Free SEO & Link Building Tips

Domain Names

The first thing to consider is what domain name to buy. The search engines have favored keywords in the domain since the beginning days of SEO. Plain and simply you have an advantage with SEO if your keywords are in your domain name. But you want to make sure your domain name isn't too long or contains too many hyphens in it. I once bought some domain names with two hyphens and three keywords in them and I no longer promote these sites. The reason is these long domain names kill branding and look like the spam they are. When considering a domain name you want to try and get a good keyword or two in while having a name your visitors care to remember. Our site Linkateer is an example of just that; we have a distinct advantage with any keywords containing the word link. And yet we have a site name you won't easily forget and one worth branding.

Keyword Research

I can't say enough about keyword research, targeting the right keywords is critical and can make or break your SEO campaign. Word Tracker has a great service including a free keyword tool that is very useful in finding the right keywords. You want to find keywords that people are looking for on the search engines but ones that not everyone is targeting with SEO. Some keyword tools will actually show you the search results compared with the queries for a particular keyword. This makes it easy to see which keywords are highly searched and not as competitive. Be sure and include a good balance and don't just go after the most popular keywords. Include some that are highly searched, some that are in the middle range and some on the lower end. Theming your keywords is also important. If your site is about SEO, you may want to go after keywords that contain the same root and are similar. So going after SEO, SEO Company, SEO Services, SEO Expert, etc. is better than going after SEO, search engine marketing, high rankings, website promotion and link building. Theming your keywords ensures that the optimization you do will cross benefit all your keywords. If you build a link with 'SEO' in the link text then this will help your other keywords that also contain this root.

SEO Copywriting

Be sure and include your top 3 or 4 keywords in the title of your homepage, in your meta keywords and description, and near the top of your page. Search engines see the keywords in your title and at the top as your most important. If you can do this in a sentence then all the better. If not you can separate your keywords with either commas, pipes, or even colons. Then continue to sprinkle these keywords throughout the site along with different variations of them. For example if your targeting 'link building' then you may also want to include another variation of it such as 'link building services'. Also include the parts of your keywords alone, for example if your keyword is 'SEO Services', then include 'SEO' on its own as well as 'services'.

Make sure you do not put too many occurrences of your keywords on a page. One occurrence every couple paragraphs is fine with also the variations and parts sprinkled throughout the page. To start and on a newer site you should not necessarily go after the most competitive keyword phrases, but rather start from the lower to middle tier. As you build your site up and get some good link juice coming in, you can then go after more difficult keywords. But better to have some traffic coming in on those lesser searched keywords then none on the higher ones.

Link Building

Make sure your SEO knows what they are doing when it comes to link building. This is one area where your SEO can really hurt your site's reputation with the search engines. All forms of spam should be avoided including link farms, automated link exchange sites, free for all link sites, and the like. Your SEO should be building you relevant one way links from trusted sources. Having your SEO build you 1,000 garbage links will get you no where. Quality rules the day and one good link can often out perform 100 garbage ones. Don't make the mistake of thinking the more links your SEO builds the better. Focus more on the quality of the links and how they are moving your site up the search engines. If just a handful of great links are moving you to top positions then your SEO is doing their job.

There are a couple of advanced link building techniques that you need to learn or hire a company to do if you want to have a successful SEO campaign.