Wedding SEO and Internet Marketing Blog

As we have discussed before, Squidoo is a very powerful tool when it comes to search engine optimization.  If you create a Squidoo lens, it gains immediate recognition in the search engine rankings, so it brings a great deal of traffic to your website if optimized properly.  Also, it provides a quality backlinks to your main website.  Many people do not even have a website and use Squidoo to generate a full-time income.  In the wedding industry, this is not recommended, but it is definitely a great way to give your traffic and conversions to your website a major boost.

Let’s go over some of the benefits of creating a Squidoo lens.  First of all, a lens is indexed by Google faster than a regular website you create.  Many times they are indexed immediately upon creation.  Also, Squidoo is a simple and free way to get a presence on the internet.  Even if you are not experienced at all on the internet you can have a lens up in under an hour.  Many people that are new to advertising on the internet are on a limited budget, so this is very helpful.  When you compare Squidoo to its competitors, such as HubPages and WordPress, there is little regulation on your site.  Squidoo has no problem with you putting affiliate links on your website.  This does not mean to create a really spammy Squidoo that is packed with no information, but has affiliate links all over it.  If you do this, there is a small possibility your lens can be taken down.  Not only that, your page will not rank well in the search engines if there is no quality content enriched with keywords, and your site is just filled with hoplinks to affiliate products.

When you begin to make your lens, after you log in and click create lens, you will be taken to a screen that asks you what kind of lens you want to make.  Click on the options that says “do my own thing.”  This gives you freedom to add whatever modules you want to your lens.  After this, you will be asked to select a title.  You need to use your keyword in your title.  If it makes sense, you can simply use the keyword as your title.  If the title is taken you can simply add a number to the end of the title and it will not affect your search engine rankings.  For instance, you could make your title “Top 10 Wedding Favors 1.”  This will make your url http://www.squidoo.com/top-10-wedding-favors-1.  If you are having trouble selecting a keyword, feel free to consult my previous blog post about selecting keywords.

Before you make your lens, it is a good idea to check out the Top 100 lenses.  By doing this you will get a good idea of what it takes to create a high-quality lens that enjoys a great deal of traffic.  No need to try to figure this out yourself, when the blueprint has been drawn for you by the top Squidoo marketers.

Squidoo will ask you if you want to keep the money you earn from your lens or donate it to charity.  This is only referring to the Adsense earnings from your page.  Adsense is the text ads placed on your website by Google.  You will probably not generate much revenue from this, because this is not our main objective, so choose whichever option you like.

After this, you need to create a bio for yourself which includes a link to your main website.  A link will be on each Squidoo you create that takes people to your bio, so put a little bit of time into it, because it will getting a good amount of views.  You can make this bio default for each lens or create a special bio for each lens.  If you have the time, I recommend creating a unique bio for each lens.

The first thing you create in the lens is the introduction.  This is the most important part of your lens.  This is where you need to capture the attention of your reader.  This module is what gets your reader to continue.  For this part you can write a short review of your product or service, or you can tell a story to gain interest.  When you create your lens, make sure to use 4-5 modules.  You want to include a lot of text.  Also, add a module that contains something humorous or entertaining.  You can use articles you have already written or other people’s articles from ezine.  Just make sure to credit the author.

After this, you can take it from there.  Use all of the seo techniques you have read previously in the blog and you can create a top Squidoo lens.

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.

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.