Effective SEO Techniques You Should Know
On-page techniques
Basically, on-page SEO refers to anything that affects what is actually on your website. For example, each page should have the proper keyword density and use latent semantic indexing (using words that are semantically related to the keywords) to further enhance the site in search engines. Use relevant titles, headers, meta descriptions and link internally. In addition, the site should be laid out so that it is easy to navigate and every page can be reached within a few clicks.
Quality content
It should go without saying that one of the biggest issues with SEO is content in general. Even if all the proper rules and techniques are followed, you still must have quality content. Your information should be interesting to the people in your target audience. This entails doing more than just stuffing a few keywords into the page; scatter them naturally throughout useful or entertaining content. Good content needs to be created and updated regularly.
Include a site map
A site map is basically a page that lists all of your links and the pages contained on the website. This will help Google (and the other search engines) find and index the site. Additionally, the site map will also help the search engines to analyze and ‘understand’ the site structure, which is especially helpful for larger and more complicated websites.
Off-page elements
As you might imagine, off-page SEO involves everything which occurs outside of your website. There are numerous strategies that can be employed in this regard. The best strategy, however, is to gradually build links over time with different methods to include social media, article marketing, guest blogging and press releases.
Social media sites
The popularity of sites like Facebook and Twitter is undeniable. Posting content (both from your site and others) and building a following on these and other social media sites can increase your traffic and provide an off-page SEO as well. The idea is that by posting quality content and information people will be drawn to like and share with others. There is always the possibility the right content will go 'viral,' and generate a great number of links.
Article marketing
While it does not pack the punch it used to, this is still a cost-effective strategy for anyone who does not mind writing. Of course, you do want to make sure that the article is something of interest to your target market. They can be posted on a variety of article directory sites or on social content communities to include HubPages. All of these methods help to generate links leading readers back to your site. When using article directories, you also hope that other webmasters will republish your article on one of their web properties.
Guest blogging
Increasingly, links need to be in the right context to offer SEO value. This is one of the reasons guest blogging has grown in popularity. While it takes some work to find good blogs in your niche that will accept guest articles, links in these articles are more valuable overall.
Email marketing
While email marketing is not a direct SEO strategy, anything that brings in more traffic will eventually provide a boost in search engines. This is actually a very intimate method of contacting your prospects and customers. Take this opportunity to educate, inform, and even deliver additional quality content. Your email marketing messages can direct prospects to any site you wish, further helping to increase your SEO positioning.
Press releases
Search engines also seem to like press releases. Creating such a document is a relatively simple process. The content will need to be something newsworthy that people in your niche will be interested in.
RSS
This is short for real simple syndication. It is essentially a method of distributing your content to a large number of people at once, each of whom is using a special content reader. RSS is normally used for content formats that are frequently updated such as blogs, news, or even audio/video content. When an RSS subscriber signs in, all new content is automatically updated, downloaded, and presented in a very user friendly format.
Conclusion
SEO includes both on-page and off-page elements. Each of these techniques is important and useful, but there are no quickly solutions and everything takes time. All webmasters should try as many techniques and possible and concentrate on those that work best for them.
