In a few hours my wife and I will be heading down to the local Red Lobster to dine with a group from our class at church. What we expect is a fun night out with other couples from the church to eat some great seafood and then head over to the Nicholas home for dessert.
Okay, Dave. Enough, already. What does this have to do with getting more traffic to my blog
Its simple, my dear Watson. The flyer we were handed at church was titled, Couples Dinner Out - Red Lobster, along with a sub heading, Dessert will follow at the Nicholas home.
Okay, Im still lost, you say.
Heres the deal. I didnt have to read the whole flyer to get the point. The headline told me everything, except for the time and date. And thats just it. You need to incorporate facts - headliners - for title of your pages. This carries a dual purpose. The biggest one is that it lets everyone know what the page is about.
Secondly, when people type in web cam reviews in Google, if title of your post that day was, The Latest Web Camera Reviews, Google will direct people to your site because your post title contains the keywords the person is searching for.
Now what is so cool about this is that search engines are notorious for returning results from pages that have keywords in the H tags, like h1 h2 h3, etc. Make it a habit to think like a newspaper editor and create a title to your page that explains what the article is about, but at the same time is concise and carries words you know people will search for when looking for your content.
If you can, make good use of your ALT tags for your images. Now, dont be devious by keyword stuffing the ALT tag, just make sure you use it. Many people forget it.
And finally for today, make sure you have enough quality content of value on your page. Many search engines look for more content than HTML code. This means if you have a lot going on in HTML that has little or nothing to do with your content, try to bring the ratio down as much as you can. Use cascading style sheets and less of the clutter that has nothing to do with the subject of your page.
Keep working hard at these optimization tips. Soon you will greet new visitors every day. More visitors equals more clicks! And we all know what more clicks equals.
Dave is author of and writes about creating residual income through pay-per-click ads.
Perhaps one of the best tips I read, which totally makes sense, to get your site listed in Google and then the other search engines which use Googles database, is to first, get a Google Site Map created and posted for your site, and second, create an xml feed of your website.
You can do these two things under an hour, providing your site is not humongous.
First, lets tackle creating a Google Site Map. Well, why Google Site Map Because Google totally supports it as a way to get your site included in their search engine - . This isnt your typical site map; this is an xml site map created for Googles spider bots.
Ive received e-mail from vendors touting Google Site Map software which theyll gladly charge you $29.95 to $147.00. But dont worry. You wont have to shell out a thing.
One of the wonderful things about search engines is that you can use them to save money. In this case, I looked for Google Site Maps and found the third listing is for a free generator. Its at . Not only is this a cool tool, but it is fully configurable and fast. It works using a Java engine and spiders the site. You save the output, if youre happy with it (i.e. it didnt spider your stats index, etc.), and upload it to your site.
Were not done.
The next part requires that you have an account with Google. If you read any of my articles about AdSense, I assume you do - but if you dont - feel free to create one - . Use your login to go to . Youll be able to add your sitemap there.
Once your Google Site Map has been submitted, Google will send out its bot and check out your site. Okay, so the lesson here is what Well, get your site map installed ASAP - so you can benefit from correct page display in the Google search engine. If youre creating a new site, try getting the Google Site Map installed before you tinker with your AdSense. Once AdSense is up and has been accessed, Google starts coming to the site.
Whats next Yes, two tips today! The next thing you want to do, even if your site is not a Blog is to create an XML feed. Why XML feeds means that people can link to your site by way of subscribing to the feed. Now the feed doesnt have to be a continuously updated feed. It can be a simple explanation of what you offer on the site and why it may benefit the reader. There are many pages on the web on how to create an XML feed, but my favorite is from CityDesk - . But want to know what I do
I simply take a current XML feed, say http://monetizethis.blogspot.com/atom.xml and edit it. It works! Dont forget to do two things: upload the edited version to your website, and create a link to your XML feed. A Visit to Aruba - - has a great example at the bottom of the page.
Cool! There you go! Get those two things done and youll be that much closer to Google Nirvana, or search watch heaven - (dont worry, one does not exist).
Founder of one of the first web hosting companies on the Internet, World Wide Mart, Dave Jackson has been teaching others how to monetize their web sites for over ten years. Currently he teaches others to create a solid residual income by creating quality web sites of great benefit to visitors and monetizing them using contextual ads. His blog is .