Any website owner would want to generate traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. And why not? After all, traffic generated from search engines are high quality and free! Plus, if you’ve got good ranking, you might as well sit with your hands folded and see the visitors pour in. But of course, you have to put in your fair share of effort first and when it comes to effort in website marketing, SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is the name of the game. Yes, you’ve heard of the amount of work involved and the internet marketing companies out there that can help you with your SEO. But there are some SEO strategies you can carry out all by yourself thus making the entire process an inexpensive one. So, here are 9 surefire (and DIY!) ways to up your ranking:

• Choose your keywords wisely: Keywords are the search terms that people use to find websites in search engines and if you want them to find yours, you should choose your keywords wisely. When planning your website’s content, do some research about which keywords to use and consider using tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to help you with this. And do use the “exact match” option when using the Keyword Tool to find out how many people are searching for the exact terms you’re researching. Keyword phrases with 1500 – 5000 monthly searches are fine as they bring along just enough searches to be profitable while keeping out stiff competition. Begin with 5 keywords and add more to the list as you go ahead.
• Use your keywords in the title tags of your web pages: A title tag that describes the content of the page in a concise and accurate way with the right keywords helps search engines decide how relevant the page is to a particular search term. And remember, the more relevant a page is, the higher it will rank in the results for that search term.
• Use your keywords in your domain name: Everyone might not agree on this one but there has been clear evidence that websites with exact match domains get top ranking easier than non-keyword domain sites. So, do include your best keyword phrase in your domain name with a .com, .net or .org. You should use a hyphen (-) between your best keywords if none are available.
• Use Your Keywords in the HTML Heading Tags: This gives search engines more info about how relevant your web page is to certain search terms. So, make it a point to use heading tags containing your keywords at each page of your site. And see to it that every web page has at least one H1 tag that includes the same keywords that are in your title tag.
• Check the Keyword Density in Your Website Text: Keyword density refers to the several times your keywords appear in the text on your webpage. Some believe that high keyword density is beneficial to search engine rankings, while others argue that ‘keyword stuffing’ is viewed as a form of spam by the search engines. So, if you want to be in the safe zone, you should use the main keyword once in the first paragraph, once in second paragraph, once in the last paragraph, and once somewhere between for a web page that has about 400-600 words.
• Setup Your Website’s Internal Linking Structure Properly: You should have at least one text link with your best keyword or keyword phrase on every page that links to your main URL. This increases the popularity ofyour main page because the number of web pages that point to your main page will grow along with your website. And don’t forget to hyperlink to other posts on your blog when adding blog posts to your blog! Remember to put your best foot err..keywords forward!
• Grow the Number of Incoming Links from a Wide Variety of External Sites: You’ve got to have a lot of webpages and popular sites linking to your site if you want to improve its PR (stands for Page Rank). This is quite a time demanding task, though, so you might consider outsourcing it.
• Grow the Number of Incoming Links From External Sites Slowly and Consistently: Getting a few dozen links a week or even 10 a day is fine but hundreds of them is not! Unless you want your site to move down the serpsthe next time Google updates their database, you should consider taking it slow.
• Use Your Keywords in as Many Incoming Links as Possible: Focus on using your best keyword or keyword phrase for most of your links and use it as much as possible.

Use these DIY SEO strategies and see your Page Rank improve right in front of your eyes!

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