Now if you search online, there is a lot of conflicting advice on the subject – some of it good and some of it bad.

The only tips that you should be following are the ethical SEO tips that actively help your site, without abusing the system.

SEO Has A Bad Name

For some people, SEO has a pretty poor reputation online.  It can be seen as a way to somehow “cheat” the system or gain an unfair advantage over rivals.

This isn’t helped by the fact that there are some people (a small minority) that do try to abuse the system to further their own cause.

This has led to some to even suggest that search engine optimization be called something different.

It Can Actually Be Good, When Used Right

The simple fact is that SEO can actually be used ethically when done right.  Search engine optimization is simply a way of getting your content to the most people possible.

Search engines are the number one method of driving traffic to a site, so it makes sense to make the most of them.

People have given a bad name to SEO by using negative techniques (or Black-Hat SEO) that abuse search engine rules, such as; keyword stuffing, invisible text, doorway pages, etc.

They do this to try to boost their rankings quickly, but the joke is on them as these methods only tend to work for the very short term, if at all!

Thankfully, Google and others are cracking down on websites that abuse these rules, which is great for the rest of us that pride ourselves for following the rules.

You have to remember that search engine optimization is a long term strategy for your site.  There is no “quick” way or “short cut” to success, so you are better off optimizing your site for long term results.

So What Is Ethical SEO

Ethical search engine optimization is a term to describe all the good techniques and tips that you can use that are not in breach of search engine rules (or White-Hat SEO).

There is nothing wrong with optimizing your posts and pages to rank higher, as long as you do it right.

All search engines want to do is provide the best quality content to their users, as this is how they make money.  To do this, they need to look at sites (by crawling them) and establish what a post/page is about.

Optimizing your pages helps search engines to identify what your content is about, therefore enabling them to show it to the right people who are searching for it.

Ethical SEO Tactics

So now we know that ethical SEO is the right way to go, how do you go about optimizing your posts?

One of the key aspects of SEO is keyword placement.

Placing keywords and keyphrases in certain places of your site helps search engines to identify what your post is about. This is called ‘on-page SEO’ and can refer to things like;

• Page Titles
• Meta Descriptions
• Subtitles (H1, H2, H3 Tags)
• URL Address
• Image Alt Tags
• Internal & External Link Anchor Text (and the links themselves)

Whilst these are all good places to include your keywords/keyphrases, it is VITALLY important that you don’t overdo it.  Don’t place too many keywords in these places, as you risk keyword stuffing, which is bad!

A good rule of thumb is that keywords should not exceed about 3% of your overall article.  Think of your keywords as simple sign posts that help tell people what your post is about.

That way, you don’t need to go overboard with using them.

A great WordPress plugin that you can use to help you monitor your keyword density and other on-page SEO is the ‘WordPress SEO by Yoast’ plugin.

Now SEO is not all about keyword placement.  Search engines also look at things like post frequency, social media interaction, and PageRank.

But for the purpose of this post, this is what I will be focusing on.

It’s All About Being Relevant

Another good ethical rule to remember is that things should always be relevant to your content.  Whatever keywords, keyphrases, internal links, external links, videos, images, etc. that you include in your posts, they should be relevant to what you have just written.

For example, if I were to write an article about a certain actor, let’s say Matt Damon, then linking to reviews of movies that he has been in would be totally relevant, therefore justifiable.

If on the other hand I started including links to some car selling site, that wouldn’t be very relevant.

Search engines look at the terms, phrases and links that you use in a post to see if they are all connected in some way.

If they aren’t (as in the example that we just looked as) then they may suspect some dodgy behaviour going on on your site.

If you think about it logically though, you only want to be providing the best quality content to your visitors anyway, so why would you use/link to unrelated things.

Summary

Ethical search engine optimization isn’t too hard to get your head around.  Just remember to follow search engine guidelines and not abuse the system.

It can actually be more beneficial to concentrate solely on writing for your readers, as ultimately it is them that will determine whether your site is a success or not.

Plan out a long-term SEO strategy for your site and work at optimizing your site ethically.  It is much better to work with Google rather than against them!

What other ethical SEO tips do you use that I haven’t mentioned here?  Do you even do SEO on your site and if not, why?

Do you have a positive or negative view of SEO?  Please let us know your views by leaving a comment below!

Blog isn’t just a custom research paper you can write and forget about. It’s like an organism that need attention and care of the web-master and readers.

Nevertheless, there are diverse ways to drive and increase the traffic of your blog both online and offlin. This article will identify 10 different ways to increase the traffic of your blog online and offline.

Online Ways to Increase the Traffic of Your Blog

Surrender Your Blog to Search Engines

As a matter of fact, submitting your blog to search engines including Google, MSN and Yahoo is the first action you must take when you create a new blog. Without submitting your blog to search engines, it will not be recognized. All you need to do in this case is to submit the URL of your blog to them just to notify them of your newly created blog for them to include your pages in their results after search engine must have crawl the blog.

However, submitting your blog to search engines does not signify that your pages will appear on number 1 of Google search results but the implication is that your blog will be included and have the opportunity of being picked up, whenever the search engine crawl it.

Put In Excellence Content Continually

One of the notable ways to increase the traffic of your blog is to frequently update it with relevant, quality and useful content. This is to invite visitors to the blog and make them willing to visit your blog always as they are sure that whenever they get to your site, they will get whatever information they need. To keep your visitors loyal and keep visiting your site, feed them with meaningful information.

At the same time, post content to your blog as frequently as you can, for your blog content to be noticed by search engines.

Exploit the Power of Comments

It is essential to exploit the power of comments if you want to increase the traffic of your blog. This is because; commenting is such a simple and vital tool for increasing the traffic of your blog. To implement this successfully, respond to comments left on your blog first to tell your visitors that you appreciate their options.

On the other hand, visit other bloggers sites and leave your own comments to drive new traffic. When you do this, ensure that you leave the URL to your own blog in your comment so that you will create a backlink to your blog.

Get the Content of Your Blog Syndicated with RSS Feed

All you will do in this case is to set up an RSS feed on your blog to make it unproblematic for your faithful readers to know when you publish a new content as well as read your blog.

Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be described as a technique of advertising your blog or website on the internet in order for it to receive the attention of more visitors. Add links and relevant keywords to your content when optimizing it for search engine but do not overcrowd your posts with a lot of relevant or even completely irrelevant keywords to avoid spamming.

Add Images to Your Blog

Always remember to add images to your blog as a way to increase the traffic of your blog. Apart from the fact that images will make people locate you in search engine listings, it will also beautify your site. You can use images search alternatives from Yahoo, Google and some other search engines. Identifying your images with search engine optimization in mind will increase the traffic to your blog tremendously.

Surrender Your Blog Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites

It is equally important for you to submit your blog best posts to social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Reddit among others to increase the traffic of your blog.

Offline Ways to Increase the Traffic of Your Blog

Basically, that are not all things you have to do online. There are also some things you can do offsite concerning your online business. Hence, there are ways to increase traffic to your blog offsite.

Use of Business Cards

Business cards are small cards that you can use to introduce yourself and your business for the purpose of promoting your business. Its content includes your name, your organization name or website, address and phone number. It is a great tool to increase the traffic of your blog.

Networking

Networking is a system of connecting people professionally or socially to exchange information. When you meet people, inform them about your blog and convince them on why they must visit it. This will go a long way in increasing the traffic to that blog.

Host and Attend Events

One on one meeting through seminars and other meetings is remarkably useful for bloggers who are looking to increase the traffic of their blogs. All the people you come across onsite are far more likely to lead to discussions concerning your blog.

Hosting people as well can lead to assisting one another that may yield tweets, guest posts, blog roll inclusion, shares, links and general development of your business.

And how do you get traffic to your blog?

But do you know that your website’s content should not only consist of text. It must also contain pictures for more appeal.

Then again, this is not the only purpose of placing photos. You can increase the likelihood of driving traffic to your site through these.

“How”, you may ask. The answer is simple—optimise them for Google Images. This way, you can rank for related queries.

So how does it work? Check out these ideas.

1. Place keywords

Like on-page optimisation, you need to place the right terms in the following:

• Filename – You cannot expect the spiders to spot your content if its name consists of digits and/or alphabet letters such as DG1234.jpg. Generally, the users look for info by typing in a word or phrase in the search box. You are more likely to rank in the top rows (given that Google shows one page for the results) by creating a filename such as google-image-search.jpg or seo-tips.jpg.

•  Alt attribute – The main reason you require an alternative text is to help the spiders with easy indexing and crawling of relevant words, especially since they cannot detect image content. When you place keywords or key phrases (with each word separated by a dash), you have a greater likelihood of ranking high in the results.

On the other hand, it allows you to provide people with visual impairment a chance to understand your content. How? The screen reader (software application) interprets the information you added to the photos.

• Description – While your pictures get along just fine without this, the users will have more idea what your content offers if you come up with a brief and illustrative phrase.

2. Use JPG as filename extension

According to an optimisation website that experimented on various extensions, JPG images performed well in SERPs. Additionally, the administrators stated that this outcome was maybe because you can compress the photos to lessen page load time and that JPG is readable by all browsers.

The site owner also suggested that you stick with 1-60 kilobyte since anything beyond this tended to slow down the page’s loading speed.

3. Publish unique, fresh, and high-quality pictures

Doesn’t this tip say enough already?

Well, let me elaborate its importance. By adding your content with such images, your webpage looks different from the billions of other pages online.

So can you be original?

Simple, choose those which you have taken or created yourself. You can get ideas from your Pinterest account or you can use Photoshop. However, you have to remember that this strategy is mostly applicable if you are blogging.

If you have an e-commerce website, you can take pictures of your products or you can hire a professional photographer to provide you with high-quality shots.

As a bonus method, you can use Google Trends to find out which photos rank well in search results.

4. Upload several images

I’m guessing you re-read this statement, right? And you are probably thinking that I might be wrong.

However, I am not.

Remember the SEO site I was telling you a while ago, its team also discovered that a page with plenty of photos performed better in SERPs compared to those with one or two. So, it goes to show that more is preferable.

As a note though, you must ensure that you follow the first three tips to boost the likelihood of ranking. What is more, take advantage of lazy load or super cache if you use WordPress as your blogging platform.

Final Insights

What do you think? Are these tactics easy?

Now, you have to know that these are not the only things you can do to generate traffic through Google Images. If you ideas apart from the ones I have given, feel free to share it with us.

In the last two months I read more than 200 articles and blog posts about SEO and traffic. I make a little compilation from them and in this post I collected most important tips (and links) about traffic and SEO which I found on blogosphere.

This article is divided into two parts.

The first one is about 35 Traffic and SEO tips – it’s my compilation of SEO and traffic tips

The second part is a base for it – it includes links to almost 40 great articles from bloggers.

Part I

Traffic & SEO Tips

1. Define Who Is Your Reader

2. Plan Your Traffic and SEO

3. Follow Your Plan

4. Use Keyword Research Tools (like Google Keyword Tool or Market Samurai)

5. Use SEO Tools for Analyzing Your Competition (Alexa, SEMRush, Majestic SEO)

6. Use Analytical Tools to Monitor your Site

7. Optimize Your Website (Onsite Optimization)

8. Use Proper Keywords on Your Site

9. Avoid Keyword Stuffing

10. Use Internal Linking

11. Don’t Overoptimize Your Website

12. Don’t Overuse Black Hat SEO Methods

13. Don’t Rely on One Source of Traffic

14. Write for Your Readers, Not for Google

15. Prepare Great Content for Your Readers

16. Mix Content on Your Website

17. Get a Lot of Quality Links to Your Site

18. Try to Get Various Types of Links

19. Don’t Get Thousands Links too Quickly

20. Don’t Link to Bad Neighbourhood from Your Site

21. Remove Links from Bad Neighbourhood

22. Make Social Media Your Friend (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, G+)

23. Add Shares Buttons to Social Media

24. Make Relationships with Bloggers

25. Make Comments on Other Blogs

26. Write Articles for Other Websites

27. Accept Guest Posts on Your Blog

28. Go Viral (Click to Tweet!)

29. Start Building Your Email List Today

30. Participate in Social Networks (Bloggers.com, Tribber)

31. Think Broad, Concentrate on Details

32. Be Up to Date with Trends and News in Your Niche

33. Update Your Site Frequently

34. Be Consistent in Your Actions

35. Don’t Give Up – Building Traffic Needs Time

Part II

SEO Resources (Articles Written by Other Bloggers)

 (in alphabetical order)

Jason Acidre @ kaiserthesage.com

SEO Strategies and Inbound Marketing Best Practices for 2012

21 Advanced Link Building Strategies

Link Building in 2012: Scalable Link Building

A Link Development Strategy for Large Websites

Viral Content Ideas for Boring Industries

Anti-Penguin Link Building Plan

Jeff Bullas @ jeffbullas.com

50 Ways To Optimize Your Blog

50 Social Media Marketing Tips and Tactics

Kristjan @ detailedsuccess.com

Detailed Guide To Backlinking Success For Niche Websites

Pat Flynn @ smartpassiveincome.com

THE Backlinking Strategy That Works

Casey Henry @ seomoz.org

What Makes a Link Worthy Post – Part 1

What Makes a Link Worthy Post – Part 2

Kristi Hines @ kikolani.com

40 Advanced and Alternative Search Engines

Natural Link Building 101

Search Engine Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing: The Showdown

Ana Hoffman @ trafficgenerationcafe.com

My Favorite Bite-Sized Web Traffic Tips: Reader’s Digest Version

The Highly Profitable Traffic Strategy You Aren’t Using Yet

Jennifer Horowitz @ ecombuffet.com

Farmers, Pandas, Penguins Oh My!

Chadrack Irobogo @ webincomejournal.com

Google Panda And Penguin Updates: What You Should Know To Stay Ahead Of The Game!

Jeevan Jacob John @blognetworking101.com

Why Commenting and Social Media Suck As Traffic Sources

Ankush Kohli @ emarketinguide.com

Mobile Website SEO Tips & Guide

Chris Madej @ NoPassiveIncome.com

8 Helpful Tips, How To Promote Your Blog

20 SEO Tips for Beginner Bloggers

Google Penguin Attacked – 50 Types of Links to Strengthen Your Website

Admin @ micrositemasters.com

Penguin Analysis: SEO Isn’t Dead, But You Need to Act Smarter (And 5 Easy Ways to Do So!)

Nick @ nickstraffictricks.com

How To Build Back Links Super Fast

Massive DoFollow Blog List Directory

How To Build Backlinks – Fast & Easy Strategies To Build Backlinks

How To Rank #1 In Google

Francisco Perez (ditesco) @ iblogzone.com

Best SEO Plugins For WordPress 2012 (part 1)

Best SEO Plugins For WordPress 2012 (part 2)

Daniel Scocco @ dailyblogtips.com

Blog Project: 30 Traffic Generation Tips

Amit Shaw @ itechcode.com

List of CommentLuv Enabled Blogs for 2012

Best Tips to Raise Traffic For Your Website

Jane Sheeba @ probloggingsuccess.com

Traffic Generation Formula: Is Blog Commenting And Social Media Out?

Viral Marketing: Generate High Potential Viral Blog Traffic

Gregory Smith @ rxseo.net

Link Building Secrets – Post Panda and Penguin

Matt Smith @ onlineincometeacher.com

15 Great Off-Page SEO Techniques

And what do you think about it? What are your tips & tricks to get a lot of traffic? Or maybe I forgot about your post or article and you must be here?

All related links in comments are welcome.