Advanced SEO Techniques

Most website owners who are interested in SEO will have read numerous articles on the basics of getting your on-site optimisation right. The usual: Page Titles, SEO friendly URLs, appropriate Headings, etc.. When these techniques have already been applied, some websites in very competitive verticals will still need some more differentiating factors to set them apart from their competitors. Here are 5 advanced SEO tips which you may consider.

1. Even more - inbound links
I know, I know, this belongs in the 'Basic SEO Tips' section, but at the time of writing (OCT 09) the number and quality of inbound links to your website, seems to be more important than ever in determining the rank of your website on the Search Engine's results page.

So don't just know about the importance of inbound links - build them! Develop meaningful and useful content on your website. Blog and submit to industry and social forums. As well as these standard techniques, also consider:

1. Syndicating Articles that Link deep Within Your Website
Syndicating articles involves providing web feeds which make a portion of your website or blog available to other sites or individual subscribers. When done correctly, the content from the article or blog, when picked up by other sites, includes a signiture (and link) to your site.

Surprisingly, there are very few content creators syndicating material in Ireland. Even fewer of those are providing meaningful links to deep within their website. This tactic can get the Search Engine crawlers to search deeper into your site and index more of your pages.

2. Translate Your Website Into Other Languages
If you are in the Tourist industry this is a necessity. The English speaking World provides a fraction of the total visitor numbers to Ireland. Your website has to reach out further to other geographies to capture visitors and to convert those into customers.

To make those international visitors feel welcome when they get to your website, you should be providing them with content in their native tongue. You don't need to translate all of the site content, there is a cost involved, however, you should translate all of the 'key pages' - a Landing Page, which describes your product, the Booking Page, the Thank You page, etc.

3. Find Keyword Phrases which Actually Convert
This might seem to belong to the 'Basic SEO Tips' section too but for many webmasters, this is the single biggest mistake they make. Many sites focus on their brand or company name, very generic terms which describe their product (but which don't convert to sales) or focus on the single most competitive Keyword in their inductry!

Your website will be much more successful, if you target keyword phrases that actually convert ot sales and, preferably, terms which others may have missed! Typically these terms are longer, not just 1 word but 3 or 4 words long. These 'long tail' terms are always much less competitive and studies have shown that the more words used in a search term - the more likely the searcher is to purchase.

4. Use Online Tools to Find Key Phrases Which Convert
A number of tools have been developed online to help you find the terms which are working for your competitors. One of these tools is SpyFu. SpyFu tracks hundreds of thousands of keywords. Using this tool, you can browse by website or by search term.

If you want to find keywords appropriate to your industry which have high conversion rates, use these tools to see what others are using and then to find variations on those terms. Maybe variations which include obvious purchase words, for example: holiday terms with 'book' attached, electronics items with 'buy' or 'purchase' included.

Other high-converting key phrases include specific brand names. Often purchasers have done a lot of research online about their purchase and are ready to buy when they search for the specific product and model number. At that point you REALLY want to capture that searcher and pull them to your website.

5. Build Meaningful Internal Links Within Your Content
Obviously the main navigation elements on your site are crucial from a usability point of view. You need to make it easy for your visitors to move around your site and to find content. However, there is another aspect to internal navigation.

Embedding links within your main content and using key terms within the content as anchors for those links can really help Search Engines determine what your site is all about and can improve your website's performance in the Search Engine results pages. For example, on this page you will have noticed that I mention Basic SEO TIps within the article content. In each instance I have made the words 'Basic SEO Tips' a link to the page on this site which give Basic SEO Tips!

Human visitors and Search Engine Crawlers can then quickly foillow these links with a clear idea of what to expect when they get there. This technique can really improve the link popularity of other pages on your website.