Best Adsense Tips And Secrets

AdSense Tip 1: Find Best keywords for your content

Before serving ads on a web page, check its keyword density. You can find many free keyword analyzer tools in internet searching the word "free keyword analyzer".

AdSense Tip 2: Improve your keywords

Get keyword suggestions from Google AdWords Sandbox. Get new keywords that can help you improve your ad relevance.

AdSense Tip 3: Make content rich websites

This means that content-rich websites of a popular topic should attract a large amount of ads.

AdSense Tip 4: Write a new page/blog post every day

This is very important. The more content you have, the more visitors you will get. Put an Adsense unit on each and every content page of your site.

AdSense Tip 5: Choose the right AdSense format

The top three AdSense formats are for many webmasters:

336x280 large rectangle
300x250 medium rectangle
160x600 wide skyscraper

Another successful format is the 728x15 horizontal ad links, that can be placed under your navigation bar.

Use "Allowed site" feature of adsense to protect yourselves.If anyone put adsense codes in their websites you must not worried about it.

AdSense Tip 6: Adsense Color tips

When creating your Google AdSense ads it is recommended to use the color scheme and style of your website so that the ads blend in well.Google Ads with no background color and no borders will always perform better. Make the border color and background color same as your page background color.

AdSense Tip 7: Position tips

Place the AdSense ads in a prominent place around the top/left part of your page or under your headlines.

For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above the content.

For long articles, CTR will improve if you place ads somewhere in middle of the content or just where the article ends.

Use Text Ads instead of Image Ads as users get more options and the payout is often higher.

Important:Don't places images next to Google ads as that will invite a permanent ban to your AdSense account.

AdSense Tip 8: Increase the number of ads, but not too much

If you have a lot of text on a page, use multiple AdSense units. You can use up to three AdSense units on a page, two AdSense search boxes and one unit of ad links.

AdSense Tip 9: Preview Google ads

You can find out what ads will be served by Google AdSense if you install Google AdSense Preview Tool, a very simple tool available only for Internet Explorer 6.0. Click to advertiser sites without generating invalid clicks, and easily add their URLs to your URL filter list. Because AdSense uses geo-targeting, Google serves different ads for other countries.

AdSense Tip 10: What not to do with adsense

Don't click on your own ads
Don't ask others to click on your Google ads
Don't manually change AdSense code
Don't place Google ads on sites that include prohibited content (e.g.: adult sites)
Don't employ cloaking, hidden text or farm links
Don't use AdSense ads on the same page with similar ads (e.g.: Yahoo Publisher Network)
And also don't refresh your site excessively.

AdSense Tip 11: Use section targeting

Use section targeting to emphasize some content in your page.To know more about section targeting read this article.

AdSense Tip 12: Your Google ads should be visible

Make sure your text ads are visible well to the surfers in all screen formats.

AdSense Tip 13: Use AdSense channels

You can categorize the content of your website into channels and then track your performance. This way you can experiment with different types of ads and see which is performing the best.

AdSense Tip 14: Follow Adsense Programme Polices

Strictly follow the rules mentioned in Adsense policies. You will always earn more monet from Adsense if you do it.

AdSense Tip 15:Never modify the Google Adsense HTML code

If have trouble embedding AdSense code in your Blogger template, read these articles.

AdSense Tip 16: Don't place ads in pop-up windows,error pages,empty pages

You must always remember to not to do it.

AdSense Tip 17: Don't start a "MFA"(made for adsense) web site

You will never make money out these Made for Adsense websites. Instead, write on topics what you are passionate about. Don't waste your money and time searching on high-paying adsense keywords lists.

AdSense Tip 18: Block Low Paying Adsense Ads

Block low paying advertisers with Filters.For more info read this article.

AdSense Tip 19: Adsense For Search

Always select the setting to open Google Adsense search box results in a new browser window, so you won't lose your visitors.

Google Adsense Alternatives

1 Media.net

Probably of all the ad networks on the list, this is the least known but it is also the best. They offer very innovative solutions, such as content ads, search targeting, web bar, and mobile ads. Media.net is especially good for huge sites with lots of US, UK, and Canada traffic. One of the downsides of Media.net is that the payment is at $100 but for a huge site this should be pocket money.

2 Chitika

Chitika doesn't offer that many types of ads but its main advantage is that the ads it offers are very targeted. The CTR is great because the ads are displayed only when a user comes from a search engine. Its low $10 payout is also good because even if your site is small, or you use only one ad block, most likely you will be getting payments monthly instead of having to wait for them for months.

3 Bidvertiser

Bidvertiser is another (mainly) PPC network, though they started offering a conversion bonus. Its payout is also at $10, which means for a small site it is also an option.

4 Infolinks

Infolinks offers in-text advertising. In-text ads are very unobtrusive compared to the rest and they don't eat space because they are displayed as popups when the user hovers over the hyperlink in the text they are anchored to. In-text ads from Infolinks work surprisingly well, though it varies depending on the niche. However, its payout of $50 isn't very nice, if your site(s) are small because you might have to wait for months to reach it.

5 adBrite

Many webmasters consider adBrite to be the best Google Adsense alternative but since my experience with them isn't as good as my experience with Chitika or Infolinks, it comes as Number 5. adBrite is essentially an ad marketplace, where buyers and sellers can communicate to negotiate the price. This is what makes it different from the rest. However, you need to have a very popular site with a very lucrative demographics in order to make it there because the competition is really huge.

6 Clickbank

If you do not insist on using CPC ads as a Google Adsense alternative but are open to suggestions, then you should try affiliate sales (known also as CPA – Cost Per Action). Clickbank is the Mecca of CPA offers and it should be your first stop. Clickbank offers probably millions of products and choosing what to promote could be the hardest task. However, the rewards you get could be times what you are making with Adsense on a good day.

7 Amazon

Amazon is another CPA ad network that works well for many publishers. It is especially good if you have a tech site because there are lots of cool gadgets there but since they have offers in almost any niche, it is also an option. Their ads are context sensitive and because of this are almost always relevant. However, their terms are very complicated and it will take you a lot of time to get familiar with what commissions you will be getting for your sales.

8 Kontera

Kontera is another in-text network you can consider an alternative to Google Adsense. It is comparable in performance with Infolinks but again, this varies a lot depending on the niche. However, if you are to choose between Kontera and Infolinks, I will definitely pick Infolinks.

9 eBay

If Clickbank, Amazon, and a few other of the top CPA networks don't work for you, you could give eBay a try. Again, your success (or the lack of it) with it varies depending on the niche but you can make some money with it. I wouldn't put eBay ads as my primary source of income because this will waste space I can use for better ads. However, as a secondary or even tertiary advertiser, if you have some free space left, eBay could be given a try.
10 LinkShare
You might be surprised to find LinkShare – a relatively unknown company - on the list of Top Adsense alternatives but it is an alternative for real. It has a huge choice of offers and they pay at $1. Maybe it is even better than the rest on this list because if your site isn't huge, you won't have to wait for months (or even years) till you get the paycheck. Linkshare has offers in almost any niche and there you will find many of the best advertisers from all over the world.


I could add many more companies that are also worth trying. The good news is that there are many more Google AdSense alternatives and the fact that they didn't make the Top 10 doesn't mean they are worse. These 10 are my personal favorites and I can tell from experience that they do work. Well, the fact that they work for me doesn't necessarily mean they will work for everybody else. In fact, under some circumstances the companies that didn't make it to the list could be even better alternatives but you won't know this unless you try them. The world doesn't start or end with Google Adsense, though certainly it is one really good ad program.

How to Analyze Your SEO Competitors

Have you ever had the feeling that no matter what you do, you are not successful with search engines? While it is quite possible that you are doing things wrong, one other possible reason for your poor SEO performance is that your competition is really tough. If you are in a very competitive niche, then your competition can be really smashing and you just can't afford not to keep an eye on them.

Well, even if your niche isn't that competitive, you will only win if you know how to monitor your competitors' success and failure. Here are some steps you can do to analyze your SEO competition.

1 Find Who Your SEO Competitors Are

You can't analyze your competitors, if you don't know who they are. In some cases identifying your competitors is very easy – for instance, if you have an offline business and you know your competitors there, just check their sites and you are done.

However, in other cases, identifying your competition isn't that easy. Your competitors could be sites in your niche, sites that rank well for your major keywords, or direct competitors for your long tail keywords, etc. The list of your competitors might be a pretty long one and obviously you can't monitor all of them. Perform a search with Google about your target keywords and make a list of the sites/companies that pop high in the search results. You can consider these to be your main competitors.

2 Visit Your Competitors' Sites and Analyze Them

After you have a list of your competitors – or at least the major ones – the next step is to visit their sites and analyze them. You should be watching if their sites are designed professionally, if they have much content, what the quality of their content is, whether they use static or dynamic URLs, etc. This basic site inspection can give you a lot of information about how professional your competition's Web presence is, hence how likely or unlikely it is search engines to love them.

3 Analyze The Keywords Your Competitors Use

Keywords have always been the most important factor for SEO success. This is why you can expect that if your competitors are using keywords properly, their site will rank well in search engines. You might have some difficulty identifying the keywords your competition uses because what you think to be top keywords for your niche, might not be on their list at all. If you don't know which keywords they use, try checking if they use your keywords – this is more than nothing.
Alternatively, you can use the Website Keyword Suggestion tool to check which keywords are supposed to do well for their site. While doing the check, you might find many useful keywords you have skipped and start optimizing your site for them.
You should also check the keyword density of your competitors' keywords. The Keyword Desnity Cloud tool will help you get an idea. Also, don't forget to check the location of the keywords – i.e. are there keywords in the headings, metatags, image tags, the URLs, etc.

4 Check the Competition's Backlinks

Backlinks are the other backbone of good SEO rankings. This is why you need to thoroughly examine the backlinks of the competition. Look for their number and origin, anchor text, etc. and you will get a clue how your competition is doing on this front. Very often you might get some backlink ideas for you – i.e. if you see that your competitors have backlinks from popular sites you didn't know about, contact the webmaster of the popular site to see if you can get backlinks from them, too. The tools you can use are free and some of the best are: Backlink Anchor Text Analysis and Backlink Summary.

5 Check Other SEO Factors

Keywords and backlinks are important but they aren't everything. In order to get a thorough idea of how your competition is ranking, you need also to check your competitors' Page Ranks in Google and how they perform in Yahoo and Bing. You should also look at the number of indexed pages the sites of your competitors have with search engines.

6 Evaluate Your Competition's Presence on Social Media

Social media tend to drive lots of traffic to a site. This is why you can't skip a check how your competitors are doing on social media. Unfortunately, this check is harder to perform. Social bookmarking sites are one of the types of social media and you can start your research from them. Have a look at some of the major social bookmarking sites to see if your competitors have posts there and how popular these posts are.
Twitter and Facebook are two other huge sources of traffic. You can browse to see if your major competitors have profiles at these sites but unless you make friends with them, you will never know what exactly they post. Still, if their profiles have publicly available sections, this gives an idea of what they do on Twitter and Facebook.

7 Analyze How Your Competitors Are Using PPC Ads

Many businesses have figured out that using PPC to drive quality traffic is cheaper and more efficient than optimizing to rank well in natural search results. Google Adwords is the preferred choice for PPC but there are also other networks many webmasters will use. One of the best tools, though it is limited to Google Adwords only, is the Analyze Competition tool by Google. It allows to compare how your PPC is doing in comparison to your competitors' campaigns.
Monitoring your competition is a never ending task. All the activities listed in this article are quite time consuming but if you don't want to be left clueless about the world around you, you do need to take the time and perform the analysis. Even if you see you can't beat the competition, you will certainly learn from them and this will help you be more efficient in your own SEO efforts.

HTML 5 and SEO

HTML 5 is still in the making but for any SEO expert, who tries to look ahead, some knowledge about HTML 5 and how it will impact SEO is not unnecessary information. It is true that the changes and the new concepts in HTML 5 will impact Web developers and designers much more than SEO experts but still it is far from the truth to say that HTML 5 will not mean changes in the Organic SEO policy.

What's New in HTML 5?
HTML 5 follows the way the Net evolved in the last years and includes many useful tags and elements. At first glance, it might look as if HTML 5 is going in the direction of a programming language (i.e. PHP) but actually this is not so – it is still an XML–based presentation language. The new tags and elements might make HTML 5 look more complex but this is only at first glance.
HTML 5 is not very different from HTML 4. One of the basic ideas in the development of HTML 5 was to ensure backward compatibility and because of that HTML 5 is not a complete revamp of the HTML specification. So, if you had worries that you will have to start learning it from scratch, these worries are groundless.
How the Changes in HTML 5 Will Affect SEO?
As a SEO expert, you are most likely interested mainly in those changes in the HTML 5 specification, which will affect your work. Here are some of them:
Improved page segmentation. Search engines are getting smarter and there are many reasons to believe that even now they are applying page segmentation. Basically, page segmentation means that a page is divided into several separate parts (i.e. main content, menus, headers, footers, links sections, etc.) and these parts are treated as separate entries. At present, there is no way for a Web master to tell search engines how to segment a page but this is bound to change in HTML 5.
A new <article> tag. The new <article> tag is probably the best addition from a SEO point of view. The <article> tag allows to mark separate entries in an online publication, such as a blog or a magazine. It is expected that when articles are marked with the <article> tag, this will make the HTML code cleaner because it will reduce the need to use <div> tags. Also, probably search engines will put more weight on the text inside the <article> tag as compared to the contents on the other parts of the page.
A new <section> tag. The new <section> tag can be used to identify separate sections on a page, chapter, book. The advantage is that each section can have its separate HTML heading. As with the <article> tag, it can be presumed that search engines will pay more attention to the contents of separate sections. For instance, if the words of a search string are found in one section, this implies higher relevance as compared to when these words are found all across the page or in separate sections.
A new <header> tag. The new <header> tag (which is different from the head element) is a blessing for SEO experts because it gives a lot of flexibility. The <header> tag is very similar to the <H1> tag but the difference is that it can contain a lot of stuff, such as H1, H2, H3 elements, whole paragraphs of text, hard–coded links (and this is really precious for SEO), and any other kind of info you feel relevant to include.
A new <footer> tag. The <footer> tag might not be as useful as the <header> one but still it allows to include important information there and it can be used for SEO purposes as well. The <header> and <footer> tags can be used many times on one page – i.e. you can have a separate header/footer for each section and this gives really a lot of flexibility.
A new <nav> tag. Navigation is one of the important factors for SEO and everything that eases navigation is welcome. The new <nav> tag can be used to identify a collection of links to other pages.
As you see, the new tags follow the common structure of a standard page and each of the parts (i.e. header, footer, main section) has a separate tag. The tags we described here, are just some (but certainly not all) of the new tags in HTML 5, which will affect SEO in some way. For instance, <audio>, <video> or <dialogue> tags are also part of the HTML 5 standard and they will allow to further separate the content into the adequate categories. There are many other tags but they are of relatively lower importance and that is why they are not discussed.
For now HTML 5 is still far in the future. When more pages become HTML 5–compliant, search engines will pay more attention to HTML 5. Only then it will be possible to know how exactly search engines will treat HTML 5 pages. The mass adoption of HTML 5 won't happen soon and it is a safe bet to say that for now you can keep to HTML 4 and have no concerns. Additionally, it will take some time for browsers to adjust to HTML 5, which further delays the moment when HTML 5 will be everywhere.
However, once HTML 5 is accepted and put to use, it will be the dominating standard for the years to come and that is why you might want to keep an eye on what other web masters are doing, just to make sure that you will not miss the moment when HTML 5 becomes the defacto standard.

SEO Musts for Local Business

 The Internet might be global in nature, but if your business is local, it makes no sense to concentrate on global reach, when your customers live in your city, or even in your neighborhood. For local businesses getting a global reach is a waste of resources. Instead, you should concentrate on the local community. You might be asking how you can do it, when the Web is global and Google doesn't classify sites according to their location. Here is how you can go local with SEO:
1 Use your location in your keywords.
The first trick is to use your location in your keywords. For example, if you are in London and you sell car insurance, your most important keyphrase should be “car insurance London” because this keyphrase contains your business and your location and will drive people who are looking for car insurance in London in particular.
2 Use your location in metatags
Metatags matter for search engines and you shouldn't miss to include your location, together with your other keywords in the metatags of the pages of your site. Of course, you must have your location in the keywords you use in the body text because otherwise it is a bit suspicious when your body text doesn't have your location as a keyword but your tags are stuffed with it.
3 Use your location in your body text
Keywords in the body text count a lot and you can't afford to skip them. If your web copy is optimized for “car insurance” only, this won't help you rank well with “car insurance London”, so make sure that your location is part of your keywords.
4 Take advantage of Google Places and Yahoo Local
Google Places and Yahoo Local are great places to submit to because they will include you in their listings for a particular location.
5 Create backlinks with your location as anchor text
It could be a bit tricky to get organic backlinks with your location as anchor text because some keywords with location don't sound very natural – for instance, “car insurance London” isn't grammatically correct and you will hardly get an organic inline link with it but you can use it in the Name field to comment on blogs. If the blog is dofollow, you will still get a backlink with anchor text that helps for SEO.
6 Get included in local search engine
Global search engines, such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo can bring you lots of traffic but depending on your location, local search engines might be the real golden mine. A local search engine could mean a search engine for the area (though it is not very likely to have regional search engines) or more likely for your country. For instance, Baidu is a great option, if you are selling on the Chinese market.
7 Get listed in local directories
In addition to local search engines, you need to try your luck with local directories, too. You might think that nobody reads directory listings but this isn't exactly so. For instance, Yellow Pages are one of the first places where people look when searching for a local vendor for a particular product.
8 Run locally-targeted ad campaigns
One of the most efficient ways to drive targeted, local traffic to your site is with the help of locally-targeted ad campaigns. PPC ads and classifieds are the two options that work best – at least for most webmasters.
9 Do occasional checks of your keywords
Occasionally checking the current search volume of your keywords is a good idea because shifts in search volumes are quite typical. Needless to say, if people don't search for “car insurance London” anymore because they have started using other search phrases and you continue to optimize for “car insurance London”, this is a waste of time and money. Also, keep an eye on the keywords your competitors use – this will give you clue which keywords work and which don't.
10 Use social media
Social media can drive more traffic to a site than search engines and for local search this is also true. Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networking sites have a great sales potential because you can promote your business for free and reach exactly the people you need. Local groups on social sites are especially valuable because the participants there are mainly from the region you are interested in.
11 Ask for reviews and testimonials
Client reviews and testimonials are a classical business instrument and these are like letters of recommendation for your business. However, as far as SEO is concerned, they could have another role. There are review sites, where you can publish such reviews and testimonials (or ask your clients to do it) and this will drive business to you. Some of these sites are Yelp and Merchant Circle but it is quite probable that there are regional or national review sites you can also post at.
12 Create separate pages for your different locations
When you have business in several locations, this makes the task a bit more difficult because you can't possibly optimize for all of them – you can't have a keyphrase such as “car insurance London, Berlin, Paris, New York”. In this case the solution is to create separate pages for your different locations. If your locations span the globe, you can also create different sites on different, country-specific domains (i.e. uk.co for GB, .de for Germany, etc.) but this is only reasonable to do, if your business is truly multinational. Otherwise, just a separate page for each of your locations will do.
These simple tips how to optimize your site for local searches are a must, if you rely on the local market. Maybe you are already doing some of them and you know what works for you and what doesn't. Anyway, if you haven't tried them all, try them now and see if this will have a positive impact on your rankings (and your business) or not.

How to Pick an SEO Friendly Designer

A Web designer is one of the persons without whom it is not possible to create a site. However, when SEO is concerned, Web designers can be really painful to deal with. While there are many Web designers, who are SEO-proficient, it is still not an exception to stumble upon design geniuses, who are focused only on the graphic aspect of the site. For them SEO is none of their business and they couldn't care less for something as unimportant as good rankings with search engines. Needless to say, if you hire such a designer, don't expect that your site will rank well with search engines.

If you will do SEO on your own, then you might not care a lot about the SEO skills of your Web designer but still there are design issues as we'll see next, which can affect your rankings very badly. When he or she designs the site against SEO rules, then it is not possible to fix this with SEO tricks.
When we say that you need to hire a SEO-friendly designer, we presume that you are a SEO pro and you know SEO but if you aren't, then have a look at the SEO Tutorial and the SEO Checklist. If you have no idea about SEO, then you will hardly be able to select a SEO-friendly designer because you won't know what to look for.
One of the ultimate tests if a designer is SEO-friendly or not is to look at his or her past sites – are they done professionally, especially in the SEO department. If their past sites don't exhibit blatant SEO mistakes, such as the ones we'll list in a second and they rank well, this is a recommendation that this person is worth hiring. Anyway, after you look at past sites, ask the designer if he or she did the SEO for their past sites because in some cases it might be that the client himself or herself has done a lot to optimize the site and this is why the site ranks well.
Here is a checklist of common web design sins that will make your site a SEO disaster. If you notice any or all of the following in the past sites your would-be designer has created, just move to the next designer. These SEO-unfriendly design elements are absolute sins and unless the client made them do it, no designer who would use the below techniques deserves your attention:
1 Rely heavily on Flash

Many designers still believe that Flash is the next best thing after sliced bread. While Flash can be very artistic and make a site look cool (and load forever in the browser), heavily Flash-ed sites are disaster in terms of SEO. Simple HTML sites rank better with search engines and as we point out in Optimizing Flash Sites, if the use of Flash is a must, then an HTML version of the same page is more than mandatory.
2 No internal links, or very few links
Internal links are backlinks and they are very important. Of course, this doesn't mean that all the text on a page must be hyperlinked to all the other pages on the site but if there are only a couple of internal links a page, this is a missed chance to get backlinks.
3 Images, not text for anchors
This is another frequent mistake many designers make. Anchor text is vital in SEO and when your links lack anchor text, this is bad. It is true that for menu items and other page elements, it is much easier to use an image than text because with text you can never be sure it will display correctly on users' screens, but since this is impacting your site's rankings in a negative way, you should sacrifice beauty for functionality.
4 Messy code and tons of code

If you have no idea about HTML, then it might be impossible for you to judge if a site's code is messy and if the amount of code is excessive but cleanness of code is an important criterion for SEO. When the code is messy, it might not be spiderable at all and this can literally exclude your site from search engines because they won't be able to index it.
5 Excessive use of (SEO non-friendly) JavaScript
Similarly to Flash, search engines don't love JavaScript, especially tons of it. Actually, the worst with JavaScript is that if not coded properly, it is quite possible that because of the use of JavaScript your pages (or parts of them) are not spiderable, which automatically means that they won't be indexed.
6 Overoptimized sites
Overoptimized sites aren't better than under-optimized. In fact, they could be much worse because when you keyword stuff and use other techniques (even when they are not Black Hat SEO) to artificially inflate the rankings of the site, this could get you banned from search engines and this is the worst that can happen to a site.

7 Dynamic and other SEO non-friendly URLs
Well, maybe dynamic URLs is not exactly a design issue but if you are getting a turn-key site - i.e. it is not up to you to upload and configure it and to create the links inside - then dynamic URLs are bad and you have to ask the designer/developer not to use them. You can rewrite dynamic and other SEO non-friendly URLs on your own but actually this means to make dramatic changes to the site and this is hardly the point of hiring a designer.
These points are very important and this is why you need to follow them, when you are choosing a SEO-friendly designer. Some of the items on the list are so bad for SEO (i.e. Flash, JavaScript) that even if the site is a design masterpiece and you promote it heavily, you will still be unable to get decent rankings. SEO-friendliness of design is a necessity, not a whim and you shouldn't settle for a SEO-unfriendly designs – this can be really expensive!

How to Boost your SEO with Google Adwords

Many advertisers use Google AdWords as their major PPC network. However, in addition to using AdWords for getting paid traffic to your site, it can also be used for SEO. Here are some ideas how you can use AdWords for SEO.

1 For Keyword Research
The most valuable use of AdWords for SEO is to research keywords. Keywords are the basis of any SEO campaign and even if you are an expert in your niche, you should always research keywords simply because users frequently search for quite unexpected keywords and keyphrases you as an expert will never think of. Needless to say, what matters most for high rankings is which keywords your target audience is searching for, not which keywords you as an expert think are most popular in a particular niche.

In order to find what users are searching for, you need a keyword research tool. It is true that there are many special (free and paid) keyword research tools but Google AdWords Keyword Tool is light years ahead of them all.
It is simple to use AdWords to research keywords. You can either enter the URL of your site or put in some seed keywords, the tool will then automatically generate a whole bunch of suggested keywords. Look at the results and shortlist all the keywords that seem relevent and have a decent global search volume.
You may want to rank well for ALL the generated keywords, but its best to focus all your efforts on a selected few. The idea now is to find keywords that are relatively easy to optimize and yet have a decent search volume. These would be the keywords with the least compitetion in Google. Go to Google.com and enter each of your short listed keywords (one at a time). It is best if you search for the exact phrase, so surround your keyword with double quotes. Note how many web results there are for each of the phrases. Now that you have collected the 'Number of web results' for each keyword, calculate competition ratio by divding it's 'Global search volume' by the 'Number of web results'. The keywords with the higher ratios are the easier ones to optimize.
You can now start a SEO campaign for your keywords however you'll see next, it might be much wiser to start an AdWords campaign instead.

2 To Ensure that the Keywords You Have Picked Convert Well

After you have picked your keywords, you need to verify if these keywords really work for you – i.e. if they convert properly. No matter how precise you've been when picking your keywords, if you don't test them in practice, you can never know for sure if they work well or don't. You can pick lucrative keywords with high global search volume and low levels of competition and still end nowhere.
For instance, for this website - webconfs.com we could try optimizing for the keyword "Search Engine Optimization". It could take a year or so with a LOT of effort to reach the first page on Google for "Search Engine Optimization” and still one can never be sure this will happen.
However, let's pretend that this happens – We manage to top Google for "Search Engine Optimization” after a year of hard SEO work. To our greatest disappointment, even the first place for "Search Engine Optimization” on Google did'nt bring the expected results because the bounce rate for this particular keyword turned out to be very high. Since we do not provide SEO Services a lot of people reaching us via "Search Engine Optimization" may NOT be getting what they're looking for. Instead, lesser popular keywords, such as "SEO Tips” or "SEO Guide” might have lower bounce rates and may actually perform better than "Search Engine Optimization” did for us.
The result is not surprising but the price paid is. If we had launched an AdWords campaign, it would have saved a lot of trouble. We could have spent $20-50 on AdWords for "Search Engine Optimization” and it would have taken us a week or less to figure that the bounce rate for this keyword is very high and it makes no sense to do organic SEO for it. These $20-50 on AdWords would have spared a year of wasted SEO efforts.

3 For Getting a Better CTR with Your Existing Rankings

In addition to keyword research, AdWords is a valuable tool for getting a better CTR (Click Thru Rate) with your existing rankings. You might rank well for a given keyword, get a lot of traffic, and still be unable to monetize this traffic because your CTR is low. The reasons for this might be various but inadequate title and description could be a very possible reason.
AdWords can also help you get better CTR with your existing rankings. For instance, if you run ad AdWords campaign and you are satisfied with the conversion/performance, you might want to keep changing your ad title and description until you feel you have reached the maximum CTR for your keywords.
Sure, it might take you a couple of tries till you find the winning combination of a title and a description and you might even lower your CTR in the process but once you find this magical combination of a title and description, just copy them as the title and description for your page in order to maximize your organic search CTR as well.


4 For Geographic Targeting
One more good use of AdWords for SEO is geotargeting. If you bid on traffic from many geographic locations, you can use Google Analytics to compare how different locations convert. It is quite natural to have significant discrepancies in the conversions for the same keyword among the countries.
When you go to Google Analytics and see which countries are converting best, you can invest more effort in them. For instance, you can create local pages for these countries or target the geo-specific keywords with exceptionally good conversion rates.

AdWords is a really valuable tool not only for advertisers. It started as a tool for advertisers but its use is not restricted to them alone. For many publishers and SEO experts AdWords is the most valuable tool because even a moderate AdWords campaign can give you valuable insights and save you a lot of time and money to optimize for words, which don't work for you.

Make money from your website

For millions of people web sites are the major source of income. Thanks to the various ways to monetize a site, it is possible to make a living as a web master. However, this doesn't mean that every web master is a millionaire. Well, if you know how to monetize your web site, you might not get rich but at least chances are that under the worst possible scenario, you will be able to cover your hosting fees and the other expenses you make for your site.

Currently the most profitable ways to monetize your site are CPM ads, CPC ads, CPA ads, direct sales of ad space, and selling merchandise/goods/services. These ways are described in this article.

CPM Ads Can Bring In Cents

CPM ads (an abbreviation for Cost Per Thousand) is the oldest type of site monetization. You put banners on your site and advertisers pay you based on the number of unique impressions/page views your site has.

CPM ads are the easiest form of site monetization because they require almost no effort on your side, but they are also the least feasible because as a rule (unless you have really high traffic and your audience is well-targeted), the rates are low. Some CPM ad networks pay as low as $.05 per 1,000 uniques, which means that you need millions of visitors in order to make $100-200 a month.

Popups and layer ads pay a bit more ($.5-2 per 1,000 uniques/pageviews). They could bring you a few dollars a month but many visitors find them especially irritating and this is why many web masters are not willing to put popups and/or layer ads on their sites.

There are high-paying CPM ads – for instance ads paying $2-5 per 1,000 uniques but usually the networks that run them have very high traffic and quality requirements for the sites that are eligible. As a result, it is very hard to get into these networks and take advantage of these well-paid CPM ads.

There are many CPM networks we can recommend. For sites with lots of traffic the choice better and some of the good options are Advertising.com, TribalFusion, CasaleMedia, and ValueClick because there CPM rates are good. AdBrite, AdToll, Right Media, and BurstMedia are also good. Some of these networks are CPM-only, while others have other types of ads as well. Google also has CPM ads, so you may want to try them.

CPC Ads Are a Profitable Way to Monetize a Site

CPC ads (an abbreviation from Cost Per Click) are different from CPM because with CPC you get paid not when visitors view ads but when they click on them. The good news is that CPC rates are much, much better and as a result, it is possible to make a decent income even with a small site with not so high traffic. The key with CPC success is to have a well-targeted site in a niche where there are a lot of advertisers.

The most popular CPC network is Google Adsense and even though there are other CPC networks, the income you can make from Adsense is much higher. The reason is that Google Adsense has many advertisers and if your site is in a profitable niche, CPC can be the best way to monetize your site. Additionally, unlike some of the other CPC ad networks, Google Adsense is open to publishers from all over the world.

Usually CPC ads are text ads and you publish them in blocks. However, there are also intext ads, where the keyword is underlined and when the visitor puts the mouse on it, a tooltip with CPC ads appears. Intext ads are less obtrusive but it takes much more effort for the user to notice them (and above all – to click them), which means that your chances to make money are further decreased. Kontera is one of the most popular networks for intext CPC ads.

The list of good CPC ad networks is not as long as the list of CPM or CPA ad networks but still there is a choice. For instance, Google Adsense, Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN), BidVertiser, Chitika, and Clicksor are generally considered top choices but since many CPM ad networks pay decent rates for clicks on their CPM ads, you might want to try them as well.

CPA Ads Could Make You Rich

Currently CPA (an abbreviation from Cost Per Action) is the most profitable way to monetize a site in a profitable niche. CPA, also known as “affiliate programs”, pays you a commission when your visitors perform an action. Most often this action is a purchase, but it could also be something else – i.e. download a free trial, or signup for the service of the advertiser.

Affiliate programs can make you rich because there are many products with really fat commissions. For niches such as health, finance, travel, etc. affiliate programs are a real golden mine.

However, affiliate programs require a lot of efforts on your side and still there is no guarantee that the offers you pick to promote will convert well and will make you money. Sometimes even the highest converting offers won't convert on your site and the only thing you can do is replace them with other offers, hoping that they will convert better.

There might be hundreds of CPM ad networks but for CPA they are thousands. It is practically impossible to try all of them personally and this is why we would like to recommend some of the best to start with. Amazon, eBay, ShareASale, Commission Junction, Clickbank, Max Bounty, Azoogle, Never Blue Ads, LinkShare, or PepperJam are just a few of the greatest CPA networks we can recommend.

Direct Sales of Ads
If you are not happy with the CPM rates of ad networks, or CPC and CPA don't convert well with your site, you could try to find direct advertisers. However, have in mind that such an endeavor is not necessarily bound to succeed and if your site doesn't have audience advertisers can't reach elsewhere, you will hardly be able to negotiate good prices. Still, for some sites direct sales of ad space are a viable alternative and this is why you could also try it.

Openads Ad Server and OIO Publisher Ad Platform are two of the sites where you could try your luck. AdBrite also allowa you to price your ad space. In fact, almost any major network gives you the chance to put a widget on your site to invite advertisers directly to advertise on your site.

Sell Merchandise/Goods/Services
In addition to CPA ads, where you are selling other merchants' products, you can try selling your own merchandise or products/services with your brand. This technique works well mainly for popular sites with loyal audience and is hardly the easiest way to monetize a site. You could try to sell merchandise/goods/services as a supplementary service and if you see that this monetization technique works, you can expand the business. CafePress is one of the best places where you can sell merchandise with your logo and the greatest thing is that they print on demand, which means you don't have to keep your merchandise in stock.

The monetization techniques we described here can be combined. You can run CPM ads together with CPA or CPC. You can also combine multiple ads from the same type (i.e. CPM, CPC, or CPA) from different ad networks, provided that this doesn't violate the terms of these networks. There isn't a universal prescription about the best way to monetize a site. The basic rule is that you need to try and see what works for you. The fact that a given monetization technique works for somebody else doesn't mean that it will work for you, so you need to try and see for yourself.

Revisited: The Art of SEO

As much as Google *pretends* to like SEOs by inviting us to parties at the Googleplex and posting on SEO forums, the bottom line is that they don’t like us — or rather, they don’t like what we do. Google wants to find the best, most relevant sites for the search query at hand all by themselves. Perhaps someday they will actually be able to do that, but for now, they still need our help, whether they like it or not.

Unfortunately, unscrupulous SEOs have given Google good reasons not to like us. Because of search engine spammers, Google is constantly changing their ranking criteria and is always on the lookout for the telltale signs of SEO on any given site. It’s not a huge stretch to say that they may even downgrade the sites that they believe have been SEO’d.

If you think that having your keyword phrases “in all the right places for
SEO” is a good thing, think again! You’re essentially telling Google, “Hey
look…my site has been SEO’d!” To which they reply, “Thanks so much for
letting us know… ZAP … see ya later!” Doesn’t matter if your site is
the most relevant (in your mind) to the search query. Doesn’t matter that
you’ve placed your keyword phrases strategically throughout the site.

Stuff that worked like a charm for many people in the early years of SEO may actually hurt rather than help now. As to what might trigger an SEO “red flag,” my guess is that it’s a combination of things. Like, if you have a certain number of traditional SEO factors on any given page, those may set off some Google warning bells (otherwise known as a spam filter).

Some of the traditional SEO formulaic elements that you may have been taught to use include putting the keyword phrase:

• in the domain name
• in the file name
• in the Title tag
• in the Meta description tag
• in the Meta keyword tag o in the image alt attributes
• in an H1 (or any H) tag
• as the first words on the page
• in bold and/or italics or a different color
• multiple times in the first paragraph or twice on the page
• in the copy in every single spot on the page where it might possibly make sense to use it, and
• in all the hyperlinks pointing to a page.

If you put the same keyword phrase in many of those spots, you might very well trigger a spam filter. Since it’s difficult to determine how many and which combinations of those things might trigger the filter, the best advice I can give you is to do your SEO without any particular formula in mind.

That’s how I’ve always done it and it’s always worked because every site is
unique and has different SEO needs.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to describe this type of SEO to others, as
people are always looking for the magic formula. For as long as I’ve been
doing SEO (over 12 years now), I’ve had it in the back of my mind that I
wouldn’t want to tip off the engines that my sites were SEO’d. This is one
of the reasons I’ve never used keyword-rich domain names or file names.
That’s probably the most obvious SEO thing you can do.

The most important aspect to being a good SEO is creativity. You shouldn’t
worry too much about the specifics of putting keyword phrases here and
there, and again over there. Not every page needs an H1 heading with
keyword phrases in it. If your page isn’t designed to use H1 headings, you
don’t need to change it to use one just for SEO purposes. And many images don’t really and truly make sense with a keyword phrase in their alt attribute (alt tag). Don’t force one to be there just for the search engines.

Most importantly for Google (and for your users), when it comes to your page copy and how you use your visible keyword phrases, less is definitely more. Please don’t read my Nitty-gritty report and then put the same keyword phrase in every single available spot on your page that you can find. My report is supposed to help you think about a few places you may have missed because you weren’t thinking about being descriptive when you originally wrote the copy. You can definitely have too much of a good thing.

A first paragraph on a page that has, say, 4 sentences, should not have 10
instances of your keyword phrase. It will look and sound dumb. I know that I have stressed this in my conference presentations and in our High Rankings seminars, but no matter how many times I say this, people don’t quite grasp the importance of working this way. If your copy reads poorly to a human, and does not come across as natural professional copywriting, the search engines won’t like it either.

When you do SEO, you don’t follow a guidebook. Think like a search engineer and consider all the possible things they might have to combat both now and in the future. Always optimize for 3 or 4 or even up to 5 phrases, and spread them out throughout the entire page. Never, ever, ever think that it’s the first paragraph that matters and stuff ‘em all in there. There should be an equal distribution throughout the entire page, and you should never use the phrases so much that you hear them constantly when you read it.

If you’ve done it right, an everyday user should not have any idea that a page has been SEO’d. A trained SEO should be able to spot what your keyword phrases are, but it shouldn’t be glaringly obvious. Last, but not least, hire a professional copywriter to work on the important pages of your site. This is the best investment you can make for your site and your business. Even if you don’t want to hire an SEO, you absolutely MUST hire a
professional copywriter. You need someone who really and truly understands target audiences and how to speak to them about the benefits of what you offer. You can easily teach someone like that the SEO writing part

Setting Realistic SEO Expectations

Those who've been in the SEO biz for a number of years know how much more competitive it is these days compared to a few years ago. The number of web pages indexed by search engines has doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in past years. On top of that, a good portion of site owners and webmasters know just enough SEO to be dangerous. In the golden age of SEO, the vast majority of websites hadn't given a thought to the search engines, and when they did, it was only to place some keywords in their Meta tags. (Which, incidentally, didn't help then either.) Those were the days when anyone who knew even the slightest bit about SEO could easily rank highly in all the major search engines, with very little effort. Even competitive areas were doable with just a little more work than their non-competitive counterparts.

The Competition Is Fierce

These days, it's almost the exact opposite. Even keyword phrases that nobody's searching for can sometimes be difficult to obtain high rankings with unless you really and truly know what you're doing. And even then, those rankings may be here one day and gone the next. The problem is magnified for new businesses and new websites. If your site isn't at least a few years old, your SEO efforts will be less likely to provide the results you want. This is one reason why your website optimization should always be seen as a long-term proposition.

It's About Targeted Traffic, Not Rankings

As we move forward in this industry, webmasters, site owners, and SEOs need to shift their focus from asking how they can get this keyword to this position in this engine to how they can get more targeted traffic and convert it into customers. Unfortunately, a large portion of those looking into SEO services are still seeing the small picture. For instance, on the contact form on our High Rankings site, I ask people to tell me a little bit about their "business goals." A good number who fill it out want something like "top-5 rankings in Google and Yahoo for this keyword." Huh? That's not a business goal! A business goal is more like "Bring more people to my website who are searching online for the types of products we sell." (As a side note, soon after writing this, I got an email from someone whose goal was to have their Flash site be "#1 in all the search engines for the word 'spring.'" I kid you not!)

Don't get me wrong, I very much understand why people would love to move their rankings up from #11 to #1 for a highly sought-after and targeted keyword phrase. I'm quite sure it would very much increase their targeted traffic and their sales (assuming they're doing everything else right). My frustration lies in the fact that there are people who believe that somehow an SEO company can magically snap their fingers or wave their magic wand and make it so.

Even the best SEOs are not magicians. They can't simply place a site at the top of the engines when there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of others that offer basically the same thing, and provide basically the same information. If they could, you'd see a whole lot more millionaire SEOs.

Does this mean that SEO is dead?

Absolutely not! But SEO that focuses on rankings for the most highly sought-after keywords in any given space is most definitely dying. This doesn't mean that you have to settle for keywords that receive few searches. It just means that you have to broaden your horizons and see the big picture.

Almost every time I review one of those "put me at #1" prospects' websites, I see tons of opportunities for fixing the site in general so that it will work better for both their users and the search engines. They are almost always so focused on their "money phrases" that they completely neglect many areas of their site. Instead they put their special phrase on every page and never research the thousands of others that are being typed into search engines every day.

Content for Content's Sake

Another trend I've been seeing a lot lately is the creation of content simply for the sake of creating content. What's that all about? SEOs certainly throw the words "good content" around a lot, but why is it that nobody seems to know what that means? We now have a whole cottage industry of companies who will allegedly write "good content" for you. Worse, there are even some that will *rent* you content! Newsflash...good content has nothing to do with the history of your products. Nor is good content a bunch of madlib spam pages where you simply substitute keyword phrases from one page into the other. Good content isn't stuff you write for the search engines.

What Exactly Is Good Content?

Good content is unique. Really and truly unique. It is creative ideas that simply popped into your head which nobody else in your space has thought of yet. The key to good content is creativity. Unfortunately, creativity itself seems to be a dying art. Being creative isn't looking at what your competitor is doing and copying them. It's being a leader, not a follower. It's having your own voice and your own opinions and expressing them, regardless of what others might think. It's pouring your heart and soul into your website, not looking for the next quick fix. And it's (say it with me) making your site the best it can be for your site visitors AND the search engines. It's what brings targeted traffic to our own site for thousands of phrases, and it's what will help your site gain traffic for whatever phrases relate to it. But it's not easy, and it's not fast. And it can't be done with the flick of a switch.

Determine Your True Goals

So please...if your pet phrase isn't ranking highly enough, don't call me and don't email me. In fact, don't call or email *any* SEO company. Instead of calling, you need to reassess your goals. No SEO company in the world will be able to help you unless you are ready to forget about what you think you want, and learn more about what you really need. Read that last sentence again until you really understand it. Forget about what you think you want, and learn more about what you really need.

Beware of SEO Companies Who Will Tell You What You Want to Hear

And remember, there are plenty of SEO companies that will say they can do whatever you want them to do. You want to be #1 for "spring"? Sure, no problem. They will happily take your money, do some work, and promptly get no results. Don't blame them though – they were just telling you what you wanted to hear.

Ten Tips to the Top of the Search Engines

Ten Tips to the Top of the Search Engines

Having a website that gets found in Google, Yahoo, and Bing, etc. isn't hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are my latest and greatest tips to get you started:
1.Do not purchase a new domain unless you have to. The search engines put a lot of stock in how long your website and domain have been around. While you can purchase a new domain and redirect your old one to the new one, your best bet is to use your existing domain/website if at all possible. If you're redesigning or starting from scratch and you have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, you can expect at least somewhat of a loss in search engine traffic. It could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months or more.


2.Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines. This may sound counterintuitive, but hear me out. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into their little search box. If those "someones" are typing in search words that relate to what your site offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience. You need to optimize your site to meet *their* needs. If you don't know who your target audience is, then you need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online that might provide demographic information, and visit other sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research, and copywriting.

3.Research your keyword phrases extensively. The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect. To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use research tools such as KeywordDiscovery, Wordtracker or Google's Keyword Tool. Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page. Never shoot for general keywords such as "travel" or "vacation," as they are rarely (if ever) indicative of what your site is really about.

4.Design and categorize your site architecture and navigation based on your keyword research. Your research may uncover undiscovered areas of interest or ways of categorizing your products/services that you may wish to add to your site. For instance, let's say your site sells toys. There are numerous ways you could categorize and lay out your site so that people will find the toys they're looking for. Are people looking for toys to fit their child's stage of development? (Look for keyword phrases such as "preschool toys.") Or are they more likely to be seeking specific brands of toys? Most likely, your keyword research will show you that people are looking for toys in many different ways. Your job is to make sure that your site's navigation showcases the various ways of searching. Make sure you have links to specific-brand pages as well as specific age ranges, specific types of toys, etc.

5.Program your site to be "crawler-friendly." The search engines can't fill out forms, can't search your site, can't read JavaScript links and menus, and can't interpret graphics and Flash. This doesn't mean that you can't use these things on your site; you most certainly can! However, you do need to provide alternate means of navigating your site as necessary. If you have only a drop-down sequence of menus to choose a category or a brand of something, the search engine crawlers will never find those resulting pages. You'll need to make sure that you always have some form of HTML links in the main navigation on every page which link to the top-level pages of your site. From those pages, you'll need to have further HTML links to the individual product/service pages. (Please note that HTML links do NOT have to be text-only links. There's nothing wrong with graphical image navigation that is wrapped in standard <a href> tags, as the search engines can follow image links just fine.)

6.Label your internal text links and clickable image alt attributes (aka alt tags) as clearly and descriptively as possible. Your site visitors and the search engines look at the clickable portion of your links (aka the anchor text) to help them understand what they're going to find once they click through. Don't make them guess what's at the other end with links that say "click here" or other non-descriptive words. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. The cool thing about writing your anchor text and alt attributes to be descriptive is that you can almost always describe the page you're pointing to by using its main keyword phrase.

7.Write compelling copy for the key pages of your site based on your chosen keyword phrases and your target market's needs, and make sure it's copy that the search engines can "see." This is a crucial component to having a successful website. The search engines need to read keyword-rich copy on your pages so they can understand how to classify your site. This copy shouldn't be buried in graphics or hidden in Flash. Write your copy based on your most relevant keyword phrases while also making an emotional connection with your site visitor. (This is where that target audience analysis comes in handy!) Understand that there is no magical number of words per page or number of times to use your phrases in your copy. The important thing is to use your keyword phrases only when and where it makes sense to do so for the real people reading your pages. Simply sticking keyword phrases at the top of the page for no apparent reason isn't going to cut it, and it just looks silly. (Purchase and read our Copywriting Combo for exact tips on how to implement this correctly.)

8.Incorporate your keyword phrases into each page's unique Title tag. Title tags are critical because they're given a lot of weight with every search engine. Whatever keyword phrases you've written your copy around should also be used in your Title tag. Remember that the information that you place in this tag is what will show up as the clickable link to your site at the search engines. Make sure that it accurately reflects the content of the page it's on, while also using the keyword phrases people might be using at a search engine to find your stuff.

9.Make sure your site is "link-worthy." Other sites linking to yours is a critical component of a successful search engine optimization campaign, as all of the major search engines place a good deal of emphasis on your site's overall link popularity. You can go out and request hundreds or thousands of links, but if your site stinks, why would anyone want to link to it? On the other hand, if your site is full of wonderful, useful information, other sites will naturally link to it without your even asking. It's fine to trade links; just make sure you are providing your site visitors with only the highest quality of related sites. When you link to lousy sites, keep in mind what this says to your site visitors as well as to the search engines.

10.Don't be married to any one keyword phrase or worried too much about rankings. If you've done the above 9 things correctly, you will start to see an increase in targeted search engine visitors to your site fairly quickly. Forget about where you rank for any specific keyword phrase and instead measure your results in increased traffic, sales, and conversions. (You can sign up for a Google Analytics for free, which easily tracks and measures those things that truly matter.) It certainly won't hurt to add new content to your site if it will really make your site more useful, but don't simply add a load of fluff just for the sake of adding something. It really is okay to have a business site that is just a business site and not a diatribe on the history of your products. Neither your site visitors nor the engines really give a hoot!

SEO Advice: Writing useful articles that readers will love

Okay SEOs, what can you learn from my previous post about changing the default printer for Firefox on Linux? In the last week someone wrote and said “I want you to talk about SEO, and don’t give me any of that crap about good content.” I’m going to beg to differ.  I wrote that post mainly because I’ve looked for this information a couple times and never found exactly what I was looking for quickly. That tells me that in this small niche, I could utterly rock the search engines. Plus once I figured out the info, it was only 10-20% more time to package it up nicely. Now this short content post can act as an evergreen draw for searchers.
Notice what I did with keywords. I carefully chose keywords for the title and the url (note that I used “change” in the url and “changing” in the title). The categories on my post (“How to” and “Linux”) give me a subtle way to mention Linux again, and include a couple extra ways that someone might do a search–lots of user type “how to (do what they want to do).” I thought about the words that a user would type in when looking for an answer to their question, and tried to include those words in the article. I also tried to think of a few word variations and included them where they made sense (file vs. files, bash and bashrc, Firefox and Mozilla, etc.). I’m targetting a long-tail concept where someone will be typing several words, so I’m probably in a space where on-page keywords are enough to rank pretty well. I don’t need anchor-text for “linux default printer” or similar phrases; in the on-page space, I’d recommend thinking more about words and variants (the “long-tail”) and thinking less about keyword density or repeating phrases.
The meta-issues I’d mention would be:
1) The utility of an article is paramount. If you write 2000 words about mortgage loans and never discuss the industry landscape or impart some useful, concrete knowledge to your reader, that should set off a warning flag in your head. So use this advice only for good (high-quality articles), not for evil.
2) Be sure to study your niche. I just spent 10-15 minutes to tackle the “default printer in Linux/Firefox/Mozilla” space. Is that niche worth writing an article about? Well, it was for me, because I was looking for this information myself. In general, any time you look for an answer or some information and can’t find it, that should strike you as an opportunity.
But the larger point is that if you put in time and research to produce or to synthesize original content, think hard about what niches to target. My advice is not to start with an article about porn/pills/casinos/mortgages–it’s better to start with a smaller niche. If you become known as an expert on (say) configuring Linux or hacking gadgets, you could build that out with things like forums to create even more useful content. Look for a progression of niches so that you start out small or very specific, but you can build your way up to a big, important area over time.
There are a lot of niches that just take sweat equity. You could be the SEO that does interviews. Or the SEO that transcribes Matt’s videos. Or the SEO that makes funny lists. Or the SEO company that provides webmaster radio. Or the SEO that makes podcasting easy. Or the SEO that specializes in a certain content management system or shopping cart. Or the SEO company that specializes in Yahoo! stores. Or the SEO that specializes in accessibility. Or the company that mocks Silicon Valley and its companies. Or the SEO that specializes in AdWords API ROI tracking. Or you could be the SEOs that write-up a summary of every panel at every search engine conference. Or the company that does cartoons. Or the SEO who pays attention to Google Base, Google Co-op, Yahoo! Answers, or Facebook. Or the SEO that provides Firefox plugins. Or the company that provides metrics and tracking for blogs. Or the SEO that talks about patents. Or the SEO that specializes in dynamic sites. Eye-tracking. Beginner SEO tutorials. Making maps mash-ups. Ajax SEO. SEO for non-profits. SEO for Second Life or MySpace. SEO to repair a company’s reputation. SEO for MySQL, Python, Ruby on Rails, WordPress blogs, or .NET sites. The SEO that surfaces databases or Flash sites. SEO for self-publishing authors. The SEO that does radio ads.
An infinite number of niches are waiting for someone to claim them. I’d ask yourself where you want to be, and see if you can find a path from a tiny specific niche to a slightly bigger niche and so on, all the way to your desired goal. Sometimes it’s easier to take a series of smaller steps instead of jumping to your final goal in one leap.

WordPress SEO

The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For WordPress Sites
WordPress is one of the best, if not the best content management systems when it comes to SEO. That being said, spending time on your WordPress SEO might seem like a waste of time, it most definitely is not. Optimizing your site to the best practices outlined in this article will help you improve your rankings, gain more subscribers and have a better website in general.

As I take quite a holistic view on (WordPress) SEO, meaning that I think good SEO should be engrained in all aspects of your online marketing and PR, this guide covers quite a lot of ground and is therefor a long read. Check out the table of contents below for some quick jumping around.
Updates to this WordPress SEO article
This article has been kept up to date with the best practices for WordPress SEO since early 2008 and the release of WordPress 2.5, the most recent update was on March 28th, 2012, with WordPress version 3.3.1 being the most current release. The goal of this article is to let all the info of all the different articles I wrote about the topic, here and on other sites, fall into one big piece: the final WordPress SEO tutorial.
The first versions of this article were heavily based on using a plugin called HeadSpace and a series of other plugins. I've since released my own WordPress SEO plugin which replaces quite a few of those. That plugin has proven so powerful that sites like SearchEngineLand, The Next Web and Mashable now all use it. This WordPress SEO plugin is very stable and ready to use and this article now assumes you're using it.
If you're using another SEO plugin, like All in One SEO pack or Ultimate SEO, but would like to switch and make use of my free and extremely powerful SEO plugin, I've written a migration guide for you. It's a really easy process. If you're not using an SEO plugin yet, grab my WordPress SEO plugin and get going.
As search, SEO, and the WordPress platform evolve I will continue to keep this article up to date with best practices. Be sure to subscribe to my WordPress & SEO newsletter to receive notification when I update this article.
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