7 Important SEO Tips

We’re going to look at the 7 most important things you should do if you want your sites to rank well. We’ll be focusing specifically on ranking well with Google, but these tips can also help you rank well in other search engines.

1. Make sure you have keywords in your title tag.

Always put keywords in your title tag, but don’t stuff. Remember, the title is what people click in the SERPs, so it should be enticing. Two phrases of 2-4 words is plenty.

2. Use keywords in your domain name.

Having golfswingtips.com if you want to rank for “golf swing tips” helps. It’s not the holy grail of ranking, but it does make a big difference.

3. Only use .com, .net, and .org domains.

The .info domain, the .biz domain, and other extensions are used extensively by spammers. These domains CAN rank well, but it’s harder than the big three extensions.

4. Don’t use more than two dashes in your domain name.

Spammers tend to stuff keywords into domains by putting a lot of dashes. If at all possible, don’t use any dashes in your domain, but never use more than two.

5. Get backlinks to your site from high quality sites in your niche.

Getting backlinks is essential, but take care to get most of your links from quality sites that are related to your site’s niche. If your site is about golf, get mostly backlinks from sites about golf or at least sports. Backlinks from cooking sites wouldn’t work as well.

6. Don’t get hundreds of backlinks per day. This looks unnatural.

Anything unnatural can cause your site to fall under suspicion. While you might not get banned, you might see a big drop in rankings for a while.

7. Write quality content, and don’t worry about achieving a specific keyword density.

Keyword density is a thing of the past except for proving you’re a “spammer” if your density is too high. Just write naturally.

Getting More Backlinks

Backlinks are absolutely critical to a successful SEO campaign. If you don’t have any links to your site, it’s going to be very unlikely that you would rank for any keywords that really matter. You might get some long tail traffic, but probably not in any significant quantity.

The trouble is, most websites don’t link to their competitors. It doesn’t make sense for them to link to another site that competes against them, unless of course they have a reason to that benefits them directly.

That’s what you have to do. You have to provide sites with a reason to link to your site. This is actually a lot easier than you might think.

There are several ways you can provide value in order to get links:

• Write exceptional content. The higher quality your content, the more links you will get.
• Go easy on the ads. Sites with fewer ads will get more attention, because they don’t look like spam sites.
• Offer something in return. For example, offer to write a great article for someone else’s site in exchange for a link.
• Exchange links. While reciprocal links do tend to carry less weight, they are still very valuable.
• Pay for links. Do NOT pay for “backlinks”, as Google frowns on this. But you can buy “advertising” on sites.

Always be working on getting more backlinks to your site. If you don’t, you will probably find yourself slipping in the rankings while your competitors climb. Backlinks are an ongoing thing. You have to continually be getting more of them to stay ahead of the competition. It’s not a difficult job, but it is time consuming, so consider outsourcing the job to a knowledgeable and reputable backlink provider. Just remember to check their references. If you hire someone who is inexperience, they could end up getting you a bunch of worthless links that could hurt your site more than they help.

SEO Title Tags

The title tag is undoubtedly one of the most important components of SEO. If your title tag isn’t configured properly, it’s going to be very difficult to rank well for the keywords you want to rank for.

The title tag of an HTML document is found in the head, between the <title> and </title> tags. It should contain keywords, but you shouldn’t stuff the title full of dozens of meaningless keywords. Ideally, your title should have just two or three phrases, up to around 160 characters or so.

What I like to do with my title tags is to insert one main keyword phrase, then another similar phrase that uses some of the same words, but not all. Let’s look at an example title.

Improve Your Golf Swing | Golf Swing Tips

I’ve included my main keyword phrase first (Improve Your Golf Swing), and then I’ve included a secondary keyword phrase (Golf Swing Tips) that includes two of the four words from the first phrase. You’ll also notice that the two phrases are separated by the | or pipe symbol. This could also be a dash, an asterisk, or one of several symbols. I just prefer to use the pipe symbol and it works for me.

Some people like to put the name of their site in the title of every page. While you CAN do this, I don’t recommend it unless the name of your site is related to the topic of every single page. For example, if you have a site called GolfSwingTips.com, and every single article on the site was about improving a player’s golf swing, then you could probably safely put “Golf Swing Tips” in your title. If your site was called GolfMania.com, you might not want to put “Golf Mania” in every title tag.

Whatever you do, do NOT leave the title tag blank. If you do, it will show up as “Untitled Document” in the search engines. Not only are you not likely to rank this way, but you aren’t likely to get many clicks through to your site, either.

Choosing a Domain for SEO

One of the most important elements of successful search engine optimization is choosing a good domain. If you want to rank well for a particular phrase, it’s a good idea to buy the domain name related to that phrase.

For example, if you want to rank well for the phrase “Amish quilts”, you should ideally buy amishquilts.com. If that domain isn’t available, you could either try for a less popular version, like buyamishquilts.com, or you could buy amishquilts.net or amish-quilts.com. I would stick with .com domains if at all possible. If necessary, you could buy a .net or a .org, but I never bother with other extensions. In my experience, .com domains rank better and faster than comparably optimized domains with other extensions.

One main reason why the domain is so important is presumably because the Google algorithm is programmed in favor of companies. For example, someone searching for “Taco Bell” would probably prefer to be presented with the company’s official website first. If someone searches for “Taco Bell recipes”, they probably aren’t looking for the Taco Bell website, but might like a site called tacobellrecipes.com!

Should You Use Dashes?

A lot of people want to know if they should use dashes in their domain name if a domain isn’t available without dashes. In the past, dashes were very useful and sites using them ranked very well. These days, domains without dashes seem to have an edge over domains with dashes. Although this isn’t always true, it does seem to make a difference.

In my experience, domains with dashes are fine, but NOT more than two dashes per domain name. Anything more and the domain may look spammy to the search engines, as well as to any potential visitors!

How Many Keywords?

Ideally you want to buy a domain that uses the phrase has the highest traffic in your niche. Most of the time, the highest traffic phrases (those with two words usually) will be taken. Three and four words is fine, too. In general, phrases with five or more words have a lot less traffic and don’t work as well for getting traffic. If possible, I would buy a two word domain first. Not only will they usually get more traffic, but they will be more valuable if you decide to sell the site later.