Anchor text is one of the most important factors you must understand in order to earn good rankings from the search engines. Specifically, anchor text refers to the linked text that’s displayed in place of a web address – the text you click on to be taken to a new web page. Anchor text is structured as follows in a website:

Learn how to make money online

Examining this link structure, we can see two major elements – the actual web address of the site and the anchor text that the viewer will see displayed on the page. In this example, a visitor to this web page would see only the words: Learn how to make money online. Any visitors who clicked on this link would automatically be taken to the site www.makemoneyonline.com, even if they weren’t aware that this was the link’s destination.

Anchor text can be used in both internal and external links – and it’s important to focus on both of these elements as part of your linking strategy.

Internal links are those that connect separate pages on your website. In this instance, you can use anchor text on the links that connect your home page to an article that’s posted on your site. The navigation links on your web pages are internal links.

External links are those that come from sites outside of your own – if, for example, another money making site linked back to your own as a good source of information.

So why is it so important to use anchor text? Why not just include the link to your website or something generic, like “Click Here”? For one, using anchor text gives visitors more information on the benefit of clicking on your link and through to your site. Of course, for this reason, your anchor text should make sense – stuffing it full of three or four keywords will turn off potential human visitors, even if it boosts your rankings in the search engines.

Secondly, using quality anchor text that includes your target keywords or keyphrases also improves your rankings on the major search engines (especially for the exact keywords and keyphrases you use in the anchor text).

This is due to the fact that anchor text helps let the search engines know what your site is about. Search engines also place a premium on the anchor text that links back to your site from other reputable sites. Focusing on increasing the number of quality links coming back to your site and including keyword-rich anchor text in these links is a great way to improve the amount of natural traffic you receive from the search engines.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

When you start building your actual site, one important on-site technique you can implement is the inclusion of meta tags in your web pages. Meta tags are special snippets of code that are included before the body content of your site that contain information about your site’s name and purpose. Other than the title tags, these tags aren’t visible to visitors on your site, but they provide valuable information to the search engine robots that determine which search terms to display your site for.

The most popular tags for SEO purposes are title, keyword and description tags, all of which provide more information to the search engines about your site’s content and what search terms its most relevant to.

Title Tag
The first tag you should include is a title tag, structured like this:

While this isn’t exactly a meta tag, it’s usually categorized as one because it occurs in the “HEAD” area of your webpage (before the body region). However you’d like to categorize it, this tag helps the search engines scouring your site to figure out what the page is called and what should be displayed in the search results. For search engine optimization purposes, it’s important to include your page’s main target keyword or keyphrase in the title so that search engines will know to display your site when a user searches for that specific term.

Keyword Meta Tags
Keyword meta tags are also important, as they let the search engines know which searches the site is relevant to. A keyword tag is set up like the following example:

A good keyword tag includes between 3-10 keywords that are relevant to your page. Stuffing this tag full of 50 keywords won’t help you rank for more keywords – if the search engines can’t determine that the keyword is relevant to your content, they may penalize you with lower amounts of traffic. Be sure that any keywords you choose to include in this tag are actually used on the page.

Description Meta Tags
Many sites also make use of description meta tags – although many SEO experts disagree about whether they actually contribute to your site’s SEO. At the very least, description tags let you control the paragraph of text that will be displayed below your site’s name in some of the search results. Description meta tags are structured like this:

This meta tag controls what will be displayed in the search engine results when your site comes up in the rankings. Natural search results usually display the page’s title and description.

So even if meta description tags don’t contribute to improving your site’s rankings, writing a good description may help convince search engine visitors to click through to your site. You can even use this description as an opportunity to pre-sell potential visitors on any products you’re selling with persuasive, targeted language.

Heading Tags
While not exactly classified as meta tags, in addition to these techniques, including your major keywords and keyphrases in headline titles is a great way to boost your search engine rankings. Using heading tags on your pages is simple – instead of just including your text and adjusting the size to make it larger, wrap it in a heading tag structured like this:

Your Title Here

. There are six different heading sizes – h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6. The top heading of your page should be wrapped in h1 tags and should include your page’s main keyword or keyphrase.

Another good on-site SEO technique is to frequently update your site with fresh, new content. The search engines love sites that are regularly updated. When you add new content be sure to let the search engines know that you’ve updated with your site with XML-compliant sitemaps.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

As mentioned previously, on-site Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the actions you take on your website to make your site appeal to the search engines. These include actions like the words you choose to use in the navigation links, meta tags, and the words within your content.

Meta tags are snippets of code you can include on your website to give the search engines more information on what your site is about. Visitors to your webpage won’t be able to see this information, but the search engine programs that scour your site will appreciate the tip off.

Alternatively, you don’t want to frustrate the search engine robots by bogging down your site with loads of pictures and flash animations. Search engines rely on the words and phrases on your site to get a feel for what it’s about, so that they know when to pull your site up in response to user search terms. If the search engine robots encounter lots of images or movie files, they won’t be able to figure out what your site is about and as a result, it will surely rank lower in the search results.

It’s important to get your on-site optimization right because you control it (as opposed to the off-site strategies I’ll cover later). The following are a couple of quick, but important on-site SEO principles to implement.

First, if you’re aiming for high search engine rankings, you’ll want to focus each page on a particular keyord or keyphrase. As I mentioned earlier, an ideal keyphrase is not too competitive, but still searched for frequently in the search engines. Once you’ve identified your target keyphrase, you’ll want to write content that includes this keyphrase about 2-5% of the time. Don’t go overboard – your content should still sound natural. In the short run, you can trick the search engines by stuffing a page full of your target keyphrase, repeated over and over again, but this is a poor long-term strategy.

Second, the domain name you choose is important as well. The domain name should reflect the main keyphrase for your site and, whenever possible, be a .com domain. Although most experts disagree whether a continuous domain is better than a dashed domain – “www.makemoneyonline.com” versus “www.make-money-online.com” – it is becoming increasingly clear that .com domain names are given more weight than some of the other extensions, like .info or .us.

There are many other on-site optimization tips, these are only a couple. I’ll cover meta tags in the next part of this tutorial.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

SEO techniques can be broken down into two general categories – onsite and offsite. Both of these will benefit your rankings, so it’s worth your time to address them both when building and promoting your website.

On-site SEO includes the specific actions you take on your webpages to increase your search engine position.

Off-site SEO techniques are the actions you take outside of your webpages to increase your search engine position. Backlinks are one of the most important strategies in the offsite SEO toolbox. For example, say you’ve put together a site on reducing hypertension and heart attacks. If Google or another major search engine notices that the American Heart Association has linked back to your site, it assumes your site must include good content. The more of these quality links back to your site you get, the more free traffic you’ll receive from the search engines because your site will rank higher.

Both on-site and off-site optimization help the search engines categorize your site and rank it higher. On-site optimization is more under your control than off-site optimization. So you need to make sure each page of your site is well optimized and then start a link building campaign.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

As we’ve discussed, the internet revolves around keywords and keyphrases – the specific terms users enter into search engines when they’re searching for content. Finding competitive keywords to target on your site is as much a science as it an art, as you need to search for elusive keywords that aren’t too competitive, but still have significant search volume. As the internet becomes more and more competitive, smart web site owners are turning to long tail keywords to generate traffic.

According to DoshDosh.com, the long tail refers to “a socio-statistical theory which suggests that the collective sales of products in low demand can exceed that of popular products and bestsellers.” In terms of keywords, this means that it’s easier to succeed using longer, less competitive keyword phrases, like “how to establish a home-based vending business”, than it is with more popular keywords, such as “lose weight” or “make money online.” By using long-tail keywords, you’re shooting for the small fish in the pond, while the rest of the marketing community is trolling for the record-breaking bass.

The idea of the long tail is summarized in the following graphic:

Courtesy of www.DoshDosh.com

At the far left of the graph, we see the most popular products on the marketplace – those that receive the bulk of the traffic and interest on the internet. The amount of traffic for these products quickly levels off as we move right along the graph, but you’ll also notice that the long tail section is much longer than that of the popular product section. The long tail section represents all the traffic coming from longer, more obscure search phrases.

So what does all this mean for you as a site owner? When you’re just getting started, it’s much more difficult to get ranked for popular search terms, given the amount of resources the existing sites have to maintain their rankings. However, it’s entirely within your reach to rank at the top of the search engines for long tail keywords, using a combination of on-site and off-site search engine optimization strategies.

If you rank high for lots of long-tail keywords then you will receive lots of free traffic from the search engines.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion