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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Quick SEO Tip – Leveraging on high traffic keywords through older posts

It’s always good to brush up your basics, even if you know it all, check it just for fun, and sometimes you may discover something new, if not, it’s just that – a cross check.

Today, the folks at Google have gathered up some information for us on what are technically – incoming links/inbound links – internal links and – outbound/external links.

Very clear information put up there.

Hey still thinking this is not for you ? Okay, what is an “inbound link?” If you are taking more than half of a second to answer, you should check out the article.

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What are internal links, inbound links and outbound links ?

And it’s a guarantee. You have three months time (assumption), implement these and get ready to shed those green points.

(Caution: This is for the adventurous at heart, and the steps suggested are “implement-able” at your own risk.)

1. Copy paste content from other blogs and websites.
   Edit words like is, was and the, with suitable replacements and re publish the “refurbished” contents.
2. Buy links from text link brokers. Not many, a few will do.
3. Go to a public forum and advertise for “link spots” available on your blog.
4. Place a “links available for sale” note on your blog.
5. Buy a directory submission service from Digital Point
   Get 1000 link submissions for $10.
6. Add the text-link-ads widget on your blog.
7. Make all the outbound links on your blog “nofollow”
8. Sell the Russian guy a few ad spots on your blog.
9. Write reviews on Text link ads and TNX, if un successful, try again.

Any experienced guys out there, please share your thoughts and add in your valuable points. Please mask your identity while doing so.

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9 things you could do to screw up your Page Rank

Sitewide links, Deep links, Sponsored links, Carefully crafted anchor texts, Blogroll link lists - Well, they are not probably worth tying together, but I’m beginning to think that they have some similarity of sorts and are more junk than anything else these days, that Google might be discounting them no matter how valuable they might seem. And I have the reasons.

With the September Page Rank toolbar stats update, we’ve seen more “downgrades” than “upgrades” right ? Many popular blogs have dropped by one point, some of them even further down.

Reasons are diverse, but let’s see if we can find a pattern.

I think with the new changes being implemented, there is clearly an indication that Google is once again sealing the concept that links are not any more just links. But a lot more factors goes into deciding whether a link is actually a “vote” or not.

Age old concept I know, but I think this is becoming more prominent.

Here are some factors I can think of to help Google decide if a link is actually a “vote” or not.

1. Content and nature of the site linking you
   More than the page and the content on the page linking to you, it matters more about, what is the content on the website that’s linking to you. Ex:- It might be wiser to consider a news site which has more authority and “value” link to you than a fellow blogger on hisname.com
2. Does the link come from your social network?
   Just like Digg, I cannot think of a good reason why Google should not discount the incoming links from a “friend” of yours.  A friend might be a common commentator on your blog, or a guest blogger, if he is related to you in some way, I think it’s fair for Google to consider that it’s a “favor link”. Even worse, what if Google knows who your friends are (it has the friend feed data remember?) and discounts all those links from the network ?
3. Are you guys too similar ?
   If your links are originating from same domains, which are too similar, won’t they be “favor” links ? Ex:- If you are a part of any Feedburner networks (like the feedburner technology bloggers network), why shouldn’t Google stop from discounting the links from all the blogs in that network?

Well, these points my sound lame, but I think there is a possibility to this concept, getting stronger as we go ahead and Google acquiring more “networks”.

If we look from Google’s perspective, it all makes sense, it only would want to take into consideration the genuine links and recommendations and not the “scratch me, I scratch you” networks that might be gaming the system.

It is also a fact that the networks and the user interactions will grow stronger, and the “favor” links will keep coming in. I can only guess, that they might only carry less value than earlier.

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Google might be discounting links from your social network friends as they are “favor” links

Search Engine Land reports Google testing image banner ads on Google Image search. Aaron Wall has a confession to make and a question for you  - Is buying links stupid ? If you’ve been thinking if Google ever forgives a penalized site, you better read this. Bill Slawski has a list of suggestions for blogging beginners – good read !#

Stephan Spencer spoke at the Startonomics on SEO, and he has a good video for you. (It was not that all good quality for me, see if you get a good full session, but insightful talk there)

Brett Lane has a very interesting post on the five things to consider while hiring a Social Media Consultant, seriously interesting one that.
And here is my favorite. Eric writes about why and how he thinks that Google weighs the anchor text less and the content of the linking page more. I cannot disagree with him.

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Best of the SEO blogs

Some of you have been asking me if I use any “secret SEO tools” to gain that edge over others.

Good question, but there aren’t any that are “secretive”. For those of you reading this blog for some time now, knows that I make it a point to reveal as much as possible, and keep no “secrets” to myself.

On a different note, tools and wizards only help you do the basic stuff which I think is only the tip of the ice berg. I always like human algorithm and wouldn’t want to trust the tools.

Having said that, tools are the best way to get the information dug out.

And I’ve been mentioning them here(Free site stats checkers), here(Free link checkers), here(keyword density checkers), here(SEO friendliness), here(Rank Checkers) and here(Site validation tools).

And if you are looking for more from the SEO experts, check this story. It has a list of all the SEO experts reveal out their secret SEO tools !

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What SEO tools do the experts use ?

While selecting a domain name, what is your preference ? Would you go for a perfect keyword match or a brand name that has a better recall value?

Before jumping into a conclusion, let’s see what are the options we have.

Of course, there is no thumb rule that says one is better than the other but, there might be a few factors that you want to evaluate before deciding on a domain name.

1. Site content
   A lot depends on what your content type is. Do you have a content rich website, or a community website where pages just fly by? When the content itself is the USP of your webpage then, the domain name takes a backseat, and you can get away SEO’ing the pages. In such cases the domain name is pretty much irrelevant assuming that your pages are itself strong in SEO and helps you develop that authority you need.
2. Site volume
   How much content do you think will go in? Will you be having a few thousand content rich pages by next year? In that case, you don’t have to worry if you didn’t get a perfect keyword match.
3. Scalability
   Are you planning only for a 10 page website that will have static pages and nearly no content update ?  You might want to get a closer keyword match because the real estate you get to do SEO are limited, so cling on to every possible smaller details you can find, and that might include a domain with perfect keyword match.
4. Promotion
   If you have a long term strategy with strong promotions and advertising campaigns in mind, then the content pages would take care of relevancy patterns with Google and you have the luxury of going for a funky domain name. Because, you are going to build on the brand positioning and recall value with the promotions, and as the traffic builds up, you don’t have to completely rely on the search engines.
5. Website type
   That’s a very general term to use right ? But yes, what category does your site belong to, is it a one page marketing site, a forum based community, a CMS based site, a blog or a static page site – really matters while selecting a domain name. If it’s a one page marketing site, then there is no other go but to select awkwardly long keyword match domain names, if it’s larger community based sites, then you have more luxury of going for “web 2.0” type domain names,

There are probably more pointers out there to help you select a domain name, more complicated and finer details, but generally, I think that with the new algo changes on Google, keyword match domain names are certainly not favored as they had been favored earlier. So it isn’t something you should put on the top of the list while buying a domain name. No definitely not !

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Selecting a domain name – SEO or Recall Brand value?

A complete customizable, slick twitter plugin that auto refreshes without page reload. If that’s what you’ve been looking for then head over to Kishore Asokan’s blog. He has released a Wordpress plugin that does just that.

Here are it’s features, and I’m sure you’ll love it.

1. Update twitter status from your blog
2. Update twitter status from your blog
3. View and display public updates on your blog
4. View and display your followers updates on your blog
5. Simple installation
6. Widget Ready, just need to enable to use
7. Can be displayed anywhere on your blog, if not widgets
8. Fully customizable, size, font, font size, colour, number of updates, number of followers, etc
9. Regular Updates

It looks pretty much interesting, at least for the Twitter enthusiasts out there. If you didn’t like those boring non-customizable twitter boxes, try this.

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Customizable Ajax Twitter Plugin for Wordpress that auto refreshes

Google takes us back to 2001, with it’s nostalgic search engine here. Interestingly, there was no SEO then.

And there are “SEO Experts” around who have more than 12 years of experience!

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In 2001, there was no SEO

Back to basics now. Article submission might be one of those oldest methods webmasters still rely on for link building methods - unfortunately. But are they really working? Do they give you backlinks, and if at all they do, how much of that time and energy you spent actually get converted to “authority”? That would raise more questions than answers.

Well, just to make sure all of us on the same level of understanding, let’s see what article submission really is.

Article submission is the process where an article on a targeted category/topic with crafted text and embedded links is distributed to channels that distribute them.

That’s a very crude definition I know. Well, two things here.

1 - The Article    and   2 - Where is it submitted to

Ideally, and article should be unique, well written and original with meaningful, contextual links and references. (Now, that’s an article I haven’t seen at all anywhere on the channels.) And the channel which receives the article is ideally one that is again exclusive, and original (yea alright..).

Now, article submission can really work if the above two factors are as close to the ideal one. Original source and original channels. But today (at least in my exp) both of them are heavily skewed. There are no original articles. All of them are either copied, or written to serve many. Let’s not talk about the relevancy of links here, that’s a different chapter, book altogether. And the channels that distribute the content is so original that they take articles from everyone, copied/scraped whatever, all they want is a few chunk of text to fill in, to show AdSense ads. Now, that’s when the whole process goes junk. Lack of original articles, and lack of original channels.

How can article submission be done right?

Can it be done? Yea, why not?

First off, article submission has to be seen as a method to increase the reach and length of your “tentacles” and not as backlink source.
When it is seen only as a backlink source, it is quite natural that it gets spammed.

- Write lot of articles and make them unique.
Submit each to only one source, and not multiple sources.

This will ensure that the same article does not appear on multiple sites, and thus avoiding duplicate content. So, whatever you grab from it, remains unique.

- Rotate the anchor texts.
Don’t use the same keyword as anchor text, use your creativity and make different versions of it, include them on each article.

- Do no submit to automated sources.
Yea, they’ll promise you a thousand backlinks in a week, but I can guarantee that all of them would be scrap. Because, all the articles on all those sites would probably be the same as they all got it automated.

- Submit only to reliable sources.
Like websites, that’s been there for some time, and not super scrapers that sprout out yesterday.

- If at all you want it automated, limit the number of pubishing to bare minimum. At least, you’ll save al those scrap websites from linking to you.

So essentially, article submision works or not, they’ll collect some backlinks for sure. To make the best out of them, don’t automate things, handpick sites and channels and spent some time writing stuff. The more the merrier !

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Article Submission - Do they work at all ?