Organic Traffic Generation: Best Tools for Content and SEO

Top Search Engines

These generate about 90% of all traffic, even though there are 1000s of other search engines out there. Other directories you should get your Website into are:

DMOZ (search engines like AltaVista use this)
Dogpile
Metacrawler

2 Types of Traffic

Organic –> free
PPC (pay per click) –> you pay for every click to your Website, e.g. Google Adwords

Our Focus will be Organic traffic and tools to accomplish that. Benefits:

Anyone can do it
Usually does not cost anything (but some tools might)

Basic Examples of Organic Traffic

Basic tweaks of Website settings: robots.txt, sitemap.xml, keywords in meta tags
Add to search engines (AFTER the above)
Article writing, submitting to article directories, i.e. generate content and let people read it!
Comments on high-ranking sites, with backlinks, e.g. with Comment Kahuna.
Reviews of your site/products from high-ranking sites, again with backlinks
Create a community for interaction with your clients
Submission to social networks such as Technorati, Digg, Facebook, MySpace.

Tools for Checking Your Current Traffic/SEO Status

Alexa: check your traffic rank at http://www.Alexa.com
PR (Page Rank) sites: check your Google page rank (combination of factors) at http://www.pagerank.net/pagerank-checker/
Add code to your footer to track your status – see bottom of www.steveatwal.com
Google analytics. Requires gMail account. Tracks stats/visitors. Visit: http://www.google.com/analytics/

Tools for Keyword Generation

SERPS (search engine results pages): see what position your site ranks for certain keywords and phrases. Visit: http://www.shoemoney.com/serps.php
WordTracker: free version limited to 100 words. Useful keyword suggestion tool. Shows search volume for each keyword. Collects data from two search engines: dogpile.com, metacrawler.com. Visit: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
Google Keyword Suggestion Tool: visit https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Paid Tools: Compete.com, KeyCompete.com, KeywordDiscovery.com

Creating Web Pages and Structure

Files names: use meaningful file names for each page. Use hyphens sparingly or they may be considered spam by search engines.
Title Tags: use meaningful, keyword related.
Meta Description Tags: again, meaningful, keyword rich.
Meta Keyword Tags: all your keywords.
Validate HTML: http://validator.w3.org – very important for proper indexing by search engines, since some search engines may stop indexing when they encounter an HTML error.
Optimize for Multiple Browsers: ensure all major browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari) can see your Website properly! Visit:www.anybrowser.com and select SiteViewer to check.

Tools for Website Structuring: Robots, Sitemap

Robots.txt: tells search engines what NOT to index to avoid duplicate content penalty and increase speed (improves quality ranking). Use Notepad to create one and place it on the root of your site as robots.txt
Sitemap.xml: makes it easier for search engines to index your site. Create one at: www.xml-sitemaps.com
Redirect Non-WWW Traffic to WWW: most people do not know that search engines see your Website as both domainname.com and www.domainname.com. Why? To check if this is canonical issue exists for your site Google both site: domainname.com and site: www.domainname.com and if the results differ then you have an issue.Use Notepad to update your .htaccess with

Rewriteengine On
RewriteCond %(HTTP_HOST) !^\.example\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 (R=301,L)

OR, much simpler, use WordPress plugin. Can also do a 301 redirect.

Tools for Building a Community

Create a forum/discussion board: keep your visitors interested and coming back to your site using tools like MyBB at http://www.mybboard.net
Make it popular: Create contests or Giveaways. Provide feedback to product buyers/users or support forum.

Tools for Content Creation

Tips: avoid duplicate content penalties by search engines. Use www.copyscape.com to see how unique your site content is and if someone else has copied your content.
Use proper keyword density: see how well your sites are optimized for keywords at http://www.webuildpages.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/
Latent semantic Content: see how search engines rank your relevance based on site content not just keywords. You can then construct your sentences and paragraphs using semantically linked words. Two tools for this:

Google.com: search for ~apple ; then search for ~windows. Note bolded words such as Mac, Quicktime.
Quintura.com: search for apple and place mouse over word apple in the left side keyword cloud and see results change to related terms.

Keep content fresh! Visit www.freshcontent.net which shows you news feeds that are relevant to what you want. Create your own RSS feed (simple in WordPress), and create fresh content yourself, get users involved in forums to create content as well. Search engines like this.
Tool for Semi-Automatic Article Creation: Instant Article Wizard. Show demo. $7 for first month so try it out.

Tools for Building Links & Social Media Optimization

See how many links you already have: navigate to Google.com and enter link: www.yourdomainame.com. Do the same at Yahoo.com using linkdomain: www.yourdomainname.com
Linking Partners: links from older domain names are better ranked by search engines. Navigate to www.DomainTools.com and enter the domain name you are trying to get a link from. Scroll down to registry data to see age of this domain. Try to acquire links (e.g. comments on their sites or reviews by them of your site) from the older domain names.
Find .EDU links pointing to a domain name in Yahoo: (these are usually older domains) as an example, navigate to Yahoo.com and search for linkdomain: www.domainname.com and then search for inurl: .edu. Can do the same at AlltheWeb.com
Use Yahoo Directory: located at http://dir.yahoo.com/ and log in using your Yahoo account. Click Get Started and enter/confirm your Website info.
Article Directories: write some articles and put them up on www.ezinearticles.com, www.sphinn.com
Participate in Online Communities: such as at http://blogsearch.google.com where blog posts are listed in terms of relevance.
Participate in Other Forums: use CommentKahuna to help do this which also helps you find high ranking sites to post to.
Request One-Way Links to your Site: search www.dmoz.org for subjects relevant to your site. Then contact the owners of the sites returned to see if they are willing to link to your site since it would be relevant to what they offer.
Buy Links: use Text Link Ads or www.payperpost.com
Post on Social Networks: www.facebook.com, www.myspace.com, www.mybloglog.com, www.twitter.com, www.linkedin.com, www.youtube.com, www.digg.com and www.stumbleupon.com to post to other peoples walls and groups relevant to what you do.