Search Engine Optimizaion Guide

SEO Steps & Suggestions for BuildOffers Websites

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the cheapest ways for making your website successful. Achieving complete optimization does take some work, but the effort involved is nearly always rewarded. What follows is a step-by-step guide for optimizing your website. All BuildOffers website owners should try to implement these changes in order to increase their chances of ranking in the search engine results.

Buying Domains |Registering Your Site |Adding Meta-tags |Getting Inbound Links
Conducting Keyword Research |Creating Unique Content |Beyond SEO: Advertising Online

Buying Domains

When it comes to SEO; the name of your domain matters. For example,http://www.rewardcreditcards.com will rank much higher thanhttp://www.theamazingcreditcardwizard.com because the former uses better keywords. Here are a couple of very good domain registration tools that make the process of finding a good domain name easier.

• Ajaxwhois.com
• Domjax.com
• Psychicwhois.com
• Domize.com

When searching for domain names, particularly if you're trying to get some keyword matching, it can be extremely helpful to use tools such as Yahoo! Search Suggest or Google Suggest / Trends as well as more obvious direct keyword research tools including Wordtracker or KeywordDiscovery.

Before buying a domain name, one should process it through few blacklist checkers. Here is a list of such applications:

• http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/E-mail/Spam/Blacklists/
• http://www.dnsstuff.com/
• http://www.blacklistmonitoring.com

There are 3 types of domains one can purchase:

1 - A new/original domain with no history. These are getting harder and harder to find, but it is still possible to locate a decent domain name.
PROS - No bad history to worry about. Lowest possible domain cost.
CONS - This may take a bit longer to be found by the Search engines. Branding and SEO will have to start from scratch.

2 - A used domain that was misused and has a terrible history of bad behavior (Punished by search engines).
PROS - None
CONS - You just started and search engines already rank you negatively. Undoing this will require a reconsideration letter/e-mail to search engines and re-inclusion is done at the search engine's discretion. It will also take time to be "forgiven".

3- A used domain that has great PR and clean history.
PROS - You get to inherit a lot of previously done SEO/internet marketing efforts.
CONS - Expensive$$$

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Registering Your Site

By registering your website with Google, you inform Google that your site exists, thereby increasing your chances of ranking on the search engine results. To register your site:

• Go toGoogle Webmaster Central
• Register and verify your website
• Create and submit a sitemap
• Go over your website code and pages to make sure:
  (a) Title tags havequality keywords and reflect content on your pages
  (b) Keywords and Description tags havequality keywords and reflect content on your pages
  
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  Adding Meta-tags

  BuildOffers allows you to create and edit your own meta-tags on every single page of your website.

  

  Take advantage of this great tool and make sure your Title, Description and Keyword Tags are optimized and correctly reflect the content on each page. Try not to go over the character/word limits of each tag as follows:
  
  TITLE TAG: Maximum allowed 65 characters or 9 words
  TITLE TAG: Maximum allowed 1000 characters or 45 words
  DESCRIPTION TAG: Maximum allowed 150 - 200 characters or 25 words

  
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  Getting Inbound Links

  External (inbound) links directed toward your website also help to get better search engine rankings. A Link where the highlighted text uses keywords such as, "Business Credit Cards" will always be more relevant than a link where the highlighted text is ‘click here" or your site's domain name. Unless you believe your site's domain name will bring more visits than "Business Credit Cards".

  When acquiring link that point to your website, be smart and careful. Search engines have become very aware of "links for sale" schemes and if your website's inbound links grow too fast or if the links are from places considered "bad apples" by the search engines you might:

  • Waste money
  • Get punished and/or blacklisted which might take some time to fix

  A good place to start looking for links is your current "offline" business relationships. Consider:

  • Who has a website?
  • Do those people with sites enjoy doing business with you?
  • Would they place a link toward your website?
  • Could the link use keyword relevant text?

  Also, try to locate other websites that offer complimentary products and services to yours that might be interested in swapping links.

  Please note that it is beneficial to incorporate discoveries from your keyword research in your inbound links.

  
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  Conducting Keyword Research

  Most web professionals use keyword research to see what possible customers are searching for and how they are searching. There are many free keyword research tools available online, including:Google,WordTracker,Trellian, andSEO Book.

  It is important to conduct research to see what keywords have the greater search volume. Once the best keywords are located, try to use them throughout your site's content. Always keep common sense in mind, as the use of too many keywords runs the risk of making your website seem like a search engine "spammer".

  
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  Creating Content

  Search engines like, prefer and tend to give higher ranking to websites that bring something new and fresh to the web. Do not expect to have high rankings solely based on compliance-ready, pre-approved content. Remember, you are not the only website selling credit cards online and due to strict compliance rules all of your competition is using the same content. So, in order to stand out you should create your own content. BuildOffers has a great tool exactly for the purpose of enabling webmasters to create original content.

  To make sure your product pages have unique, readable, SEO content:

  • Make sure your title and content are optimized with relevant keywords, maintaining use of the keyword or phrase (and variations of that phrase) throughout the article
  • Make sure your articles are at least 250 words long
  • Make sure your paragraphs and sentences are clear and concise
  
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  Beyond SEO: Create PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Campaigns

  Most large search engines and big sites related to your business offer some sort of advertising package. These include, Google,MSN,Yahoo andAsk. There, you can create your own ad campaigns and ads. It is extremely important that you make sure you obey all compliance and keyword bidding rules set by credit card issuers when creating your ads.

  It is also important that you conductkeyword research when creating your PPC campaign in order to bid on the keywords you believe will bring the most quality traffic towards your website.

  
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  Beyond SEO: Other Online Advertising

  Look into advertising opportunities on websites that rank well on keywords that you believe to be of value to your site. If possible, buy banner Ads, sponsored listings and text ads in order to increase exposure for your website.