From the above number, an estimated 70-80% of users focus more on organic search results than on paid adverts. Additionally, approximately 75% of individuals only look for information on the first search engine result page (SERP). Furthermore, a study has discovered that most websites receive around 41% of their traffic through search and only 11% from some social media platforms.

What do all these statistics mean to you then? These figures indicate that if you want to build a credible and strong marketing campaign, you can combine your traditional methods (e.g. print adverts, TV commercial, etc.) with modern strategies (e.g. pay-per-click, online advertising, SEO, etc.). Now, there is a huge importance in establishing both a storefront and eCommerce website.

When you have the latter, you can cater to your customers’ needs any time of the day. Plus, you can promote your business without spending a big budget. When you have the former, you can take advantage of the fact that Google receives over 2 billion location-based searches each month.

How to Submit Your Business to Google Places and Get Tons of FREE Traffic?

How is this possible? You can be one of the businesses that consumers spot online by signing up for Google Places. Google Places is an application programming interface (API), which allows you to enlist your trade location. Place Pages connect people to information from the best sources across the web, displaying photos, reviews and essential facts, as well as real-time updates and offers from business owners.

Once you have established and have optimized your listing page, you can rank in search results whenever potential customers shop around for offers within your niche and area.

Google lists everything  from restaurants and hotels to dry cleaners and bike shops, as well as non-business places like museums, schools and parks. It sounds like a great opportunity for your company. And, the best advantage of all is that it does not charge you a penny! With that said, sign up for Google Places using these simple steps.

Step 1: Go to Google Places and click “List Your Business”

» Go to google.com/places and choose “Get started”

» Log in using your Google (or Gmail) account or create one (that is, if you do not have one yet). If it is the latter, click on “Sign Up” at the top right corner (check out the next image for reference).

Step 2: Check if your Business has already been Picked up by Google Places

» The moment you have logged in or created an account and are already on the Places page, choose your country and type in your company’s phone number to help Google determine if you have a previous listing.

Step 3: Follow the Steps While Remembering Google Places Guidelines

» If there is no previous listing matching yours, another page will appear asking for basic info on your business. While you are filling out the fields, take note of these reminders:

- Provide complete details on each box.
- Use a real and specific address and not your P.O. Box.
- Supply as much information about your company on the “Description” field and do not forget to incorporate relevant keywords. And, by “relevant”, it refers to terms related to your niche or industry.
- Enter your website to ensure that your target customers know where to find you in case they want to shop online.
- Include several trade categories under “Category” as long as these associate with your offers. To do this, click on “Add another category”.

» Upload an image of your company logo as well as those of your products or successful transactions to show potential buyers your capacity as a seller.

Step 4: Get your Google Places Listing Verified

» When you are through, click on “Submit”, which you can see at the bottom. Now, you have to know that you need to verify or claim your listing before it actually appears on Google Maps or search results. You will receive an email, SMS, or phone call for this. While you can confirm through all these methods, the second and third are the quickest means.

» Sign up for Business Photos too. This way, you can give the consumers an initial look into your establishment and offers through pictures (taken by professional photographers from Google) and a 360-degree interactive tour.

» As a last note, take time to update your Places listing each time something new comes up in your company. Additionally, upload interesting content such as videos or links to your official website. Finally, request reviews from your satisfied customers because these help in putting you at the top of search results.

Guest Author: Emma Tomlinson is the Head of Retail at Smart Traffic, a leading search agency providing SEO reseller packages to local and national companies. You can read more articles from me by checking out the blog section of Smart Traffic’s official website.

International Search Engine Optimization or Multilingual SEO is the backbone of any global search marketing campaign. Often referred to as “natural” or “organic” search, SEO is the process used to improve website rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).

Not everyone will search for the product or service they need in English and your content needs to catch the terms that people are really searching for.  To complicate things further, people sometimes search using a combination of their own language and others or use a dialect specific to their region.

The aim of Multilingual SEO practice is to make websites more visible in search engines across the world and to ensure they are relevant and appropriate for the specific market they are targeting.

Although English is the language most commonly used by internet users it’s followed by Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and Portuguese, according to Internet World Stats.

Research by the Common Sense Advisory also shows that people are more likely to buy a product or service if information about it is available in their native language.

Localizing Content

Using machine translation software will give you a basic translation but it won’t take into account the popular terms that foreign language searchers are actually using. If you analyze the top-performing keywords in particular countries you’ll find that they’re sometimes a direct translation but other times they’re a colloquialism or a word borrowed from English or some other language.

Take Italy, for example; keyword analysis shows that one of the top searches for cheap flights  is “voli low cost”. Translation software could never give you this information but if you were a business targeting people who need cheap flights you’d definitely lose out to competitors by not using it.

The best way to get this essential information is to work with a native speaker and to analyze search term data to find the most popular terms that are actually being used in the SERPs.

Watch out for Dialects

Dialect quirks can also throw your searchers off track.  Take France and Switzerland, for example. Both use the common language of French but some terms are different in Switzerland to France.

If a keyword is translated into the wrong local word, even if the translation is technically correct,  you could miss out on traffic. Just as an example – a cheese dealer in France is a “fromager” but in Switzerland it’s  a “fruiterer”. There are also dialectal differences in the French spoken in Belgium, Africa and Switzerland.

There are other examples of this too: in Spain, for example, ‘coche’ means car, but in Latin American Spanish it is often used to describe a baby stroller. Similarly, what you’d call a ‘baby stroller’ in America is a ‘pram’ in the UK. These quirks can mean the difference between using a correct and high traffic keyword, and a rarely searched term.

Ask the Linguistic Experts

Make sure the source you liaise with is a true expert, preferably residing in the country you’re localizing your content for. They will be fully on top of the key language developments and quirks that you need to know about.

Ideally the expert that you work with will also be knowledgeable in the business sector you work in and have a good and up-to-date knowledge of SEO.

Guest author: Christian Arno is the founder of Lingo24, a top translation agency in the USA. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 150 employees spanning three continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over forty million words for businesses in every industry sector, including the likes of MTV, World Bank and American Express. Follow Lingo24 on Twitter: @Lingo24.

How Can You Recover from Penguin? One of the most difficult things with this update is telling people how to recover. Anyone hit by Penguin was deemed to be spamming Google. I doubt anyone has recovered yet but that doesn’t stop SEOs from sharing tips and techniques they are using in an attempt to break lose from the Penguin’s grip!

Top 5 Reasons to Hire an SEO Company for Penguin

Talking about Penguin recovery, I think it is about time when we start agreeing that when it comes to blogging and placing content online, ‘SEO is required’! There are companies that specialize in optimizing content for search engines but the question is whether to opt for them. Here are top 5 reasons why you should consider hiring a SEO company if your site was hit by Penguin update and you are trying to recover the SERP damage:

Knowledge of Search Engine Optimization

One of the main benefits of hiring a SEO company is that the employees will already understand the use of keywords and how to rank highly in search results. They know what exactly is wrong with your site and what needs to be fixed. The employees know the good tactics to use and those to avoid.

This takes months, if not years, to completely learn and then it takes time for the search engines to notice the change and rank the content accordingly. And when you are trying to recover from an anti-spam update like Google Panda or Penguin, hiring a SEO company makes perfect sense.

Understand Algorithm Changes

Forget about just Penguin or Panda updates, the search engines, in general, change their algorithms on a regular basis. This helps with ranking high quality content highly instead of those pieces that are trying to cheat the system. Those who work for optimization companies will understand the changes quickly and will implement them to the content; it can take months to really understand the changes and how it affects content on a website or blog.

Constantly Optimize Your Content

Another benefit of hiring an optimization company is changes are regularly made to the content on blogs and website. This is difficult for a website owner or blogger to do as they will need to offer fresh content and work on other areas of the site or blog – and the business. It is important to update blog pieces and content regularly to help with algorithm changes and to reach as much traffic as possible.

Saves Your Money

The problem with hiring someone else to do this is that it will cost money; otherwise search engine optimization is free. For those who run small blogs or niche websites, there may not be the funding available to have someone else do the optimization. This is something for larger businesses and those making a larger profit to consider.

Saves Your Time and Better Chance of Penguin Recovery

SEO copy-writing is extremely important to rank on a search engine highly. It is important to reach within the first two pages for the chosen keywords as research has shown very few searchers will look past the second, maybe third, page. Hiring a company to do everything helps to cut down on the time spent on the content and means time can be spent in other areas of the business or on the blog; however, this is not for everybody.

Further Reading: Top 10 Penguin Recovery Tips Directly From Google

Author Profile: Ryza Royze has been contributing search engine optimization articles to the SEO industry for almost 5 years. All she ever wanted is to share her knowledge with people showing interest in the same field.

If you are a blogger or a site owner you might probably have heard about Google Penguin Update; the latest webspam killer update Google launched this week in an continual attempt to penalize low-quality spam sites and reward high quality content. Like their earlier Panda update, nobody can tell for sure what exactly Google is experimenting with this algorithm update but Google made it very clear that it’s about targeting sites and blogs violating its quality guidelines.

Here’s an exact quote from the announcement.

In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. Our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.

How to Survive and Recover From Google Penguin Update Traffic Drop?

Even though the Google Penguin update, just like its big brother Panda update,  was supposedly targeted at sites, which engaged in spammy SEO tactics it appears to have penalized a wide range of legitimate and high quality web sites. If your site or blog has been hit by this update here are some tips directly from Google and some from our own SEO experience that can help you minimize the casualty.

1. Say NO to Hidden Text or Hidden Links

As obvious as it may be as to why this is a bad SEO practice still people keep doing it to trick Google and other Search Engines. Hiding text and links from normal human users and showing them to search engine spiders has been a age old spammer’s technique to boost their search engine ranking.

Site owners resorting to this method of spamming often use CSS to reduce the font size, use white text over white background (to make the texts and links appear invisible to human readers but visible to search spiders), display texts and links behind images, set font size to 0 etc. If you are doing it, STOP right now. Otherwise Penguin will get you!

2. Do NOT Use Cloaking or Shady Redirects

Cloaking is a real illegal blackhat SEO technique. Cloaking is when Search engine crawlers see one page (that is highly optimized for a certain keyword) and the visitor sees another version of the same page. They know whether it’s a crawler or a visitor based on their IP address and/or user-agent.

Similarly shady redirect techniques using meta refresh, Javascript, PHP, ASP and other techniques to mislead the robots and the human eye is a bad practice and is  against Google’s guidelines. If you still use redirects for unethical SEO purposes then you risk to get penalized or banned from the index.

3. Control Your OBLs (Out Bound Links)

Having many outgoing links does not get you any benefits in terms of ranking and could even make your situation worse. If you must have so many OBLs on a page then consider using NOFOLLOW on links that are of low-value. In this way, a visitor can reach this page using a link (pointing to this page) on your site. But the search spiders will not follow the links to all these external sites.

Also, your out-bound links should not appear as if you have sold them. Google is strictly against buying or selling of links with an intent to gain SEO value. So make sure you do not have any sponsored links  available on your blog/site. If you must have them, then make sure you have NOFOLLOWed such links.

4. Do NOT Stuff Keywords

Keyword Stuffing is one more black-hat SEO practice done by some webmasters who stuff their pages with lot of keywords. They use a large amount of keywords inside the post usually in form of synonyms, long tail keyword phrases that essentially mean the same and targeted at a specific set of keywords. Search engines like Google can easily identify it and will penalize your ranking.

A good way to ensure that you are NOT accidentally stuffing your articles with lot of keywords is to keep an eye on the Keyword Density. In simple words. keyword density is the ratio of keywords to the total number of words in a particular article. Usually, a keyword density of about 3% to 4% is considered optimal and you should refrain from going higher than that.

5. Don’t Send Automated Queries to Google

Unfortunately, Google wouldn’t say much about this practice. But as a rule of thumb, refrain your site (blog) from automatically sending any sort of queries to Google servers (or data centers). They clearly state that they do NOT want to be queried unless you have their explicit permission to do so.

Also Read: SEO Guide For Surviving Google Panda Update

In other words, do not use any third party software programs that might send queries to Google in an attempt to submit pages, check rankings, analyze, etc. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Gain More Google+ Followers:

I am not asking you to get into the number game, but there are fewer options left. However, if you do not like my casual and carefree approach, here is something diplomatic for them. Take it this way – you are writing great content and that means, large number of people will find it good and will give link back it and some even become your follower in Google + because of your creative prowess.

Here is How To Add Google Plus One Button To WordPress In 2 Minutes [Without Plugins]

So, this will lead to more followers and the increase in followers can easily be equated in increase in visibility in SERP when searchers are logging in. If some of the posts of your website manages to get some Google +, it will do more good to your website and a visible difference in SERP is likely to be seen soon. So, produce great things, resources, infographics, images, videos and Google + users will start loving you.

Set Up Authorship With Your Personal Profile:

Google’s latest authorship markup is making its search page look super hot with the images, names and followers of respective author incorporated. If you have a blog, you can claim your position in SERP with all the niceties added.

All you need to do is to create a profile in Google and once you are done with profile creation process, you can stage ahead with adding the link reference of your Author Page profile in your blog in the Contributor To section of your Google + page.

Google Plus Author Rank

Now, it is time to do some work with your blog. Lets say, your blog page is: http: //www.example.com/blog/my-first-post/ and the author page is: http: //www.example.com/blog/author/My-author-page/

The author page should be linked from the Blog Post page via the below code:

<a href="http: //www.example.com/blog/author/My-author-page/" rel= "author">My Author Profile</a>

And from the author profile page, you need to add a link back to Google + profile page of yours. You need to use the below code for hyper-linking:

<a href="[profile_url]? rel="me">Google+</a>

When you are done with it, make sure you have checked it against Google Rich Snippet Testing tool.

Get Connected Directly:

Google obsession with Google + is not anything unknown and that means, you need to have an impressive presence in Google + to see your website securing top ranking in Google. To make your Google Plus presence prominent, you need to place a small piece of code in the source code of your website that will form a cool Google + badge for your website.

This will make it easier for followers to follow your website in Google + and the more the number of followers, the greater the chances of securing top ranking in Search Plus Your World. Moreover, having a prominent position in Google + will certainly have positive impacts on your brand’s social presence.

More Plus +:

Since Google is gathering information from Google + to have an insight into users’ behavior and to get an idea whether a website is good enough for a user or not, you need to take extra care. Try to get as many Google + from different people without doing anything sneaky and you will have a better world to live.

Author Bio: Stephen Dedalus is an online consultant by profession and blogger by passion. He has written numerous articles and currently associated with webhostingdeals.org that offers best Webhost Deals.

At least, when it comes to my nutrisystem and medifast diet blog I currently get 99% of my search engine traffic from Google alone, while the other one percent comes from all the other search engines.

How To Get Free Traffic Using Google

The name Google is the first name that comes to the mind of most people when people talk about “search engines“, and any blogger who is very smart will quickly realize this and as a result leverage it for effective results.

I have been studying how Google works for years now, and as a result I’ve been implementing the tips I learned on my medifast and nutrisystem diet blog, and in this article I will be giving you a few tips on how to use Google to grow your blog.

Focus on Your Content

Do you know that Google currently considers around 300 factors before trying to rank any web page? I know that is a huge number of factors showing that nothing is certain, but in reality one of those factors is certain, and that one factor is your content.

Over the years Google has changed how it ranks websites, it has introduced a lot of changes in how it calculates links, and it has also disabled and introduced a lot of new factors. Of all those factors, the only factor that wasn’t affected is content.

What this shows is that Google still does, and always will, respect great content, so it is very important to start focusing more of your efforts on delivering the best of your content if you really want to get results from your blog.

Realize that Links Influence Google Rankings a Lot

Another thing you need to realize in other to get the best from your search engine optimization efforts is that Google places more importance on links to your site compared to other search engines. As far as Google is concerned, links control the web.

Most search engines today rank your websites based on majority of factors, but unlike other major search engines like Yahoo and Bing that focus on on-page factors, Google places more strength on the number of links to your blog and the quality of those links

Capitalize on Existing Rankings

One thing I’ve observed based on years of optimizing my medifast and nutrisystem diet blog for the search engines is that it is easier to move to page one for keywords I’m already ranking for compared to ranking for a new keyword.

In other words, Google places more importance in ranking you more for a keyword you’re already ranking for. The best way to effectively use this is to capitalize on existing rankings. So instead of having to target new keywords, try to look for keywords you are already ranking for and focus on improving your ranking for them.

Guest Author: This is a guest article from John who gets thousands of visitors daily from Google, and is always happy to share how he does that. He blogs about discount coupons for health products like Medifast and Nutrisystem. His best articles give nutrisystem coupons and medifast promo code.

Before one gets started, evaluating a link value is important for new link builders although it may be very tricky. Moreover, understanding the value of a link is also of great importance not only in building a new link but also in relation to content plan.

When one is making content specifically to target particular linkers, one should comprehend how one can value a prospective link in order to determine if the effort regarding the performed task is worthwhile. Many times when you’re creating a piece of content designed to target certain types of linkers, you’ll need to understand how to value a potential link to be able to determine if creating the content and actually getting the link will even be worth the effort.

Get Started

The foremost aspect that would be helpful especially in amplifying how to evaluate a link target is getting familiar with the phrase ‘it depends’. One would possibly ask if the page rankings matter. One should be able to explain the importance of having more links in a site, as well as another site that probably has a higher ranking. Moreover, one should know the significance of cache date when one is evaluating a resource.

It depends on some aspects

It depends of various aspects such as backlink profile, ones competitor backlink profiles, keywords as well as keyword set (phrase) that one attempts to rank for, in addition to other many factors. Putting into consideration that ones blanket reputation, at this point, one evaluates the effects of a link in relation to algorithm one can never obtain complete skill of as well as one who attempts to consider a marvelous number of various factors. It is ever depending hence it would be impossible to determine certainty all the time especially the links that would be most influential.

An instance

In case one sets up a fresh link builder wobbly on the resources, they would probably retort with a better comprehension of a value of a link. For instance, imagine an individual carrying out a promotion regarding environmental effects those outcomes from bottled water company. It is necessary for one to stat with typical search inquiry operator in attempting to establish a link prospects. The point here is assisting people to comprehend the process as well as introducing people to other better tools for prospecting.

For one to evaluate the value of a link, the content of the articles posted really matters. For individuals with websites, it would be a better idea to address the issue of frequently posting some content on the website regarding current news, as well as news regarding business.

If one is not a good web designer, it would an ideal idea to hire an experienced expert to design the website. This is because most traffic considers an attractive website.

Also Read: Top 10 Link-Building Tips for Your Blog (SEO)

This will help drive more traffic as well as maintaining the existing clients. The link on the other hand, should be enriched with relevant keywords as well as being able to direct on to other relevant links. One should focus on maintaining the link to be sure of the value to persevere. Moreover, for pages that frequently change, such as blogs, it would be best to assess the prospect value of the links that one may get from the page.

Author: Crystal J. Briscoe is from Exams Expert. Looking for exam help? Let’s take advantage of Exams Expert self paced SY0-301 Exam and pass your IT exams on first try.

Social Media and Blogs

Even the traditional Search Engine Optimization Specialist believed that blogs do wonders for SEO. The same remains true, with a small addition to it. Blogs have become more powerful with the correct use of social media to highlight them.

Facebook and Twitter, along with a horde of other popular social media sites, have proved their efficiency in popularizing blogs. Therefore bloggers must also understand how to make the best use of Social Media Sites to promote their posts over the internet to get their posts show the maximum results for them.

Online Profiles

It may sound like a rumor, but SEO Service Companies are claiming that search engines have started giving a high value to authentic user profiles these days. User information can be a huge catalyst adding to the value of a web page, as the search engines treat profile interaction as one of the most authentic tools to estimate how important and valuable a page is.

Therefore if you have not yet paid attention to the tools like Facebook Likes or Google +1, it is time that you made the full use of them to add value to your website and SEO efforts.

Mobile Web Optimization

Almost every internet savvy person is using mobile phones to browse websites and search for products and services these days. This in turn means that mobile web optimization has quickly assumed a great importance. Mobile websites are therefore a must for every business, and a good SEO company should be able to offer efficient mobile web optimization services to its clients.

Local Searches

When options are plenty, people start becoming more and more specific about their search. This is probably why local searches have assumed a great importance these days. It has become very important that your websites are listed in the local web directories, or local business directories.

This not only drives more targeted traffic to your site, but also adds a good value to your website with regards to search engines.

Website Loading Speed

Visitors to any site have a huge range of choices in front of them these days. This is specifically why they are becoming more and more impatient. Time is important for every person, and therefore websites should load fast to see the best response from visitors.

Search Engine Optimization Specialists are therefore very particular about developing websites that load fast and take visitors quickly to the information that they are after.

RSS Syndication

RSS Syndication is the secret to spread information over the internet in a viral manner. Everything is syndicated these days, be it blogs or be it your Facebook posts. SEO Service Companies urge webmasters and SEO experts to automatically spread feeds into the maximum number of sites possible, so that one post results in numerous posts over the most happening websites and Social Media Platforms over the internet.

This is the secret to spreading your information in a viral manner over the internet with the least efforts applied. Most SEO Service Companies and search engine optimization specialists have recognized these areas to explore with regards to SEO. These techniques are tried and tested, and are some of the most effective ways to add value to your website through SEO today!

Guest Author: This is a guest article Susmit Mukherjee, who is an experienced content writer. He likes sharing information about Search Engine Optimization Specialist and SEO Service Companies.

It is no secret that search engine optimized articles are very popular and your best shot to get loads of visitors. Firefox is a popular web browser that is used for faster internet surfing while also allowing for multiple add-ons such as the five listed below for SEO’s. So here are top five Firefox SEO extensions every Webmaster should have:

Best Firefox SEO Plug-ins For Bloggers

1. SEOQuake

This is by far one of the most popular SEO related plug-ins available, and is one that we frequently use day to day in our SEO work. When you visit a site, you can see information about the page that you are currently on, such as its age, page rank, when it was last visited by Google, the list goes on.

You can opt to see this information right away, or you can set it that the information is only found when you choose to do so. This can help to reduce problems with Google, who will start to notice unusual traffic from your IP address if this feature is utilized too often.

SeoQuake extension helps to check for competition such as to check PageRank, backlinks, domain age and various other statistics. This SEO add-on helps webmasters deal with search engine optimization and promotional websites.

The extension is fully customizable, and you can select the parameters or features that you wish to use. This can also help to make the plug-in work faster, and reduce the amount of suspicious traffic that is coming from your IP.

2. Firebug

This is a nifty little Firefox plug-in that is great to use for SEO purposes, and also for web development, if you work in that field. It allows you to see the HTML and CSS of an element with a page, but you can also make changes to the code and see immediately how it would look if these changes were actually made on the site. This SEO extension is particularly useful when it comes to making a mock-up for a client, as you can quickly and easily make a mock-up, without having to physically download pages and then make changes.

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a number of essential development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. You can also find and edit DOM (Direct Object Model) quickly.

3. SearchStatus

This Firefox SEO addon allows you to display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank of any website in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and other SEO tools.

This Firefox extension allows you to see how any and every website in the world is performing. Designed for the highly specialized needs of search engine marketers, this toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar.

4. IE Tab

As Internet Explorer is still a popular browser, it is necessary for us to ensure that any site we have created or modified still works across all the commonly used browsers. Rather than opening each program separately, we use these extensions to see how the site displays, and ensuring that the site loads properly across each browser that visitors are most likely to use.

This is a great tool for bloggers and webmasters, since you can easily see how your web page displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.

5. Foxy SEO Tool

Foxy SEO Tool is a free, open source toolbar that provides quick and easy access to a multitude of search engine functions such as Google Site, Yahoo! Site Explorer, Live Fromlinks. Also included are famous web traffic analysis sites such as Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, popular statistic aggregators like Quarkbase and WebSiteOutlook.

You can check a site’s listing in important directories like Dmoz and Yahoo! Directory, buzzing Web 2.0 sites such as Technocrati, Wikipedia, Digg, Delicious and links to useful network functions like Whois, Geotool, Internet Archive, etc.

Guest Author: This is a guest article by Angela who likes the potential that SEO can bring to businesses and enjoys writing articles that answers questions and discusses possibilities.

There is a fine line between content that is reader friendly and content that is search engine friendly; learning how to strike a balance between the two together is one of the keys to obtaining high Search Engine Rankings. If you’d ask me, writing for humans first and then considering the search engines is the way to deal with this matter.

What Does ‘Writing Naturally’ Mean For ‘SEO Copywriting‘?

Content, in the form of articles, knowledge bases and blogs should be keyword rich, but not over-saturated.  Over use of keywords is something that search spiders will look for in your textual content. In fact, spiders are on the lookout for ‘word stuffing’ or pieces of text filled with too many keywords. And it can mean doomsday for your site/blog if you are trying to trick search engines by stuffing keywords into your content.

So if old hat optimization is considered over-optimization and/or is potentially detrimental to your SERP rankings what do you do? Here are some tips for writing searching engine friendly blog posts or news stories that every website should use. Not all of your blog posts have to be directed at search engines, but to rank on specific keyword phrases you should write at least some blog posts with equal attention towards keyword phrases.

Top 10 Best Tips For Search Engine Friendly Natural Copywriting

Without further ado, here are some tips to help you write articles and blog contents that have a balance between targeted search engine bots as well as are equally appealing (natural looking) to your regular human readers:

1. Use an Interesting and Unique Article (Page) Title

Admit it or not, your article’s headline is the first thing that can make or break your chance to grab reader’s attention. You have got about 15 seconds time during which a potential search engine user looks at your article and tries to make sense out of it – if your article title is well-written and if the reader is able to identify his needs with it then you can expect him/her to continue reading the whole article; otherwise, the visitor will simply ‘close’ your article and move along (and will probably never get a chance to stumble upon your site again).

So it is absolutely important to write a unique and interesting article title to turn a casual passerby into a serious reader. Here are some nice tips to write attention grabbing article headlines for your blog posts.

However, just writing a good article title is NOT enough. Your web page that contains your article must also have a good headline. Interestingly, the page title is something that appears in the top left corner of the browser window. You and your human visitors may not be keen on looking at the page title (in the browser title bar) but it is something that most search engine spiders look for while indexing your content. So make sure to assign a unique page title for each page you create. If you are unable to assign page titles via your CMS install an SEO plugin that lets you do the same.

2. Use H1 tag and Use Primary Keywords in Your Article Page Title

Most search engines use a maximum of 70 chars for the article title. So make sure that you have included the ‘most natural’ variation (translation) of your primary target keywords in the page title. And ensure that the main heading on your page uses a H1 tag. Most WordPress themes by default do his on the fly. However some themes uses a H2 tag instead for the article page titles, which is also OK but not as effective as the H1 tag.

3. Collect Your Keywords Wisely

When the so-called SEO experts talk about ‘keyword density‘, most of them forget about the ‘keyword quality‘! It is absolutely important to research and determine ideal keywords for your topic based on supply and demand. Use keyword tools like Wordtracker or Micro Niche Finder to brainstorm for popular keyword phrases. Search in Google to determine the supply/competitiveness of the keywords. Find high demand and low supply keywords. And while you are at it, you should probably also do your homework keeping the long tail and short tail keywords in mind.

4. Format Your Article Ensuring Easy Readability

Remember that people generally scan web pages looking for simple answers. So long and complex sentences/paragraphs will tend to put them off. Also try to break up the text using bulleted or numbered lists where relevant. This is really important for your users as it is important to keep the content digestible if you want to keep people’s attention.

You may think that this is not important for the search engine spiders. But after Google’s recent Panda update, it has become clear that things like easy navigation, an uncluttered web site (blog) design and good readability are things that Google (and other search engines) have started taking into consideration while ranking a web page.

5. Write ‘Link Magnet’ Articles

Lot has been talked about writing ‘pillar articles‘ and ‘link bait articles‘ as an effective methods to attract backlinks. So basically while writing, in addition to formatting visually appealing copy (bold points, lists, useful sidebars, etc.), think about writing article pieces that other bloggers from your niche will want to link to, will want to save to their social media bookmarks, and tell others about. For example, take a look at the homepage of Digg or Reddit. You will notice that the posts are straight to the point (i.e. right now an article entitled “Google+ scares me” by Market Watch is on the front page of Digg.) To know more, check out our Top 10 Link-Building Tips for Your Blog!

6. Use Descriptive Alt Tags On Your Article Images

As they say — pictures are worth thousand words. So you should include images in your articles where ever possible and when you do so, you should use alt tags. Alt tags are basically short descriptions (mainly intended for the search engine crawlers) that let search engines know what is in the picture. And make it a point to use your keywords in your image alt tags but don’t try to overdo it. Try to keep them relevant to the content of the picture and you can expect some good traffic from Google’s image search.

7. Use Different Variations of Your Target Keywords

‘Keyword stuffing’ is possibly the surest way to jeopardize your article’s SEO success — so do NOT do it. Instead, select 1 to 2 main keywords for each article based on high demand and low competitiveness. Then create a list of several keyword phrases to target in current and future updates. Once you have the list, use those keywords in the article name, titles, the first sentence and the last sentence. Repeat the keywords and synonyms a few times throughout the article; but NEVER overdo it.

8. Use CSS (Div) Instead of Tables

When the search engine bots view your article page code, the content should come first before sidebars and other junk that will reduce the relevancy of the page. CSS is the solution to this. You can place content below a menu visually, but above your content up in the source code. In addition, HTML code should be used as it was meant to be used. For example, the title of an article should be in an H1 tag, other less important subheadings should be in H2 and so on.

9. Keep Your Keyword Density within 4%-6%

Calculate the keyword density by dividing the number of keywords by the number of total words. Aim for a 4 to 6 percent density. Edit the article for quality content for reading that also has a good keyword density for the search engines. Add keywords or edit down the word-count to increase keyword density.

10. Write for People NOT Robots

This is probably the most important of all. Write something that people want to read — whether it be informative, educational or entertaining. TO know better, read aloud your article before publishing it. If it sound ‘natural’ and yet informative then your readers would also feel the same. As a rule of thumb, a great article is the one that your human readers as well as the search engine spiders find interesting. Hence, if you want to get higher search engine ranking, target the humans and the robots will follow!