10 Search Engine Ranking Tips to Improve Traffic Conversions

It’s a fact that if your product or service is not appearing in the top 10 SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) used to find your site, then your competition is there taking all the hits. SEO or Search Engine Optimization techniques are not rocket science; they can be implemented by anyone requiring increasing the exposure of their web site business.

You may have decided to pay an SEO company to do the legwork here. It’s actually possible with just some simple application to do the work quickly and effectively by yourself. SEO is all about optimization and is crucial for success on the web.

By optimization I mean two types of organic methods: On-Page Optimization and Off-Page Optimization. This can be achieved without using PPC plans (Pay per Click) which can cost a lot of money.

On-Page optimization involves editing the web site code and content – keyword research, choosing the best keywords used to find your business and coupling this with relevant content that is useful to your readers. In the code, the keyword and key phrases form part of the Meta tags and should also be in the Home Page title bar. Each page should be optimized according to the keyword that matches the content.

Off-Page Optimization involves back linking from quality sites that sell or display information related to your business. This is best achieved through contextual one-way links to your site from a high traffic site where your target audience will browse for information on your products. One-way links shine bright in the eyes of Google, if they are relevant.
Be aware of these 10 points in order to avoid a bad SEO plan or worse a bad SEO company, or even worse again – getting banned by Google:

1. No black hat techniques, don’t buy into link farms that just send traffic, you will not receive converting visitors.

2. Ensure you have your own web site domain rather than relying on free sites and article directories like Squidoo and Hubpages. These are good but use them to drive one-way traffic to a landing page on your own web site domain.

3. Ensure your Meta tags contain relevant descriptions. These should contain your keywords derived from your keyword research. Use google keyword planner to find out what daily searches contain those keywords, you may need to optimize further.

4. The content must be original, avoid duplicate content. Notice I am using the word ‘relevant’ a lot here, the reason being is that it’s often overlooked in favor of keyword density – forget it, you risk being banned if you use keyword stuffing techniques. Generally 3 to 5 key phrases (assuming long tail e.g. popular online games) per 500 to 1000 words.

5. Create blogs and mini-sites related to your niche that all serve your market with back links to your main business web site. This is a good time to use Squidoo, blogger and Hubpages as they are very high traffic sites. Include back links to your site in your bio.

6. Add ALT tags to all your images with relevant words related to your web page.

7. Submit a press release highlighting your product benefits to the top press release networks such as PRWeb and URLwire. If you don’t know how to prepare one, consult lulu.com as it teaches you the basics.

8. Create discussions on facebook and MySpace related to your niche and invite potential customers to voice their questions, concerns, etc. Include back links to your site in your bio.

9. Promote your web site services in free high traffic classified ads such as USFreeads. Include back links to your site in your bio.

10. Offer support to people needing your products by finding questions on Yahoo Answers and showing them the solution with a link to your site and a reason to visit. Be honest, show the benefits.

What’s next? Simple, rinse and repeat for every product you are marketing on your site. SEO is a long term marketing plan. You will reap the rewards if you can play the game and set out to dominate the search engines in your niche.