In this video, Mike Mindel shows you how to search engine optimize your web page, so you can rank for the keywords you choose and attract more traffic from Google.

Everything Mike’s about to show you is white hat and straight to the point, so sit back, press play and let’s begin!

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In this video I’m going to show you how to search engine optimize your web, so you can rank for the keywords you choose and attract more traffic from Google.

Just so you know who’s teaching you, my name is Mike Mindel and I’m the CEO and founder of Wordtracker.com, the popular keyword research tool.

Everything I’m about to show you is white hat and straight to the point, so sit back and let’s begin.

The Mad Hatter Is Definitely Rather Loony

No, we haven’t gone mad at Wordtracker. Each of the letters in bold stands for the steps you need to take to SEO your page.

T: Title tagM: Meta description and keywords tagH: Header tags: H1, H2, H3I: Image file names and alt tagsD: Diverse keywords R: Relevancy L: Reputable links

That’s everything you need to know to SEO your page.

Let’s go through them.

The title tag is one of the most important factors for ranking highly in the search engines because it tells Google what your page is about.

Let’s work through some dos and don’ts.

Focus on a primary and a secondary keyword for your page.

Put your primary keyword at the beginning.

If you can work it in, put your secondary keyword at the end too, but in a different way like this.

It’s not a title, it’s a headline!

Make your title compelling for the reader so you get clickthroughs.

What’s the point of getting to number one if you don’t get clicks? Your prospects are scanning the results, looking to find a match for the conversation in their heads. So make sure your offer is straight to the point!

If your titles are longer than 8-10 words then that scanning becomes more difficult and may be overlooked by the searchers.

So as a rule of thumb aim for 8-10 words and 50-80 characters.

Make sure your title tag is relevant to the content of your page.

If the content is about oysters don’t have a title tag that mentions Paris Hilton !

Use a unique title tag for every web page or your pages may be seen as duplicate content and Google may not list you in its index!

For punctuation I recommend you use the pipe (|) symbol or dash (-) and don’t bother with anything else.

Good examples of title tags include:

• Online Gardening Tips | Your Guide to Everything Gardening
• Mortgage Rate | What Is Today’s Best Mortgage Rate?
• My Wedding Favors – Unique Wedding Favors – Bridal Shower Favors

Debbie has just sent me her first post for her new London colonic hydrotherapy blog at: www.NorthLondonColonics.co.uk/blog/

It’s called: “Start detoxing NOW … it’s easier than you think”. A quick look at the article tells me that it could do with some search engine optimization.

Let’s have a quick look at the free keywords tool to see the most popular search terms for detoxification.

The thing is, the free keywords tool only allows you to search one keyword at a time, so I’m going to hop over to the full Wordtracker keyword tool so I can search for multiple keywords at once.

Let’s put in some detox variations:

• detoxing
• detoxify
• detox
• detoxification

A quick search reveals that the top keywords include:

• detox
• detox diet
• detoxification
• detox cleanse
• body detox
• detoxify
• detoxing

Ah, so detox is the most searched for variation, followed by detoxification, detoxify and detoxing.

I’ll rewrite the title tag to put the primary keyword up front and take advantage of the extra traffic for the word detox.

I’ve selected detox as the primary keyword and detoxification as the secondary keyword.

Notice I haven’t gone for a loose title like this. This would be optimizing for start your body and we’re trying to get ranked for detox and detoxification.

Now, this title tag will work fine for a blog post, but if I was optimizing the home page of the site I would probably be tempted to go for a third keyword in the title tag like this.

The home page will likely be the most linked to page on your site and this allows you to rank for a third keyword without overdoing the optimization.

Google will tend to use your meta description tag when giving a summary of your site on its results page if it contains the search query.

Use your primary keywords in the description, working in one or two secondary keywords if you can. But above all appear natural!

Length should be 25-30 words and about 160-180 characters total including spaces.

The description tag must make sense to a reader, reinforce the title tag and provide more detail.

It should contain a succinct version of your offer and a strong call to action.

And as with the title tag, put your primary keyword near the front.

Here’s how the title and meta description look together.

Doesn’t this look like a listing you’d click on if you were interested in body detox?

The meta keyword tag is not very important nowadays so it’s really not worth much of your time. I suggest you stick your primary and secondary keywords in there with a few variations.

No more than 7-10 relevant keywords, or you will look like you are keyword stuffing!

And make sure you have different meta keywords for every page you optimize.

Here’s what a good meta keyword tag looks like for Debbie’s blog post I’m working on.

Use one H1 heading tag for your page. No more!

Use your primary keyword in your H1 tag if you can.

The H1 heading tag doesn’t need to be as SEO focused as your title tag and is usually the title of the content in the page.

Here’s my advice: I recommend you write great headlines for content like articles or blog posts which makes people want to read the rest of your story. Then try and work in your primary and secondary keywords. If you can get your primary keyword at the start, do that. If not, don’t worry about it.

For Debbie’s post, this H1 tag is just fine.

H2 and H3 are subheadings so you put your secondary keywords there.

Don’t stuff keywords, work them in naturally!

Working through Debbie’s post, instead of the H2 heading that says ‘massage’ …

… I’m going to put in something with a benefit and a secondary keyword toxins, which is closely related to detox.

As for <h2>Heat treatments</h2> I’ll change that to:

You don’t want to use sweat therapy which you can see in the next paragraph because there’s no traffic for that search term!

I’ll also change <h2>Healing and rebalancing the body</h2> to:

We’re back to a variation of the primary keyword which is detoxify and the copy makes sense to the reader and to the search engine. Right, next.

Give all your images keyword rich names eg, fruit-and-vegetable-juices.png.

Make sure your names are rich and diverse, not algae1.png, algae2.png.

If you have an image that isn’t relevant eg, logo or a background graphic, give it a number eg, 1.png, 2.png.

Google will ignore these images and they won’t influence what Google thinks your page is about.

So I’ve gone to iStockPhoto.com and found a representative image for the article that gets across the idea of a body detox:http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-8174117-healthy-fresh-juices-fruits-and-vegetables.php

Above is my image tag and notice that both the file name and the alt text are keyword rich.

Alt text means alternative text and that is shown if a visitor cannot view the image, for example if images are turned off in their browser, or they’re using a screen reader due to a visual impairment.

The alt tag should be no more than 70-80 characters and should be a literal description of the image.

You can create a caption as a paragraph below the image to describe what the image is for and then gently work in a secondary keyword without it looking unnatural as we’ve done here.

Use your primary keyword and several related keywords liberally throughout your text but don’t overdo it.

The key is diversity! The more on topic language you use, the more likely Google thinks you know what you are talking about and will regard you as an authority.

Your copy must above all else read and sound natural to a human reader.

This is a great use for the Wordtracker keyword tool as you can find plenty of on topic language with search volume to work into your page.

See how this colonic hydrotherapy section uses the words colonic hydrotherapy, colonic irrigation, detoxification and bowel wall in a natural way that makes sense to the reader?

Here’s an example of where it went horribly wrong:www.garryconn.com/blog/an-example-of-bad-sem-copywriting.php

What do you think a human reviewer from Google is going to think when he sees that? Spam, right? You don’t want to do that or you’ll be removed from Google’s index.

Google rewards you if you’re relevant and you’re relevant when you put relevant stuff on a web page.

Ask yourself, “if someone searched for this keyword and came to my page, would they find it relevant to their search and stick around?”

Google monitors how long visitors stick around for, so if the answer to the above question is “yes” then you’re doing a great job!

Here is Debbie’s post on www.NorthLondonColonics.co.uk/blog/

Now Debbie’s post is quite long but it’s 100% relevant to the subject of detoxing your body. A rough rule of thumb is that a blog post only needs to be between 400-600 words.

But Debbie’s enthusiasm for the subject shines through and this post contains some excellent natural keyword rich copy so I’ve left the length alone.

She’ll also probably start ranking well for hundreds of long tail keywords, combinations of her target keywords that we can’t even think of.

You’re reputable when other people link to you from relevant, related and reputable websites.

But the first thing is to look reputable yourself!

Which means make sure you have quality content that adds value to your readers. Quality content means a higher chance of getting decent links, which is the most important step in SEO. Even more important than everything we’ve already discussed.

Link building is a big subject and there are numerous tactics you can use, but the idea is to get an inbound link to your page.

Google and other search engines will see a link from another website to your page as a vote by that website for you. If another website thinks your page is worth linking to then Google will notice it too and then come and crawl your site.

Here are a couple of quick simple tactics you can use for any page to get your first link.

First, social bookmark your page on social networks like Twitter, Digg etc where your valuable content should attract some initial links from a few interested parties. That takes just a couple of minutes.

A second useful tactic is to add value to someone else’s related content eg, a forum post or a blog post.

Now that Debbie has written her blog post on “start your body detox now”, next stop is to find some related blogs who are already discussing the issue.

Head over to Google and do a search for body detox with this text which will find you blogs that allow you to post comments.

I’ve found a post called “Natural Ways to Detox Your System after Chemotherapy or Radiation”.

Read the post and the comments. Then add your own comment that adds to the discussion. Remember, you must always add value, even in comments!

See how Britta has done exactly that when she says “check out our post on coping with metal taste”.

There is even a comment from Lucille, thanking her for the post!

Next time, it might be a good idea for Debbie to look for questions in blog comments and write a post specifically to answer them so that the link fits.

A final point about anchor text …

Getting your keywords into the anchor text of the link is the best SEO you can do!

Don’t link with the text “click here”.

Instead, use linking text which contains the keywords you want to rank for.

Do you see how “detox your body now” is inside the link text? We want to rank for detox and detox your body so that’s what goes in the linking text.

Finally, to look more reputable, I’d recommend you don’t use a scraggy and dishevelled URL like this.

Instead, make sure your page name is neat, trim and descriptive like this.

Once again, detox our primary keyword is right at the beginning of the page name which has both a slight SEO benefit and will make it easier for you to attract relevant links.

Remember the mad hatter and his cups of tea?

The Mad Hatter Is Definitely Rather Loony**

This is a quick reminder of how you SEO a web page.

T: Title tagM: Meta keywords & description tagH: Header tags: H1, H2, H3I: Image file names and alt tagsD: Diverse keywords R: Relevancy L: Reputable links

And if there’s one final tip I can give you it’s this. Don’t stress about SEO. Lightly implement this method and then forget about SEO and instead, focus on delivering value to your readers. Too much focus on SEO means you won’t be able to make the connection with your readers.

Writing great content that adds value to their lives will help make that connection and bring you the traffic you need.

I hope you found this quick guide on how to SEO your web page helpful. Why not sign up for your risk-free trial of Wordtracker atwww.wordtracker.com/trial or click the link below. Then enter your details and you’ll be able to use Wordtracker for seven days free of charge.

You can use the one-click cancel button at any time during your 7-day trial period or you can continue your membership for just $59 a month.

Your 7-day risk free trial will also include these free bonuses: first, our seven “Profit from keywords” videos then a free Keywords Basics e-book which is the perfect introduction to keyword research, and finally a free keywords starter webinar which will hand hold you through using the Wordtracker keywords tool.

So now you’ve got the information to get going, what are you waiting for? Sign up to Wordtracker so you can start getting traffic from Google right away!

Mike Mindel has a passion for internet marketing and is the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Wordtracker.com.

Mike runs Wordtracker with his brother, Andy Mindel, from its offices in Kentish Town, North London, UK.

SEO your web page for Google

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