I plan to take on the SEO of my site myself. I hope to find some help on this forum and hence, am posting my basic plan to get your opinions. I have a package site, where I can modify the content on the page, but not the structure. This is why I planned a backlink approach. We are working on a number of keywords for the moment to target and scale the listings. Is this the right track to go on? I would really appreciate if you offered some advice.
One of the rare posts where someone begins SEO with a right step - keyword research. But, do it wisely, if you have no experience you will maybe stuck somewhere on the 3. - 4. page and will be hard to go higher. When you choose a keyword then you go for Top10 or do not go for that keyword at all. If you plan to do that on a long term basis, and you are unexpereinced, I suggest you to try to rank for a keywords that has about 200-300 exact searches in google keyword tool and about 100 for inner pages... That will be nice to compete, not easy and not hard. Of course, this is just a guideline, not all 200 searches are the same strength
If it is just a start then I will prefer to choose best 3-5 keywords and just work on them only rather than working many number of keywords. Once your site get indexed well and got a good amount of backlinks then you can start with more keywords.
Your on the right track - choosing and planning the best keywords for your site is definitely the first thing to do before going into the real online competition. Afterwards, you need to set-up a good plan on optimizing your site's on-page and off-page with the chosen keywords.
Its always a good start to do keyword research try to find the keywords that aren't too competitive yet give decent traffic. Once you have found the keywords you can start building backlinks with them in the anchor text. You can comment on blogs and you can post on forums with the links in your sig. This will increase your backlinks as well as give you traffic.
Yes, get some basic backlinking done: Article Directory submission Directory submission Web 2.0 Remember to use the correct anchor text where possible.
I'd suggest having each page set up for a specific keyword, perhaps a landing page or entry point for each keyword would work as well. Really, with a new site, you have all the options in the world. Just create content and backlink for appropriate keywords on each page.
Sounds like your on the right track. Linking and proper anchor text usage are probably the most important part of SEO feel free to check out my site for more free (and some not free) tips http://getonpage1ofgoogle.com Doug
yes you r on right track, use google adword keyword tool if u have any problem in keywords.. you can also Do SMO and Directory submission and forums to get back links for your site which help u in Traffic and PR.. start slowly and wait for result.. all the best...
Keyword research is the 1st step to start seo of your site... Search the old post of DP and you will get a lots of useful information.
Starting with good keywords is definitely the best route. Backlinks are obviously important too but I am interested in what you say about not being able to modify the structure of your site. Do you mean the layout of the pages (which is not vital from an SEO point of view) or are you limited to how many pages you can have ? The most important thing is good content and lots of it, you will want to grow the site internally by adding pages (with lots of relevant content). If you cant do this then you may have a problem.
By the way - i can advise a good tool for keyword research. It is semrush, i use it for a long time and succeed with the results.
I tend to target one or two keywords only for each page of my site. How competitive these phrases are depends on the niche I'm working in. Each page will have different targeted keyword phrases. If you work on less competitive keywords you won't get the same traffic for a high postion but you are more likely to get on the first page of search engines. It's a balance and only you can decide how you want to play it. Also make sure you check out the strength of the competion for keyword phrases. Some phrases may have relatively few competitors, but if they are mainly high authority/page rank sites you are wasting your time unless you really know what you are doing. Write naturally using unique content and don't cram your keywords as it will be viewed as spamming. The LSI will take care of itself if you write in this way. Get to know how to use the free keyword tools properly first and then think of investing in one of the many excellent paid for tools. They make life a lot easier. Then you need to start thinking of building backlinks...but that's another story. Cheers, Andy