Wedding SEO and Internet Marketing Blog

SEO stands for search engine optimization.  There are many things you can do to optimize your site for the search engines.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to start a website or blog is by using WordPress.  If you have not used WordPress before, it is a program that you install from the cpanel of your website.  With the rise in popularity of WordPress, many hosting sites now offer one-click installation of WordPress.  If you are not sure what a cpanel is, it is very simple.  You log into your cpanel by going to www.yourwebsitename.com/cpanel.  Once you get in there, there should be an option for installation of WordPress.  Leave the directory field blank.

Once you get WordPress installed, it is one of the easiest formats to use.  In order to log into WordPress, you simply go to:  www.yourwebsitename.com/wp-admin.  You will use your WordPress username and password to log in.  You got this username and password when you installed WordPress.  Once you get logged in, you will see many options.  You can add new pages or posts,  check out your traffic stats, change your themes, and many other things.

First let’s choose you a nice layout.  These are often referred to as themes.  You can go to www.wordpress.org and search all of the themes they have.  You want to get a nice search engine optimized theme.  There are many of these available for free on the internet.  Once you select the one you are looking for, you need to the file and upload it to your “themes” directory.  To do this, you will need an ftp program.  I recommend Filezilla.  There are many tutorials on how to upload files on youtube.  It is a very simple program, and after using it one or two times, you will definitely have the hang of it.  Once you have the theme uploaded, you click on the “themes” link on the left side of the screen.  You will then activate the theme you chose.  All of the information you had on your previous theme will be automatically transferred to your new theme.  This is one of the great features of WordPress.

Making new posts is very simple.  There is a button in the left sidebar that says “new post.”  All you need to do is click on it to begin a new post.  There are spaces for the article title, article body, and tags.  Tags are another word for keywords.  These are the words that search engines will use to find your site.  When choosing the title, make sure you include the words that you will use as tags.  Also, when you are writing the article body, make sure you use the words you plan to use as keywords within the article 2-3 times each.  This is an important step in optimizing your site for the search engines.  After that, you hit publish, and you are finished.  All you need to do is click publish.  Of course, this is not all you can do.  You can add pictures, links, or anything you want.  WordPress uses a very user-friendly interface, so you can add pictures or links with one click.

Once you finish your post, you need to make sure Google and Yahoo are aware that you made a new post to your website.  In order to do this, you need to “ping” your website.  What does it mean to ping your website?  When you ping your website, you are sending out a signal that notifies the search engines and directories that your page has been updated.  The easiest way to do this is by going to http://www.pingler.com.  All you need to do is go to this page, put in the url, blog title, keywords, and a small description and click submit.  After doing, over 50 search engines and directories will be notified that your blog has been updated.

WordPress is very simple to get started with, but there is no limit to what you can do with it.  There are many plug-ins you can integrate into your WordPress blog.  There is one where it automatically sends out a “Tweet” on Twitter, notifying all of your followers that you just updated your blog.  There is another one that allows you to put Adsense on your blog.  Adsense is those little ads you see on many webpages, by Google.  When you set up an Adsense account, you will be paid each time someone clicks on your Adsense.  The most important plug-in is called  “All in One SEO“.  This FREE mod will verify that ALL of your posts are SEO friendly with proper page titles, keywords, and tags.  I highly recommend that instead of writing a unique description, you include a 50 word unique excerpt for every post.  Also NEVER place the same post into multiple categories, this is detrimental and gets looked as duplicate content from Google.  Your best bet is to only have a few categories, and keep all your posts organized within a select few pertaining to your keywords.

When it is time to do search engine optimization for a website, many people do not know where to begin.  Heck, some do not even know what search engine optimization is.  Well, first of all search engine optimization is often shortened to simply SEO.  SEO is described as the steps taken to optimize your site for higher rankings in the search engines.

There are many different opinions as to what are effective tactics as far as search engine optimization.  So we will stick to what has proven to work.  One of the best ways to optimize your site, as well as get some immediate traffic to your site is by submitting articles to the website Ezinearticles.  When you submit your articles, it takes up to a week to get them approved.  Upon approval, your articles will begin drawing immediate traffic to your website.  At the end of your article, you are given a source box which you can put a link to your website in.  This is the reason you write the entire article.  You are leading them directly into the source box, where they will then find your link.  The other reason to submit articles is it provides a quality backlink for your website.  A backlink is a link that will take anyone who clicks on it back to your site.  When your site has many quality backlinks, it helps a great deal in climbing the ranks of the search engines.

Another method to get traffic to your page is by creating a Squidoo or Hubpages account.  Squidoo and Hubpages are sites where you can create your own website absolutely free.  At Squidoo they call the page you create a “lens,” while Hubpages refers to your pages as “hubs.”  At each site you are able to add text, pictures, video, and much more.  The interface is very user-friendly and is designed for someone with no experience in web design.  You are not required to know any kind of code in order to make a lens or hub.  As a matter of fact, a Squidoo Lens was one of the first pages I ever made.  I did so without any outside assistance and had no problem whatsoever.  I prefer Squidoo to Hubpages, because they offer more tutorials and assistance on improving your lens, but it is good to use both.  They both rank very highly in google.  Also, like Ezinearticles, backlinks on these sites will help your main business website a great deal.  Here is a good video tutorial about how to set up your first Squidoo Lens.

Visiting forums can also be a great source of targeted traffic.  If you are in the wedding industry, you can find many forums and online communities that are completely based around Weddings.  It can also be a great source of learning more information about your particular niche.  When you are at these sites, take note of what the members are talking about the most.  Pay special attention to what kind of problems they are having or what type of products they are looking for.  If you can become one of the people at the message board that people go to when they need information or help with something, that will definitely help your business.  Some internet marketers make the majority of their business on forums.  Most message boards allow you to put a link in your signature.  So every time you post, everyone who reads your post will see your links.  Be careful not to get in trouble for “spamming” the message boards with your links.  I usually spend about fifteen minutes a day surfing forums.  I learn stuff from them every day, and also help people with them.  There is also an added bonus to having links in your signature at a message board.  They also count as a backlink and will help your linked websites with search engine optimization.

Do you know what all of these search engine optimization techniques have in common?  They are all entirely free.  Also, each of them takes less than an hour to complete.  So there is no reason why you cannot get started today and put up a hub, lens, an article, and register for a few forums.  Also, each of these methods is very easy to get started with, even for an inexperienced internet marketer.  No excuses, get started today.

When you begin optimizing your site for the search engines, there are many things you need to consider.  One thing you need to do is narrow down the competition that you are fighting with for the same spots on google.  For instance, if you are a wedding DJ, based in Texas, it will be a lot of wasted time and energy to get your website all the way to the top of Google for people that search for the keyword “wedding.”  Sure, you will get tons of traffic, but your DJ business in Texas will not benefit from the majority of this traffic.  Odds are, if someone is searching for a DJ for their wedding based in Texas, they will search for something more along the lines of “wedding dj’s texas” or something along those lines.  These types of keywords are called long-tail keywords.  These keywords do not get as much traffic as keywords such as “wedding” or “dj,” but there are many benefits to being at the top of the search engine ranking pages (serps) in the long-tail keywords.  The greatest benefit is that the traffic you get from the long-tail keywords is obviously very interested in your service.  If you had people going to your website that searched for “wedding” it is very likely that they are looking for a wedding dj 500 miles from you or even more.  They probably aren’t even looking for a DJ.  When someone searches for “wedding dj in Austin, Texas,” this is a very hot lead.  They are looking for the exact service that you offer.  You are much more likely to turn the visitors to your website into actual paying customers when they arrive to your website by searching with long-tail keywords.

Another important thing to remember when trying to rank high in the serps, is that Google loves content.  There are a lot of mysteries regarding what Google actually looks for when doing the search rankings, but two things are for sure:  Google loves good, unique content as well as quality backlinks.

What does it take to make quality content?  When you are writing articles for your webpage, it is good to use the keywords you are trying to rank with, to consist of about 2-3% of your articles.  You do not want to use the keywords too many times, just make sure you use them at least once.  Another great way to boost traffic is by putting videos on your website.  Also, creating your videos and uploading them on youtube can help drive traffic to your website.  When people search youtube and find your video, you can point them to your site.  You can do this by watermarking your video with the URL of your website.  You can also put the URL in the description of the video.

Now I am going to explain what I mean by “quality backlinks.”  A backlinks is any link on the internet that will take someone to your webpage.  There are many ways to get backlinks.  You can post links on message boards, your other webpages, by leaving comments on blogs, and many other methods.  So your next question may be, “How do we know if the link is quality?”  Well, Google ranks all websites.  The way they rank them is by PR or page rank.  They are ranked from PR0-PR9.  The higher the PR, the better.  If you can get links to your website on PR9 sites, it is very helpful in moving your site up the rankings of google.  One of the best ways to get quality backlinks to by creating social bookmarks.  Many of the social bookmarking sites are ranked as high as PR8.

How do you determine the PR of a website?  After all, it is not like when you visit a website, the PR is listed in bold numbers and letters on the front page.  There are add-ons for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer.  If you have not heard of Mozilla Firefox, it is an alternative web browsing option.  I highly recommend it, as it provides much quicker web browsing, as well as more security measures in protecting your computer.  Back to PR.  Once you active these add-ons they will show the PR of each page you visit.  This will usually displayed in the toolbar of your browser.  If you do not like adding things to your internet browser, there are websites that show you the PR of sites that you list for them.

Search engine optimization is the best free way to provide targeted traffic for your business.  The best paid way to generate traffic is with Google Adwords.  With some work on your website, you can gain all of the benefits that paid traffic gets at no cost.  If you are not familiar with Google Adwords, it is the paid system for traffic offered by Google.  You bid on keywords, then when people search for those keywords, your website is placed on the search engine results page.  The bids range anywhere from a single penny to over ten dollars.  Google also gives your website a quality score which can affect the cost of the bids.  It sounds simple enough, if you have a product or service that converts.  Google Adwords can be a dangerous method of advertising for anyone inexperienced.  Even though you may be spending only ten cents per click, that adds up very quickly.  Remember, Google is the number one site in the world in terms of visitors per day.  Your expenses can add up in a short amount of time, no matter how cheap it is per click.

The other way to get traffic to your site is by search engine optimization.  This kind of traffic is called organic traffic.  When you get your website placed at the top of the Google search engine results pages, there is no cost for that.  You get just as many visitors to your website as you would for the paid traffic, if you optimize for the right keywords.

Selecting the right keywords to optimize for is the most important aspect of this process.  You can get to the top of the search engine results pages, but if no one is searching these keywords you will not see any results for your hard work.  You can use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to help you choose the keywords that you want to optimize your site for.  This is a handy tool that provides a large amount of great information.  It tells you how many times each keyword is searched per month.  It also tells you how much competition there is for the keywords you search for.  Another helpful piece of information it gives you is related keywords.  When you type in a keyword it not only gives you information for that keyword, but it gives you a list of hundreds of related keywords.  For the related keywords it also provides you with information on how many times they are searched and how much competition there is for that particular keyword.  This will help you think of keywords that you may not have thought of.  It will also help you find keywords that are easier to get to the top of the search engine results pages in.

Once you find some high traffic keywords with low competition, it is time to start optimizing your site for these keywords.  When writing articles for your page, it is important to use those keywords in the articles two to three times within the article.  It is also good to have the keywords you are targeting listed in the url for your website.  This alone will give you a head start on everyone else who is targeting the same keywords.

There are other mechanisms you can use to get traffic to your site for free.  You can make free webpages on sites such as Squidoo and HubPages.  These sites have a lot of power in the Google search engine results pages.  Within a day, your site will already be indexed on google.  These pages also allow you to easily list the keywords that you are looking to rank highly in.  A good, search engine optimized page can easily get on the first page of search engine results.  This is very common.  Another benefit of making a Squidoo or HubPage is the strength of the links you put on them.  When you put a link from your Squidoo or HubPage back to your regular webpage, it improves the rankings of your regular webpage in the search engines.  Also, you can directly sell your products or services from the Squidoo or HubPage.  Many free blog providers do not allow you to sell anything on it, but Squidoo and HubPages actually encourage you to sell on their pages.

When you start doing research about internet marketing, it is hard to sort through all of the information you encounter.  You will find information about how to write your sales page, how to build blogs and webpages, and how to build a mailing list.  It is very common to get overwhelmed with  information.    At some point, you need to start applying what you have learned, instead of continuing to learn more.

Though all of the information is helpful, it seems that many digital products based on internet marketing do seem to leave one key omission.  They forget to tell you exactly how you get the traffic to your website.  Sure it is nice to know how to write a good sales copy and how to design an attractive website, but all of that does not matter if you are not getting any traffic to view your great sales copy and beautiful webpage.  Getting traffic and targeted bridal leads to your website is what makes your business thrive.  Without this, nothing else really matters.

A new way people are going about internet marketing is by using Twitter.  If you haven’t seen Twitter, it is just something you have to see to know what I am talking about.  I advise you to go check it out right now.  When you first get to the website, you might be wondering what the heck is going on.  Twitter is a very simple interface.  Basically it is used to just advertise status updates to all of the people that you are “following.”  The people that are following you see all of the status updates you provide.  What I am explaining right now might seem somewhat confusing, but once you get on Twitter and start navigating the site, you will have the hang of it in no time.

You can use Twitter to get fresh, targeted leads every day.  In order to do this, you need to start following people that are in your niche.  For instance, if you are in the wedding niche, if you can find some wedding planners, it is good to start following them.  Then, you can look and see all of the people that the wedding planner is following.  Do the same with brides in your local area, and leverage this new era. Again, this might sound very complicated, but following is very simple and you will have no problem doing all of these things once you get on the website.

You can put a little image on your website that says “follow me.”  When people click on the image they will be taken to your Twitter page and given the option to follow you.  You can also put a link in your signature on forums, and emails that will enable people to follow you on twitter.

Once you get all of these people following you on Twitter it is important to pay attention to what you “tweet” about.  A “tweet” is the small status update that you use to keep your followers updated.  Sorry about all of the technical Twitter lingo!  It is really not as complicated as it sounds, I promise.  When you are tweeting, you need to make sure that you are providing good, informative posts for your followers.  If you start spamming your followers with link after link trying to sell them things, it will not pan out well.  With one click of a button, they can simply stop following you.  It is also a good idea to connect directly with the people you are following.  There is an option that allows you to send direct messages to the friends you have made on Twitter.  This makes you seem more personable to the community and will make what you say more valuable to them.  This way when do want to sell something to them or pitch some kind of an opportunity to them, they will definitely listen to what you have to say.

Right now Twitter is the biggest craze on the internet.  When you turn on the television you often hear about famous athletes and actors, and news anchors talking about Twitter.  It is a site that is visited by millions of people every single day.  It is your job to leverage that traffic in order to provide quality bridal leads for your website.  Some people make hundreds of dollars a day only using Twitter.  Well, I have to go now, why don’t you go get started and follow me http://twitter.com/jasonhennessey?

When beginning to do some search engine optimization work, it can often be intimidating.  Most people have no idea where to begin.  I am going to give you some free methods to drive more bridal traffic to your website and climb those search engines.

First of all, you can make a squidoo lens.  If you haven’t heard of these yet, it is basically a one-page blog that is created step by step.  You can add different “modules” to your squidoo lens.  You can add text modules, picture modules, link modules, and many other types of modules.  Squidoo is very self-explanatory and walks you through the process when you are completing your first lens.  Squidoo has very high authority when it comes to search engines results pages (serps).  It is very common to create a lens and immediately rank on the first page of google on a few of the search engine pages for the keywords that you chose.  Also, putting a link on your squidoo page to your home page is very valuable in helping your home page climb the serps.

Another great way to generate traffic to your website and to climb the serps is by writing an article and submitting it to Ezinearticles.  Like squidoo, Ezinearticles rates very well within the search engines.  If you write a good article which contains your keywords 2-3 times in it, you can often find yourself at or near the top of google.  Writing and submitting articles to Ezinearticles is so powerful that many internet marketers use it as their main source for driving traffic.  A good article with carefully researched keywords can provide you with hundreds of even thousands of unique visitors to your website.  The only downside is that it can take up to a week for Ezinearticles to approve your article for viewing on their site.  When submitting articles and keywords to ezinearticles, it is important to track which keywords work and which do not.  Do not worry, they make this very easy on you.  When you log into your account, you can view all of the articles you have written and exactly how much traffic they have generated for you.

If you are able to create videos, this is a great way to drive traffic to your website.  Programs such as Camtasia make video creation easier than ever.  Also, there are many services that will create videos for you.  Video marketing maybe be a little bit too advanced for the beginning internet marketer, but at some point is definitely something you want to experiment with.  Videos are a very powerful marketing tool on the internet.

Do not forget about advertising with classified sites, such as Craigslist.  Craigslist is a site that lists online classified advertisements.  There are many categories that you can advertise your product or service.  It is certain there will be a category that matches what you are promoting.  Craigslist is one of the most visited websites in the world and is certain to get a lot of targeted leads for your business.  It is especially effective for companies that are based in larger cities.  When posting on craigslist, be sure to only post one ad per day, because if you abuse it, they will ban your i.p. address and you will be unable to post.  This is done in an attempt to prevent spam, but it makes it more difficult for those of us that are just utilizing it like it was meant to be.

Social bookmarks are a great way to get instant traffic to your website, as well as help your website climb the serps. There are many social bookmarking sites, such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicous, and Reddit.  All you do is create an account and submit your website with some details.   After you do this, you can get some instant traffic from people that view your social bookmark.  Also, having social bookmarks linked to your website helps you climb the google rankings.

These are some quality methods to start doing SEO for your webpage.  Different methods work better for different people.  If you are a highly skilled writer, then it is wise to submit as many articles as possible to Ezinearticles.  Find out what works best for you and then go with that method.  It is good to have a mix of all of these methods, to diversify your traffic.  Now go drive some bridal traffic to your website!