What is SEO – Search Engine Optimization?
Well at the end of the day, SEO is really about just getting your website found as easily as possible within the search engines. Search engines include things like Google, Bing, and Yahoo and there are others but these three are the main ones. By far, the most important one is Google. So if you got your website found in Google, chances are it will be found on the other ones as well, because they all will use somewhat similar techniques to rate WebPages.
At the end of the day, you will see, there are two types of SEO there’s what’s called ONPAGE SEO which is basically all the changes, which you make on your website. And there is OFFPAGE SEO, which is basically everything else. Everything else includes things like Links. So, as you’ll see links from other websites to your website. One way links are important and quality one way links from a well respected site to your site. That is the sort of link you want to attract. So that’s really what OFFPAGE SEO is all about. The other areas covered by OFFPAGE SEO are things like Social Media. So things like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and things like that.
In SEO, niche sites like a casinos reviews based site or a tennis player fan site gives much better results than general ones. However, one needs to optimize these sites properly to get best out of them? Here are some of the points, which will help you in getting desired results:
- a) Promotion : Niche sites will give best results, when they are promoted within the similar niche based sites. Instead of trying to acquire links from here there and everywhere, its better to concentrate to the sites that are of the same nature as your niche. For example, if your site is about fitness and muscle building, then its advised to promote it among other sites of the same or related niche. Getting a link from similar sites, not only values more in SEO but will also help in driving targeted traffic to your site.
- b) Link Building – The best way to acquire links for Niche sites are the same ones which works for a normal site. This will include mundane methods of bum marketing, blog and forum links, video promotion, social networking, directory submission etc. But the important point which one should remember here is that try to get links from sites of the similar niche as yours. Short list the sites, which has resemblance to your site and then consciously work on acquiring links from them.
- c) Others – Apart from above points, niche sites should be optimized as per their specific nature. For example, a blog can be submitted to various aggregators. These are specifically meant for the blogs. A forum site can be made search engine friendly by bringing its latest post on the index page. Tags would work equally well with both blogs and forums. If the site is an estore, then video promotion and product review articles will work better than any other way of SEO. Social media and Press Release are equally important for any site, irrespective of its nature and niche.
To sum up, its way easier to optimize a niche site for SEO than a general site. If you follow and apply above points sensibly, then you will get definitely get effective results for you niche site.
How to drive free targeted traffic to your site?
There are many ways to drive targeted traffic to a site. Your traffic strategy should depend on the nature of your site. A blog needs to be optimized in a different way than a forum site and an estore needs to be promoted in a different way from these two categories. So, you should plan out your SEO and online promotion strategy while keeping the nature of your site in mind. The fundamentals of driving traffic would however remain more or less the same.
Here are some general tips for driving targeted traffic to your site:
- Keyword Research – Traffic comes from keywords. So, it is important that you first define them and then mention them properly in your site. For example, for a site related to weight loss, suitable keywords to target would be like quick weight loss, how to lose weight etc.
- Keyword positioning and density – Once you know your keywords, you should try to position them at the right places to get favorable results. Keywords gives better results, when used in the title and in the first paragraph of the article. An ideal density is between 2-3 %. Make sure that you do not overuse any keyword as it would qualify as spamming and will hurt your site more than helping it in getting traffic.
- Use keywords as tags – If your site facilitates use of tags, then use the primary keywords of your site as tags. This will sent a message to search engines what your site is all about, which will ultimately help your in attaining higher rankings on them, thus receiving targeted traffic.
- Quality content – Although, it is not directly related to SEO, yet practically, no site can do well in a long run without quality content. If your site has something fresh, interesting and informative to offer to its visitors, they will surely recommend it to others and your site will gets free publicity. This will only be possible, if you maintain the quality of your content.
- Video Marketing – Video steaming sites like Youtube can help immensely to drive targeted traffic to your site. Google videos can go viral in no time and can drive lots of free traffic to a site. Do remember to mention the primary keywords in the title of your video and to include the url of your site in it.
These are some of the many was by which you can drive lots of free and directed traffic to your site. Try them and check them out for yourself.
