Everybody wants to make it to the top of SERP, with so much effort, time and dedication invested to make it happen. But you either keep the search engines or the humans from coming to your website. Optimization begins from your website, from the most trivial (seemingly) factors, before you move for the social media and link building campaign. There are a few things you need to ensure before you leap to getting your website out to others, out to search engines. Are your web pages well optimized? For the search engines? For the humans? Check out a few important factors.




Keyword(s) / Phrases

A keyword is one that best describes your page. Aptly you must choose keyword phrases so that you are neither being very specific nor too broad. The one you choose must be on the grounds of an extensive research so that you get relevant and targeted traffic to your website. Don't bombard your web page with any number of keyword phrases you wish like. Concentrate on just a couple of them used in different variations. This is the most important step towards optimizing your web pages for the search engines.



Meta Tags

While the major search engines like Google do not consider the keyword meta tags for search engine relevance, the others do, including Yahoo. So you may as well want to use meta tags in optimizing your web pages not wanting to miss out the share from smaller search engines. Importantly, do not stuff keywords in the meta tag. Use a distinct list of keywords that relate to the specific page on your website instead of using one broad set of keywords for every page. Meta descriptions should also be optimized to be unique to each page aptly describing the page content and using the targeted keywords. Google and Yahoo use meta description to display as snippets in the search engine results. Description should be ideally less than 200 characters. Even if you extended it to be so lengthy to stuff in the keywords, the search engines are only going to display a limited number of characters.



Alt Text

To fully optimize your web pages with graphics, use relevant and appropriate keywords as the alt text. I would suggest you read my blog on alt text optimization where I have explained the subject.



Title Tags and Headers

For a well optimized web page with effective page title, it should be carrying relevant and targeted keywords/phrases of not more than 65 characters. Circumstances being permissive, avoid non-indexing filler words such as an, and, the etc. Likewise, the page heading tags used to separate the topics, should carry the most important keyword phrase. Though not all search engines place relevance on header tags, some do and it's well worth the effort.



Body Text

Your web page should contain a good amount of text with each of your targeted keywords/phrases distributed appropriately. The keyword density is ideally kept at 3-5% (no hard and fast rules as long as you follow a sound judgement and do not spam). While it's a known fact that keyword frequency adds relevance to search engines, it shouldn't be spammed. The keywords/phrases should be integrated to fit into the context with the right frequency and prominence given. Prominence is best given at the start of a web page, sentence, title etc.



Content Positioning

Search engines read your web pages just as how we humans do; from top left to bottom right on a general case. The content to the top of the page receives more prominence and weightage from the spiders compared to the text towards the bottom. And that's just why it is advisable to shift less important content, say, certain navigational links from the sidebar menu, to the bottom of your web page only to add space to your more relevant content that you want your spiders to see first.



Website Architecture

Following that the spiders read the content from top left to bottom right, the website architecture should be one that stands compatible to the same. You do not want your spiders to read all those links and resources first that you've placed on the left column and then come back to reading your main content to the right only to lose the prominence of your content keywords. Shift your side column to the right, if appropriate, or make any other changes to your website architecture and get the spiders to reading more important ones first. Be smart at designing your website.



Set the Navigations Right

Be careful with the navigation URLs. It helps the search engines and real users alike. Make sure the links on your web pages use the keywords that are mapped to them. Use the keywords/phrases of the linking page in the anchor text as well. Use breadcrumbs to add to the ease and user friendly experience of the visitor. Breadcrumbs facilitate easy navigation throughout your website and aids movement between different levels of pages within the website.



Sitemaps

Sitemaps help Search Engine Saturation. Sitemaps are of two types: one which is created within a website (.html) and the other is Google sitemap (.xml). The .html page sitemap will have only the links of all the inner pages of the website listed. The xml based sitemap can be generated using an online sitemap generating tool. Sitemaps are especially useful when you have a large website and want to guide the search bots.




Above all, do not get so much obsessed with the above factors while optimizing your web pages. While onpage optimization may not bring dramatic results to your ranking, it is defenitely the first step forward in ensuring a successful online visibility. Each search engine is different and has different sets of guidelines in helping you rank well. The guidelines are of course not static; so you may want to keep up with them. While this may be difficult, the best advise is to optimize your web pages ethically and to the best of your ability. Once you're confident you meet the general guidelines of optimizing web pages, you are ready to mark your go on the big front. Again, remember, moderation is the key to SEO. Do not forget that all your efforts are to get the real people to your website and search engine is only being used as the medium. So be real. You are presenting yourself to real humans.

Blog marketing may be found hard by some. Blog success is not an immediate one but a result of persistent efforts. Following the trend of once written done and forgotten does not bring any success to your blog however. There must be relentless efforts in updating and marketing your blog if you want yours to be one that everyone knows about and wants to read.

Let me lay down a few techniques that could help bring success to your blog marketing efforts.


1. Be regular at posting blogs. Not that you write at long intervals. People like to see fresh and new content often when they visit your blog, or they will opt to forget about you. Stick to a schedule and follow that.


2. Interviewing people pertaining to the niche of your blog is an excellent way of blog marketing.  Just as you should be posting relevant blogs to your market, an interview you post should be one too. 


3. Submit RSS feed and blog URL to prominent RSS and blog directories.


4. Post fresh news if you come across any, about your blog market. Everyone loves news, and your readers would much appreciate if you blog on current events pertaining to the market of your blog.  Stay away from the frown of your readers by offering them the same stuff they have already been through. Stay current.


5. Ensure that you use the right tags and categories for your blog posts. Sites like Technorati conduct searches on blogs based on the categories and tags that you've used. Therefore use the most right and appropriate ones.


6. Content is king yes. But it is required that you post original content and not something copied that you don't even have the rights to. Content duplication and plagiarism can get you on a fire with search engine trust to result in a severe penalisation. It could get you into trouble with the owner of the original content as well. Moreover your blog marketing efforts would go vain if you do not succeed in establishing your own identity and versatility as expertise. So be original. Be real.


7. Participate in forums to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will naturally link to you and help you in promoting your blog.


8. Structure your blog post around the keywords that the readers will most likely use to search what you are writing about. An attractive and witty title may intrigue the readers to get reading but that is perhaps more useful when your blog goes viral. You will need to write blogs around a well researched keyword pertaining to the subject that will fetch you readers in search.


9. Be generous. Do not hesitate to link out to other useful resources through your blogs. This will with time get you recognition amidst other bloggers and an identification of your blog as an information hub among your readers. Share knowledge, share information. You will be amazed by the viral effects your readers will create to your blog marketing efforts. 


10. Acknowledge the contributors to your blog. Answer to any questions they raise, thank them for the suggestions or additional information shared. People would love you if you address them in person and hold a conversation through the blog comment medium. You become an icon of 'real' source of information for your readers.


11. Conduct a research on the relevant industry blogs and choose to participate in those with significant influence. You will get noticed as an expertise through valuable information and advices  shared and can help you in marketing your blog.


12. If you come across a comment about your blog on any other, thank the person through that particular blog comment. This is very effective in marketing your blog when you are interactive around other blogs too, and help you in establishing relationships with other bloggers.


13. Almost everybody is a participant in social networks. If you have a profile in a social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, MySpace etc, include your blog URL or feed and that will gain your blog much exposure. And if people find your posts useful and informative, they are going to subscribe to them.


14. If you have just written a useful, informative or intriguing blog, leverage your online network at services such as Orkut, Facebook and Twitter to promote your blog. Active participation in online networks can get your blog marketing to exciting levels.


15. Social bookmarking sites are also very helpful in marketing your blog. If you have written a blog that people might find interesting and useful, bookmark them in sites such as delicious, digg, reddit etc. Don't overdo it however. Bookmark only worthy content, not just everything you write on.


16. Holding contests are also an excellent way to marketing your blog. Contests are always a fun and something that gets people come back to you again and again. You could gift your winners with something relevant to the market of your blog, say, an ebook on SEO?


17. A very famous tactic of brand promotion could be applied to your blog as well by adding your blog URL to the signature line of your emails.


Ultimately do not give up. Successful blog marketing requires dedication of time and patience towards implementing the strategies. Sooner or later, you will be paid for your efforts.