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Blogging is one of the best ways to get started on the internet. Most hosting companies offer one click installs through Fantastico, there is little to know HTML or PHP knowledge needed, and you can add pics and vids with a push of a button.

Blogging platforms make the most novice of internet marketers look like professionals. But, we need to get people to our blogs so they can see our content. Here are 5 tested methods that work every time:

1. Article Marketing. Your blog is full of content. Basically, those blog posts are articles. The power of article marketing comes in taking advantage of the high PR’s of certain article directories to get your content in front of more people. Sites like www.ezinearticles.com and www.articlebase.com are my two favorites, with www.buzzle.com a close third. Simply write an article. Submit it to EZA first. Once it is accepted by EZA, you can submit the same article to the other directories (or change them for uniqueness).

2. SEO. Yup. Creating SEO’d content with proper SEO plugins will help your content rank high in the search engine rankings. That way, your blog is found by people searching for your topics on places like google. For this strategy, you need to dedicate some time in both on site and off site SEO strategies. But, it is the best long term traffic strategy out there.
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Micro niche sites are among my favorite types of website to build. They are highly targeted, and they are easy to optimize for a particular keyword. The best part is, with proper research and setup, it doesn’t take a whole lot of off site SEO to achieve first page rankings.

What is a micro niche site? A micro niche site, the way I build them,  is a small website that targets one keyword phrase per site. Most people are used to building a 5 page website that attempts to target multiple keywords per page. Or, they setup a blog and try to target one keyword per post. In every niche, I can compete with these types of sites by targeting on keyword per website.

Research

A micro niche site begins with research. You want to look for keywords within a niche where there is a demand, and the keyword is a buying keyword. I use the google keyword tool, and look for keyword phrases that get 300-1200 exact searches per month. These keywords are usually low competition. Also, these longer keywords are also more likely to be buying keywords.

Buying Keywords

Micro niche sites are successful because they have great conversions. They get less traffic, but the visitors to that website are highly targeted. I did a test with a non buying keyword. I found a two word keyword phrase that gets 16,000 searches per month. I found the exact domain name, and built the site. The site is on the 1st page of google with two million competing sites. I have not made one sale with this site! The keyword is “kindergarten toys” and the website is www.kindergartentoys.org

That site doesn’t convert, despite the traffic, because it isn’t targeting a buying keyword.
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We all know that to increase a site’s rankings in the SERPS, you must build backlinks to your site. We also know that only dofollow backlinks really help you accomplish this. But, what about those worthless nofollows?

Do we need to waste our time building nofollow backlinks? The answer is yes. A backlink is a backlink, whether it is dofollow or not. The importance of the nofollow link doesnt come in increased page rank, the importance comes in your motives.

The lack of nofollow backlinks to your site shows search engines that your site is only getting backlinks from websites that are dofollow. The lack of nofollow backlinks exposes you as a link builder.

We all know that backlinks are supposed to appear natural. Wouldn’t a site with natural backlinks have both dofollow and nofollow? Of course they would. That is why it is so important to throw in a few nofollow backlinks in your backlinking efforts.

This could be looked at as a test. The whole dofollow vs. nofollow issue could all be a test designed by search engines to expose sites that are building backlinks in a “spammy” way. If you want your site to grow in the SERPS and stay there, you need to have those natural looking nofollows in the mix.

Once you have your content planned out, it is time to think about the formatting of your website to ensure proper on page SEO. I always write my content in Word, transfer it to WordPad, then input the content into my editor. This way, it is properly formatted and spell checked.

Structure takes on many forms:

• URL’s
• Links
• Pictures
• Content
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The most important aspect of on page SEO is content. The difficulty here is creating content for people to read, as well as for spiders to crawl. Again, this isn’t rocket science. It just takes a little practice.

Content starts with the title. The title of this post is “On Page SEO: Content. This title needs to be  in <H1> tags. I use Wordpress, so this is done for me. Your keywords need to be in <H1> tags, or “Heading 1″ if you are using a blog, a maximum of one time in your content. Since your title needs to stand out, it makes perfect sense to make it a habit of making your title <H1> every time.

It is also helpful to have your keywords in the <H2> tags at least once. Again, if you are using Wordpress, just select “Heading 2″ from the drop down menu. <H2>’s are best used as subtitles. If you look back at my meta tag post, you will see that I used <H2> tags for my keywords one time about half way through the page.  In fact, I am about to use them to setup the rest of this post. Only use <H2> once per keyword. Read the rest of this entry »

Too much has been made about the difficulty of on page SEO. Thinking about the various elements may seem like a lot to consider, but in reality having a highly optimized web page is extremely easy.

We all know the importance of optimizing our websites for favorable rankings in the SERPS. I think that just knowing we are dealing with google makes the whole aspect of trying to get ranked with them a little intimidating. It’s OK to feel intimidated, but once you create a system of writing SEO’d content and pages, you will find that you can do it as naturally as having a conversation. 

The Building block of on page SEO is the Meta Tags. The dinosaurs of SEO, these tags are still relevant and should be included in every page of your website. Read the rest of this entry »