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Marketing For Musicians Search
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SEO – How to Use Keywords Effectively
Keywords are search terms that are entered into a search engine for finding particular items of interest or topics relating to your website. You will need to optimize your website with
relevant keywords in order to get the best possible placement. You should use your keywords and keyword phrases effectively within your site so when a search engine spiders your site, the keywords get picked up. There should be a variety of keywords and keyword phrases used.
Within the HTML of your site, you should use keywords in the title tag. These keywords should be used in a descriptive
sentence for each page within your site. The most relevant
keywords and keyword phrases should be used in the home page title. You should repeat the keywords phrase two or three times but make sure that the title makes sense.
Use of Meta tags is also important. You should place all relevant keywords and keyword phrases in your Meta tag. Check back on this often as you add content to your site. Using keyword phrases as opposed to single keywords is generally helpful as single
keywords can be very competitive. Avoid overuse of a keyword. This can actually hurt placement with some search engines if it is used too often. Use commas or spaces to separate the keywords but do not use both. It is also helpful to add common
misspellings of a word as well as both the singular and plural forms of the word or phrase. It is also advisable to upper and lower case words and phrases.
In the Meta tag description, use your keywords and keyword
phrases and repeat them two or three times. The Meta tag
description should be relatively short and not exceed twenty five words. It should also make sense and entice users to click to your site when they view it on a search engine.
Content of your site is the most important part of keyword
placement. Search engines often concentrate on the first 250 words for relevancy and density so use the majority of your
keywords there. Try to get a five to seven percent density but do not go over this. Search engines will consider this spamming and it will damage your placement. Make sure the content makes sense without sounding too repetitive. It may be helpful to write your content without using keywords first, then modify the content to incorporate your most relevant keywords.
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SEO - Natural Linking Strategies
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be the difference between a small, barely profitable or visible website and a traffic magnet website. There are a lot of ways, both good and bad, to
influence the search engines. Some search engines react to
certain strategies better than others. Some even have
conflicting strategies that they react to. To document all of these things would require a significant number of pages and research that goes beyond the scope of this article.
However, there are a number of things that can be documented that will work for most if not all search engines. And let's face it; there are really only 3 that make a difference between a
successful and an unsuccessful SEO strategy. They are the big three: Google, Yahoo and MSN. These three search engines in any given month are responsible for over 90% of all internet
searches.
So, what is this article about? It's about what you can do as a website owner that will influence the search engines using
commonly accepted practices of linking to other websites
(outbound) and getting website links (inbound) back to you. There are basically 4 strategies that a website owner usually will employ to increase their website value in the eyes of the search engine. They are reciprocal linking, one-way linking, multi-site linking and directory linking. A website owner should not think that using just a single strategy is the right answer - sure it will help your SEO but it won't be the Best answer. The Best answer is to employ all 4 techniques and to do it
naturally.
Each of the four linking strategies has specific descriptions that can be summed up as:
1. Reciprocal Linking = Site A links to Site B, Site B links back to Site A
2. One-Way Linking = Site B links to Site A
3. Multi-Site Linking = Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site D links back to Site A. Could be 3..N number of sites involved.
4. Directory Linking = Site Directory A links to Site A
That seems simple enough but it takes time and effort to perform all 4 strategies and most website owners aren't willing to spend the time or don't have the time to spend on it. As a website owner, SEO needs to be one of the highest priority tasks that you need to address, just after Order Processing and Fulfillment and Customer Service. Without free traffic from the search engines, other traffic generation strategies that usually require payment must be engaged.
Now doing the 4 strategies above is great, but it gets even
harder because you have to do it in a way that doesn't trigger the search engines to enforce a penalty upon your website. No one except the search engine engineers know all of the exact penalties but we have some good theories for some of them.
The first is the rate at which links are created. There is a certain threshold for creating links that is too fast. It's
possible that the threshold is a sliding scale and is related to the age of the website according to the engine. For example, a young low-traffic website should not normally be getting 1000 links a month whereas an older website that gets a lot of traffic could be OK to get 1000 links a month. As you progress in your linking strategies make sure you keep this in mind, especially if you are thinking about buying links.
The second is that having a link to every site that links to you will likely reduce the value of the links. In other words, if all you ever get is Reciprocal Linking, you will likely move up the SERP's (Search Engine Results Page's) but you won't reach your sites full potential. Having a mixture of all 4 strategies will appear more natural to the engines.
The third is having all inbound links to your site on "linking" pages will make those links less valuable than having a natural link on a contextually relative page for a percentage of the inbound links. The higher you can drive this context percentage, the better your website will rank. These types of links are
often some of the most difficult links to generate an exchange for because it requires more time and effort for both website owners.
The fourth is to have links inbound from all different ranking sites. If all you have linking to you is page rank 6 and 7 sites then you are likely to be sending the message that you purchased your links and that is not natural to the engines. Some would argue that purchasing links for driving traffic is just fine and it is. However, you should not expect the search engines to give those inbound links very much weight when calculating your SERP positions. It is significantly more natural for you to have a large number of rank 1 and 2 inbound links and a decreasing
number of inbound links as you move up the page rank scale (0 - 10).
The fifth is to have the text of you inbound links varied. It isn't natural to have every website that links to you to have the same text on the link description. The natural tendency would be to have a certain percent be the sites name, but after that it should be a wide variety of description. Your link text
description is a key factor for how your site/page will rank, so make sure that you keep that in mind as you specify your
preferred link text description on your website.
Finally, it would be best for a good percentage of your inbound links to appear within the text of a page that appears natural for the reader of that site. And for those links to not all
point back to the home page of your website. It's most natural for a good high quality link to appear in the text of a page and have it point internally within your site.
So, when you begin or continue your SEO activities keep all of these things in mind and don't be impatient. Impatience could incur penalties or worse. Your website could end up in the
"sandbox". It is rumored and becoming more concrete that Google supposedly uses a sandbox that questionable sites are put in until they have aged to a point that Google no longer feels that they are being manipulated. Many of the search engines use
similar protection schemes to eliminate spam sites and
manipulation sites to keep their SERP's from being cluttered.
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Tips On Getting Your Web Site Spidered Quickly
The world of internet marketing is a highly competitive place. As a beginning internet marketer there are some basic things you should know about how search engines spider and index your web site. Unless the search engines find your web site and index it, there is no way the general public will know that it is there.
After you have created your web site and chosen the products or services you want to provide, you will be ready to get your site listed with the search engines. When developing your marketing strategy, it is important to include a plan to get your web site spidered quickly. In order to get your site indexed you must let the search engine spiders know you are there in the first place.
You may have wondered if there are ways to lure the spiders to your web site other than manual submission. The good news is that many SEOs recommend the following methods rather than
submitting your pages directly.
The best way to get your site spidered quickly is to link your web site to another site that is already indexed, that is related to your site, and that is spidered frequently. Having your site mentioned in news releases, blogs, and so on can get your site your web site spidered very quickly, sometimes within days.
You can also use the more traditional methods including posting in forums and providing articles for the various article
directories. If you choose this route, be careful not to spam. Follow the posted rules, give helpful answers, and do not go overboard on your "sig file". Private forums are not always indexed, so make certain that the forums where you post display recent posts and are listed in search results.
No matter which method you choose to get your web site spidered, you will need a good site map. A site map lists and links to all pages on your site. If your site consists of over approximately one hundred pages, consider using a multi-page site map. Make certain that every site map page links to all other site map pages. You should have a link to your site map on your home page and preferably on each of your pages. You should make sure your web site pages are simple and free of useless clutter.
Getting your web site spidered quickly is the most important thing you can do to achieve success as an internet marketer. Using the methods suggested above can be very helpful in getting your web site indexed.
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