SEO: Link Text

Link text is very important in maximizing SEO and scoring better search engine rankings.

When the engine analyzes your links, they look for the words used in the link body. If you are linking to another page on your site, or on a different site, you should be using a keyword form the linked page in the text of the link. If all you are saying is something like "Next Page", you are wasting a link.

If the next page discusses baseball's triple-play, for example, your link should contain the words "triple play" or somethign similar.

The search engine will index the page based on the link, will check the description and keywords, and give it ranking because of it.

SEO: Google Webmaster Tools

A critical tool you should definitely be using in your efforts to maximize your SEO is Google Webmaster Tools.

These tools will tell you what keywords you are ranking with, which are sending traffic to your site, which pages are in the Google index, who is linking to you, and if there are problems on your site.

This is a basic tool for you to keep in your SEO toolbelt

SEO: the Site Map

When you are building your website, make sure to include a site map.

Whether your site is large or small, it needs a site map, though small sites can get away without the site map, using a navigation bar instead. But you must consider, if your site is small, whether you intend for it to grow over time. If you do, eventually it might be big enough that it will be more difficult adding it later. It might be easier to add the site map now, when the site is still small, than waiting and adding it later.

The site map should be linked to from every page on the site, and it should link back to every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks.

SEO: keyword file names

Here is a tip you might not have considered that might give you a little boost with your rankings.

Any time you are placing an image on your website, name the file with a keyword from your site. As well, of course, and this you already know, your title should include keywords as well. Add to that any specific page you add to your website should also be named using keywords.

Keywords are always a key component to SEO. if you use the keywords wherever you can get away with it, you are boosting your rankings with very easy steps.

SEO: Check out the competition

To best optimize your website for search rankings, you have to know where you stand in relation to everyone else. Specifically in relation to your competition.

First, figure out which website, which company, is your main competition.

Once you know that, you have to understand much of Google's rankings are based on incoming links - the source, how many, the quality.

If you analyze the website of your competition, you will be able to see how many links they have to their websites, the quality and how they optimize. You want to do better than that so that you get ranked higher. I am not saying steal their ideas - of course not. Do better than them. In every industry you have to know what you are up against, so you know how you have to perform.

To best optimize your site and come out on top of the rankings, check out the competition.

Adsense: Preview tool

Google Adsense has a preview tool.

With this preview tool you have the ability to see what ads running on your site will, more or less, look like.

Using this tool can help you design the format of your ads better, to design your posts better, and to decide whether or not to add more adsense units to your page (you are still limited to 3 per page of adsense for content)

Adsense, SEO: writing about products

An important aspect to remember when authoring a site with Google Adsense ads is that you need to write the right posts to get the good ads.

If you just write a plain old blog post, you might get ok ads, depending on the topic. but if you are writing about a certain product, your ads will be much better.

Adsense: finding the niche

You will always do better with Google Adsense if your website targets a niche that has high paying ads with a large number of competing advertisers..

Of course you have to know something about the niche and be able to continuously write good, fresh content for that market.

If your site is in a nice that is low-paying int he sense of advertising, don't expect to rake int he Adsense advertising bucks.

SEO: Importance of analytics

SEO

Analytics

To really succeed at SEO, you have to have some sort of analytics program configured in your website.

Without an analytics program, you will have no idea what is going on with your site. You won't know what is working and what is not working. You won't know what works better and what works even better than that, and what doesn't work as well. If you know these things, you can tweak your site, your keywords, your articles, your content, etc. and direct them more towards the things that work and draw more traffic than the things that do not.

There are all sorts of analytics programs available, some for pay and some for free. The most robust of the analytics software is probably Google Analytics, and it is free. There is no reason not to set it up, and it can only help you.

There are other programs available and you should find one that fits your needs. But you have to find one. All the rest of SEO is worthless without an analytics program.

Adsense: Inbound Links

Inbound Links

One of the things you need to do is to figure out how to get inbound links. Without other sites linking to your website, few people are going to stumble across it. Few readers means few people will notice, and click on, your Google Adsense links.

There are all sorts of ways to get inbound links from other sites. While you can start slowly building traffic by asking other websites for reciprocal links, a better wya would be to get your site listed on a powerhouse. Some sites might give you a link that will give you syuch an influx of readers that you will be shocked.

Submit an article you wrote to an online magazine, add content to a wiki site, get listed in one of the many "Best of the Web" roundups from reputable news media sites (such as WSJ for example). These, and more, will all bring you tons of hits and get you noticed.

Of course, if you dont write good content, or if you don't keep submitting articles, you might become a one-hit wonder. So keep submitting articles and eventually you will get a steady set of inbound links bringing lots of traffic.

Another good idea is to submit articles for publishing on sites like ezinearticles, hubpages and the like. If the article is submitted and published, and as long as you follow the rules there is no reason it should not be, it can be a source for a lot of people following your link in the article (in the signature) and finding your site.

It doesn't really need to be repeated, but the more readers you have checking out your site, the more impressions your adsense ads are getting, and the chance for clicks increases.

Adsense: Tweak for better earnings

Borders

Should you use borders or not in your Google Adsense ad blocks?

They each have benefits. Ads with borders will generally look much nicer than those without.

The benefit of ads without borders probably wins out though. It seems that ads without borders have a higher CTR, or click-through rate, than ads with borders. When you drop the border it seems to make the ad blend in a bit more and people feel confident clicking on it. When you place the border, it separates the ad from the rest of the page and gets ignored more.

SEO: less images, better rankings

Images

In order to optimize your search engine performance and get better SEO, try not to use too many images on any given page.

If you have too many images on a website, or page within, the search engines have less data to read and therefore will ignore your site, or at least rank it lower. Make sure you get enough data in there so that there is actually something to be read.

This is true even if you are fastidious about adding the ALT tag to each and every image. t doesn't matter. that ALT tag helps, but if the whole page is laden with images, the search engines will push you down.

Adsense: Contrasting the color scheme

One of the common recommendations when implementing Adsense on a website is to have the ad format blend in with the style and color of the page as much as possible.

This format does have the benefit that it could be harder for the reader to differentiate between the article you wrote and the ad banner of links immediately preceding or following it. The reader will then inadvertently click on an ad link thinking it is part of the article.

This is good advice how to trick a few clicks out of your readers. In the long term though I am not sure how effective it is.

Think about it. Think of yourself as the reader of a website. You think you are reading an article and click on a link within to continue. The link opens up and you see it is a different page, maybe relevant to what you want, maybe not. Probably not because you only clicked on it by mistake.

Chances are you will close the website and not return. After a few times of this happening you will likely get frustrated and not even return to the original website, considering it not worth your time and energy.

So the website owner may have made a few dollars on some mistaken ad clicks, but he probably lost a reader and future potential clicks in the process.

A better suggestion is creating contrast. Use a color that stands out off the page and apply that as the color for the links in the ad. Of course you don't want your website to look ugly, but you should still be able to find a color that stands out without ruining your page.

The color standing out will attract the readers eye as he reads the article. He will naturally gravitate to the red (for example) link in the ad and will likely click on it. Despite the fact that you "lured" him there, he clicked on the link because he thought it was relevant to his needs. All you did was make him notice it. He is more likely to even find your site even more useful as he finds relevant information and relevant links.

SEO: Google Page Rank optimization: Inbound links

Page Rank

SEO

Optimization

Page Rank is one of those creations of Google that is used to determine how important a website is. The higher the page rank, along with other factors, the higher the specific website will come in in the results of a search.

When you perform a search on Google.com, it generates a whole long list of results. The order it displays those results in is based on how important it considers the page. The importance is weighted based on Page Rank.

The Page Rank is calculated based on a complicated algorithm Google uses taking in all sorts of factors.

One of the main factors in the algorithm is links. How many websites link to your website. The more links, the higher your page rank will go.

But links alone is not the whole shebang. It is also the quality of the links. More on that later.