When trying to gain mastery of search engine optimization, one of the primary aspects that you should focus on is getting backlinks. In SEO, backlinks refer to your website link getting posted on other sites that are indexed by the search engines. Your link could be posted in a blog, another website, or a directory of some sort. Backlinks are important because if you have many backlinks from different sites (or other sites linking to you), the search engines will see your site as popular and trustworthy, which potentially leads to higher search engine rankings.

Over the years, SEO marketers have done efforts to increase their backlink count to thousands of links. Today, however, it is relatively harder to generate backlinks, owing it to the fact that search engine algorithms change from time to time. Recent search engine algorithm updates has decreased the possibility of links found on article directories to be counted as valid backlinks. In simpler terms, if you submit an article to top directories and your website link is posted at the bottom of the article, search engines may or may not count that as a valid backlink!

It means, for today’s SEO marketer, generating backlinks would have to mean more than just submitting pieces of content to article submission sites. The solution is to let your SEO content become popular online in the most “natural” way possible. Letting your content spread virally is important because it lets the search engines know that you are not manipulating the search algorithms. Instead, you are pushing your content ethically and it is sparking genuine interest from internet users.

It is always helpful to find high-traffic blogs in your niche and contact the blog owner so that you can offer to post a “guest blog post” on their blog. If you build a good relationship with five to ten blog owners in your niche and then regularly post your content on their site, you will generate a lot of incoming links.

Submitting to social bookmarking sites is also very effective for backlinking. Once you have a new blog post link, submit it to social bookmarking sites such as Stumbleupon, Digg, Twitter, and many others. Search engines love to crawl these bookmarking sites, and if your link happens to be present there, it will also be indexed fast. Plus, the link you posted as social bookmarks may count as backlinks too.

Outsourcing also works for building backlinks. You can hire SEO experts, then arrange to pay them a fair price for generating a set number of backlinks. Choose a provider who has the ability to make things easier for you on the SEO side, while you focus on other important aspects of your business that you know best

In just a few words, let’s discuss some SEO article marketing tips because a lot of online business owners need it. Whenever the word SEO is mentioned, it’s almost certain that the phrase “article marketing” will pop out in the conversation. Many internet entrepreneurs are aware of the fact that article marketing is one of the best ways to apply search engine optimization techniques. Submission to popular directories with high traffic volumes also provides greater exposure for your brand, product or service.

There are two ways by which article marketing can help you gain more website visitors. First, submitting articles to popular directories can help you get “direct traffic”. By direct traffic, we mean that people are finding your articles posted online and then they visit your website after they read your article resource box. This requires some SEO because you need to optimize your online content so that people can find it online when they use the search engines.

To gain direct traffic, it is important that you write your articles to attract both the search engines and people. Lots of marketers optimize their content for the search engines but the articles they post are barely readable. Instead of doing that, I suggest you study a little bit of copywriting so that you will know how to arouse attention, provoke interest, intensify buying desire, and prompt your readers to action. There’s more to writing articles than piecing together some long tail keywords and talking in circles. You have to actually help your readers get valuable information that they want and need.

Your article headline is extremely important because both the search engines and people will take a look at it to decide whether it’s worth the time and exposure. The search engines will check if your title is keyword-rich. If it is, and there’s lesser competition for that phrase, your article has a higher chance of ranking higher in search results. In fact, lots of web pages which rank number one in Google and Yahoo are not formal landing page sites, but article pages in popular directories. The key to doing this is to put your keywords on the first two or three words of the article title.

The second way through which article marketing helps you get website visitors is “organic traffic”. Organic traffic means that people visited your site because it appeared in the search engine results and they ended up clicking on it. This is much more difficult to generate than direct article traffic, because organic traffic actually means your website homepage should rank for more popular keyword phrases with heavy competition.

The main strategies for gaining organic traffic include effective keyword placement on your landing page, and building backlinks. “Backlinks” refer to webpages that link to your site. In this area, article marketing can help because if your articles get picked up by other blogs and publishing platforms, your website links will also be published along with the articles. The more websites or blogs that link to your own homepage, the higher your backlink count. The higher your backlink count, the greater chances you will have of higher search engine rankings.

Paying careful attention to keyword placement during the search engine optimization work you do on your website is usually a good idea. It might improve your search engine ranking, giving you an edge over your rival websites.

Before delving deeper into the subject, it’s necessary to make the distinction between on-page and off-page optimization. Both are important, but, as it will be seen later on, in different ways.

On-page optimization
In order to get ranked highly in the top search engines out there you must optimize every page of your site, according to specially chosen keyword phrases. Google, Bing and Yahoo all rank pages and not websites. This is why specific optimization work on each individual web page pays off.

After having a primary keyword phrase that reflects what your website is about make sure you choose secondary keywords which are just as precise. Depending on the density you are aiming for, distribute the keywords through the text in a way that does not affect readability. For example, you can place your primary keyword phrase once at the beginning of the text, once in the middle, and finally once at the end.
The primary keywords must also appear in the file name, title tag, text header (h1 tag), sub-headers (h2 and h3 tags), and in reference links.

Off-page optimization
The search engine optimization you do off -page is extremely important because Google sees it more essential when ranking your website than the on-page optimization. To make it clear, the content you feature on your site is the foundation and it should be of great relevancy, but according to search engines your links say more about you than your web page itself.

Be careful to what websites you link out and also, what websites link to you. It’s true that you don’t have full control over who links to you, but you can partner with credible websites similar to your own and have them redirect visitors to you. Having just one relevant website link to you is better than having five general websites do the same thing. Also, it’s preferable that you get others to link to as many of your pages as possible, not just the homepage.

When linking to other pages, include in the text link your main keyword phrase. Try to make it look natural though; if that is not possible then refrain from using the keyword phrase altogether.

Don’t use “click here” outgoing links because nobody really clicks them; moreover, they make your website look cheap. Be as specific as you can about the website you’re sending visitors to, but don’t use too many words.

Good keyword placement implies that after you finish optimizing your web pages and your links you browse your website looking at it as a first-time visitor. Observe how keywords blend in the text and evaluate the overall accessibility of your site. If the keywords are well integrated then they should not stand out and the text should flow naturally.

Organic search engine optimization (SEO) is basically ranking highly on the search engine results page (SERP) on a regular basis without having to directly pay Google or other search engines for your placement. Websites that use organic SEO practices are ranked entirely based on their relevancy, unlike those that pay for their ranking. The latter usually appear among the top search results with a special notification, making it clear that they have paid for their position.

Advantages
While paying search engines to rank your website can be efficient if you’re a major brand, the average websites can’t afford to buy their rankings—and they don’t really need to. Unless we’re talking about established brands, the websites that pay for their ranks usually generate fewer visitors than those that rank high naturally. Searchers tend to be mistrustful of websites that buy their rank—if they are really good, why don’t they top the results naturally?

Organic SEO comprises all the optimization practices concerned with the betterment of the website. Many top websites rely on it to rank highly. Organic SEO has many benefits:

• It guarantees a constant search results ranking in the long run
Organic SEO ensures a good position for the website using it because it brings relevancy, which cannot be obtained by paid ranking or any other practices. If a website’s content is relevant, then not only will search engines rank the website high in their results pages, but it will also guarantee that visitors continue to access it in the long-term, regardless of the owner’s marketing efforts.

• It shows that you’re good at what you’re promoting and that you care about it
A website that regularly adds organic SEO content looks professional and has more chances to build trust than one that chooses instead to spend its budget on promotion. Organic SEO makes a clear statement that the owner is interested in the business he’s in, knows a lot about it, and doesn’t take its visitors for fools.

• Overall it’s more affordable than paid promotion
The competition for top ranks in paid listings is fierce. This has led to a considerable increase in the fees demanded by search engines for promotion compared to a few years ago. Organic SEO is cheaper and comes with the assurance that it will be efficient for a long time.

Achieving organic SEO
With its numerous advantages, organic SEO clearly surpasses paid listings. Make sure your website is using organic search engine optimization by:

• Keeping your content relevant and optimized
A good website always needs quality content. This does not refer only to the right keyword density, but also to the relevance of the content in relation to the offerings promoted by the website.

• Maintaining lucrative link-in and link-out practices
Setting up and maintaining multiple links can help you reach the right users. Collaborate with the websites within your niche that are not your direct competitors. If your website is well-known, then set up an affiliate program and promote it through other smaller websites.

• Optimizing all your keyword and meta tags
All your keyword and meta tags need to be accurate. They have to sum up what the website is about.