7 White SEO Steps to Increase Traffic and Visibility

First of all i would like to say that SEO is not for the soft persons, here if you hesitate you loose money, big money or you'll have a mediocre website.
I created this article as promised, with the ideas that worked for me so you can benefit from it.

There are 2 types of SEO: White SEO and Black Hat SEO. As you probably intuited the white one is what everyone is using without breaking google's laws and the general Internet laws and the black SEO is everything that breaks those rules. In this article we will discuss White SEO.

White SEO
The White SEO is what a normal person should do(that until he doesn't get the desired success with his website and goes on the black side, Dark Vader anyone?).

I will enumerate some of the most important things one should know before starting a site and what should do to increase it's visibility/value over time.


These tips worked for me, each and everyone so you know i'm not talking from books.



1. Install a Traffic Analyzer.
This is probably the most important thing you could do for your website. Why? Well smartass because if you don't know how many visits you have you don't know what to improve, what effects have some articles on your traffic, how often people enter to read your articles, which are the most low-traffic days of the week, if your monthly traffic is better then last month, enough reasons?


2. Make them Want to Click
Page Views, this is the magic word, without them you lose 50% of your potential earnings. The bad, bad scenario is when someone enters your website from an external link, reads an article and then leaves your website.

The happy scenario is when someone reads the article and then clicks on another article he saw on the site because he thought the title was interesting or he saw a cute picture and clicked it to enlarge it.

Here are some tips to make people click some more and earn you some pageviews:
-Put pictures on your website, this is crucial, a website with pure text and no pictures is lifeless, boring, how is it to read a review about a laptop and don't even have a picture to see how it looks, makes me read it once or twice and forget about it even if it has interesting information on it, i will search for another site in that area that has pictures and looks more attractive.

In each article/post insert some pictures that relate with the story, a small picture and the large picture and an enlarge button/link.

-Have a portion of your website where to list your most recent articles. If i enter a website from an external link, i read the story and then maybe I search for another article , maybe i don't(usually i don't), but if 5 of the most recent posts are listed somewhere visible and i like the looks of a title i will surely click it, therefore more views and lower bounce rates(bounce rate=someone enters directly on an article, reads it and then leaves immediately without interest for the rest of the website)

-Put your Categories at view so that people can click a category, therefore making more page views and of course makes your website more organized. They will surely click on categories from pure curiosity.

3. Don't create fast trashy articles
If there is something that Internet users want, that thing is quality. Create articles that really helps people, if you search my website all articles are made to help people get informed, fix things, resolve problems. www.beepme.blogspot.com was created 3 months ago and although i didn't had the time to take care of it as i should, my Alexa Rank went down week after week, twice a week, never up. In 2 weeks i will have Alexa Rank 180,000 with 60% of the visitors from google.com

My secret? I don't post news. Why? Think about it, you post it today you get lets say 1000 visits on it, 300 visits tomorrow and probably no visits by the end of the week, why? because you read the news and then when something new appears there is no interest for an old announcement.
On the other hand articles that last in time are the key. I made an article about How to Manage Firefox Tabs better, brought me 1,231 visits in the first day and after 1 week still brings me daily, 100-200 visits. This is because lots of people use firefox, new people will install Firefox and they will search for related articles everyday.

Off course if you have the time to create articles that last in time and put 1-2 news too(i sure don't have the time)it's great for boosting the traffic but if you have to choose, take long term articles.

4. The Link Exchange Problem
Yes in order to increase your page rank, you'll need to exchange links in the first months when you mean nothing on the Internet and you have 0 visibility.

But how do you exchange links? First thing First, second thing second...umm..i've lost my idea, o well here are the tips for link exchanges:
-DON'T exchange links with websites that have smaller page rank then you, unless of course they are your friends and you want to help them increase their page rank.

-Exchange with websites that have page rank as high as possible. For example if you have page rank 3, exchange links with websites that have PR 4 and higher. Always try to look for quality Page rank websites. For example is more indicated to make one link exchange with 1 website that has pagerank 7, then to link exchange with 3 websites that have PR 4.

-Be very careful after you make the link exchange so that the other guy doesn't adds to your link the rel="nofollow" attribute because, when the page rank update will be made, google will ignore the link he added on his site. You can read more about the rel="nofollow" attribute here: How to stop your Page Rank leak

-Try to submit your articles on Social Bookmarks websites, news/articles websites like digg.com, clipmarks.com, stumbleupon.com and others because you'll have more links towards you, but be very careful to post interesting articles or you'll be considered spamm and put to sleep by the community.

-Make professional articles that are very searched at the current time like Firefox articles, google articles, ipod articles because if they are good enough, some high page rank websites will put your story on their page and a link to the source, that being you.

5. Search Engines Anyone?
Yes you have to get your website indexed in search engines/traffic engines/analyzers like Google, Alexa, Dmoz(if you get accepted in Dmoz in less then 4 months I'll send you a beer, hell I'll give you a beer if you get accepted in 1 year), yahoo.com, Msn, Ask, Gigablast(it has real time spidering), WISEnut.

Advice: After you submit your website to Dmoz and observe with nerves of steel that they don't contact you, even after 4 months don't try to resubmit or you'll get your site banned, i though you should know.

The more search engines index you, the more traffic potential.

6. Keywords
Well this is a tricky and sensible domain that can be controlled only after you play with it for some time. What are keywords? Well there are words, tags if you want, upon which you can be found by search engines, when someone is searching for something related to your websites/area of interest.

For example if you have a cigars website your keywords should be companies that produce cigars, names of cigars, materials that make a cigar. Change the keywords, play with them until you find the perfect combination. To see how much competition you have on your keywords you can use the Google AdWords KeyWord Tool

7. Attractive Titles
This is very important for an article, because the title is the first thing you read at an article. Make it interesting, make it sound good, make it different from what is on the internet.

-Use great companies names in your titles because they are easily indexed by search engines, for example: How to repair a Samsung monitor .

-Make it from 4 words up so you have more keywords in it.

-Search on the net before you put a post because others may have already posted articles titles like yours and you'll create without need, competition. If there is a title like yours How to repair Firefox change it in How to Fix Firefox.

Note: Don't make the greatest mistake that you could ever do and most beginners make. Don't respect the steps i described above for 1 month and then forget about them and then have the nerve to ask someone why isn't your website improving. Keep doing this every month, every year.

For Alex, Joana, Michaela23, Andrea, George and Tom_tr and for all that regularly read BeepMe, guys the next article will be as promised, about Black White SEO, dirty tricks to evolve your website .