2% – while others can only be used less than 1% of the time and still look natural.

Remember, your readers shouldn’t be able to read your content and pick out the keywords you used. If your keywords stick out like a sore thumb, you’re not optimizing your content properly. Instead, your SEO content will cast a negative light on you and your business!

SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, can be difficult to understand if you are not familiar with it. Unfortunately many things you read about SEO on the internet are not always true. There are a lot of myths and misconceptions floating around the net and they can sometimes be hard to confirm or debunk because of the ever changing techniques and the complexities of the search engines.

Some of the most common SEO myths are listed below and with it, the information to expose the truth so you can concentrate on real SEO methods to improve your site rankings and increase your traffic.

1. The More Reciprocal Links You Have on Your Site, the Better Your Ranking.

Have you ever been to site that is nothing but a long list of links? These sites are called link farms or FFA (Free for All links) and they do nothing for your site’s ranking. They are usually just filled with spam and can hurt your rankings because they are probably in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines which you can find on the Google site.

You also do not want to link to sites that are not relevant to your site. For example: if you own a site that sells jewelry, don’t link to sites about home repair or other topics that don’t relate to your site. You want to find quality sites that can complement yours such as fashion sites, make-up sites, etc. So, keep exchanging links but be selective and choose only quality, content-filled sites that complement your site.

2. You Need to Manually Submit Your Site to the Search Engines.

Submitting your website pages to the search engines will not boost your rankings, or help your site get indexed any faster. The search engines find sites by a process called web crawling done by spiders or bots. It has little to do with you filling out those long forms and submitting to the search engines. What will get you indexed faster is a quality site with relevant links, good content and the wise use of keywords.

3. Cramming Your Site Full of Keywords Means a Higher Ranking.

Have you ever seen a site that repeated the same words over so many times, it barely makes sense anymore? This is called keyword stuffing. Unfortunately, many people believe the more keywords you can stuff into your site, the better. This is sometimes done to such extremes that the content sounds ridiculous and unprofessional, thus defeating the purpose of the keywords.

For example: Jewelry ‘n More has beautiful diamond rings that don’t cost as much as most diamond rings because our diamond rings are more affordable than other diamond rings. If you are looking for diamond rings, visit our site for diamond rings because we have more diamond rings at cheaper prices than any other diamond rings.

This is really an extreme example but this type of thing does happen. The best way to use keywords is to use different combinations of relevant keywords throughout your site’s content. There is no set number of keywords that will magically make your site appear in the number one position so do not over stuff to the point of redundancy. Your web copy should be natural, professional and informative.

4. Duplicate Content Can Get You Banned.

Fortunately this is not true. Using duplicate content on your site can cause problems if it is done in a “spammy” or exaggerated way. If you mix the duplicate content with other quality and relevant content, your site will stand a better chance of a higher ranking. What happens when duplicate content is found by the search engines? Well, once the duplicate content is discovered, the search engine will base their decision (which page to add to the search results) on how long the site has been active, the page rank, the amount of incoming links and other qualifying aspects of the site. Duplicate content is a part of the internet (as we have all seen) and there is no penalty for it.

Many people also believe that using reprint articles on their site will bring them a penalty. This is not so. While you don’t want ALL your site’s content to be duplicates, using quality informative articles on your site (that happen to be published elsewhere) is not a problem for the search engines.

5. Higher Page Rank Means Higher Search Engine Ranking.

Many people mistakenly believe that if you have a high page rank, you will also have a high ranking in the search engines. This is not so. Page rank is not as important as most people believe. The search engines use other factors to determine your ranking. You need to have a high quality site with functionality, relevance, a good linking system, good information, user-friendliness and purpose. Do not rely on your page rank to raise your ranking in the search engines.

I hope this information will help you in producing a more search engine friendly site. You can do it yourself but be sure to learn the facts and find out which SEO myths are true and which ones are not.

Many businesses have a strong focus on their advertising campaigns, integrating pay-per-click ads, targeted email marketing, social media, and traditional advertising to broadcast their products and services to potential customers. One critical area that many businesses fail in, though, is SEO.

On-page SEO in particular tends to fall by the wayside or is tacked on almost as an afterthought. This would be fine if the majority of users went directly to the website, but most find a website through use of a search engine, even if they already know the URL of the site they’re visiting. The rules for on-page SEO can seem daunting, but in reality the basic on-page rules are fairly simple. Producing quality content that people will want to see should be one of the main concerns, and providing a friendly, functional user interface will improve not only the experience of those using the site, but also the website’s ranking in Google.

Content

Google’s Panda updates have added a new dimension to Google’s algorithm, allowing it to judge content similarly to a human. This is consistent with Google’s attempts to refine its algorithm to the point where every searcher will find the exact result they want as the first result on their first search. Because humans desire content, not filler or ads, the Panda update emphasizes that. Sites that want to rank well on Google must make sure that all of their pages have deep, well-written content.

Before Panda, some sites attempted to fool search engines by posting a well-written paragraph followed by several paragraphs of keyword-stuffed unintelligible text. Now, though, Google can see through that. Content must also be unique, because every time it is reused Google values it less, lowering the rank for the page. Including relevant keywords throughout the text will make the context of the page and site easier to determine, resulting in a higher rank. Going too far, though, will hurt rankings, so keywords should only be used in situations where they might naturally occur. By updating the website’s content–not the overall design–frequently, businesses show search engines that their site has new, up-to-date content that will provide something fresh for users, resulting in higher search rankings.

Site Architecture

Making the website easy to navigate for users will also increase its chances of ranking well on search results. Every page should navigate back to the home page and to the most popular pages or categories, while the least popular pages should be accessible through a standard menu. Page titles should be unique, short and readable. Some businesses include the full business name on every page, but that is an unnecessary and unwise policy. As with the content of the site, search engines favor unique titles and descriptions. Reusing titles and descriptions for unique pages is a red flag for search engine crawlers and will likely result in a lower rank. Links within the site, whether in the menu or within the content of the site, should be optimized. Appropriate, simple anchor text should be chosen in order to help search engines properly categorize links and pages.

In the past, optimizing a website for search engines was very different from building a positive user experience. While keyword stuffing and cloaking used to be capable of quickly raising a site’s position on search results pages, those tactics are now singled out and penalized. Instead, websites should be built to provide users with a positive experience and useful, unique content. As search engines continue refining their algorithms and creating newer, more intelligent crawlers, building for SEO and building for users will increasingly become indistinguishable.

Reverse SEO can help mitigate a corporate crisis, especially when the crisis is being played out in social media networks and on blogs. Many times, a story grows online instead of in the mainstream media, which can cause major problems with a company’s search engine rankings.

Whenever someone searches for the company name, the story will be the first several listings to appear on the first page, not the company’s home page. But with proper tactics, this story can eventually be pushed down off the first page.

Here are four reverse SEO tactics a PR professional can use to suppress the negative stories from search results

Reverse SEO Tactics #1. Start a Blog on the Company Website

Search engines love websites that post new content on a regular basis. A blog is the best way to do this. Not only does it help the PR pro do some reverse SEO during the crisis, it also helps the marketing department with regular SEO, so the company can be found for their chosen keywords.

If the search engines can see regular updates to a website, they are more likely to push it to the top of their results, displacing the negative story.

Reverse SEO Tactics #2. Respond POSITIVELY to the Criticisms

The worst thing to do during a crisis is to let emotions take hold and to respond in kind to negative comments in the heat of the moment. While the first instinct may be to take on the naysayers and critics, a shrill outburst will not only delay the reverse SEO efforts, it will fan the flames of the story. There are too many cases of PR pros forgetting themselves and causing the story to grow bigger than it would have if they had left it alone. In some cases, the response even becomes a story of its own.

Reverse SEO Tactics #3. Use Social Media Ranking Tools to Determine Whether the Person is Even Worth a Response

Hopefully, companies managing their reverse SEO efforts are using social media monitoring tools to keep up with online mentions. These tools find all mentions of a company’s keywords in different social networks, blogs, and forums. The temptation is for a PR pro to respond to all of them. This can be a big mistake.

Not everyone who responds has the influence to have a big impact on the story. Use a social media scoring and ranking tool to see whether the person has any real “clout” before responding. If they have a low score, it is safe to ignore them. Otherwise, a wasted response to a non-influencer may give continued life to the story.

Reverse SEO Tactics #4. Give it Time

Keep in mind that regular search engine optimization takes time – as much as three to six months. So does reverse SEO. Companies cannot count on immediate results on their reverse SEO efforts. They need to remember they are in this for the long haul. While companies need to deal with a corporate crisis in the usual manner, they need to realize this is a long-term strategy as well.

Just like with every other crisis and problem, this too shall pass. But its effects can linger, thanks to the search engines, if it is not dealt with properly. For some companies and individuals, an old crisis will still rear its ugly head whenever someone searches for the company name, because they did not take the proper steps. But reverse SEO techniques will suppress those results after the original furor dies down.

Reverse search engine optimization is an ideal long-term strategy to deal with company crises, and to protect its online reputation. Not only does it deal with problems as they arise, it can be an effective inoculation against future crises as they develop.

The two most important elements that qualify companies to promote themselves as SEO experts are competence and professionalism. And the way you find out if a company is competent and professional, as well as legitimate, is to do your due diligence and check their credentials thoroughly, by exercising good old common sense and following these steps:

1. Verify Their Contact Information

If the company provides a street address, Google it to see if it’s a real address. If they provide a telephone number, call the number to see if it’s answered by the company or an answering service. If they don’t provide a telephone number, walk away. SEO is serious business. You need to have the ability to talk to whomever is going to be handling your account. You need to be able to ask questions, and you have a right to expect your questions to be answered in a professional manner.

2. Talk to Previous Customers

If the SEO company publishes testimonials on their website, contact a few of their customers and get their feedback. If the company can’t provide testimonials, walk away, or if the testimonials don’t have contact information, they’re probably bogus. Walk away.

3. Visit Reputable SEO Forums

Visit reputable SEO forums like Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Forum to find out what forum members have to say about the company. If an SEO company has a bad reputation, it will race across the Internet at warp speed. Conversely, if a company has a good reputation, you will find that out also.

4. Check Their Better Business Bureau Record

Most companies who are members of the BBB post it on their website with a link to their record. Check their record to see if they have any complaints, but don’t panic if the company has complaints. All companies receive complaints from time to time. What you want to find out is whether or not the company has an inordinate amount of complaints, and how those complaints have been handled.

5. Check Them Out with Their State’s Attorney General’s Office

If the company is located in the United States, check them out with their state’s Attorney General’s Office, Division of Consumer Affairs. All companies aren’t members of the BBB so often unhappy or dissatisfied customers will file a report with the AG’s office to get satisfaction.

6. Check Them Out with Local Police Agencies

Before you give a company your hard-earned money, do your due diligence. In addition to checking them out with the BBB and AG, put a call into the police department in their city to see if they’re involved in fraudulent activities. You’d be surprised how cooperative many police agencies are when it comes to fighting fraud in their city.

7. Check Them Out with Online Scam Watch Sites

Like I mentioned a moment ago, if an SEO company has a bad reputation, it will race across the Internet at warp speed. If a company is ripping people off, someone will know about it. Before parting with your hard-earned money, always check companies out with various online scam watch sites like Scam.com.

8. Avoid Companies That Send You Unsolicited E-Mail (spam)

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times, legitimate companies don’t send unsolicited e-mail. They don’t send sp@m. Do you know what kind of companies send sp@m? Scam artists intent on ripping you off, that’s who. The best thing to do when you receive sp@m is delete it. Don’t open it, don’t read it, don’t consider it…delete it!

9. Avoid Companies That Aren’t Ranked Competitively

If an SEO company doesn’t have the ability to secure a competitive ranking for their own site, then how on earth can they secure a competitive ranking for yours? Answer: They can’t. While far from perfect, sites like Alexa can give you a fair idea about a site’s ranking.

10. Don’t Make a Hasty Decision

Choosing the right SEO company is critical to the success of your company, so you want to make sure you get it right. Take your time and leave no stone unturned as you do your due diligence. Don’t rush the process, and walk away from companies that try to pressure you into making a quick decision.

11. How Long Has the Company Been Around?

When choosing an SEO company, the length of time they’ve been in business matters. A company’s longevity is a good indication of stability and how good they are at what they do. When it comes to SEO companies, the longer they’ve been in business the better.

12. Have They Written Articles About SEO?

Ask if anyone from their staff have written any articles that have been published on reputable websites. Has anyone on their staff written any books? Do they speak at major SEO conferences? Are they moderators at SEO/SEM forums? All of these things are indicators of professionalism, reputation and expertise.

13. Read the Contract

Don’t sign any contract until you’ve read and completely understood its terms. Better yet, let your attorney look over the contract. Contracts can be tricky, so it’s best to let a professional check things out. It’s too late to read the contract after the fact.

14. Money-Back Guarantee

I’m a firm believer that if you aren’t satisfied with the results, or if the company hasn’t delivered on their promises, you are entitled to either a full or partial refund, depending on the terms of the contract. Avoid companies that aren’t willing to stand behind their work.

15. Avoid Companies That Guarantee First Page or Top 10 Rankings

No company can guarantee you a first page or top 10 ranking. I repeat: No Company Can Guarantee You A First Page Or Top 10 Ranking. Here’s why: There are far too many variables involved in the ranking of a website – not the least of which are the age of the domain, relevancy and quantity of content, number and quality of inbound links, competition, and of course Google’s ever-changing algorithms. That’s why legitimate SEO companies don’t make those kinds of outlandish promises.

16. Make Sure They Answer Your Questions

Ask plenty of questions and monitor the companies willingness to answer your questions. If they seem argumentative, evasive or unsure, walk away.

17. Pay Attention to Response Times

Whether you call or e-mail a company, monitor how quickly they respond to your communications, or if they respond at all. Slow communication is a huge red flag. Walk away.

18. Do They Engage in Black Hat Practices?

In case you don’t know, black hat SEO practices consist of unethical methods like cloaking, hidden text, doorway pages, link farms, mirror sites, duplicate content, etc. Ask questions to see how the company feels about these types of practices. If they don’t strongly denounce these types of unethical practices, walk away.

19. Does the Company Have a Portfolio?

Before making your decision, carefully look over the companies portfolio, the projects that they have worked on in the past, as well as current projects. Does the portfolio accurately reflect the information you’ve been given, or does something seem not quite right? If you don’t like what you see, walk away.

20. Listen to Your Gut

Over the years, listening to that little internal voice has served me well. The times I ignored that little voice is when I’ve gotten into trouble. Listen to your gut. If something doesn’t feel right, walk away.

In closing, in a perfect world, we would be able take SEO companies at face value without being suspicious. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world, so be suspicious. Be very suspicious…the money and aggravation you save may be your own!

By now, most site owners realize the importance and value of SEO in the development and growth of their site. A properly optimized site is going to rank better in the search engines, see more targeted traffic being directed over, have a higher conversion rate and much more. However, SEO is incredibly long term and nothing can rush time. It takes time for a site to build a good trust factor with the search engines and until that happens, most of your off-site SEO efforts are going to produce minimal results.

If you recently launched your site and are already looking into SEO, here are 5 things you should focus your time and energy on.

Learn the Basics of SEO for Yourself

There is no shortage of blogs, whitepapers, articles, reports, e-books, webinars, videos and more that can teach you the basics of SEO. It is imperative that you as the site owner arm yourself with as much SEO knowledge as possible during the first year of your site’s life. The more you know about SEO, the less likely you are to be conned by a black hat SEO company and the less likely you are to make black hat SEO decisions by accident. A good place to start is with the Bing and Google Webmaster Guidelines. Consider those two sources as your SEO line in the sand; what they say goes. Look for other reputable blogs and sites that can help you learn more about SEO and how others in your industry are using it to their advantage.

By taking the time to teach yourself the basics of SEO (you could take an SEO course or spend time with a consultant as well), you’ll be better prepared to take your SEO to the next level after your site has aged a little and earned the trust of the search engines.

Start a Blog

Start blogging right away. Start with at least one blog post a week and see if you can work up to one a day within the first year of your blog’s life. That may seem like a huge ordeal now, but you’d be amazed at how easy it gets to write a 350-500 word blog post with practice. You’ll learn how to better formulate your thoughts, present a single idea and flush it out entirely with time. If you aren’t confident in your writing ability or are struggling to come up with topics, turn to your employees and co-workers for help. The worst thing you could do is launch a blog and then not routinely update it with fresh content.

It takes a long time to hone your writing skills, find and develop your niche, build your reputation and attract loyal readers to your blog, so don’t expect to see major results fast. However, just like your site, as your blog ages it earns more trust from the search engines. Individual blog posts can start to rank for targeted keywords, increasing your online brand presence.

Build Your Social Network

If you are just getting onboard the social media marketing train, you’re in for a surprise! Social media marketing takes a lot more time than most companies realize, and it needs a solid strategy to run on. Don’t walk into social media blind and hope you’ll figure it out before something goes wrong. Take the first year of your site’s life to really develop your social profiles and connect with your target audience. What kind of content are they looking for from you? When is the best time to engage them? Which sites do they spend most of their time on? If you want your social media marketing efforts to be effective, you need to understand the behavior of your target audience so you can better reach them.

Focus on On-Site Optimization

The first year of your site’s life should really be spent focusing on the site itself. Don’t worry too much about developing a full blown link building strategy just yet; it’s more important to make sure your site is in the best shape it can be! Work on creating great webpage content, developing an internal linking structure that helps keep your visitor engaged, tweaking your landing pages to improve their conversion rate and so forth. Your website is going to be the hub of the rest of your Internet marketing. It doesn’t matter how great everything is off-site if your website doesn’t measure up. At the end of the day, it is your website that is going to convince visitors to act. Does it matter how many show up or how they got there if you website fails to convert?

Develop an Editorial Calendar

Content pretty much fuels all of your SEO and social media marketing. Without great content, you don’t give your target audience a real reason to check out your site, profile or blog. In addition to all the content you have to create for your own sites, you also need to start looking into 3rd party sites where you can publish guest content. Take the first year of your site’s life to build relationships with industry bloggers and other site owners that allow guest articles to be published on their site. Identify which popular industry blogs cater to your target audience and start laying the groundwork to get one of your articles published there. If you can create an editorial calendar for you to follow, you’ll be able to get a jumpstart on your content marketing.

Not too long ago, a visitor to my blog posted the question: “What’s more effective, off-page or on-page optimization?” He had just finished optimizing his webpage using SEOPressor, and was understandably annoyed that the expected increase in traffic had failed to appear.

Unfortunately, the most definitive answer I have to his question is – it depends.

If you want to increase your site traffic by ranking well for lots of less competitive, long-tailed keywords, then on-page optimization is your best bet. If you are choosing to improve your ranking in the Google search results for shorter, more competitive keywords, then you should optimize off-page.

If you simply want a healthy and profitable website, then you need to engage in both kinds of optimization.

Google Ranks Pages Based on Content, not Sales Pitches.

Google uses a mathematical formula to rank your webpage based on its relevance to a particular user. That formula uses information found both off your page and on it, which explains why both on-page and off-page optimization are important.

The off-page information that Google looks for is the number of people or reputable sites that have found your web page useful and have linked back to it. The on-page information they look for consists of navigation aids like well-placed keywords and article descriptions, as well as quality content.

Both kinds of information are important, and therefore both on-page and off-page optimization are important, but they are not equally important. It’s been said that on-page optimization only influences about 20% of your Google search page ranking, while the other 80% of that ranking is influenced by off-page optimization.

That piece of information should tell you where the bulk of your efforts should be applied.

Off-Page Optimizing: Choose Your Friends Carefully

Long before the folks at Google publicly confirmed this, I and a few other internet marketers were already aware of it; Google takes a lot of stock in other people’s opinions. Those other people, by the way are the webmasters, bloggers and researchers who choose to link to your site.

Google keeps track of who links to you and determines the quality of your site based on the quality of those backlinks. For instance, if your website sells high-end cookware and you have backlinks from sites like BetterHomesandGardens.com or CooksIllustrated.com, than you’ll be ranked fairly well based on those sites.

However, if that same site has a few backlinks to BubbaJakesRoadkillCuisine.com or VegansforMao.au, you may find your site being punished because of the association with lower quality websites. Guilt by association isn’t necessarily fair, but you need to keep in mind that this is how the internet works.

Consequently, whether your website sells one of a kind children’s clothing, offers free online car insurance quotes or acts as a resource for geocaching in Kentucky, it’s important to pay attention to off-page optimization. This will ensure that you’re keeping good company, and enable your site to rank well for the highly competitive keywords.

On-Page Optimization: The Principal of Low-Lying Fruit

Although off-page optimization will influence the lion’s share of your Google ranking, you can’t afford to ignore your on-page optimizing, either. When deciding where to place your page in terms of a search for a particular keyword or keyword phrase, Google will look in three areas on your webpage:

- The title
- The first or second paragraph
- The meta description

The title of your article should contain your primary keyword or keyword phrase. This should be a natural result of matching the keyword phrase to the content of your article. If you’ve targeted a keyword phrase which doesn’t seem to fit in your title, perhaps you should re-think your approach to the topic.

That keyword or keyword phrase should also be in your first or second paragraph. One of these paragraphs should also contain a concise but detailed description of the article.

This is simply a more stringent standard than the one set by your fourth grade teacher when he or she taught you to write an introductory paragraph for a term paper.

The meta description gives you a second, more targeted area in which to provide a detailed article description to your potential readers. Because this description will often appear as a blurb under your site name on the Google search results page, it will not only affect where Google places you, but it will directly affect the amount of traffic on your site.

While directing more traffic to your site will not immediately result in stratospheric Google rankings, it will bring other, more direct benefits. Direct site traffic is referred to as low hanging fruit, because it’s easy to gather and, while it represents only a small portion of the whole crop, it is certainly enough to live on.

One final way to bring in this fruit is remarkably simple and therefore is often overlooked; simply provide your readers with quality content. If you purposely write informative, understandable information which is meant to be read by humans and not just analyzed by a search engine, your webpage will naturally contain many long-tailed keywords which are less competitive and easier to rank well for.

Tying Up The Package

A well-written webpage which has been properly optimized on-page may not rank particularly well for the shorter, more competitive keywords, but it will rank better for the longer tailed, less competitive keyword phrases.

If you want to – and you should want to – help your page rank well for the shorter, more competitive keywords, your off-page optimization will be far more effective for that task.

Whether your site helps folks compare auto insurance quotes or provides them with a comprehensive index of every film Kevin Bacon has been in, the same rules will apply for improving your search engine rankings. Both on-page and off-page optimization is necessary to keep your webpage visible and visitor-friendly.

That’s one man’s opinion, anyway. I’d be interested in hearing yours. Please share your thoughts in the comment box below.

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With so much SEO advice being dispensed nowadays, it’s hard to know what you should or shouldn’t believe. It can be especially difficult for Internet Marketing newbies to separate the wheat from the chaff, however, there ARE proven SEO tips and techniques that virtually every SEO expert agrees work and are very effective.

Following are 7 simple SEO tips that will help your search engine rankings:

1. Have Fast-Loading Pages

You may not be aware of this, but page load-speed is now one of the more than 200 signals Google uses to determine the ranking of web pages in the search results. As a result, it is more important than ever that your pages load quickly. Slow loading pages are annoying to searchers and affect their ability to access content quickly. This is viewed as a negative user-experience by Google and can have an adverse effect on your rankings.

You can quickly check your page speed at Page Speed Online, a free web application
offered by Googlelabs. This tool tests the speed of your page and gives it a score from 1-100, based on the performance of your page. The Page Speed Score indicates how much faster a page could be. A high score indicates little room for improvement, while a lower score indicates more room for improvement. In other words, the higher the score, the better. The Page Speed Score does not measure the time it takes for a page to load – just whether or not it loads quickly. Here are some things you can do to speed up your pages:

o Avoid Redirects – a common redirect that many designers use is unintentional – they leave off the trailing slash on a URL which forces a redirect to the directory name with the slash. Redirects also happen when you move a page or site – change the URL to point to the new location when you link to a redirected page.

o Avoid 404’s – while a useful 404 page is important for your customers’ experience on your site, you don’t want to link to them, as they generate another HTTP request that provides no value. This is especially important with images on your page.

o Optimize Images – keep the images small. (Source: How to Speed Up Web Pages)

2. The Trust Factor

Believe it or not, the trustworthiness of your site – or lack thereof, has an effect on your rankings. So the more things you can do to make your site appear trustworthy, the better. Some steps you can take to improve the trustworthiness of your site include having a clear privacy policy if you collect personal information. Tell people what you’re going to do with their information. They have a right to know.

Also, at the very least, provide an e-mail address on your site for customers to contact you. In addition, create an “About Us” page. Provide the names of the owner(s) and employees, if you have any. Be sure to include pictures and brief biographies. The worst thing you can do is give the appearance you want to be anonymous, which obviously generates suspicion.

And don’t underestimate the power of testimonials. Just make sure they’re legitimate and verifiable. Otherwise, you risk getting into trouble with the FTC.

3. Create an Effective Title-Tag

The title tag is a critically important factor in achieving high search engine rankings. For those of you who don’t know what a title-tag is, it’s the words displayed at the top of your browser. It is also used as the title of your website in the SERP’s (search engine results pages). Therefore, you should put plenty of thought into writing your title tag – to make sure it’s as effective as possible. Your title-tag should also
contain specific keyword phrases, in addition to the name of your company.

For example, suppose your company name is “ABC Home Remodeling,” a home remodeling company in New York, you would want your company’s website to appear in the search engine results for searches on phrases such as “New York home remodeling” and “home remodeling in New York.” If you prefer to work with homeowners only in the Albany area, you would need to be geographically specific in your title-tag. For example, “Albany home remodeling.”

What about meta-tags? Aren’t they important too? Opinions vary on the importance of meta-tags, but in my opinion, they’re not as important as they once were. They won’t have a significant impact on your rankings one way or the other. But if you want to use them, it certainly won’t hurt anything – provided you don’t abuse them (i.e. keyword stuffing).

4. Publish Quality, Relevant Content

In case you haven’t heard, sites like EzineArticles, Buzzle and Associated Content got absolutely hammered by the recent Panda update. But why? Those sites have been around for years, and have a ton of quality content. Unfortunately, much of their content is also low-quality. When explaining the Panda update, Google said it was important for high-quality sites to be rewarded. By punishing the titans of article directories, Google sent a powerful message about quality.

But it’s not enough to just publish quality content. Your content also needs to be relevant to the overall theme of your site. Google places a tremendous amount of value on relevancy. So do everything you can to make sure your pages are as relevant as possible and accurately reflect your site’s actual content.

5. Syndicate Your Content

Content syndication is a simple, effective and proven SEO method. When I say content syndication, I’m referring to two types of syndication in particular: RSS feeds and article submission. RSS (an acronym for Really Simple Syndication) syndicates your web content, making it easily accessible to other sites and helps build inbound links, making RSS an extremely powerful SEO strategy.

If you use any of the popular blogging platform like Blogger or WordPress, you already have a built-in RSS feed. If your website doesn’t have a built-in RSS feed and you’re technically savvy, you can create your own by following the instructions in Anatomy of an RSS File. Or, if you’re technically challenged like I am, you can use a service like RapidFeeds.com.

Article submission is the second type of content syndication I referred to. Basically, there are two ways you can submit your articles. 1. To article directories and 2. Directly to publishers. I prefer to submit my articles directly to publishers because it gives me control over where my articles are published.

If you submit to article directories, there’s a good chance your article will get buried among the thousands of other article submissions. In addition, once submitted, your articles are available to be published by anyone. That means your articles have the very real potential of being published by low-quality sites, which could effectively damage your site’s reputation with the search engines.

6. Authority, Authority, Authority

Authority sites are considered authoritative for a reason. It’s because people trust their content. That’s why authority sites rank so highly in Google’s SERP’s.

So what exactly is an authority site?

Definitions vary, but my own personal definition of an authority site is “a site that is linked to and respected by thousands of people who often reference its material.”

Authority sites have quality content and consistently show keyword to content relevancy. If you write articles, instead of submitting them to article directories which have diminishing link value, instead, submit them to top authority sites like Problogger, SiteProNews, WebProNews, PromotionWorld, Copyblogger, SearchEngineJournal and others. And while it might be considerably more difficult to get your articles accepted and published by those sites, the fact that Google places such high value on links from authority sites makes it worth the effort.

7. Social Networking Matters

While only Google knows for sure how much of an impact social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others actually have on search results, the fact that it’s providing real-time social sharing is an indication that Google takes participation in social networking sites seriously. And if Google takes social networking seriously, then, common sense suggests, social networking participation will help your SEO efforts.

If you asked 10 different SEO experts which was the absolute best SEO method, you’d likely get 10 different answers.

Why? Because the truth of the matter is, there is no absolute best SEO method. They all work, provided, they are all executed properly. Let me explain.

Regardless of the industry, different experts have different opinions. Does that mean one expert is right and another expert is wrong? No, it doesn’t. It simply means our opinions, analysis and thought processes are shaped by our personal experiences, successes and failures. And while one expert might have had success with one particular SEO method, another expert might have had success with an entirely different method.

In other words, multiple experts can have different opinions about a topic, and all parties can still be correct based on their own personal experiences.

My Best SEO Method

Now, I don’t consider myself an SEO expert by any means. However, I do have many articles that rank highly in Google’s SERP’s (search engine results pages). Therefore, based on my own personal experience and the success I’ve had with article syndication, in my opinion, the best SEO method is to create and distribute quality, relevant content.

You see, if you create and distribute quality, relevant content, your website will get linked to by quality websites. And if your website gets linked to by quality websites, your search engine ranking will increase. And isn’t that the whole point of SEO to begin with – increased search engine ranking?

The Panda Update

Just to be clear, when I talk about search engine ranking, I’m not talking about “PageRank”, Google’s 0-10 logarithmic toolbar which is nothing more than a “superficial beauty contest” vanity tool – very much out-of-date, and does NOT have a direct impact on a site’s ranking. No, I’m referring to where your pages rank in Google’s SERP’s.

And if the recent Panda update has taught us anything at all, it’s that Google is committed to “taking out the trash.” And if you produce garbage content, eventually one of Google’s algorithm changes is going to punish you.

In fact, this is what Google said about the recent Panda update:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. It is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.” (Source: Google Blog)

Ya Gotta Have Pride

But it’s not just Google that has a problem with garbage content. Many Internet users despise the low-quality content that permeates the Internet as well. That said, you shouldn’t create quality content just to please Google or visitors to your website. Creating quality content should be a matter of personal and professional pride.

Because just like the products and services you sell are a direct reflection of you, so too is the content on your website. There are many marketers who consider the content on their site unimportant – little more than filler. The content is just there to take up space. It has no goal and serves no real purpose.

That’s a fatal mistake. The content on your site should have a purpose. If it doesn’t have a purpose, then why is it even there? And you can bet, if I’m asking that question, so is Google. Remember what I just said about your content being a reflection of you and having personal and professional pride?

Create Useful Content

Always make sure the content on your site is useful, informative, interesting and/or entertaining. If it isn’t, visitors are unlikely to return or refer your site to others – depriving you of valuable word-of-mouth exposure. Also, make sure your content is well-written. It doesn’t have to be a journalistic masterpiece, but it shouldn’t be an embarrassment either – like it was written by a 3rd grader.

If you don’t write well, reputable and professional content writing services like Nicole Beckett’s PremierContentSource.com, can write content for you at a reasonable cost.

A Word About Keywords

Since this article is about SEO, I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss keywords. When interspersing keywords throughout your pages, be careful not to repeat them so often they looked forced. Overdoing it with keywords (known as keyword stuffing) will make your content read unnaturally, and will lead to an unpleasant reading experience for your readers.

In addition, if search engine spiders discover too many of the same keywords on your pages, you will likely be penalized for spamming. This will adversely affect the search engine ranking of your pages. It might even get your site blacklisted, if a pattern of keyword stuffing is detected on your site.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

In closing, you have a choice. You can either create garbage content that belongs outside on the curb waiting to be picked up and disposed of by Google’s waste management algorithm truck, or you can create quality, relevant content that is useful and helps people.

Because if you focus on consistently creating quality, relevant content, regardless of what other SEO methods you choose to implement, they will only be enhanced.