SEO Is Like a Golf Game

Your entire golf game can, and at some point almost always will,  break down over just one small  flaw in your swing or slightly misreading the break of a green. The success of your website is often quite similar to that rough golf game – there are several key factors that make a site work at it‘s best, and a breakdown in any one of them can cause your site to breakdown – just like your golf swing.

Links are, without a doubt, one of the most important key facets of your site’s search engine optimization program. Ensuring that you don’t pass up the opportunity to plug your keywords is imperative! A small hiccup in your routine and everything can go haywire.

You can use links on your site to get from page to page, and also to link from your blog to your site. These are two excellent ways to make a site easy to navigate and get links out.  You can always keep it simple and simply make your anchor text read ‘click here’, but you will be missing out on a totally natural, easy way to plug some of your most needed keywords. it is far better to hyperlink a piece of anchor text like “custom caps” than click here.

Let’s suppose that you are setting up a blog post in which  you can mention your daughter’s cat and how silly she looked decked out in a baby bonnet and socks for mittens. That is your opportunity to add that Fluffy would have been much happier in a ‘made for felines’ outfit from PetsStyles. When you highlight those six words as your visible anchor text for your link back to your pet clothing site, you have latched on to something of value.

You are doing even better if you make it a deep link that sends your visitors to a landing page which has been specifically devoted to cat bonnets and booties. Make sure that an appropriate ‘home page’ link is on that page as well just in case they have a playful pooch at home too that would look super in a new outfit!

Links in articles on directories or submission sites should also contain links where permissible.  These should always be optimized for your keywords. Just optimizing for your site name is okay, but you are missing some valuable opportunities when you don’t hit your keywords as well.

When you begin linking to other sites, whether you are doing so for reciprocity or because they are extremely relevant to your post/site, remember that unless you have agreed to link with text of their own design you have another great opportunity to optimize the anchor text. Don’t be afraid to make your anchor text longer than a few words if necessary, sometimes it takes a little something extra to get the best benefits.

Once you get into the habit of thinking about the anchor text of every link you place, it will become second nature to you. The key to it all is to submerge yourself fully into the idea of optimization. When you do that, optimizing content becomes reflex reaction – you do it without even thinking about it. That is when you are full of win!

When content, pictures, videos and links are optimized correctly, it is time to begin branching out into the more complex ideas behind SEO.  This is where you have to start watching your step, because black hat SEOs are lurking behind every bush. Be careful not to be lured into traps that can result in a penalty from Google or worse