SEO Advice
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Search Engine Optimisation - How and Why
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) when done properly is the lifeblood of the working website, saving you a great deal of money on campaigns such as adwords and similar promotional methods.
This however, is a learning curve, one which may try your patience and skill to the limit as you wrestle with many areas that, when combined, can promote a website to the holy grail of the top 5 positions within the first page of a search engine result set. Praise be if it was to be the most holy at number one on that list!! If you don't have the energy or time to do it though (and it takes a lot of time and energy) then just click here
If it was easy though, everyone would be able to get the huge sales and promotional clout that being number 1 - 5 gets you for that artfully chosen and super popular phrase; but only when you've done that all important ground work, making your site not only acceptable to the likes of Google but also to that most valuable promoter - the buying (participating or donating) public. When they start sending you, as a link, to other people, because you have a great site, perhaps with a great viral, then that's really where dreams are made of. Imagine the power of the word of mouth that can spread so fast that your main server will groan and overheat due to the amount of traffic that is passing through it?
What could that awareness do for your sales and marketing activities or your request for assistance from the world to support the cause that you hold so very close to your heart? For those of you who can face the hours of painstaking effort, the advice below will take you a bit closer, as you grasp the nettle and go through the pain of the right html and css, the right wording, the right heading, those essential and targeted keywords, the sitemap file, the robots file, the anchors and sub headings within your content, remembering not to overstate your keywords, the back linking process, the promotional viral in support, the joining of social networks, the creation and acceptance of articles.......
If that's you and you are starting that road to damascus then I hope the advice I am going to give you will help to save you a great deal of trial and error, well some trial and error maybe... but pay attention... as you step onto this spring board for the first time; it's a long way to the water and you've got to get those moves just right or a belly flop is all you are going to get, until you turn that perfect keyword somersault or that ridiculously great "double pike" of back links from the type of sites that really launch tomorrows web stars.
Don't worry if what I'm saying means little to you now, because by the end of the article.... it will mean a whole lot more! Have you got the patience though; to work through the craft and emerge a web maestro, a word smith and keyword smith, a magician of relative meaning and copyright fluency? Only time will tell.
If you have the clout to get someone to do it for you though; take the red pill here
It's your still here it's time to follow the rabbit......
SEO Tips List
- 1) Choosing Your Keywords
- 2) Keywords and on-page optimisation
- 3) Anchors within your pages
- 4) Internal Linking
- 5) Web Directories
- 6) Link Exchanges
- 7) Link Submission Forms
1) Choosing Your Keywords.
Choosing which keywords your website should target is perhaps the most important decision you can make when beginning search engine optimization. The aim of keyword research is to discover which words and phrases will not only bring traffic to your website, but more importantly, bring targeted traffic to your site. Targeted traffic is the traffic that will generate most sales as the searchers will actually get what they are looking for when they enter your website.
Before you use the first keyword that pops into your head it’s wise to first do some research, firstly to find out how difficult it will be to get a good ranking for your chosen keywords and also the number of people that enter those keywords into the search engines, which will give you some idea on the amount of traffic you can expect. When you have your keywords you need to put them into the keyword meta tag within your web page code and seperate the keywords with comma's.
2) On Page Optimization - How to optimize your website for a certain keyword
You should have decided on which keyword or phrase you want to target. This guide will walk you through the process of optimising your website for your target word or phrase. There are various ways of doing this: -
- - Meta tags
- - Title Tag
- - Body Text
- - Headings
- - Image alt text
Meta Tags
Meta tags were used extensively by search engines in order to rank websites in the results, but nowadays they have very little or zero power in determining your ranking. So why use them you might well ask. Well, usually the search engines display a short description of each web page listed in the results. If you enter a meta description tag then the search engines sometimes use this as the description displayed in the search engines result pages (SERPs). I personally would like to be able to enter a description for my site, rather than the search engine create one using the body text of my website.
Meta tags are placed in the <head></head> section of your web page. The two meta tags that are concerned with SEO are the meta description and meta keywords tags. You should try to enter your target word or phrase in the keywords and description meta tags.
The Title Tag
The title tag is a very important. Why? Because you only enter one title tag, and it’s quite short in length, so it can be deemed to be an accurate representation of what the web page topic is.
From an SEO perspective you should always enter your keyword as close to the beginning of the title tag as possible, this will give the keyword more ‘prominence’. You should also try to keep your title tag as short as possible, this will give each word in the title tag more ‘weight’.
Body Text
The actual content, or body text of your web page is an important factor of on-page optimization. To optimize your body text you should try to use your keyword frequently throughout so that it accounts for 4-5% of all of the words on your website. It is also a good idea to try to include your keyword in bold or italics to give additional weight to the keyword. You should also try to place your keyword as close to the beginning of your body text as possible, certainly in the first paragraph of text. Ideally your keyword will be the first word in your body text.
One important thing to remember is not to go overboard and mention your keyword every other word. This is known as keyword stuffing, and the search engines certainly don’t like this as it is seen as an attempt to spam and your site could actually be penalised, or even worse – banned! You should also never use text which is the same colour as the background of your web page (so that it is invisible or hidden), nor should you ever use tiny text, both of these can also be seen as an attempt to spam the search engine and could lead to a ban.
Headings
HTML headings, e.g. <h1>, <h2>, <h3> are important when it comes to on page optimization. The headings carry special weight with many search engines. The same rules apply to the headings as applies to the <title> tag: -
- Ensure your keyword is present in the heading
- Try to get your keyword as near the beginning of the heading as possible
- Keep the heading as short as possible to ensure maximum weight is given to your keyword
It is generally good practice to only have one <h1> tag per page, so in some respects this is the most important heading to be optimized for your keyword.
A common mistake I see is that people use graphics for their headings – don’t! Sure they might look pretty, but they mean zip to the search engines – they can’t interpret graphics or read what they say. If you want to make your headings look more attractive then by all means use CSS to make the heading look more aesthetically pleasing, but do not use graphics, it’s a waste of an opportunity!
Image Alt Text
Image alt (alternate) text is an attribute of the HTML <img> tag. The alt text can be entered when creating an image: -
<img src=”ferrari.jpg” alt=”Ferrari sports car” />
It is used by text viewers (web browsers that only display text – no images) rather than displaying the image itself. So in the example above it will say “Ferrari sports car” rather than display the image. In case you’re wondering, a visually impaired person might use a text viewer when browsing the web.
It is important that if you have any images on your web page, that you include your keyword or phrase in the alt text of a few of the images.
Piecing It All Together
When doing keyword optimization it is important to maintain a balance between what is ‘optimized’ and what is ‘useful’. I’ve seen on many websites where the Webmaster has gone way over the top when optimizing the page for their keyword, that the content was incoherent drivel.
3) Anchor Text – The Most Import Factor of SEO
Many moons ago Google PageRank (PR) was the most important aspect of SEO, not any more, in fact it now counts for very little and is seen as somewhat of a gimmick to the experienced webmaster. By far the most important aspect of modern-day SEO is anchor text found in the backlinks to your website (a backlink is an incoming link). Anchor text is the clickable text that is displayed for a particular link. For example this link:
<a href=”http://www.google.com”>Google Search Engine</a>
links to www.google.com and has the anchor text “Google Search Engine”. When you get links to your website you should always try to get your targeted keyword or keyphrase in the anchor text. This is an incredibly important factor used by search engines when generating the result pages.
Utilize The Anchor Text on Your Own Website
Anchor text is not only important for backlinks to your website, but it’s also important for internal linking of you web pages too. You should never have a link that has “click here” as the anchor text – it’s a wasted opportunity where you could use the anchor text to optimize your website. Instead, put the keyword of the page you are linking to in the anchor text for the link.
4) Internal Linking
In order for your website to rank well, your internal linking structure is vital to your success. Not only will this help your search engine rankings, but it will also help visitors of your website navigate your site, which will in turn result in a happier visitor and hopefully more sales for your website.
As a search engine optimizer you should exploit every possible tweak that is available to you. Your first task is to make sure your own website is optimized to it’s full potential. You should know by now the importance of anchor text for backlinks to your website, well, the same applies for the internal links on your website.
When you create a link to another page on your website you should always use your target keyword or phrase as the anchor text. The site you are linking to should then be fully optimized for the same keyword/phrase to maximize your SEO efforts.
Images for navigation are a 'no-no'
If your navigation system uses images then you’re instantly throwing away huge potential to get your website’s ranking as high as possible since you can’t specify anchor text if you’re using an image. Anchor text counts for so much in modern-day SEO, so if you don’t use text links to interlink your web pages then you’re instantly losing the potential to have potentially hundreds or thousands of link pointing to your web page with your targeted keyword/phrase.
Before going down the images route, you should explore using CSS. CSS is extremely powerful and you can actually make a normal text link look like an image.
I’ve seen many websites move up hundreds of places in the search engines, simply by optimizing their website’s internal linking.
5) Promoting Your Website – Web Directories
Like telephone directories list the telephone numbers for certain surnames, web directories list websites for certain topics. Getting listed in web directories should be your first step in your ‘link building’ strategy. You should take note that directories are completely different to search engines. and it is in fact highly recommended that you do take time to submit your website to as many directories as you can.
Web directories provide an easy method of obtaining links since the Webmaster of the directory wants to add links to the directory to try and make it as comprehensive as possible. Most web directories are free, but some charge a fee to be listed or request a reciprocal link., It is your decision whether it’s worth paying for a listing. In general I don’t pay for listings in web directories as there are plenty of free ones available. My one exception might be for entry to the Yahoo! Directory. You’ll have to weigh up whether the profit you’ll earn from getting listed in a directory will be greater than the amount of money it costs to get listed.
I definitely recommend trying to get listed in the Open Directory Project / DMOZ (www.dmoz.org) - this is the largest web directory on the web. But be warned it can take over a year just to have a moderator review your submission!
The process of submitting your website can be a very tedious one – it can be difficult to find an up-to-date list of directories, and also it takes time to type your details over and over again.
6) Promoting Your Website – How To Set-Up Link Exchanges Via Email
Email is a very powerful method of marketing – it costs nothing but can reap huge rewards. By emailing the Webmaster of other websites you can set-up a large number of link exchanges quickly and easily. In this tutorial I’ll explain how to do this.
There are two ways of finding websites to set-up link exchanges with. The first is to use the normal search engine results to find a list of relevant sites to exchange links with. You can then create a link to their website, then email the Webmaster (webmaster@example.com) to say you’ve provided a link to their website and in return ask that they provide a link to your website. This can be done with a large number of websites in a reasonably short amount of time.
The other method is to obtain a list of websites that are providing links to your competitor websites, then as above, link to their website and request a reciprocal link to your website. You can obtain a list of websites that link to another website by using Google, Yahoo or MSN. For example to find the websites that are providing links to microsoft.com you can type the following in the search engines: -
Google: link:www.microsoft.com
Yahoo: linkdomain:www.microsoft.com
MSN: link:www.microsoft.com
It is useful to keep track the emails you have sent so that you can see which websites have then replied and which haven’t – a spreadsheet is useful for this. If after say 10days the Webmaster has not replied, you could try sending another email, or simply remove the link you have added to their site.
7) Promoting Your Website - How to Find Link Submission Forms
Many websites now operate a ‘submit-your-site’ facility which allows you to enter your link details in order to get listed in their link pages. This is a quick and easy way of getting backlinks to your website. In this guide I’ll tell you how to find websites that are relevant to your website that also have a submit your site facility, this ensure you are only exchanging links with websites that a similar to your own site topic.
To access these link submission forms on a website you usually click on a link on the site which says “add your site”, “add your url”, or “submit your site”. So, if we search in Google for the term “submit your site” and the topic of your website, then you will find websites that have a similar topic to your website and which also contain the term “submit your site” on a web page, which is exactly what you’re looking for.
