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Top Two Google Ranking Factors

Top Two Google Ranking Factors

In this article I reveal what I believe are the two most important ranking factors used by Google.

My findings are as a result of my ongoing optimization experiments of my network of web sites on Google.

The top two Google ranking factors are:

PageRank and Incoming Text Link Keywords

I'll explain each in more detail and what you MUST do to maximize the effectiveness of each element.

1. PageRank

PageRank is determined by the number and quality of links to a page. Both the quantity and quality of text links are important. Always try to get links from web pages with a PageRank rating of at least four.

Concentrate on getting as many different quality sites as possible to link to one page on your site, usually your home page. Do not spread the links to different pages. This will maximize the PageRank of your main page, plus those of the subpages.

2. Incoming Text Link Keywords

ALWAYS provide text links for linking to your site. Avoid image links.

Google does index image links, but without any text for it to index, it won't help your link popularity rating for your important keywords.

In addition:

Include the most important keyword phrase in the text link, using the EXACT spelling. Do not pluralize the keyword phrase, if people usually search the singular version of the phrase. And vice versa. Avoid excess words, where possible. The linked to page MUST have the text link keywords in the body of the page, otherwise Google will discount the page. Include the text link keywords within the title tag of the linked to page. It is possible for a page without the text link keywords in the title tag to get top rankings. But I have discovered that around 80% of top 10 rankings have the text link keywords in the title tag, so always include it.

Well, there you have it. Those are what I consider the two most important ranking factors used by Google. Other factors are considered by Google, but their importance pales in comparison to the two I have discussed in this article.

Follow these tips whenever you optimize your web pages and they will quickly shoot up the Google rankings.

Google Ranking Tips

Google is by far the most popular search engine available today for both ordinary surfers and webmasters.

Surfers like it because of the highly relevant results it gives, and the speed at which it delivers them. This is due to its complex text matching algorithm and of course the Pagerank™ system that this engine uses. More on the Pagerank™ system later.

Google is popular with webmasters and Internet Marketing companies due to the highly workable ranking system it uses.

Unlike other engines where information about how the results are obtained are sketchy at best, Google actually publishes information on its site about the results it produces. So webmasters have things they can do to produce higher rankings. What also makes Google popular with webmasters is the speed at which they will spider / list your site.

If you are not listed in Google and submit you are usually indexed within two weeks. If, however, your site is already listed in the index Google should reindex once every month, but more frequently if you have a high Pagerank™.

This indexing / reindexing time is much quicker than most other search engines, this allows webmasters to edit their pages properties such as title, first few lines of text, headings, keyword distribution and of course the number of incoming links to their site. They can then discover quickly if the changes were successful or not.

It's because of this popularity that you need to know the workings of the google search engine. Without knowledge of it you will be ranked lower than all other sites that are only slightly familiar with the Google algorithm.

So let's indulge ourselves in the Google ranking algorithm. Well, there are two main parts to the algorithm google uses, the first is its text matching system, whereby Google tries to find pages relevant to what the searcher has entered. The second and equally important part of the algorithm is of course the Google patented Pagerank™ system.

I'll first go through how to make your page relevant, i.e. - the text matching part of the algo.

Google gives a lot of "weight" to the title tag when searching for keywords. So make sure your most important keywords or keyphrases appear in the title tag. It seems to work best if you have other words in your title tag, too, after your keywords, but try to remain under 35-40 characters.

As many of you know, Google does not use meta tags such as keywords or description tags. This is because the text in these tags cannot be seen by visitors to a website. And Google feels these tags will be abused, by webmasters placing lots of unrelated words in them in order the get more visitors.

The lack of support for meta tags means that Google creates your description from the first few lines of text on your page, this means you have to have your keywords and phrases right at the top, if it finds them your page becomes more relevant. If it doesn't the rest of your page has to work harder to become relevant. For example Scroll back to the top of this page and you will see:

AKA Marketing.com - Free Internet Marketing Articles , Google submitting tips, ranking high at google.com

The above sentence includes keyphrases related to this page.

Google considers keyword density in the body of a page for determining relevancy too, so make sure your keywords and phrases appear a couple of times throughout the whole page. Don't go overboard though, a density of 6-10% seems to work best.

Other advice about making your page relevant includes putting keywords into the heading tags . Also try and bold as many keywords as you can. As of late Google seems to be indexing text in alt image tags, so includes your keyphrases in there too.

One final tip on page relevancy is the point on having your keywords and phrases in links which point to your site. It is a good idea to have the linking text contain your keywords as Google even says itself that it analyzes pages that links come from too, in it's description of it's pagerank technology.

How much keyword laden links matter is anyone's guess. But I have noticed a lot of sites which give the HTML code to visitors who want to exchange links do include keywords in the actual linking area. You should do something like this to on your links page. Say something like "if you want to link to this site, please use the following code".

In the above section of the article you have learned what areas Google uses and looks at when looking for a relevant site. But what method does Google use to determine which site is better, the answer is the Pagerank™ system.

Pagerank™ is as the name suggests a ranking system of pages. It works on the basis that if a website ABC.COM has been linked from a website XYZ.COM, abc.com must have some good content and therefore Google will count the link from XYZ.COM as a vote for ABC.COM. You can check your link popularity on Google by downloading the Google toolbar from http://toolbar.google.com

The Pagerank™ scale goes from 1 to 10 on the Google toolbar and from 1 to 7 beside listings on the Google toolbar. A less important site is of course a site with a PR of 1 and a very very important site is a site with a PR of 7 or 10, in the directory or toolbar respectively.

The more links or votes a site has the more important it must be and therefore the higher it will rank for search words which it is relevant to, right?, WRONG!.

Google does not simply count the number of incoming links a page has, if that was the case every webmaster from Iceland to Vietnam would try and exchange links to every tom, Dick and harry website that would let them. In Googles own words

"Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Hopefully your beginning to get the idea. If not - The idea is to have your page linked to by as many high quality and high pageranked sites as possible. Right?, RIGHT and WRONG.

WRONG BECAUSE - You see Google pagerank system also takes into account the number of links the page that has linked to you has. The reasoning for this is that a page X has a certain amount of voting PR, if your site Y is the only link from that page X, then Google feels confident that page X thinks your page Y is the best link it has, and will give you more PR. If however page X has 50 links, page X could think your only the 50th best page. So the more links it has the less of a PR boost your site gets.

RIGHT BECAUSE - Linking to a site with a 6+ PR will provide a significant boost to your PR in most cases, but in cases where the site also links with 100 other sites the boost will be almost zero. Likewise if a site has a PR of just 2 but you and only one other site are linked from it, then the PR boost would be more than the site with 100 links and a PR of 6.

It's beginning to come complex isn't it, just wait till you see this formula. Its looks scary for non math's people.

First let me explain what the damping factor is. The damping factor is the amount of your PR which you can actually pass on when you vote / link to another site. The damping factor is widely known to be .85 . This is a little less then the linking pages own PR.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

In layman's terms PR(A) is the Pagerank™ boost your page will get after being linked from someone else's site (t1). PR(t1) is the pagerank of the page which links to you and C(t1) is the amount of total links that (t1) has. It is important to know that a pages voting power is only .85 of that pages actual PR and this voting power gets spread out evenly between all sites it links to.

Imagine akamarketing.com was linked by XYZ.COM's link page which had a PR of 4 and 9 other links, here's how the formula should look like:

PR(AKA) = (1-.85) + .85*(4/10)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .85*(.4)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .34
PR(AKA) = .49

To sum up my site would get an injection of .49 PR after being linked from a page with a PR of four and 9 other links.

Lets say I was linked from a site with a PR of 8 - double the previous example's amount, which had 15 other links, a total of 16 outbound links, my boost would be:

PR(AKA) = (1-.85) +.85*(8/16)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .85(.5)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .425
PR(AKA) = .575

The above two worked examples show that not only is the PR of the linking page important but what is also important is how many other sites are also linked / voted for from that page.

OK, I think we've had enough mathy stuff for now. Just remember that the name of the game is to get as many links from pages with high PR and few other links. The more of these links you get the more your PR will grow and the more your rankings will improve for your relevant keywords.

The best thing you can do for your PR seems at the moment seems to be getting listed in Dmoz.org - The Open Directory Project.

Pagerank™ is widely known to be biased towards big name directories such as Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looksmart.

This is true, especially in the case of Dmoz.org. These ODP links are treated like gold by Pagerank™. It doesn't even matter what the individual PR of the category page is. I have seen sites gain a large PR boost on the toolbar as soon as Google updates it's directory with the latest one from dmoz.org. This is because Google uses it's own version of ODP for the Google web directory.

Don't believe ODP links are very important to Pagerank™?
Don't believe a listing in the ODP will boost your ranking?

Well they are and they will. Perform a search for almost anything on Google and you'll discover that 75-80% of the top 10 results are also indexed in the Google directory. The fact of the matter seems to me to be if your not listed in ODP, you shouldn't expect much traffic from Google.

It's not difficult, it does sometimes take time, but it's not difficult. Just make sure you site has good content and follow the guidelines for adding a URL. Try to get you index page listed at least. I say at least because although ODP claims only to list your index page, there are plenty of sites with 5 - 10 pages listed. So if your site has very distinctive sections, then submit each section - slowly. Once Google updates it's directory, these listings could do wonders for your site maximum PR.

As for Yahoo and Looksmart, Pagerank™ will usually allocate a more than normal amount of PR boost for any sites listed. For tips on getting listed in Yahoo, read Yahoo Submitting Tips.

If you are a non-commercial site or have a site that's almost completely non-commercial you can get into the looksmart directory through www.Zeal.com. I really love this site, just like Google obtains results from ODP, Looksmart obtains it's non-commercial listings from the Zeal web directory, without Zeal I would have to fork out hard earned cash and all my site does is provide information.

To continue - I submitted inetready.com on a Tuesday and was listed in Zeal by Thursday morning. On Monday I checked my logs and found lots of referrals from Looksmart, I was in Looksmart already. I looked at my logs later only to find MSN had updated it's DB from the looksmart DB and was sending my loads of visitors cause of the good listing I got. My site was listed in Zeal, Looksmart and MSN within six days. So get over to Zeal.com and submit your site.

Before you can submit a site however you must pass a member quiz, which is fairly simple and straightforward.

If you happen to be a webmaster that has a listing in all three of Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looksmart then I'm guessing your site has good to very good PR and rankings.

RECAP
Have your main keywords and phrases in your TITLE tag and well spread throughout your page. Get as many links from as many high PR low number of outbound links pages you can. GET LISTED IN DMOZ.ORG, Yahoo and Looksmart.

Well that's it. I hope you have enjoyed this Google Ranking tips article, as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I also hope that you can put this advice into use and help get yourself some real traffic.

SEO for Page Rank vs. Site Rank

Do SEO on a "site" level

By James T. Faasse

I think you would agree to do seo for pages instead of site. Search engines' ranking is page-based algorithm (think about the PageRank and your pages are ranked instead of your whole site).

Most seo experts believe incoming links from theme relevant pages can give you a boost in SE ranking. This also gives you a hint that you can organize the whole site and build internal supporting pages around targeted page to increase your ranking.

For example, when you want to optimize your homepage for a highly competitive keyword, first place the keyword in index page with important and favorable locations by SEs(such as in title, bold, h1, h2 etc.) Think about a list of related keywords (as many as possible) and start to build a series of pages, each of that is to be associated with one or more keywords in your list. Make all your pages well-readable and with good keywords density (it's said 2% tolerance with Google), assign a unique title containing keywords (should be theme related to the "most important" keyword). And link internal pages with each other using "good" anchor texts. Last but not the least, make all your supporting pages link to your home page with that keyword. A tip here: make small variation in anchor text to keep from triggering the SE filter.

Another strategy for you here is to include a blog. Blogs usually get indexed and re-indexed faster and loved by search engines. This helps in two aspects: your blog can make high ranking seperately in SE for certain keywords (think about theme focus, new content and frequent keyword appearance); secondly, your blog naturally "link" to your main site with dedicated keywords.

After you finish all this, keep an eye on your ranking and keep doing research on keyword popularity for your client. Target new keywords to get more visitors and traffic!

Some Tips for Planning your SEO Campaign for the Long Term

Some Tips for Planning your SEO Campaign for the Long Term

Posted by: Rob Sullivan on Sep 21, 2005

At one time you used to be able to perform a one time optimization on your site and reap the benefits for months. In todays competitive landscape, however, that is not the case. This is because your competition is always growing and changing and therefore you have to as well. This article explains what you need to do to plan a long term SEO campaign.

Before Google there was Altavista, and once your got your site into Altavista you didn’t want to change it for fear of a loss in rankings. achieving high rankings was easy enough and without changing anything you could maintain them for months.

But Altavista isn’t the important engine it once was. now you have to optimize for Google, Yahoo! and MSN. The good news is that the three engines generally consider the same factors when ranking your pages. They are: Content, meta tags, links and age of all those factors. Granted no one knows for sure which of these are more important than the others, but in general, content is the most important.

All the engines have realized that the most important aspect to their business is people. In order to keep the people coming back and using their engine, they have to continue to improve on their results.

The results have to be relevant to that person at the time they are searching.

As a website owner, it is imperative that you understand how these search engine changes can affect your site. If you don’t adapt to their changes your site likely will suffer.

Therefore it is imperative that you have some form of ongoing SEO campaign, whether its aggressive as a monthly target of incoming links, or as simple as regularly publishing new site pages, or a combination of these two aspects of SEO.

Therefore, the main considerations for one planning a long term search engine optimization campaign are their budget and how aggressive they want to be.

A site owner who doesn’t have an extensive budget likely can’t compete against a site that can afford to spend thousands per months on link building for example. That is because all the engines use some form of link popularity for ranking sites and generally the site with the most links wins (There is much more to link building than this, but essentially it comes down to volume).

Similarly, a site owner needs to invest in an ongoing content campaign as well. Because you can be sure that your competitors are doing so as well.

Now a content development SEO campaign can be something as simple as setting up a blog on your site and posting regularly, or going so far as to hire professional SEO copywriters to create optimized content for your site.

In either case, the growth is positive, however there are obviously benefits to professionally written pages.

So what should one consider when defining an SEO budget?

There can be many aspects which affect your SEO. Some companies like to perform an in-depth analysis of your current site, making suggestions to improve existing optimization, and remove barriers to search engine indexing, while other firms will swing into action performing keyword analysis and writing meta tags.

Ideally you should receive quotes from many SEO firms and pick the one you feel best suits you. Keep in mind that you do have a budget, and don’t be afraid to negotiate with them. Prices can vary from $50 per hour to many hundreds per hour depending on the caliber of firm you choose. And like most things, you generally get what you pay for.

What should my SEO campaign contain?

Depending on what way you go, I would recommend a key phrase analysis, to help suggest those phrases which accurately represent your site, which you can compete for that will drive traffic to your site. Also, if you can get it, a detailed site analysis outlining the areas of improvement your site needs.

Sometimes the SEO firm can perform these changes for you (at a cost) or you can do them, if you have sufficient skill. If not you can perhaps find a third party to make the changes for you.

Some SEO campaigns will also either contain meta tags to use on your pages, as well as optimization suggestions for those pages, so that the content can be tweaked to match the meta tags. If you don’t receive meta tags you should at least receive guidelines and assistance on optimizing your pages yourself.

Some SEO programs also include some link building, however this can be a time consuming and costly process. The last time I did link building for a client (using some automated gathering and parsing tools) still took me over an hour to find one high quality link. Therefore if you are paying an SEO firm an hourly rate for this, it can get quite expensive.

However, link building is something you can do on your own time, provided you have some guidance from the SEO firm, or you can hire a firm which specializes in link building.

In general a lot of the firms out there have a variety of packages from mostly self serve, with consulting, to full service. It is up to you to decide what you think you can afford.

Some other considerations for an ongoing SEO campaign

Now, you are probably thinking “great I can spend a few hundred (or thousand) and get this work done at once and be done with it.” But I’d have to tell you that you’d be mistaken. SEO is not a one time thing.

I consider it like car maintenance – it’s something that has to be done on a regular basis. If you don’t perform regular oil changes, your car breaks down and repair bills can get very expensive. Similarly, simply performing a one time optimization will only take you so far, and then the site begins to lose in the rankings it once had.

That being said, you can generally find a firm which will do a bunch of optimization initially and then step down to a maintenance package, whereby they provide ongoing consultation and minor changes on a monthly basis to help maintain your rankings.

As such you need to factor this ongoing monthly cost into your “Cost of Doing Business” online. just like you’d have to hire a janitor and repair crews to keep your brick and mortar store clean and functional.

For example, you might have an initial “setup” that can run you a few thousand, and may take a month or 2 to complete, but after that work is done perhaps you can “step down” to a $500 monthly maintenance package including some consulting time, maintenance time and perhaps even some light duty link building.

Why else you should plan for long term SEO?

November 16, 2003 will be a date that many webmasters, site owners and SEO firms will remember. This was the day that the now infamous “Florida” update began on Google. It was at this time that sites which had traditionally owned the top of the SERPs had disappeared altogether while sites that struggled for a top 30 listing moved to the top.

For a long time people complained about how Google could do this to them. We know now this was Google’s first attempt to drastically improve the index. And the results can be felt today – the index is much cleaner and you don’t see the same poor quality sites you used to.

And as an SEO who went through this time I can tell you that of all the clients I deal with on a regular basis, probably less than 10% felt any negative impact. If anything most of my clients benefited from the change. Why?

Well for one, I don’t go for the “quick fix” SEO tactics. Up until the Florida Update all you needed was tons of links. Quality and Relevancy didn’t matter. But I didn’t condone that type of link building. Sure it may have taken me longer to find the relevant authoritative links that I felt my clients needed but in the end they weathered the storm that was the Florida Update.

I also instituted a regular content development program with many of my clients long before Florida. This too helped them weather that storm and the many which have followed since then.

And this is my point to all this – a good SEO firm will not only help you weather such drastic algorithm changes they should in fact be able to predict them to a certain extend and help you develop strategies to help combat them, should your site suffer the effects of a Florida like update.

So just how do you plan a long term SEO campaign?

Well there are two ways you can go about it – the first is the DIY path but this requires significant investments of your time, to learn the proper way to do SEO, as well as time to keep up to date on the current state of search engine affairs. And I have to tell you from experience that this can be very time consuming.

I spend a good part of my job researching SEO tactics so I can develop effective strategies for my clients. It’s not like I have a business to run on top of that. My job is to understand how search engines work so my clients can benefit. That type of understand takes a long time to pick up and maintain.

That being said, if you have the time to devote to this, you can save yourself a lot of money. Perhaps all you need then is a consultant, perhaps, which you can throw ideas at to get their expert opinion.

the second way is to hire a firm to do it for you. Granted this will cost you more, but you will be able to sleep at night knowing you are in good hands, and that the firm you hire should be on top of things and won’t get you banned for unethical tactics.

However you go, you MUST plan for the long term with any SEO campaign, you are no longer able to perform a one time optimization and walk away from the site. Today’s search engine landscape required constant change and innovation because if you don’t do it, I can almost guarantee you that your online competition is.

Effective web copy that is optimized for SEO and converts traffic

Effective web copy that is optimized for SEO and converts traffic

Posted by: Rob Sullivan on Oct 06, 2005

Web copy has evolved from the “early days” of SEO. Back then (3-4 years ago) doorway pages were all the rage because they could be auto generated on the fly and were built to rank highly on the search engines.

The problem was that these pages, while highly ranking, did little to help convert visitors into buyers. In fact more often then not turned people off websites.

Today however search engines put much more stock into the content of page, not just counting occurrences of phrases but actually understanding what the page is about which is why effective web copy is even more important than ever.

Just what is effective?
Trying to balance the need for effective web copy that ranks well, as well as converts traffic is an ongoing task. This is because both the search engines and the site’s visitors change over time. A page you wrote today won’t likely be as effective a year or even six months from now.

In fact I know from experience that page rankings change monthly across most of the engines. A well optimized page that was re-optimized in May is just now starting to show good rankings while pages which haven’t been touched in more than six months are beginning to drop in the rankings. This is the cycle of the search engines. As they find content which they deem more effective they will gradually refresh the index, dumping those pages which aren’t as effective and replacing them with ones that are.

Effective copy is found on pages that both rank highly and helps convert visitors. That means they are written to rank but are compelling enough to encourage users to first click on the listing and then stay and read the page and click through to other pages, hopefully converting in the end.

Now I can’t tell you how to write effective copy but I can give you some tips on how to optimize it so it will rank. Therefore, if you are reading this to learn how to write I’m sorry I can’t help you.

This is because to me writing is just one of those things that come naturally. You can either write or you can’t. Mind you, you can practice and you will get better over time, but I wouldn’t expect that the average person can just sit down in front of the computer and bang out web copy at will. As I said, it takes time, trial and error to learn how to create effective web copy.

That being said, I can give you pointers on optimizing your copy to make it effective from the search engine point of view.

Step 1 – choosing keywords

There are two ways you can go about creating effective copy – the first involves creating content around keywords, while the second involves optimizing content after it is written.

Let’s start with the first type of SEO copy:

Writing Around Keywords

Often, you will have an idea of the keywords you’d like to position your site for, so you just need to have appropriate content to support it. That means writing around the words or phrases you have in mind.

To do this, I like to take a look at a few of the sites currently ranking for those phrases. These sites can give you an idea of the writing style that is used, as well as the approximate word count on the pages. Remember, its a combination of factors which got those pages to the top of the rankings, so analyzing them can help give you an idea of just how they got there.

Once I have a “feel” for what’s required, I begin writing. Sometimes I take a block of text from a ranking site and copy it to a document for reference. For example, if a government site is occupying a top spot and it has statistics relevant to what I’m about to write on, then I copy the stats into a document for later use.

One thing to be careful of is to NEVER EVER COPY directly. It is OK to copy and use as a reference but your pages should never be the same as someone else’s for many reasons including legal. If you are struggling creating your unique content consider hiring someone (I’m always available :) ).

As I said, if you can write, by now you should have a good idea what the tone and style of your writing should be, and you already know what keywords you are using so its a matter of doing it.

Like I said, I can’t tell you how to do it. I don’t even know how I do it. All I know is I can sit in front of a keyboard and the words start to spill out onto the screen via my fingers. Sometimes I can’t type fast enough to keep up with my racing brain.

In the end, though, I get a page there. I don’t always get the important keywords out in the first try, but that is ok. I go back and revise the page as needed. The important thing at this stage is to be sure your page emulates those pages already ranking.

Once the page is created (it could take only a few minutes, or it could take days depending on your creative ability, but don’t let that stop you – practice does make it easier) it is time to optimize it.

As a guideline I like to keep my pages between 400 and 500 words, with 2-3 occurrences of any given phrase. I also like to try and keep my pages to 2 or 3 phrases per page. For more details on the perfectly optimized page, be sure to read my other article on the topic of Perfectly Optimized Web Pages.

Optimizing an existing page

As with creating new content from scratch, you need to keep your keyphrases in mind when optimizing new or existing content.

Using the same guidelines as found in my Perfectly Optimized Web Pages article you can optimize your existing content around your chosen phrases.

Sometimes that means rewriting parts of the text, while other times it could be a matter of changing synonyms to the phrase you want to position for.

If you need to, now is a good time to split up larger pages into that 400-500 word range. This also gives you more pages to optimize for those phrases which helps show your authority status on that keyphrase to the search engines.

Know your audience

While nailing the tone and style of the currently ranking pages is key to helping you achieve rankings, it is equally important to write for your target audience to help them stay on your site, ultimately converting.

That means writing something that is compelling for them. But in order to do this you need to know just who they are.

As I mentioned in a previous article you want to be as detailed as you can in knowing your target customer. That means getting as much realism as you can into your profile. Don’t just settle with the demographics (ie. 30 year old male, 45,000 annual income) but get into the details as well – is he married or single? What kind of car does he drive? Does he own or rent? What does he look like? Answering all these questions to the best of your ability can help you write content that is compelling to this person.

Test your content

Once you’ve chosen your keywords and written and optimized your content it would be a good idea to test it out on some visitors.

What I’d recommend here is talking to your friends and family. If they fit the profile of your target audience then get them to browse through your site, making notes about things they liked and didn’t like as well as any improvement suggestions they have. A lot of the time these people will give you an accurate idea of your average target audience. A warning though, you may have to be a little thick skinned. But keep in mind that all the criticism is good for your site in the end.

The advantage of recruiting friends and family is that you get instant feedback – you don’t have to wait for the engines to re index and re rank the pages. While you could do this, and then monitor your analytics to note any changes, this process could take months.

There you have it – a somewhat brief introduction into effective web copy.

Granted it is difficult for me to tell you what effective is. Really it is up to you, the website owner, to know what is effective and what isn’t. And as I mentioned above, a good way to do that is get someone you know to give you an honest evaluation of your site.

It is also important to write for your target audience. If they prefer highly technical commentary, and lots of details then don’t be afraid to give it to them. If they prefer a story behind every product or service, then give them one.

Let me tell you a little story about effective copy. A while ago I was researching a purchase. I want to buy a big screen TV. My current TV is pretty small and old, so I thought it would be time to upgrade. While I could find tons of generic information on which type to get, when it came to the specifics I needed to help make the final decision on what make and model to buy I found the information greatly lacking.

While there was lots of this type of information out there, I found that the dozen or so sites that I visited had EXACTLY THE SAME INFORMATION. And worst of all, it wasn’t what I wanted. If I were to buy online it wasn’t going to be from one of these sites because they didn’t answer the questions I was asking. If they can’t answer my questions before purchase, what are they going to be like after the purchase?

Whatever you find that your target wants to see should be incorporated in your site. Because this is the only way to get these visitors to stay on your site once they’ve found it in the search engines.

Remember, getting your site found through effective SEO is only part of the equation. The real trick comes in the conversion cycle, and what it will take to turning visitors into buyers. One important element in this cycle is the effectiveness of your content.

5 steps to a perfectly optimized web page

5 steps to a perfectly optimized web page

Posted by: Rob Sullivan on Sep 19, 2005

There is so much talk out there about what the ‘perfect’ web page looks like. In this article we give you tips on what we consider perfectly optimized as well as tips on helping turn the page into a great conversion tool.

Step one – Know who you are targeting
As with any marketing campaign the first step in optimizing ANY web page is to know your target audience. Is your site B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer). This is important because this not only affects the tone of your site, but also the keywords you chose.

It is imperative that you nail who your target is before you do anything else because if you don’t it doesn’t matter how big your site is, or how many pages you have. If you don’t write to the right crowd you aren’t going to get too much business.

The best thing is to write down who you think the target is. Be as detailed as possible. For example, your target may be a 30-45 year old female, in middle management, who drives a mini-van and takes her 3 kids to school before she goes to work. She makes $45,000 per year and has a bachelors degree in finance. This is the type of detail you need. You should be able to picture this person in your mind. Not just the abstract idea of her, but a physical look as well. the better you can picture them in your mind the more successful you will be.

Once you know who you target is the next step is choosing keywords.

Step two – Choosing the right keywords

This may be the most difficult part of your journey, especially if you don’t fit the target profile. That is, picking the keywords they will use to find your site.

You can start by using free tools like Yahoo!s keyword suggestion tool. It gives you a good place to start picking keywords.

Start with a phrase you know your site is about (i.e. if you sell widgets, then simply put “widgets” in the search box). The tool will then not only spit out other related words, but also the search volumes associated with each for the previous month.

A word of caution however: Sometimes, depending on when you use the tool, the search volumes are from a couple months ago. So if your product is seasonal based, the numbers may actually be lower or higher than represented.

Don’t be afraid to get a few hundred words to start. Remember, right now you are just gathering ideas – phrases that could drive traffic to your site. They aren’t all necessarily being used by your target customer.

You can also go to Google’s Adwords site and perform the above steps. Start with a phrase or two which describe your site or product and use Google’s suggestion tool to help expand your list.

At this point you want as many phrases on your list as possible. Don’t worry, you will cull the list pretty quickly.

Once you have a huge list of words, the next place to go is a site like Wordtracker, which has a keyword analysis tool. This tool can be used for a one time fee, or if it’s something you might want to return to you can purchase a subscription. It is a fairly simple tool to use and will give you a good idea of just how likely your site will be able to compete for a phrase.

A warning about Wordtracker: The software uses search volumes from some fairly minor sites such as Dogpile, so the estimates could be a little skewed. But again, unless you deal with an SEO firm that has their own proprietary software, this is about your best alternative.

Also remember as you are culling your words, don’t just focus on the competitive factors. These won’t account for your target audience. Therefore you need to have that picture in your mind of the target as you are selecting phrases that they might use. If you are unsure, you could always as for help from friends and family that fit the target profile.

A good rule of thumb would be to chose about one phrase per page. That doesn’t mean that you will only have one page per phrase, but it gives you a good target. So if your site is 300 pages, consider having a list of 300 phrases.

Step 3 – Write your pages

Now that you have your keywords its time to write, or re-write, your content to make them more appealing to the target audience, inserting the key phrases you’ve selected whenever possible.

Keep in mind that you don’t want to over do it. Also now is a good time to ensure you have proper keyword density’s and page length.

I recommend pages that are 400-500 words long. If they are a little longer or shorter that is fine, however if they are approaching 1000 words or more you should split them up, trying to hit that 400-500 word limit.

On this 400-500 word page you should have 2 or 3 occurrences of a key phrase, and you want to limit the key phrases used to 2 or 3. In other words you could have between 4 and 9 occurrences of all your key phrases per page. This should provide you with optimal keyword density.

Above all, make sure the pages are readable. Don’t optimize for optimization’s sake. If only one key phrase applies to the page, then only use one.

Step 4 – Optimize your Pages

This can be done in conjunction with the writing. In fact it should be done at then to save time. I purposely made this a separate step so that I could outline the finer points of optimization.

Provided that you are following the guidelines found in step 3, your pages should already have good keyword density, now is the time to improve that optimization by adding optimized meta tags and if appropriate, some image alt tags.

First is to write the meta description tag. While many engines will index thousands of characters in your description, I recommend no more than a couple hundred characters. That is about how long this paragraph is.

The meta description should be a readable sentence or two with the same keywords that you wrote the page for. In other words, the same phrases should appear in the meta description as the body. They should also appear as near to the front of the tag as possible however don’t sacrifice readability for this. If the tag doesn’t make sense with them at the front, then reorganize until they do make sense. Be sure to use proper punctuation as well.

Also preferred but not mandatory is a meta keywords tag. While none of the major engines use this tag, other smaller ones, and some specialty engines do use the meta keywords tag. If your target uses one of these engines then it makes sense to have that tag in place.

Also, with the keywords tag there is a lot of debate over using commas or not. Personally I do not use commas. I just combine the phrases and remove duplicate words. For example, if the page is about blue widgets, yellow widgets and red widgets then the keywords tag could be: “blue yellow red widgets.”

Common sense should be used when deciding if you will use image alt tags as well. If your keywords match the image and you can make a compelling image description, then do it. Otherwise don’t.

Step 5 – Write a compelling title tag

I purposely left this as a separate step from meta tags because this is the most important part of your optimization program. Again, it can be done at the same time as the previous two steps, but it’s importance can not be over-emphasized.

This is because the title tag is the tag which is displayed in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). It is the link that people click on, and also the tag which is generally read by the visitor before they decide to visit.

Therefore, if your title tag isn’t compelling, it doesn’t matter how well optimized your page is, it may not get that click.

For this step, you need to look at your competition to determine what they are doing. Perform a search to see what is compelling about their listing? Is there one that stands out? If so what are they doing? For example, if on every other site the keyword is the first phrase on the title, then consider moving your keyword in to the second or third phrase.

This is because, as you will notice, engines like Google bold the search term in the title and snippets or description. One way to make your title stand out is to have the term in a different position than the competition. That way the bolding stands out like this:

key phrase in title tag
key phrase in title tag
title tag with key phrase
key phrase in title tag

Notice how the third one stands out from the rest?

I can not emphasize enough how important that title tag is. As I said, it is the “hook” to get visitors to your site. If the title is ineffective, then it won’t get clicked which means you don’t get the opportunity to woo that client.

Summary

As you can see, optimizing a page has less to do with optimal keyword density and more to do with knowing who it is that will be using that page.

If you don’t know who your target audience is you will never be able to properly optimize your pages. Sure you can optimize it for whatever keywords you choose, but if they aren’t the words that your customer will search for, what’s the point?

In the end, the more you know who your customer is, the better you will be in all your online ventures, from introduction of your product or service, to closing the sale. It is up to you to cater to them, and not force them into a more generic mold. This is because todays web searchers are much more savvy and willing to browse more if a site doesn’t appeal to them.

The Dos and Donts of Content Optimization

The Dos and Donts of Content Optimization

In a quite informative session at the Search Engine Strategies Conference, Heather Lloyd-Martin, director of search strategies for WebSourced Inc., and Jill Whalen, owner of HighRankings.com, dealt with one of the most fundamental, but perhaps most important aspect of the search engine industry: producing web copy that it is appealing to your target audience while at the same time being search engine friendly.

WebProNews' Chris Richardson was in attendance, and will be all week, funneling the most up-to-date information to us as the conference progresses.

Effectively writing optimized copy is no easy task, but Jill and Heather assured the audience that it gets easier with practice.

While the goal, as Bob Bly put it, is "creating copy that makes the argument so convincingly the customer can't help but want to buy the product being advertised," the argument many raise is that it’s easier said than done. After all, that’s what we all want to accomplish, right?

Though it’s fairly obvious, it still needs to be said that the first step to creating such compelling content is to delve into the mind of the audience and understand what these eyeballs are searching for.

Point of fact: good copy equals conversions. And by Jill’s estimation good optimized copy with the right balance of keyword content is 1/3 of SEO.

It’s tricky to know where to place and how to place your targeted keywords, so based on Jill and Heather’s presentation, we’ve put together this handy Dos and Don’ts list for effective content optimization.

DOs

DO create a page title that is intriguing and eye catching. This is the window to your shop. Compelling titles entice potential customers to choose your site over others. The higher number of clicks will pull weight the search engines as well, giving your site more relevance. Think of your webpage titles as headlines and, as a guideline, limit your title to 50-75 characters (with spaces).

DO limit your keyword usage to 2 or 3 keywords per page. Otherwise, you could get tagged for keyword spamming. Instead of the same keyword, think of variations. Be creative with keyword choices. Brainstorm all variations of the words by adding “-ing” “-ed,” and any other prefix or suffix combination. Also look for synonyms and include those in your copy (dining, eatery). Even multiple spellings and misspellings can help (web cam, webcam, behavior, behaviour).

DO include the main keyphrase you are targeting on every page, with exception to the index (although the index CAN include a keyword and company name with brief description).

DO emphasize (bold) text to boost keyword positioning with search engines.

Do use keyphrases in hyperlinks—think of it as a persuasion benefit, like pushing a user to take action.

DO a description tag. This is important regardless of search engine weight, although search engines can give credence to well-written ones. A good description is equivalent to a good sales pitch to the reader.

DO use the 80/20 rule when choosing which page to optimize. Optimize first the pages that cover the most important 20% of your products (i.e., top products, or best-selling items). Optimize the remaining 80% incrementally.

DO keep an eye on competitors and how they rank for the same keywords.

DO create supplemental content like FAQ pages, how-to pages, related product articles, manufacturer info pages, and blogs.

DO think like a reporter, asking the five W questions (who, what, when, where, why).

DO highlight your location. This is especially recommended if you are a location sensitive business.

DONTs

DON’T go over 250 words per page.

DON’T wait to implement copy changes for expected seasonal sales. Give yourself a 6-month window when optimizing seasonal content to give the engines time to adjust to your alterations.

DON’T insert keywords into copyrighted material. Look for creative ways to place keywords around these items.

DON’T forget your audience and what they are looking for. This can’t be stressed enough.

DON’T forget title tags.

DON’T rely on graphics. Text is much more important as spiders don’t read graphics, they read actual text. Image alt text is not that effective and be aware that WYSIWYGs can turn pages into graphics. Use flash in small doses as it is also not readable by engines. Other things not readable: comment tags and graphic headlines. PDFs, however, are indexable.

10 Basic Search Engine Preparation Tips

10 Basic Search Engine Preparation Tips
by James T. Faasse


While many people think it is enough to have web site to earn
hundreds or thousands of dollars within a few weeks, it is
much harder in reality to get people to your web site and then
it is another thing to get them to buy something from you.

But that's a different story. Let's concentrate on the first aspect:
Getting traffic and especially getting targeted traffic. You don't
want to have cat lovers on your site when you are selling dog
food, do you ?

How do you get targeted prospects ? First of all, you must know
your potential customers. Who are they ? What are they looking
for ? So the first thing , even before you have built your web
site, is to know which keywords your prospects would search for.

It is not as hard as you might think. But if you have a general
topic like I have myself with Internet Marketing, it might be a
much better idea to concentrate just on one aspect of Internet
Marketing.

My friend, you ask why ? Did you ever perform a search on
AltaVista for the term 'Internet Marketing'? Yes ? Then you will
certainly know that there about 6 million web sites competing for
the top position on 'Internet Marketing'.

It is very hard, if not impossible to reach a rank in the top 10 or
even the top 30 for such a general term. But if you concentrate
on, let me say autoresponders, then there are a lot less pages
that deal with that topic.


1.) Choosing your domain name

This means, when you order your domain name, be sure to include
your keywords in your domain name. To take the example just
mentioned above: If you're selling dog food, don't take a domain
like www.petshop.com .

Because then people could think that you are selling cat food,
bird food etc. , too. You want to target your potential customers,
so your domainname would be rather something like :
www.dogfood.com or similar.


So now you've designed your pages. What comes next ?

2.) Frames/no-frames

Web pages which use frames have one big disadvantage: Some
search engines are not able to index them correctly. They cannot
follow the links that are included on these pages and that means
that they won't be able to show the results of your pages.

If you want to be on the safe side, create your web pages without
using frames. There are some tricks to enable a correct indexing
but this would lead too far for this time.

3.) The title of your homepage

It almost goes without saying that your title should have your
keywords included as well. You should choose a title that includes
your four most important keywords. If you have a site where people can learn how to write ads, you could give your page a title that has the word ads in it plus some of your other keywords.

Example : 'Writing ads: How to write ads that sell your products
like crazy.' You have repeated your most important keyword 'ads' and you have used other keywords like 'writing', 'write' and 'sell'.

4.) Meta tag : description

Meta tags are additional pieces of information which are placed
within the HTML - code. Your description reflects the most
important part of your homepage since this is the description
that is shown when someone searches for your site on a search
engine.

You should clearly state the benefits of visiting your site. It
should be a like a little ad for your site. You should include your
keywords once again but not more than twice. I'll give you an
example of my own site and then it looks like this :

META content='Writing Headlines : No Success With Your Advertisements ? Discover The Little-Known Secrets Of Writing'Killer'-Headlines !' name=description


5.) Meta tag : keywords

The Meta tag keywords should be used to put in all your
keywords that are relevant for your site . It is crucial to put
your 4 most important keywords at the beginning. You can
include 15 further keywords and even more.

Example :
META content='headlines, advertisements, ads, copywriting,writing winning sales letters, prospects, online, web, internet,marketing, campaign, writer, marketer, promotion, copywriter,top-seller' name=keywords

6.) Meta tag : robots

You create a little robots.txt to let the search engine know
which links it should follow. If you want to exclude certain
directories, you can use special commands which forbid the
search engine spiders to follow a complete path.

This can be necessary e.g. to avoid that the search engines link
to your download page where you have the articles you want
to sell. An example can be found below :

# robots.txt for http://www.internetmarketing-success.com/
# file created: 16.08.01

User-agent: *
# Disallow: /cgi/ # exclude robots from specified tree
# Disallow: /scripts/

# file modified: 16.08.01

7.) Keyword density

Your main keyword should be mentioned within the first 8 words
of your body text and can be mentioned 3 times more. The other
keywords should not be forgotten, too. Try to use them at least
3 times in your text.

8.) Alt-tags for your images

Alt-tags are alternative descriptions for your pictures. If you
move your mouse-cursor over your pictures, you can see this
alternative text. This text is also shown if a picture is not
loaded correctly. Use your keywords to describe your pictures.

9.) No tricks like white text on white background !

Some people consider themselves to be very smart and they
want to outwit the search engines by putting a lot of their
keywords with a font in the background colour on their
pages to make it more relevant to the engines.

But times have changed : The search engines recognize these
tricks and as a result your pages are banned from their index.
Try just to do what is necessary but don't use tricks, it won't
do you no good.

10.) Link-Popularity

Many search engines like AltaVista have a new ranking
concept which includes link-popularity. This means, the
more pages have a link to your site, the better your site
gets ranked.

Some of them have also made special deals with pay-
per-click search engines. Those sites which rank on the top 3
will also get a high rank at 'normal' search engines.

Increase Your Page Rank Through SEO

Increase Your Page Rank Through SEO
by James T. Faasse


Search Engine Optimization (SEO) must be considered a process and over time you can build your ranking and traffic.

Remember, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

This article provides 10 SEO tips that will build your search engine rank.

1. Title

The Title is (usually) the hyperlink provided in the search results so make sure it’s people friendly. Put the most important keyword first, followed by the 2nd…If you need to have your Company name there (branding), put it at the end.

2. Meta descriptions

Use the keywords once or twice in your Meta description. It can be the text that shows up in the description area of the search engine results.

3. H Tags (and proper use)

Have your keywords in an H1 tag at the top of your page embedded in a good description. Not only will it help your rankings but many times the search engines will actually display it in their results.

4. Keyword positioning (on the page)

Have your main keywords high up in the page (the higher the better). The most valuable real estate on a web page is top left corner – people (& engines) read left to right starting from the top.

5. Number and Quality of inbound links

Each link from another web site acts like a vote of confidence – A link implies that the site believes your site has value.


However, all links are not equal. You must get links from sites that have a similar theme to yours ONLY! Anything else may actually hurt your page rank.

6. Linking Text/Description

When building a link campaign, make sure to use keywords in the link. For example, a link with “click here” doesn’t help you with search engines. A link such as “Internet Marketing” is much more effective (if that’s your keyword).

Also, don’t forget to use keywords in your linking description as well.

For the most thorough ebook on developing a strong linking campaign read Jack Humphrey’s “Power Linking 2: Evolution!” (http://www.money-teacher.com/PL2.htm)

7. Content is “King”

Not only is quality content what people are looking for, but content is also what the search engines are looking for. Content is basically “food” for the search engines.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT try to “trick” search engines with useless content. Not only won’t this work, but it will bother potential customers. Also, while you want to mention your keyword, DO NOT “keyword stuff”. A too high word density will penalize you – make it natural.

8. File size

Keep file size as small as possible. It will make for faster loading pages, happier visitors and the search engines like them.

9. Bold & Italic

It’s good practice to highlight your keywords in your copy a few times, but don’t overdo it.

10. Alt tags in image links

Search engines can read text but they can’t see a pictures. Putting in Alt text for a graphic tells the search engine what it is about and also helps people who have their graphics turned off. Make sure to put your keywords in your Alt tags.

Here is an example: < IMG SRC=”graphic1.jpg ALT=”text/keywords go here” >

Once your site is optimized for the search engines, you can then start submitting your site. Practice these tips and over time you will see your search engine rank increase.

Sneaky (But Legal) Places To Insert Keywords For Higher Rankings

Sneaky (But Legal) Places To Insert Keywords For Higher Rankings
by James T. Faasse


The battle for high search engine rankings rages on! The engines themselves continually make changes which makes our jobs, as Web site owners, much more difficult. But, one thing has always remained the same... Keywords.

Search engines still read text. That text still has to be relevant to the site. Keywords are text and must be placed strategically throughout your site. Those keywords within the text are still the determining factor on how high you go up the search engine ladder.

While many engines now place no relevancy whatsoever on the keyword META tag itself, there are still plenty of places - legal ones - to insert keywords in order to boost your rankings.

Keep this list handy when writing copy for your site pages. It will help you get the biggest bang for your search engine buck.


1. In your URL.

Putting a keyword or keyphrase within your URL (domain name) counts for major points!

2. In your page link names.

Rather than using a link in your navigation bar like 'services', add a keyword to that page link. If you are a marketing consultant, you could put 'marketingservices' instead.

3. In links throughout the copy.

This uses the same principle as above. Instead of writing a paragraph about your testimonials and linking to a page named 'testimonials', create a link to a page named 'marketing successes' (or some other powerful keyphrase).


4. In the 'title' and 'description' tags.

The title and description tags are still widely read and used by engines. Be sure both are enticing and contain keywords because some engines use them interchangeably.

5. In the copy itself.

The 'optimal' copy length for search engine compatibility is between 250 - 350 words. Why? Because that gives you enough room to use the keyphrases repeatedly and still make sense! You should have about a 3% ratio of copy to keywords.

6. In ALT tags.

ALT tags are those little bits of copy that pop up when you hold your mouse over a graphic or picture. Search engines read those - because they consist of text. Use keywords in the descriptions you assign to the images on each page. WARNING: Be VERY sure that the description in the ALT tag goes with the image. Otherwise you could be banned for 'keyword stuffing.'

Last little trick ... get one or two heavyweight keywords or phrases in all 6 places above. It's hard to do, but the results are tremendous!

By taking advantage of these sneaky - but legal - places to insert keywords, you stand a better chance of getting one of those coveted 'Top 10' slots on the major engines. You also stand a darn good shot at increasing traffic to your site!

The 7 Points of Do-It-Yourself SEO

The 7 Points of Do-It-Yourself SEO
by James T. Faasse


Have you ever been intimidated at the convoluted, jargon-ridden information about Internet marketing for small businesses available on the Net? What exactly is search engine optimization anyway, and can I do it myself?

The answer is: Yes, you can! The basics of search engine optimisation are simple. It's all to do with the keyword content of your text copy, and can be summarised in seven points.

1. Register a good domain name which reflects what your site is about. Even if you are an established business, don't register www.FredJones.com if you make widgets. Rather, you want to register something like www.BestWidgets.com because that would inspire confidence in people looking for quality widgets who would not necessarily have heard of Fred Jones the widget-maker.

2. Name your page URLs based on reasons similar to the above, except now you can be more specific. Search engines like to know what your page is about. Name a page after a product (BigYellowWidgets.htm) or a service or action (Buy-Widgets-by-Post.htm) on one of the sales pages.

3. The text in the title tag is crucial in letting search engines know what each page is about. Put your important keywords in your title tags, using both the singular and plural versions (people will search for both) and make these tags different and specific for each page. For example, 'Widgets and After Sales Widget Services'. Whatever you do, don't call the home page 'Index', but treat it almost as a mini-description.

4. The other tags (at the top of the html page) between the two 'HEAD' tags are not as important as the title tag, but the description tag is still used by some search engines in displaying what you would like web users to see when they scroll down a page of search results. Some search engines don't use the description tag at all; others, like Google, sometimes use part of it together with part of the main body text surrounding prominent keywords on your page. So you may as well treat the description tag seriously; make it brief (about 25 to 30 words) and as comprehensive as possible in the short space allowed. Make sure you have your popular keywords included within your description tag. The ALT tag is used for a very short description of an image or graphic file, and is what is displayed if you allow your mouse pointer to hover above a graphic. These days it is not considered important for search engines. The COMMENT tag is never displayed on the body page, and is used by coders and designers as an instruction or reminder to themselves about what that section of html coding should be doing; in the past, some webmasters in their quest for website promotion and search engine ranking used to stuff keywords in the comments tags, but now it is generally acknowledged that the main search engines pay little or no attention to these.

5. Keyword density. Each search engine has its own preference as to how many times a keyword phrase appears on the page in order to signify the relevance of that keyword phrase (in other words, in order to help the search engine understand what the page is about). Around 5 to 8 per cent is a rough guide as to the optimal level. Don't overdo it, otherwise it will be seen as spam or keyword-stuffing. Also use your keywords in the headings tags H1 and H2. There is an H3 tag as well, but it is doubtful whether search engines bother with that, as it is perceived as less prominent on the page, therefore less relevant to what the page is about.

6. Don't forget good linking in your website marketing. Search engines will judge the importance of your web pages to some extent on the number and quality of incoming links from other sites. Ask other webmasters with sites on similar themes to yours for a link, in exchange for a link back. These sites should not be in competition with yours, but should be similarly themed. You may occasionally be asked by other webmasters if they can link to your site. If this is so then have a look at their site; make sure that their site is relevant, that it has at least some Page Rank, and that it just 'feels' good, and has no nasty surprises like redirects or unexpected popups. You don't want to be associated with a 'bad neighborhood'!

7. Make sure that important keywords are included in the anchor text within inbound links from other sites. This is crucial to search engines when they try to figure out the relevance and importance of your pages. The inbound link from the other site should take the form of something like this (I'm using normal brackets instead of angle brackets so as not to use compromising html): (A HREF='http://www.Yourwebname.com')your important keywords included here(/A). You should definitely avoid something like (A HREF='http://www.Yourwebname.com')click here(/A), which tells search engines nothing except that your site is about 'click here'. Be careful!

How to Design a Search Engine Friendly Web Site

How to Design a Search Engine Friendly Web Site
by James T. Faasse


Many web site designers don't design their sites for the search engines. This is a huge mistake because they miss out on attracting lots of free traffic. Your beautifully designed web site may have cost you thousands of dollars but it still needs to attract visitors to be profitable.

Here are 12 highly effective strategies for designing a search engine friendly web site:

1. Research highly targeted keywords - do this even before you begin designing otherwise you may have to go back and clean up some of your web site design. Use the keyword research tool, Wordtracker (wordtracker.com) to research the most popular keywords that pertain to the subject matter of your web site. Wordtracker will show how many people have searched for that particular keyword over several search engines within the last 60 days.

2. Create a list of approximately 100 keywords or keyword phrases that you can include within your web pages. After having completed the above research, you should have found the keywords that were searched on most frequently, but only produce a small number of competing web sites.

3. Write a paragraph of 250 - 500 words of text for the top of each web page. Weave your keywords within this text being careful not have them so close together that your copy reads strange for your visitors. Aim to please the search engines as well as your web site visitors.

4. Optimize meta tags - the most significant meta tags are the title and description meta tags. The keyword meta tag has lost its effectiveness due to people spamming it, however include it anyway as some search engines still use it. Include your keywords within each of these meta tags. The title meta tag should be a short sentence about the purpose of your site. In your description meta tag, write a sentence on the greatest benefit of your site. Your keyword meta tag should include the most frequently used keywords contained within your web page.


5. Include Heading Tags - these can range form H1-H6 most designers will only use H1-H3. These tags separate each section of your web page with subheadings. The H1 tag contains the largest font and is the most significant. Within the descriptive text of these header tags you should include the keyword phrases placed in the same order as your keyword phrases that are within your keyword meta tags.

6. Optimize images using the alt tag - write a short description for the alt tag of your image. The alt tag has 2 purposes:

a) visitors can read the description if they can't see the image.
b) search engines only spider text (not images), therefore this could help your site's rankings.

7. Reduce image size - too many images or very large images on your web page will slow down the loading time of your web site. Make sure your images have a resolution of 72ppi. Slice large images into smaller pieces with your graphics editor.

8. Find incoming links (backward links) - web sites that link to yours raise your link popularity. Search for web sites that are compatible with yours and have a PR 4 or more to do a link exchange. Write optimized articles and include them on your web site. This means your site has a greater chance of being indexed quickly as well as getting a boost in its rankings.

Create absolute links (ie http://www.domainname.com) from all your internal pages to your home page. This will increase the number of links pointing to your home page.

9. Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to implement a clean design throughout your web site. This will reduce the time to implement a consistent text (or layout) style for your web site. It will also enable you to easily update your whole site should you wish to make any future changes.

10. Place any script code into external files - when using javascript (ie for swapping images on your navigation bar) it creates a lot of code between the header tags, pushing down the text that search, engines would spider first. Placing the script code in an external file reduces the code to just one line.

11. Insert the DOC TYPE tag at the top of every web page. A DOCTYPE ( 'document type declaration') informs the validator which version of HTML you're using for your web pages. DOCTYPEs are a key component of compliant web pages: your markup and CSS won't validate without them. i.e.

[!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC '-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN' 'http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd']

DOCTYPES are also essential to the proper rendering and functioning of web documents in compliant browsers like Mozilla, IE5/Mac, and IE6/Win.

12. Write clean html code - web site editors often write extra code. This can increase the loading time of your web pages. Check your html code by running it through a html validator (http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator).

Once you have implemented all the strategies above, submit your site to the search engines and get ready for lots of targeted traffic.

You now have built a profitable search engine friendly web site.

Resources

The Global Structure of an HTML Document http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#h-7.1

Page Validation and Loading Times http://stoco.net/cgi-bin/wc/wc.pl

Fix HTML code errors http://www.netmechanic.com

Search Engine Optimization - Using Keywords in Links

Search Engine Optimization - Using Keywords in Links
by James Timothy Faasse


When your optimizing your website for search engines there are some link building strategies that you want to try and achieve to help be ranked higher up on search engines.

Link Building Tips
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Tip 1
Use your main keywords in your 'visible' link tags. This is very important to do because it shows the search engines that you have more relevant information on those keywords.

Tip 2
Use those main keywords at the very start of your link tags Those closer to the keyword is to the front of the link tag the more the search engines will think it is of importance.

Tip 3
Try and use the keywords more than once. Dont abuse this tip by putting keywords one after the other. Try and put one keyword than some information, than another keyword. If you list to many keywords together chances are that you will become penalized by the search engines.

Tip 4
Incoporate plurals of your keywords throughout your linking structure. Some search engines (if not most) are making it so that keywords are automatically using plurals. This is a benefit to you, but not all search engines are doing this so try and add in multiple keywords in plural form and in regular form throughout your site.

Tip 5
Use your keywords in your 'visible' link tags, and use them in your page name. This helps increase your keyword ranking by having those extra keywords in the visible link area and in the page name area. Great way to get those keyword points.

Examples of Link Building Tips

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Tip 1
Home for Webdesign
Note the homepage would be able webdesign. So why not incoporate a keyword in front of the link.

Tip 2
Webdesign Home
Including it at the front eliminates the need of 'for' and increases the relevancy of the keyword.

Tip 3
Webdesign - Click here to learn about our webdesign information. Search Engine Optimization
Learn about our webdesign Search engine optimization information.

Note: the first link I used the keyword webdesign. I than used the same keyword again in the second links description.

Tip 4
Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Optimizing or SEO

Tip 5
Example Visible Link