On Page SEO is still very important in helping your site climb to the top of Google.   The four major On Page SEO Factors are:

1) Keyword in the Title Tag
2) Keyword in the Description
3) Keyword in the URL
4) Keyword in the Header Tags

Today’s SEO Training is on a great WordPress Plugin for SEO On Page Optimization of your blog called “All In One SEO Pack”.  This a powerful all in one SEO Tool that takes care of the following automatically:

1) Title Tags
2) Keyword in the Description
3) Keyword Meta Tags

All you need to do is fill in what information you want and the plugin does the rest.  Check out how this works:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Simply a Must Have Plugin for your SEO Optimized Blog!

This is Google’s definition of a sitemap: “Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.”

It’s important to have a sitemap for the search engines to crawl.  This will buy the best insurance that each of your pages will get noticed and found by the search bots.

Here’s my step by step video on how to setup the Google XML Sitemaps plugin and link it to your Google Webmaster Account.  If you don’t have a Google Webmaster account, you simple create one using your Gmail account login.

Create a Google Webmaster Account here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/

Click here to view the embedded video.

The most powerful feature of a WordPress blog is the ability to install custom plugins to aid with SEO.

To perform these functions without plugins, would require a great deal of knowledge in website programming.  That would pretty much take out the beginners unless they have money to pay someone to build them an SEO optimized site.

Watch this video to get a quick summary of what each plugin does:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here are my “GO TO” plugins with all my SEO WordPress blogs I create.

SEO Power House Plug Ins:

• Google xml sitemaps
• All in one seo pack

Social Plugins:

• Google +1 button automator
• ShareThis
• Facebook Social Plugin Widgets

Inter-linking Plugin:

• Contextual Related Posts

RSS Feed Plugin:

• WWSGD
• RSS Includes Pages

Increase Load Time & Optimizing WordPress:

• W3 Total Cache
• WP-DBManager
• Smush It
• Use Google Libraries

Remember the four main On Page factors I talked about in my previous post on SEO Basics?

1) Title Tags
2) Meta Tags: Description & Keyword
3) Header Tags: <H1>, <H2>, <H3>.
4) URL: If possible, you will want to get your keyword somewhere in your domain.

Another reason why I love WordPress sites so much is the flexibility it gives me to optimize it fully for SEO.  It’s is extremely user friendly, that even the most inexperienced web designer can easily optimize their On Page factor without any knowledge of web coding.

This video will show you how to take care of step #4…how to get your keyword(s) into your domain by changing your default Permalink to become SEO friendly.

Download the Permalink and Ping List Text File Here

Click here to view the embedded video.

As I mentioned before, a WordPress Platform out muscles any other platform used in the SEO world.  If you plan on running SEO as part of your marketing campaign, then WordPress is the way to go.

WordPress is extremely simple to install, all you need is a hosting account and your good to go.

I recommend Host Monster for your hosting account.

Once you purchased your hosting account, you can follow this simple step-by-step video on how to install WordPress on your new hosting account.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Just a few years ago I used to design all my websites using straight HTML/Java coding from scratch.   For a beginner it can be a intimating just looking at the code rather then trying to optimize the code for SEO.  Most people would either hire people like me or would throw up poorly optimized sites that look liked some terrible plaque had infected it.  Either way, it cost them money.  Either in the sense that Google left them on the road side for dead, or any visitors that landed on that site would leave as fast as possible in fear of their computer blowing up.

Today is a different story.  The WordPress platform has so much power under the hood straight out of the box, it’s no wonder why many marketers are gravitated to a WordPress blog.  Even the beginners are creating wonderfully optimized sites that they would not have been able to do before.

The only requirement is you MUST have a hosting account.  Do not get confused with the WordPress site that hosts your blog for you.  Never let someone host your information you spent hours creating.  For whatever reason, they have the right to take your site down any time they feel like it.  So you must invest in a legitimate hosting account.  They are fairly cheap…about $6 bucks a month, but if you plan to take SEO seriously, then you better grab yourself a good hosting account.

I highly recommend  HostMonster.   I’ve worked with several hosting accounts, some good some bad, but Host Monster is very easy to work with and they have excellent customer service.

Another feature that makes a WordPress platform so powerful is the use of plugins.  The WordPress platform allows other users to write blocks of code that will perform certain features for you, this is called a plugin.  All you need to do is install them from the plugin download menu within your wordpress blog and activate them.  BE CAREFUL…Not all plugins are good and too many will slow your blog load time down.

Fear not, in the next few post I will explain the ones I use and how to optimize them for peak performance.

Before we can use any of the WordPress’ powerful features, we must first install WordPress on our hosting account.

Read my post on Installing WordPress On Your Hosting Account.

SEO, when broken down to it’s fundamental roots, consist of 2 important factors you must optimize for:

1) On Page Factor, also known as “On Page SEO”
2) Off Page Factor, also know as “Off Page SEO”

Before we jump into exactly what those factors entail.  Let me answer a more important question.

WHY do I need to optimize for these factors?

When you type in a keyword into the Google search box, how does Google know how to answer your keyword request with the relevant content that you are searching for?

To explain that process would be a science in itself, however, you would benefit to understand how Google determines what your site it is all about.

So let’s say for instance, you just created a brand new website and you want to start ranking for a particular keyword.  That Great!  The first thing that needs to happen before you can rank for your keyword is Google needs to determine what your site is about so it can properly rank your website according to your keyword(s).

That’s where “on page” and “off page” optimization comes in at.  This is your chance to tell Google or other search engines what your site is about and what you want to rank for.

How this works is like this;  you may of heard of the term “Googlebots” or  “Search Bots” (for other search engines), but the principle is the same.  A search bot is a computer software that is created by the search engine company.  It’s function in life is to go out on the web and search for content and report back to the search engine’s database with information it found.  Search bots obtain this information by “crawling” (fancy word for examining) you website to figure out what your site is about.  If you done your On Page Optimization correctly, Googlebot should walk with a good understanding about your site’s content.

This is where On Page Optimization comes in at.  Do not overlook this process!
Here is a list of the several key factors that are “crawled” by the search bots:

1) Title Tags
2) Meta Tags: Description & Keyword
3) Header Tags: <H1>, <H2>, <H3>.
4) URL: If possible, you will want to get your keyword somewhere in your domain.

You will want to make sure you have your keyword within those factors

Here’s an example from my ROI Unlimited site I developed.
Currently it’s ranking #3 on Page 1 of Google for the keyword term “roi unlimited”:

Here’s a snap shot of some content on that site.  You will see the keyword “ROI Unlimited” with in my header of the content:

So as you can see how the on page factors can help the search bots determine what your site is about what about Off Page Factors…

Off Page Factors are the biggest factor for ranking your site for your particular keyword.  This process will tell the search bots exactly what your site is about based on backlinks.  In all intensive purposes…Backlinks are the life blood of any SEO campaign.

What exactly is a backlink? 

A back link in simple a clickable link back to your site from another site.  Some things you want to keep in mind when you create your backlinks.

1) Use anchor text with your keyword(s) in your backlinks.

A keyword rich anchor text is a link with your “keyword(s)” pointing to your site.  For example… Below I am creating a backlink to my ROI Unlimited website using the keyword “roi unlimited” as my anchor text:

ROI Unlimited

You can see it points to roi-unlimited.com using my keyword “ROI Unlimited”

The more keyword rich anchor text links to your site, the more the search engines will recognize what your site is about and start to give you some attention for that keyword.

2) Get backlinks from niche related sites.  Remember a backlink is more or less like a vote of authority or confidence if you will.  Site A links to Site B because Site B has good relative contant based on Site A’s content.  When you get enough backlinks this way, your site will become more of an authority site for your keyword(s), because you have the “votes” of many niche related site.  Google will then see your site as important and you will see your site climb up through the search engine rankings.

Here’s what you don’t want to do: For example…let’s say I have a site on “Dog Training” and I get backlinks from sites that deal with “Car Racing”…This is counter productive is several ways.  First of all, when the search bots crawl that Car Racing site and find your backlink to your Dog Training site, it will not create a clear understanding how you site has anything to do with car racing (you don’t gain any authority here).  Second, if any readers of the Car Racing site sees your link to Dog Training…there’s a good chance hell will freeze over first before they click you link.  Now if you had a link to your “High Performance Car Parts” site linked from the Car Racing site, you have a good chance of people clicking on that link because it’s related.  You always want to make sure you create Traffic to your site from your backlink campaigns as well as ranking in the top 5 of Google….Why waste a link?

So as you can see, On page and Off page factors will set up the stage for you to rank well in the search engines for your given keyword(s).  Just be sure you follow these core principles to help establish a solid SEO campaign.