See images in a new light (Source: Google)

They say it is better to see once than to hear 100 times. That is why most websites make use of visuals at least to some extent.  There are also certain types of sites (stock photography sites or photography blogs) that CONSIST primarily of images. For such websites, ranking highly in Google Images is often the only way to get Web traffic.

In this post, I’m going to dwell on optimizing images for Google’s Image Search. And, let us begin with the most important issues.

Alt text

When posting an image to your site, create an alt text for it. What’s alt text? “Alt”stands for “alternative”, and it is basically the textual representation of your image. Search engines cannot read images, thus, they judge by the alt text to figure out what’s in your picture.

Alt text is intended for situations when the image on the page cannot be loaded (to give users an idea about your pic). It also benefits visually impaired people who use special programs to surf the Web, in which case the app will read out the alt text.

Be smart about your alt text. What does this mean? Say, there is a picture of the ocean that you took on the morning of November 4^th. So, instead of calling it “the pic I took on November 4^th“, call it “ocean view” or similar. Using your main keywords in the alt text is vital.

Context

The context in which your image stands is also of great importance. Google’s image bot is believed to first look at your alt text and then match it to the rest of the text on your page. Thus, make sure these are related.

A good illustration of the image-context connection would be this. Some time ago, I wrote a blog post on how to create killer landing pages. The post had 2 images, one of which had an alt text that read “convertible airplane landing”, and the other one was called “landing page scheme”. Now, when I look up “landing page scheme” on Google Images, I get both images in the search results:

As you see, both images rank for this key phrase. This means Google DOES use context to decide what picture is relevant for the query.

Image URL

You probably know about the importance of having an SEO-friendly URL structure on your site. What I’m talking about is that, instead of having dynamic URLs that look something like this:

www.example.com/showitem.php?category=34&item=146,

it’s better to create static URLs that look something like this:

swww.example.com/kitchenware/electric-kettle.html

Same is recommended for image URLs. An SEO-friendly image URL would be:

example.com/books/science-fiction/citizen-of-the-galaxy.jpg

Many SEO’s believe that Google also looks at your image URL to determine whether your picture is relevant for a particular keyword.

Image size

There is no ideal image size described anywhere in Google’s Guideline. However, it’s been noticed, that images sized from 300×200 to 1200×900 pixels tend to perform the best. The general rule that applies here is that the image should be neither too big, nor too small, otherwise Google will consider them inconvenient for the users to view.

Besides, as far as the image’s width and height is concerned, 4:3 is considered to be the optimum ratio, since, if you look at an average Google Images results page, most images will be 4:3. If your image is, like, 5:1, Google will most likely crop it to display in the SERPs.

Indexing

Another important thing to do is to make sure that your picture is not restricted from indexing with a robots.txt file or similar. Also, the more often you upload new images to your site, the more frequently Google image bot will stop by.

It also helps to add your images to the XML sitemap. This way they will get indexed faster and will not be overlooked by the search engines.

Internal and external linking

Ok, let us clear up what you are supposed to do in regards to linking from and to your images. As far as internal linking is concerned, it definitely helps to link your images to other pages on your site (just as it is the case with interlinking webpages). For instance, you can link your image to your picture gallery. While doing that, pay attention to the image’s title (it kind of works like an anchor text, but does not have that much of an impact).

As for external linking, Google does not seem to rely on incoming links to your picture as much as it relies on backlinks when ranking webpages. To get an idea about your image’s authority, Google reportedly looks at something we’re just about to discuss – hotlinks.

To allow or to disallow hotlinking?

Hotlinking is linking to somebody else’s content, so that the users visiting your site can load the piece of content DIRECTLY from the original poster’s server. For example, if you embed a YouTube video on your blog, the video itself will be located on a YouTube server, while it will be possible to view it without leaving your blog. All in all, hotlinking is considered unethical, as it steals one’s bandwidth.

Benefits

Images get hotlinked a lot. But, although hotlinking may appear evil, in the case of images it does have certain benefits. If you watermark your images, each hotlink will also serve to promote your site/brand. In addition, as I said earlier, Google seems to take hotlinks into account while ranking images in the SERPs.

Risks

In some situation, however, hotlinking may have a DETRIMENTAL EFFECT on your site and image rankings. For example, if your image is big and gets hotlinked many times, this may lead to a major bandwidth leek, and you’d definitely not want that to happen.

Besides, when Google sees many hotlinks to one and the same image, it has to decide which one of them to represent in the search results. It may even consider a hotlink sitting on somebody else’s site more relevant than your original picture, if it finds that site’s content keyword-richer or more relevant than yours.

Another possible risk is that, if the safe search filter (meant to close off adult and some other content) is applied to some site that hotlinks to your picture, the same filter will get applied to your image as well.

That said, when deciding on your hotlinking policy, weigh all the pros and cons as applied to your site. (1) Check your access logs and see if hotlinks are taking up too much of your bandwidth. (2) Check your rankings and see if anybody else is outranking you for YOUR images in the SERPs. (3) Make sure no safe search filter is applied to your pics.

And, if none of the points I’ve just mentioned hold true for your site, you may as well allow hotlinking. Just make sure Google’s bot requests for images are not blocked as part of the collateral damage.

>Bonus tip – stand out of the crowd!

Ok, one thing I’d like to leave you with is my idea of how you can conduct some competition research (probably prior to your Image Search SEO campaign) in regards to images. Look up your main keywords on Google Images and see how you could make your images stand out. Consider the following example below:

An outstanding image means more clicks and (as many SEO’s believe) higher rankings in the Image SERPs.

Know some other Images SEO master tricks? Do share!

Google Image Search: How to SEO-Optimize Images to Get Higher Rankings is a post from: Technshare

Source: Flickr

Have you heard about the art of article spinning? In short, article spinning is a search engine optimization technique by changing an existing article around to have it read differently in hopes that the search engine won’t detect the duplicate content.

I know many internet marketers who run multiple blogs. Believe me, coming up with new articles everyday just so you can keep your blog updated is no easy task. For a change, hiring a blog ghost writer seems like the easiest alternative to rely upon but reluctant as they may be to pay for hiring one, they are often resolved to ‘cutting-corners’ by distributing articles or post that are spun.

Articles that are spun most often convey the same message from the previous one but with certain alterations made. I would call it a ‘disguise’ as you are presenting nothing new to your readers. You would spin your articles using all of the content similarly but in a different format each time.   Take for example:

“That big dog”

“That enormous dog”

“That huge canine”

Even though I do not condemn such an act, and even thou it has its share of benefits, I believe aspired bloggers should never aspire to recycling ‘duplicate’ content.  When you distribute articles and acknowledge your responsibility as a trusted blogger, you should always provide your readers with the latest information on topic that relates to what you have to share. Take a moment to think about it. There is already numerous regurgitated articles and subsequently, this will not set you apart from your competition.

The search engines, especially Google, dislike such acts. We all know that Google prides itself for being the best search engine available and relevancy matters to them. Google always strives to provide the best up-to-date information for their end-users. Therefore, if you continue spinning your articles, there will see it as second-rate content and subsequently, your ranks will not sit at a desirable level.

Coming up with fresh new content for your blog is not very difficult.  What it takes is someone who stays updated on the latest news and information.  Focus on information that your readers will be able to use and understand.  Not only will you be able to grow your business exponentially as compared to your competition, you’ll build and earn yourself a credible reputation as a trustworthy expert in the field of your niche.

Believe it or not, if you think that spinning articles will safe you much time as compared with coming up new ones, the truth is, they are actually very time consuming. Imagine having to ‘re-write’ content that has been rewritten 5 times before making each new post unique.  It is very prone to grammatical errors unless you have a high proficiency in the English language.  Spinning a bad article will only make it worse.

Spinning articles are really not encouraged, even though I at times use them.  We should always put ourselves in the shoes of the reader. Do not ‘write’ because you have to. Write with purpose, whether to inform, educate or entertain.  Readers will reward you for your efforts . . . not to mention the search engines.

Have you spun an article before?  Let us know about it in the comments below.

Is Spinning Your Articles an Act of Internet Marketing Crime? is a post from: Technshare

The introduction of Google Panda in late February, 2011 represents a laudable attempt to increase user satisfaction among Google’s enormous user base. Users surf the Web everyday for a huge variety of topics and are the driving force behind the huge advertising revenue which Google generates each month. Before Google Panda was introduced, junk content sites; also referred to as content mills made use of the knowledge regarding the workings of Google’s search algorithm and directed their efforts accordingly. Such sites pay good money for quality software that can find out what keywords users are searching for and then employ an army of cheap freelancers whom they pay peanuts to produce a continuous stream of low quality articles. Such a scheme used to work just fine. Google gave such sites high ranking on the basis of the high volume of articles they produced, earning them untold amounts of money in advertising revenue while only needing to pay the freelancers peanuts. Soon however, Google caught on to what they were doing and responded with Google Panda.

Unfortunately, if you were operating a site which HAD to contain large amount of keyword-rich pieces but is not a content mill, you are going to get caught in the crossfire as well. Most probably, you are already suffering the consequences. One such example is sites of web based retailers which utilize the same product descriptions as those of their competitors and the manufacturers themselves. Fear not, below we will provide a few tips on how to regain at least partially, the traffic you have lost!

Go to any length to provide original content

As mentioned above, some E-commerce sites have been copying and pasting product descriptions right from the websites of manufacturer and then using them on their own sites. Such a practice although not malicious in nature nevertheless clashed with Google’s intent in rooting out sites containing duplicate content, thus affecting the ranking of such sites.

One counter-maneuver which these sites could use is by hiring people to rewrite the content of their sites. As long as the contents are not totally similar to that of the original, Google’s new algorithm will not decrease your ranking on search results lists.

Do not concentrate on Google alone!

Many site owners inadvertently came to regard Google as the only avenue through which traffic to their sites can be increased. As such, all their strategies and activities have been aimed at responding to Google’s workings. We should recognize the other pathways through which traffic can be generated as well and invest efforts in those areas accordingly.

A few examples of area in which we could work on (whether Google related or not) are:

Social media sites

Google’s latest search algorithm place substantial value on the discussions on social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Therefore, we should strive to increase and create discussions regarding our website and services on such sites. The higher the amount of such discussions, the higher the chances of our ranking on search lists being increased.

Email and telemarketing

It is time to get more up close with your readers and customers! Although up close may not be the best term to use since such marketing are still done long-distance over the phone or through a keyboard. Nevertheless, by emailing and calling prospective clients directly, you are increasing the prospects of them visiting your site if only for a quick look at what you have to offer. After all, doing so won’t hurt them and if they like what they see, there is no reason why there will not be back for more! As more visitors click on the URLs of your websites and traffic to the sites increase, you can be sure that Google will react accordingly, increasing your ranking on their search lists again!

Constant updates are the key!

One other way which Google used as a measure of the quality of sites is by measuring how often and frequent those sites are updated. This is due to the fact that the majority of users would not want to view outdated content. Coincidentally, site content which have not been updated for weeks or even months are often reflective of outdated content. Therefore, if you are a legitimate business, do take the trouble to update your site as often as you can. This is absolutely true for bloggers too!

To sum up, Google Panda reflects Google’s commitment in providing the best search results for their users and if your site experienced a decline in ranking, it should not be taken personally. Google provides useful advices for those sites which are hoping to regain some of their traffic and if you are the owner of such a site, you try out some of the tips we have shared above! Let’s produce better quality content, engage more in social media sites and interact more with our readers and users.

Image Credit

How to Regain the Traffic you lost to Google Panda is a post from: Technshare

Google’s Farmer update has caused quite the stir. You often see phrases like “article marketing is dead” and “Google hates article marketing.” So many sites lost their page rank and traffic after Google’s algorithm change, but others actually gained traffic. Since both used article marketing, it’s made everyone wonder whether article marketing works or not. After all, if it worked for some, but not others, then it must have been something else that kept the sites on top.

This isn’t necessarily the case. Another phrase you may have seen or heard is “the new article marketing.” For many, this has become the phrase they have clung to in this time of crisis. “New” must mean better, right? This is exactly right. When Google changed, so did article marketing.

When you hear that article marketing is dead, all it means is the old ways may not work like they used to. In fact, the typical article marketing method is likely not to work at all. Google did everything it could to ensure article directories were eliminated from search results altogether. What Google didn’t count on were article directories fighting back. While many haven’t had much luck with changing their formats, some have.

If you perform any searches on Google, you will see several popular article directories still appearing on the first few pages of results. With other directories, you have to search through page after page before you ever see them, if at all. This alone should be an indicator that article marketing is still a viable option for getting your site noticed and gaining the precious backlinks you need to succeed.

Article Marketing Of Old

First, let’s take a long hard look at why Google tried to rid the world of article marketing directories. While you may be benefiting, the wrong kind of sites were often benefiting more. Traffic which should have been yours was landing on spam sites. The reason – they ended up with more backlinks and tricked Google into thinking they were legitimate. The quality of the article didn’t matter. All that counted was growing backlinks.

Since many of these articles ended up published on sites with a decent rank, Google saw these links as legitimate. Quantity far outweighed quality in many aspects. Before, Google didn’t take the time to look much at the content itself. This meant the same article could be used over and over again. Each time it was republished, you got fresh link juice and Google recognition.

Often times, the articles had absolutely nothing to do with the site they linked back to. This sent many visitors to sites they never wanted to visit to begin with. You only want visitors who have an interest in what you are offering. Otherwise, the visitor is pointless. Even before, Google took into consideration the length of time a visitor spent on your site. A few second visits meant nothing in terms of gaining rank.

While it may seem like lots of articles and links leading back to a falsely advertised site could never work, the fact is, if you gain enough traffic, some of it is bound to be interested. It’s not so much about appealing to the right audience as bringing in everyone. Somewhere in that group are the right visitors

This type of article marketing may seem like it’s easy, but in fact, it is extremely time consuming. Constantly spinning new articles to gain more links and exposure takes time and effort. Add to this the time it takes to submit the articles to lots of directories and suddenly you have no time for anything else. For legitimate sites, this is time which could be spent on the site itself. Never underestimate the power of a well designed site with content all its own.

As you can see, the article marketing of old meant hit or miss for visitors. Since Google is more human geared now, the object is to make search results all “hits.” The better the search results, the more people who will turn to and trust Google. While this is a great concept, many legitimate sites suffered just for trying to market their site with content.

The New Method

The new article marketing method turns article marketing into something Google loves. High quality content, with little duplication. Google defines high quality content as well-written, relevant to the website it links to, geared towards people instead of search engines and filled with valuable information instead of fluff. How Google actually determines this is anyone’s guess, but from the change in results, this is indeed what is required.

With Google wanting more relevant content, it is more important than ever to make your content fit with the website it links back to. For instance, an article about the top ladies golf clubs wouldn’t be a good fit if it linked back to a site focused on car maintenance. Relevant content keeps visitors on your site once they click your link.

Since article marketing in part depends upon articles being republished, your first thought may be how the new method is any different. Google places quality above duplication. However, there is a catch. If you submit the exact same article to every directory, Google still sees your links and content as low quality.

The new method not only demands quality content, but quality directories. The directory you use matters. As before, not all directories are created equal. Take a look at the other content on these directories. Much of what you see on most of them is trash. The sentences are choppy with no real flow. In many cases, you find yourself trying to translate what should be basic English. Would you want your high quality content alongside this?

Remember growing up, you were always told that who you hung out with defined you? The same holds true with article marketing. Market with the low quality sites and that is how you will be seen. While every directory has its share of garbage, there are many who have always been known for higher quality content. Some are now even making their requirements stricter to ensure their own ranking increases.

The object is to submit a different article to each high quality directory. It can be the same topic, just rewritten enough to be unique. When others republish it, you don’t have the exact same article being shared from every directory. The duplication is limited. Since quality trumps the duplication rule, you still benefit from article marketing in less time.

While you may not have seen Google’s change as beneficial originally, it actually decreases your competition in many ways. Where before, spammers could easily game the system, now it is much harder. This means spam sites which often got mixed in with legitimate sites are now forced to the bottom of the pile. This gives legitimate sites the opportunity to reach the visitors they want.

Article Marketing On The Rise

Article marketing is now on the rise. It is being used by those who actually need it and deserve the results. The people who have put real time and effort into their sites in order to offer something valuable to visitors are now the ones who benefit. Why should questionable sites selling junk, tricking people into clicking ad after ad or passing out personal information be the ones gaining traffic? Your site is the one offering searchers what they want and need. Your site should be gaining traffic while those others lose it.

Google has tried to make search results much more relevant to searchers. Instead of looking on this change as the end of article marketing, look at the benefits it provides to your site. If you are willing to embrace the new article marketing, the change is for the better.

Why did some sites feel no impact or ended up gaining traffic when the Google Farmer update hit? They were already employing the techniques Google was looking for. While some of that success may have been possible strictly due to luck, the majority of it is due to careful consideration of where to place their content. Instead of valuing quantity, they valued the quality, including the quality of surrounding content.

Take the time and market using high quality articles and you will see Google hasn’t taken away this valuable marketing tool. Instead, it has been finely honed to make it more productive and send visitors to the sites they are actually looking for.

The New Article Marketing is a post from: Technshare

Keyword Research can seem deceptively simple.  At first glance you are looking for terms you can compete for that have a decent monthly search volume.  Pretty simple, right?  Well there’s a bit more to it…

I call it the “balancing act” and it involves weighing out three separate factors when doing your keyword research:

1. Strength of Competition
2. Amount of Monthly Searches
3. Level of Targeted-ness

Obviously you want a search term that gets a good amount of search traffic, but what is a “good amount”?  That really depends on how targeted your keyword is for your niche.  For instance, if you are attempting to rank for a buying keyword such as “buy ‘product model’” then 100 visitors could be more profitable than 1,000 visitors just searching for the product model.  Regardless of if you are attempting to rank for a buying keyword, you’ll want to consider exactly who you are going to target and how precisely you will target this market.

As an example, you might have instructional car repair videos on your site and you need to decide if you should optimize for “free car repair videos” or “car repair videos”.  This decision is going to require balancing a lot of factors:

What exactly are you offering on your website?

If your videos are free to view then obviously either term will do, but what if you also want to sell a more advanced car repair video course?  You may not want a lot of freebie hunters visiting your website as they might be less likely to buy the video course.

Which is easier to rank for?

Ranking on the first page is an accomplishment, but you need to get that #1 spot if you want to get the real traffic.  If one of the terms has an extremely tough to outrank competitor in the #1 position then you might want to consider the other.  For instance, if you’re selling an affiliate product, often times the top spot will be taken by the vendor’s site which will be extremely difficult to outrank.  You might want to opt for a keyword that is generally more difficult to rank for but has an attainable first position.

What other keywords will you rank for on other pages?

It’s not a crazy idea to target a very competitive term with your homepage in hopes of eventually acquiring the #1 position.  You can build links to your other pages and rank them for separate terms as well while you work on your homepage’s ranking.  This is also a good practice because it will improve your deep link ratio and disperse links and authority throughout your site.

What’s the competition like for variations and synonyms of your keyword?

Google uses a process called stemming to recognize different endings and pluralities for words.  “Dogs” is recognized as the plural form of “dog”.  “Jumping” is recognized as a deviation from the root word “jump”.  Check out the competition and search volume for these variations of your keyword as there might be some good opportunities.  You will also increase your rankings for these variations while you rank for your keyword.

Furthermore, Google also started recognizing and placing synonyms in the search results.  A search for the word “guide” will reveal bolded terms such as “help” and “instructions”.  This shows that Google pulled up results for these synonyms and understands their meaning and relation to your query.  Check out the competition and potential opportunities for synonyms of your keyword/keyword phrase.

Finally…

How much traffic will the term get?

All of the above factors are enough to make keyword research a very involved process, but we haven’t even discussed traffic volume yet!  My advice is to ask yourself this:

Am I trying to rank for a buying keyword? 

If so, don’t worry as much about getting a lot of search volume.  Otherwise, you should set a limit on how low you will go for your keyword.  If you target a keyword/keyword phrase that gets 1,000 exact match searches a month, you will likely get between 400-600 clicks per month from this keyword alone which would be a lot for a buying keyword (you’ll naturally get more organic traffic from random long-tail keywords too).  Whether or not this is enough traffic to produce a desirable ROI is going to be based on the other factors discussed above as well.

If you’re not attempting to rank for a buying keyword then search volume is going to be more of a concern.  You’ll need a greater search volume per month to produce a good ROI.

Keyword research doesn’t have to be a tedious or mind-numbing practice, but it’s best to take your time and understand the market and competition levels you’re getting involved in.  Search volume isn’t everything and your eventual ROI is probably the most relevant factor for choosing a keyword to target.  Focus on keywords you think you can rank #1 for and do your best to get the right kind of traffic from the SERPS – targeted traffic!

Keyword Research: The Balancing Act is a post from: Technshare

Do you want to know how to get good traffic to your website; you want to let the world know that you have some properties on your blog location (your website domain). Have you tried all the traffic generation techniques that you know but nothing seems to be working for you? Wait, you are not alone in this kind of situation.

Getting quality traffic to a website on regular basis isn’t that easy for most newbie bloggers but that doesn’t have to give you an impression that you can’t achieve your dream of turning your blog or website to a best place-to-be for everybody with the use of a genuine traffic generation techniques.

In this blog post, we shall be looking at some of the critical angles that can make you to get inconsistent traffic on your website and possible ways to correct them before it is too late for your blog. So, here below are the three notable mistakes that you can make that will have an effect on you to start getting inconsistent traffic on your blog or even not getting any at all.

Inability to Provide Epic Content

The word content I am referring to in this post doesn’t mean that you should just start to write articles on your website but, it means that you need to write what people want and don’t be too lazy to provide good content for your readers. You need to keep on providing them what you know that they would love to read and not what you think they can read.

Human beings have a tendency of leaving your blog if you are not offering them what they really want. Your effort in making things to work out for you has to be on getting your readers along with your quality blog contents because that is one of the things that can make them to continue coming back to your dearly website or blog.

The moment you begin to think about ways to get your readers happy at you by providing them what they want from you, it will become easier for you to get them hooked to your website and in the process, they will began to see you as an authority in your niche (you will start to command respect), and that alone will cause more traffic spikes on all your website’s post because they will be willing help you share your blog post with their friends.

Think of people like Devesh Sharma, Darren Rowse, Onibalusi  and Pat Flynn and hosts of others top names are examples of people that we normally see as an authority in the blogosphere on daily basis and it is very certain that everybody will be willing to read the post that comes from these people because they have what it takes (authority).

You Believe In Illegal SEO Strategies

Apart from providing good and quality contents for your readers, another great thing that you need to do is to avoid using any forms of illegal SEO techniques. Using some of black-hat SEO strategies to get traffic to your website is the number one mistake that you will make when it comes to traffic generation as a blogger. Google hates these techniques and likewise other search engines do the same (they hate it with passion because it is illegal).

In addition, your reputation as a blogger must be something that which you have to protect, if you imbibe in this act, it can cost you your online reputation and that will also have negative effects on your blog reputation too, and in the end it will be difficult for you to get traffic from most search engines because of the bad reputation that you have because of the techniques you’re using to promote your blog/website.

Moreover, if you have quality post on your blog, there’s no need of you trying to use any form of illegal SEO techniques in driving responsive traffic to your blog because your post can do more on search engines than any form of short-time traffic that wouldn’t last for a while and can even cost you more later (your reputation and influence).

My advice in this regard is that, you just have to do something that will keep helping your blog to become a search engine friendly because that is the only place where good traffic comes from, nowhere else that can beat SEO-based traffic.

Google and many other internet search engines must respect your website before you can begin to see good traffic flooding to your website and that is why you need to do all you can to keep your blog afloat and avoid anything that can make search engines like Google to disrespect your website. The moment Google website crawlers disrespect a website/blog, that blog will not be able to attract visitors anymore both from Google and some other search engines.

Procrastination

Why not today? What you don’t do today will add to your task tomorrow and you will still need to postpone it till further time, doing all what can make your site get more readership must not be something that you will keep on postponing for another time because as you are postponing it are some of your niche competitors working on their own techniques for them to beat you.

Procrastination is the killer of time, hate it and you will start to see your blog on the top page of most popular search engines like Google and others. Even if you are afraid of failing, then remember that failure can only happen to those that took action yesterday. You can’t fail if you don’t act and that is why you need to start taking active steps in building links to your blog on regular basis because this is one of the best way to make your site visible on top search engines.

Don’t be too afraid of failure when you’re trying to build your website reputation for search engine traffic. You can submit guest post to other blogs and get it rejected, don’t relent, try more and you begin to see changes and even that are some of the challenges that you will normally face on the way to the top and you don’t need to run away from them.

Inconsistent Traffic – Three Steps to solve it is a post from: Technshare

I am sure you are thinking, what else could my blog possibly need? Including some crazy acronym like LSI. I am going to tell you what LSI is and why your blog desperately needs it.

What is LSI?

If you have been in blogging for any amount of time, you will know the importance of keyword research. Without proper keyword research, you might as well be shooting arrows in the dark. The goal of your content is to get that information indexed in Google and to make it to the coveted first page.

Now that you have done your keyword research and selected your search term or phrase, you are ready to write; or are you? Well, if you want to make it to the first page of Google and even grab that top spot, NO; you are not ready. There is a second layer to keyword research called LSI. LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing.

Did that freak you out? Don’t be alarmed, it’s just a fancy pants way of saying related terms. So that’s it; your second layer of keyword research is finding synonyms to complement your primary search term. Let’s look at an example to make this as easy as possible.

You have decide to write a post on dog food. Assuming you figure out that you can rank well for dog food, you start to craft some content. Hold it partner. While keyword density is important, you can only say “dog food” so many times before Google accuses you of keyword stuffing. You do not want that to occur.

Your next step is to branch off of dog food and find synonyms that work alongside your main phrase making your post an authority. You will use dog food throughout your post as well as your LSI keywords throughout each paragraph. What this will do is give your post or article more strength in Google’s eyes.

Your content is now going to look like an authority article on dog food. Here is what I mean. You will use phrases in your post as follows; these are LSI keywords I found using the Google keyword tool. These associated phrases will let the search engines know exactly what your post is about and give you more chance to rank high.

• dog food ratings
• organic dog food
• dog food recipes
• best dry dog food
• homemade dog food

You get the idea right? All include the phrase dog food, but they are variations on your primary term. Allowing you more freedom in your content as well. Using LSI keywords will also keep Google off your back about over using your main term.

If you really want to rank high in the search engines and propel your blog, you absolutely must utilize LSI words to boost your authority in your niche.

Not only will you begin to rank for dog food, but you will begin to rank for the related keywords as well. This means double the traffic for you.

You can utilize LSI keyword research in every conceivable niche around. When you use the Google keyword tool, you will also see the search volume for your LSI’s. This will give you an even better indicator of how well you can rank.

Free Keyword Tools

Now that you know what LSI is and why your blog needs it; how about some free tools to help you with your keyword research? Try them out and see how well your content starts to rank!

• Keyword Density Analyzer
• Google Keyword Tool
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What is LSI and Why Your Blog NEEDS It is a post from: Technshare

An Idea That Changed Everything

Although we hear the term *backlinks* a lot, many do not know *why* backlinks are important to rankings. In fact, very few realize that Google’s original name was *backrub*.

The co-founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin had been working together on a search engine they called *backrub* since early 1996, two years before Google, Inc. was established on September 7, 1998.

They called it backrub because of a novel idea to *factor in* the links pointing to a web page as quality indicators of that pages popularity (each link was a vote). In other words, their original algorithms not only analyzed web content for relevancy but also took note of any links *back*.

But it was not enough to have just a link back; it needed to be a *quality* link (even more so today).

Why *Quality* Backlinks Are Everything

As Google, the grand daddy of search engines, became increasingly popular in the early to mid 2000′s, savvy Internet marketers with knowledge of Google’s preference for backlinks pounced on this *secret* to gain a competitive advantage.

It wasn’t long before sites were setting up *link exchanges* as a quick and easy way to get backlinks. (lots of them)

However, this didn’t last long because Google’s engineers were determined to filter out inauthentic linking, especially when it was obvious that *link farms*, as they called it, were corrupting their original intent: each link was a vote.

However, Google did not throw out the baby with the bathwater. What they did, though, was scrutinize more closely the true nature of any backlinks they found. They looked at factors such as:

• are the links on unique servers?
• are the *linked* sites relevant to each other?
• is the link embedded within an article or is it sitting there as part of a cluster of URLs?

These days their algorithms are so smart, due to advances in artificial intelligence, (AI) that they can tell if articles are written by robots or humans, (even whether content is written by a native speaker or not). In other words, it is no use trying to outsmart Google.

Today, more than ever, Google’s highly sophisticated algorithms want to see links embedded is well written content posted on trusted sites within their database using meaningful anchor text before that backlink gets a high score.

Why Backlinks Will Always Be Important

I guess it’s a safe bet to say Google will always value backlinks as a guide to assigning rankings for pages in its gargantuan database.

It’s simply hard-coded into the companies DNA.

How else are they able to figure out which page gets ahead of another?

Backlinks are the great equalizer because if thirty pages of unique content are similar then its algorithms look to the backlinks to determine which is the most popular. Whereas, the content tells them what the page is about, it’s the number and quality of backlinks that determine which pages get ahead of the other in their migration to the top of the search results.

The powerful simplicity of this idea, which has been universally adopted in all major search engines, almost guarantees that the need for quality backlinks will become increasingly more important in the years to come.

These are things I’ve been teaching in affiliate marketing courses for years now. And listeners to any of my affiliate program podcasts are familiar with my usual refrain: quality backlinks are everything!

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How “Backrub” Became Google: The Birth Of Backlinks is a post from: Technshare