High traffic keywords are always an addiction. Write a good, optimized copy targeting the high traffic keywords and sit back enjoy the traffic coming in.

But it’s also a fact that many of us don’t prefer to write content for the spiders, rather write for the users. I mean, how often can you write copies calculating the keyword density metrics (although they are irrelevant these days) ? It’s so boring.

But there is a work around to this. Write genuine articles for the users, but at the same time target the search engines and the high traffic keywords. Here’s how.

How to target high traffic keywords, without affecting the readers

Step 1 -  First off, using the Google Adwords keyword tool, find out the top traffic generating keywords related to your niche.

Step 2 – Go to your older posts, sorting them by the following criteria.
a) Page Rank – Find out the ones that have comparatively higher page rank, pick those first.
b) Text and Images – Select those articles that has lot of text and images used.

Step 3 – Go to the post and edit it either using “All in One SEO plugin” options OR the normal edit mode.(See screenshot)

Step 4 – Now replace all the image alt tags and title tags with relevant keywords related to that article and which are more inclined to the high traffic generating keywords.
Ex:- If “Tourist help” is the high traffic keyword related to tourism, you might want to select an article related to tourism and add the keywords in it.

Step 5 – Reformat the page title (Noted 1 in screenshot) and optimize it for the keyword.
Ex:- If your older title was “My traveling experiences”, you might want to change it to “Tourist help – tips and advice from a veteran traveler”

Step 6 – Additionally, you might want to change or add relevant keyword specific title tags to all the links in the article.

Step 7 – Also, it might be a good idea to add the relevant keywords and meta description. (Don’t spam, make it very relevant to the content you have)

I’ve found that if you do this to older posts that have gained some page rank and link juice already, they are likely to give you some search engine traffic.

And the advantages are that -

- Since your regular readers might have already read the article, the title change won’t really bother them.

- The older articles are probably getting traffic ONLY from referrals and search engines, so this is the best way to cash in on it.

While doing the editing just make sure that, you don’t edit the permalinks. Careful.

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Link building is a tough task I’ve to admit. No, it’s not difficult to do, but doing it the “right way” demands more time and energy or else, you end up being a nobody at it.

Personally, I go for natural link building developing content that’s “linkable”. Use it in combination with the social media and things can get very interesting ! Now, the problem arises when not all of your content is really potential link bait stuff.

I mean, how successful can one be trying to link bait for “101 Home Loan Services” ? Lyndoman may have an idea here, but I’m of the opinion that you better don’t do it rather find other channels where you can develop potentially viral content, that closely resembles the original idea/product and find a bridge between the two.

Drifting away from the topic, I wanted to talk about blog commenting - a very popular tool used these days to gather links. (And I think it’s more popular these days for it’s quick turn around time compared to other methods.)

How do you do blog commenting?

- By finding out blogs that allow “do follow” comment links related to your content, and actively commenting on them to source links.

If not for the time required to deliver real comments, this could’ve been the next best weapon for spammers (it already is).

How to find blogs that pass link juice?

1. Find out from Google using search queries, blogs that have the “Top Commentators” plugin installed.
Ex:- Google for “allintitle:top commentators” and you could find them. (the query may be blocked by Google if too many people are searching, so try alternate ones.)

2. Find out using Google, blogs that use the “Comment luv” plugin.
There may be both “nofollow” and “dofollow” comments here, you may have to sieve them out.

3. Find out resource lists on the web like this one.

Believe me, there are lot of blogs out there that offer dofollow comments and links, it’s only a matter of finding them. But once you have them make sure you only use the best ones, that are -

- High PR (Preferable 4 and above)
- Related to your domain and content
- Not penalized by Google
- Not in bad neighborhood

And, don’t get carried away with all the links you are gathering, make sure you don’t do it the “bad way” and stick to these guidelines while commenting.

To some wholesome, quality backlinks !!

So you know that footer text is a good real estate option in SEO. And you’ve been placing your sitemeter button and credit texts there. Some of you are clever I know, you have that “natural” looking two lines to text there with links to totally un related websites! Guess what, I have some better alternatives for ya.

1. Place the “unreached” yet important categories at the footer
   All your categories are likely to be there somewhere on the sidebar or above the fold right? But not all of them gets the same focus and visibility. If there are cetegories that are not getting the right visibility as it should, try placing them in the footer. They are likely to get crawled more, and may be you can get some long tail keyword traffic from them.
2. Place your pages at the footer
   Sometimes, pages take a lot of space above the fold, and you don’t really need to place them there (no thumb rule here). In some cases, it might be a better idea to place your pages at the footer. Especially when you want only the search engines to absorb the data from them. Ex:- A technical blog which has an “about us” page that has information on what the blog is about.
3. Place your less-viewed posts at the footer
   It’s also possible that you have excellent articles that you thought will be the the “next viral article” when you wrote it, but unfortunately something went wrong and they didn’t get the focus you planned. Now it’s time to
4. Place an “About me” article
   “About me” articles are a great way to squeeze in those crucial keywords and make a natural text rich space. So utilize it. Write about what you are doing and what you are blogging about (food for thought!)
5. Place all your low page rank articles
   So you know that there are some articles that are low page rank compared to other articles. Of course that doesn’t ,mean that they are completely ignored, but if you think they have the potential to get some traffic from Google, why not pass some link juice to them by linking to them from the homepage?

Still don’t get the idea? Ah! Forget it.

Okay, this time I’m turning the table around.

I’d like to know from you, what are the things that you do to your blog posts, right from selecting topics to blog to publishing (and even after it) the articles - what are the things that you do if at all any, deliberately to increase the possibility of driving search engine traffic?

I can safely suggest some points that I’d like to hear more from you.

- How well do you do keyword research?
- Do you use the traditional, “available or everyone” tools or do you use any clever method?
- While writing the articles, do you follow any pattern?
- While deciding titles, is there anything that you keep in mind?
- Do you do anything to the articles, after publishing them?

Well, those were only suggestions, please feel free to give your arguments and thoughts from your experience.

Overheard this question at a discussion - “What happens when I link to many sites from my site? Does it affect my Page Rank? I have a looong blogroll, you know.”

Indeed a very authentic doubt. Fortunately there’s nothing to fret about.

Let me take an example now.

Let’s assume we have four sites. Site A - And Site 2, 3 and 4.

This is how the linking pattern is for all of them.

Site A (PR 6)
||
||
v
Site No. 2 (PR 5) [your site]
|| ||
|| ||
v v
S.3 S.4

Now, Site A has lot if incoming links from valuable sites that it manages to get a PR6. As per the above diagram, Site A links to Site 2, which gets a PR4.

Now, let’s assume that Site 2, links to lot of sites (including Site 3 and 4..upto Site 10).

The question is whether Site 2 will lose all it’s Page Rank linking to 10 different sites or not.

And the Answer is NO.

What happens is instead of Site No.2 losing it’s page rank, all the 10 different sites it linked to will get probably PR 1 (PR5/10)

Had it linked to just one site, (Say only S3) then it would’ve received a PR 4, because PR5 is not shared with ten other sites.

So in effect, when a site links to more number of sites, there’s nothing much happening to the original Page Rank of the site, but it will affect the sites it is linking to. If the PR5 site link to fewer sites, then they have a higher chance of getting a better PR, but at the same time, if PR5 site links to ten different sites, then obviously the PR5 has to be shared with all of them so, each website will get a lesser PR. Again, no effect to the initial Page Rank of 5 to the original site.

This is the reason why you should be careful while “selecting” links from other websites. If there are many other sites sharing links with you (like on a bloroll), the you are likely to get lesser PR, while if you source it from sites that links o lesser sites, you have a better chance to get a higher page rank.

So guys with long blog rolls - no problem , add more.

Related reading- Imp of incoming links.

If you thought that Google found your website around the dates that you launched it, there is a good chance that you wrong. Google finds a page/website through links, and that’s when they’ll set your “birth date” as. So if you were checking your competitors domain name age, ouch…time to recheck!

How to find out your birthdate on Google?

Try this search (with your domain of course) and find out when Google indexed you. You can see it on the left hand side of the search.

Now try the same with your competition or competing keywords. Do you see a pattern?
Yes, the top ranking ones were found first.

So, who said Google is dumb and can’t fix duplicate content.

Here’s another of the “Quick SEO Tips” series. Ten things to keep in mind while posting images on blogs.

1. Include the keyword in your image name.
   Ex:- Instead of “DSC1234.jpg” it’s better to name it as “Make-money-online.jpg”
2. Never use characters/spaces in filenames as they will be encoded.
   Ex: - Instead of “DSC%20123cat.jpg” it’s better to name it “DSC-123cat.jpg”
3. Use the ALT tags.
   ALT tags are recommended, though their usage is debated. Let’s put it this way. It may not give you a good push in the SERPS, but definitely, you don’t want to lose an opportunity.
4. Use the “Title” attributes.
   Title attributes are a great way to add meaningful information about the images. Use it.
   Ex:- Title=”Yellow cat sitting on the wall.” P.S - Don’t forget the image search traffic.
5. Place the image within ample text.
   So that, engines can crawl the text and make out what the image is about, if at all the ALT tags, filenames and TITLE attributes aren’t available.
6. Do not use the same ALT tags for two or more images on the same page.
7. Do not use the same TITLE attributes for two or more images on the same page/site. It appears artificial.
8. If possible, place the image amidst text ad not before or after it.

Forget long term link building strategies, they take a long time after all. Who’d wait for so long?
Here are five quick things you can do to get some cool links, the smart way!

1. Create wallpapers of your site and submit to wallpaper directories(most of the them allow linkbacks)
   Do a google search and find out the list of sites. Example.

2. Write articles and submit to ezine articles (the old grandpa).
3. Add links to blogrolls. Many of them are link exchanges, in those cases, do a three-way link exchange with your partner sites.
   Find sites that accept linkbacks by googling them down. Example.
4. Guest blog at various blogs.
   Most them offer links to author sites.
   Find them out by doing a similar search.
5. Submit ringtones to sites and get links back to your site.
   Find the sites here with a similar search.

P.S - Here on, there will be quick articles on DailySEOblog (like this), that will feature small, power packed, capsule information on SEO. No blabbering, no frills, just pure gyan. Hope you’ll like it. They’ll be called “SEO Quick Tips” and you can subscribe to themhere.