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Push's SEO Guide
Push
US (MA) platinum Am I spamming? Total posts: 406 Status: Offline Date of Birth: 76-02-13 Total Earnings: $282.92 
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So, I'm kind of tired of rehashing the same things over and over in private messages, so I thought I would write this up. Please note, I am in no way 'an expert' but I have done alot of research into this, and have a pretty good understanding of it, at least in my opinion. So, here goes: Get a top level domain A top level domain gets you much better ranking status, than does a subdomain. I'm sure people are going to come out of the woodwork and tell you, "I've gotten 420020394 referrals from my weebly subdomain". I don't care, the simple fact is, if they had a .com instead of a subdomain, they would rank in the search engines much better than they do with a subdomain. Include your target keywords in your domain Let's say you are advertising free xbox live, having www.freexboxlive.com instantly gets you better ranking for your keywords because they are in the domain. Go google free 'just about anything here' and you'll see what I mean. 90% of the time the first few results will have all or some of the keywords in the domain itself. Using a domain like www.reallycoolfreestuff.com will give you absolutely no extra ranking for the keywords free xbox live. Make use of the h1 h2 h3... tags in your website code The first website I built in an effort to get referrals, when google webmaster tools finally started giving me information back on the site, said my main keywords were all things unrelated to what I was advertising. They had essentially taken my h1 header and used that as my keywords. So in the ad copy of your website use the header tags as seperators, but make sure to include your keywords in there. For example (brackets left out so it doesnt strip this from the guide) again, staying with free xbox live, you would do this. h1 Your one stop solution for Free Xbox Live /h1 Depending on your css stylesheet, this will make it in a bigger text/font/color whatever, and it will also tell google this is an important part of your site. There is arguement on wether or not you should have more than one h1 header, I prefer to use h1 h2 h3 etc, but others swear by repeating h1 use. Use the News Identifier No long or drawn out explanation here, everything I said about h1 tags, applies here as well. Make sure you have the right keyword density Keyword Density is the frequency your keywords appear on your website, compared to the total word count. This is another area of debate, however I find what works best for me is anywhere between 3-8%. Anymore than that and, in my opinion, you risk google seeing you as trying to trick them into listing you for keywords. Use Bold and Italic modifiers for your keywords In the actual ad copy of your site, as I mentioned you should be shooting for between 3-8% keyword density. Out of that 3-8% density, you should bold, or italicize at least 2 or 3 instances of your keywords. Again this tells google that these words are more important than the rest of the surrounding words, and helps them to recognize them as keywords for your website. Add your keywords to your actual html as a comment I can't find any proof this works, outside of the fact that I put a long tail keyword into my html as a comment (something that does not appear anywhere on my website) <--comment like this>, and I can now find my website on that long tail keyword when I search it. So I swear by this method, and now do it on all websites I code. Use the image alt attribute and put your keywords in it If you have images on your website, which frankly you should, make sure to use your keywords for the image alt attribute (the words that appear when you hover your mouse over the image). Don't however, use your keywords for every single image on your site, and make sure to vary the keywords a little. For example, sticking with the free xbox live analogy, you would have like 'Free Xbox Live Header Image' 'Free Xbox Live Proof Picture' 'Free Xbox Live Footer Image' etc, you should get the idea. Make your keywords the first AND last things on your page Ideally, you want your website to have your keywords first, easily accomplished via title and header, and last. The way I put my keywords last, is by putting them in the copyright info. BUILD BACKLINKS I cannot stress this enough, in my opinion, its the single most important thing to getting good ranking in any search engine. Essentially every link you have to your site is a vote for your site. I could probably take the #1 spot on google for 'sweaty monkey trapeeze act in taiwan' with no backlinks, but if you are in a niche with any competition at all, you will need backlinks. Go find the site that you signed up from, if you came from a referral site, or go find one now, than goto yahoo site explorer and check it. You'll see most big referral sites have thousands of backlinks pointing to it. The way search engines work is they assume if thousands of sites are linking to your content, than your content must be worth linking to, so they want to make sure they are pointing people to you as well. Do not worry about where you get your backlinks, as no search engine will penalize you for having backlinks from shady sites, only for having links to shady sites. So there you have it. My guide to SEO, I hope this helps everyone, at least some of you... If you follow my tips and start seeing referrals where you werent seeing them before, feel free to send me some of the earnings 
Best of Luck - Push |
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DarkSaber
US (NY) elite Points2shop is my specialty Total posts: 1565 Status: Offline Date of Birth: Unknown Total Earnings: $4921.11 
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Spent a lot of time posting that
Some nice pointers you got there. I totally agree with the 'keyword in domain' suggestion, if you do that for a low competition keyword, boom, 1st spot on google
Thanks for the tips
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elctro12
CA diamond Why stop now? Total posts: 798 Status: Offline 
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great contribute, its quite long post must have took some time i never managed to read the whole thing yet but i will, its a good guide and will deffinitly help those who are new to seo. good work, |
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onlineentrepreneur
UK bronze Am I spamming? Total posts: 292 Status: Offline Date of Birth: 94-08-28 Total Earnings: $46.08 
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Push, the effort you have put in to this is just great! Thank you so much for this. I hope this is stickied! And for those who on't know push, may I welcome you to the most friendly and helpful man on points2shop.
He literally spent hours PM'ing me step by step, and I didn't know him before that. Deserves serious recognition and reward.
OnlineEntrepreneur |
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Jaytylor
US gold Old Forum User Total posts: 2763 Status: Offline Total Earnings: $517.37 
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Thanks this will help me out
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Exar
UK platinum Points2shop is my specialty Total posts: 1430 Status: Offline Date of Birth: 87-03-09 Total Earnings: $1336.55 
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@Push Very good thread, all you need to know really. Not been on in ages and its good to see your refs boom. Need to get my new site going good lol. Exar |
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Push
US (MA) platinum Am I spamming? Total posts: 406 Status: Offline Date of Birth: 76-02-13 Total Earnings: $282.92
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Glad you guys liked this. I will be adding some things 'not to do' and perhaps a few more of my personal tricks into this eventually. I was tired of writing by the time I posted it. So though its mostly complete its not done to my satisfaction yet. |
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catchme24
US (OH) platinum Senior Poster Total posts: 222 Status: Offline Date of Birth: 85-11-29 Total Earnings: $474.86 
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how many backlinks is considered enough? I'm sure the more the merrier, but there's probably a limit to when I just wouldn't be getting anymore if I kept trying. How many do you assume it takes to get like top 3-5 pages on google? Also, you know how to submit your site to search engines for free? I've heard Yahoo charges a whopping $299?? |
| 2010-08-18 14:14:04 | |
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Push
US (MA) platinum Am I spamming? Total posts: 406 Status: Offline Date of Birth: 76-02-13 Total Earnings: $282.92
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none of the big search engines charge for submission, as for how many backlinks is enough, honestly it depends on how many your competition have. For example, if the #1 spot on google has 7000 backlinks, you are gonna need around 7500 to take the top spot. |
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Exar
UK platinum Points2shop is my specialty Total posts: 1430 Status: Offline Date of Birth: 87-03-09 Total Earnings: $1336.55
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@Push I know what your saying here but 1 really powerful link from a popular site is better than any number of non popular links. Just thought I'd add this into yur guide. When link building try to use related sites eg if you are getting refs from free electrical goods, get your links form electrical goods sites. Exar |
| | Facebook Credits Free | Modern Warfare 3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Got a ref site? Take part in the Digg (Link) Exchange | Need advice on SEO? Read My SEO Breakdown |----------------------------------| | Help put an end to Cancer by Donating to Cancer Research | | |
