Need Article/Website SEO Help - Paying $30!

You could get $30 for a 5 to 10 minute response! Anyone?

You know, you could just ask for help.

In any case, I would use related keywords to the one you are targeting on your site. Say for example kw research gives you "how to stop bulldog digging" as a synonym with less searches but also lower competition, you could use that as an extra source of traffic as well as link juice to help your site rank better.

You could use the same keyword but I would do that only if you were looking to drive traffic rather than rank. You could of course test both options and see if the traffic you are getting from the directories converts as well as organic traffic coming from the search engines.

You definitely do not want to submit the same article that is on your site to the directories. Also make sure you check the policies of the directories as some of them don't accept duplicate content.

Bookmark your article to dofollow social bookmarking sites. When shall i get my $ 30?

It really depends entirely on the keyword, its competing pages in Google and competition strength. You can usually not guess this but must do good research, what KW promise possible high Google rankings and what not.

One software i use for this is Market Samurai.

Now...let's take the hypothetical example you find a keyword with extremely low competition (say only 200 sites for this keyword in title) and weak competition strength, with all the current #10 sites in Google for this keyword simple being crappy sites.

Then you have a very good chance to rank very high from the beginning without you having to do anything more....simply let Google index your site...Profit.

(Assuming your article fits other criteria which Google seems worthy to rank your site)

But if the keyword has more competition and especially STRONG competition (meaning: old, established, high PR and trusted sites).....you will have a way harder time to rank this. And then you need to support your site/articles with backlinking to your article, having more and better quality links than the competing sites.

The usual SEO rules apply:

First Good ON SITE SEO: Well researched keyword, good site structure, good title, good article, keyword density, related keywords, probably meta tags, H1, H2 tags, the usual

Second OFF Site Seo, backlink to your site/article.

The sum of all of this decides how you will rank.

As for articles for your site:

Chances are that the EZA article will outrank your site, simply because EZA has a higher authority than your site, especially if your site is still new. But this does not mean that a link from EZA to your site will hurt...actually the opposite is the case

Furthermore you can submit to many more directories and

a) either link back to your EZA article from the other directories to strengthen EZA article..
or
b) link from all those places to your site to strengthen your actual site

"Penalized content" is a myth, but i would not submit the same identical article on a site and on EZA...i would also not submit the same article as on EZA to other directories.

I would simply submit a somewhat modified article to EZA so its not the same as on your site, and another modified article then to other directories.

And later on you can bookmark/digg any of them.

Awesome replies so far! Thank you.

Thanks for the great response George. You're definetely in the lead for the $30! Wanted to give this a bump in case any other SEO mavericks want a shot.

Any updates Adam regarding the contest... Thrilled to win(maybe!) a second contest here at the Warriors Forum.