The Ten Important Steps for Optimizing your Website for Search Engines
“The Ten important Steps for optimizing your website for search engines:
In these ten steps we will know ten basics and important steps to optimizing a website to perform better on major search engines. If you will follow these steps correctly your website search engine position website will be surly improve depending on you industry competition.
Step 1 – Keyword Selection
Step 2 – Creating optimized Content
Step 3 – Site Structure
Step 4 – Internal Linking
Step 5 Submissions
Step 6 Link Popularity Building
Step 7 – Title and Meta tags
Step 8 Monitoring
Step 9 social bookmarking
Step 10 Testing
Step 1 – Keyword Selection
Selecting Keyword is the single most important factor in the entire search engine optimization (optimisation) process. Choosing the right and relevant keywords will not only help you in getting good search engine position and targeted traffic but it will also increase you return on investment (ROI).
Example: If you are a company based in UK providing search engine optimization (optimisation) (SEO) services. The first keyword in your mind would be definitely
Keyword Competition
SEO : 73,000,000
Search engine optimization : 63,600,000
Seo Company : 26,800,000
It is possible to get good ranking on these keywords but it will take lot of time and money instead you can target “”Seo Company Uk” and “Search engine optimization company Uk’ this way you are targeting two keyword at a time with less competition that means more chance of targeted traffic and good Search engine positions.
Keyword selection and research tools
The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
Site: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Word Tracker
Site: http://www.wordtracker.com/
Step 2 – Creating optimized Content
There has been lot of changes in the search engine algorithms but there is no change in the importance given to quality content. In this step we will focus on how to create optimized and unique content for high search engine positioning using the keywords we have selected in the first step.
Unique and well written content will both grab your visitor’s attention and at the same time, make them want what you have to offer. So write in keeping mind what your audience are looking for and targeted keywords.
First ask yourself some questions:
What services you offer
Do you provide the services your visitors are looking for
Do some research
Provide as much as possible information on the subject. Provide useful and unique information about your industry / subject area it can entice your visitors to visit your website in future. It has found that most of the online visitors search for information about their interests.
Content Optimization
Four important factors for optimizing content
1. Heading Tags – (H1 to H6)
2. Special Text – (bold etc.)
3. Inline Text Links – (Anchor text and alt tags for images )
4. Keyword Density – (number of occurrences of your targeted keywords in a page)
Heading Tags
By default text in these tags appear too large than standard text in a browser. We can customize it by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Tip: Do not use the same tag more then once on a page.
Special Text
It can be used in bold, colored, “”In quotes”" or (in brackets). Using special text will help draw the attention to important information and also add weight to your keywords.
Inline Text Links
Example: We provide seo services and web hosting.
You add a link to related page on your site to these bold words. it gives the reader a way to find the information you are referring to.
Keyword Density
Keyword density is the no. of occurrences of targeted keyword in the content of the page. You should not spam the targeted keyword in your content; recommended keyword density is between 4% to 10%.
Step 3 – Site Structure
You must structure your website to attract the visitor as well as the search engine spiders. The site structure will help spiders read your site. Keep the code as clean as possible so search engine spider can get to your content, where you want them to be.
Use CSS to cut down code extra code like for font style, tables, images etc…
Things to remember while planning site structure
Keep URL Short and close to Root of the site
While creating folder and files use keyword
Eg: for a page in web hosting packs www.domainname.com/web-hosting/website-hosting.html
Use Hyphens (-) while splitting name in to 2 instead of underscore (_) as shown in above example.
Step 4 – Internal Linking
Internal linking means linking to your pages within the website by way of sitemap, navigation bar, footer, header etc. The sitemap should be linked on all pages of your website to get spidered by search engines from anywhere. You should also include Google sitemap on your site to get indexed easily by Google. It adds relevancy to the linked page which directly helps in getting high rank for the linked page
Using text based links with anchor text, footer navigation and use inline text link will improve Your Internal Linking Structure. So spider can crawl it easily add relevancy to the linked page. The closer a page is in clicks from your homepage. The higher the value the page rank is assigned.
Step 5 Submissions
Where to submit:
o Search engines
o Web directories
Major search engines to submit
Google.com | yahoo.com | Msn.com
Major web directories to submit
1. Yahoo (paid)
2. Dmoz.org (most important)
http://www.about.com/
http://www.incrawler.com/
http://www.jayde.com/
3. http://www.wowdirectory.com/
Step 6 Link Popularity Building
There are 2 ways of building Link popularity
o Reciprocal link building (2 way link building)
o Non-reciprocal link building (1 way link building)
Reciprocal link building
There are some basic rules to follow when exchanging links:
Relevancy is more important
Check and make sure the reciprocal link aren’t being blocked and pages are indexed
Link pages with more than 50 links aren’t worth exchanging with
Non-reciprocal link building
It can be in form of paid link, directory listings, social bookmarking, article publishing ,blogs and press releases
Step 7 – Title and Meta tags
Once you have planned and completed the site structure and content integration. Its turn for Title Meta and Description. Unique and optimized title and Meta tags are really helpful in achieving higher search engine positions
Title:
this tag represents information of page this can be in browsers header bar
Meta keywords:
This include the targeted keywords for that particular page
Meta description:
The Meta description shows on the SERPS (search engine results page). It is used in describing the products / services you offer to your customers, you can describe specific pages within your website that shows in the search results page.
You can describe your pages the way you want them to be seen by your visitors in the SERPS (search engine results pages)
Next is alt tags, Alt tags is a white hat SEO practice used very commonly by search engine optimizers
Step 8 Monitoring
There are three basic things in the monitoring process. They are:
Monitoring your search engine positions:
You can go through the searches manually, you can use software like IBP to check your rankings or you can use online. There can find many related Seo tools listed here http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html
Monitoring Back Links
Schedule weekly checks of how many backlinks you have and are your link partners still linking to you
Monitoring Changes in the Search Environment
The last thing you will have to monitor is for changes with the search engines themselves.
Visiting forums and subscribing to newsletters to keep yourself updated about search engines algorithm changes
Step 9 social bookmarking
The social bookmarking is used by many people to bookmark their pages and websites. Using the social bookmarking visitors can bookmark the sites listed in the social networking websites. The popularity of the websites in the social bookmarking world gauged by most favorites websites among the visitors. The most bookmarked website obviously will get more traffic than others and it can also help improving your search engine ranking in major search engines.
How does it work?
In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Webpage Urls, which they find useful. Often, these lists are publicly accessible, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some social bookmarking systems allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis.
Most bookmarking websites allows to enter multiple tags for your web pages in order to be searched by the visitors that helps social bookmarking visitors to get relevant and accurate search results for their keywords.
Advantages
1. Social bookmarking helps in promoting your website users market your site.
2. It indirectly helps by building a brand.
3. Generates targeted traffic.
Some important social bookmarking sites
Dig.com | Blink |Del.icio.us |Digg |Furl |Google |Simpy |Spurl |Y! MyWeb
Step 10 – Testing
You have created a great design and added SEO elements to your site. Now its time to see if all that hard work done has achieved the main goal of reaching the visitor and to convert them to a customer.
o Check for broken links :
o Other script errors
o Ease in navigating site
o visual appeal of the site
o placement of content
o are you able to find what u are looking for
You have created a great design and added SEO elements to your site. Now you should test your website for errors (i.e. 404 not found error, script errors etc.).
Check for broken links :
Other script errors
Ease in navigating site
Visual appeal of the site
Placement of content
Are your visitors able to find what they are looking for?
“
Sandeep Tyagi
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/the-ten-important-steps-for-optimizing-your-website-for-search-engines-67620.html
Originally posted 2010-08-01 08:35:58.
How to boost you SERPS in Search Engines Ranking
SERP Stands for “Search Engine Results Page”
This the page that is displayed when a uer perfomrs a search in the search engine. Distributed by Tubemogul.
Duration : 0:2:42
Originally posted 2010-03-07 13:43:02.
How to Select Keywords – an In-depth Guide
When beginning a Search Engine Optimization campaign, there are a few basic steps that every SEO knows to take before they begin. The first is always to build a keyword list of which there are varying methods of doing so. The right methods will aid you in creating and supporting a site-wide SEO strategy. The wrong methods will run you in circles, wondering what went wrong.
It is the intent of this article to teach an effective method of keyword selection that will enable you to land more keywords on the first page with less work.
Getting Started: Know the Site
To create a great keyword list, you will need to know your website backwards and forwards. You should know what the site features, and just as importantly, you should know what it doesn’t’ feature.
The first step is to brainstorm a list of somewhat generic keywords. For example, if you are a shoe store in Poughkeepsie, the temptation will arise to try and rank number 1 for the term “shoes.” Well, that’s a start, but ranking for the word “shoes” is probably aiming a little too high for a mom and pop shop in Upstate New York, which is why it’s very important that you know the site well enough to come up with a good list of pseudo-generic “modifiers” for your keyword:
* Location (Poughkeepsie shoes, shoes upstate New York, shoes 12601)
* Price (cheap shoes, affordable shoes, quality shoes, comfortable shoes etc)
* Types (running shoes, walking shoes, jogging shoes etc)
* Industry specific (anti-pronation shoes)
Lengthening the List
At this point you should have a good list of pseudo-generic keywords. The next step is lengthening that list using your favorite Keyword tool (I will be using Overture in this example).
Each time you plug a keyword into your tool of choice, it will return the number of searches conducted for that term over a given period of time. It will also suggest keywords from the tool’s database that are similar to the one you entered.
The basic idea now is to go through the list returned by the keyword tool and copy any and all similar terms as well as their corresponding search values, which relate directly to the site you’re optimizing. Then, paste them to a spreadsheet program so that they can be further edited later.
Once you have copied and pasted, just go through the list row by row. Delete keywords that don’t have to do with the website you’re optimizing (which is why it’s important to know what the site doesn’t feature) and repeat with the next pseudo-generic keyword on your list. The idea is to identify as many keywords as possible.
Narrowing the List
So you have a long keyword list; it’s time to narrow it down. I narrow my lists by deciding if the potential gain for a keyword is relative to the competition. In order to make that decision, I need know three variables:
1. The number of searches on a particular keyword (already got those from Overture)
2. The Amount of Competition (I’ll show you how to find your competition in this section.)
3. Will the keyword lead to conversions (this is up to you)
Below is a method for thoroughly determining competition for various keywords:
1. Do a search for one of your keywords
2. On the first SERP find the last listing with the keyword in the title tag that is either a homepage of any kind or is a sub-page which is not associated with a domain whose Pagerank is greater than 6. (This is the page you will need to beat, if one does not exist, ranking will generally be easier)
3. Find out how many unique links with the keyword in the anchor text whose linking page has a Pagerank of 1 or higher for the competitor (This is how many quality backlinks you’ll need to acquire)
The aforementioned is a meticulous method for determining the competition for all of your keywords, and unless you’re planning on building a tool that will automate this process, I would suggest taking a more general approach by using advanced search strings in the search engine of your choice.
The technique that I am about to demonstrate uses the following string: intitle:”Keyword Phrase” inanchor:”Keyword Phrase”. This string will return the total number of pages with, largely, the two greatest factors contributing to ranking for a keyword:
* Having the keyword in the page title
* Having the keyword in anchor text pointing to the page
It’s a down and dirty method for assessing competition. This is how it’s done:
1. Go to http://www.startlaunch.com/research/
2. Copy your list of keywords into the box, click “submit”
3. Click on each link
4. Find and copy the number of pages that the search engine returns for this query from the top right of the SERPs to a new column next to the corresponding keyword in your keyword list spreadsheet (this is your competition).
5. In another new column, divide the number of competitors by the number of monthly searches for each keyword.
6. Sort the table from low to high (ascending) using that column.
What you have done is created a ratio of competitors to searches. When determining competition, you generally want the keyword to be searched on more times than there are competitors for that word. So the closer the ratio is to 0, the better the keyword.
These techniques will point out which terms have the most competition, but competition alone should not dictate which words make the final list.
Keyword Layout
Remember when selecting keywords: words on a higher competitive level should be placed on pages that will receive deep links in groups of 2 or 3 where all of the keywords are very similar like:
* Running shoes, Shoes for running and buy running shoes online
* Web design in Atlanta, Atlanta Georgia web design, Atlanta web site design
This way, you won’t have to remove highly competitive, but potentially lucrative terms from your list, provided that you make a concerted effort to perform link-building for the pages on which those terms reside.
For smaller terms, in my opinion, the more the merrier. They can be given their own pages or be mentioned on other highly trusted pages of your site.
That’s it. You should have all the information you need to select a strategically viable keyword list. Remember, keyword research is the cornerstone of a successful SEO campaign. Knowing the competition for your keywords will aid you in site layout, as well as focusing effort on SEO only where it is necessary. Ultimately, it will make your optimization process more efficient, allowing your sites to rank for more keywords with less work, which is a goal that all SEOs strive to attain.
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Sagheer
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/how-to-select-keywords-an-indepth-guide-382326.html
Facts You Never New About Yahoo, Google, Ask Jeeves, And Alltheweb
Almost 85% of all knowledge obtained online starts with somebody doing research on one or more search engines. Weather it be a product or a service, search engines are the most likely tool people are using to find what they want. You would benefit greatly to gain an understanding of how search engines can help grow your business.
Search engines have two basic styles – portal and search box focused. In either search style, results depend on inclusion within the engine’s extensive database, some using human editing and others fully automated, some requiring paid inclusion and others free. Search results listings are called SERP’s or search engine result pages.
Studies have shown that search engines and links are the most effective way to reach web users. While other successful internet marketing tactics include word of mouth and traditional direct mail advertising.
Search engine marketing is tiered, meaning one may promote a website on the search engines at various levels of visibility. Each level offers a distinctly different service than the next. At the most basic level of marketing is search engine listing which is simply registration in any given search database. This doesn’t guarantee or solidify ranking in the top results, but does obtain consideration. The next level is called search engine optimization, or improving a website’s ability to gain top rankings in SERP’s.
To rank relevantly within search engine results, websites must be considered relevant for a particular search algorithm for that particular keyword or phrase. This is a dynamic and growing strategy based on various tactics aimed to use search algorithms to the marketer’s best advantage. Currently, websites rank highest when each page is optimized separately. Metatags are thus developed with appropriate content.
There are countless search engines driving traffic to websites. Most of these are small, targeted and growing, while others have large, broad and loyal audiences. Just a few search engines control the majority of queries on the Internet. These leaders include: Yahoo, Google, Ask Jeeves, and AllTheWeb.
Other search sites compile results from multiple search engines into all-encompassing SERP’s. Finally, a one-of-a-kind undertaking, the Open Directory Project or DMOZ is a non-commercial directory focused on human-editing and free inclusion.
Studies also indicate search engines and links are the most effective method to reach users. According to GVU users survey, 85 percent of all new visitors currently arrive from search engines. Other strong marketing venues include word of mouth and print direct mail advertising.
Traffic Facts
The following shows the average reach. For instance, if you sampled a million Internet users, average reach states how many visit each of the follow (Metrics as of February 2005.)
Yahoo301,800 reach per million Internet users
Google170,650 reach per million Internet users
Ask Jeeves6,905 reach per million Internet users
AllTheWeb1,070 reach per million Internet users
Dogpile1,485 reach per million Internet users
DMOZ1,880 reach per million Internet users
Today Yahoo is the top ranked, highly trafficked website on the Internet. Word of mouth grew into what is now a publicly traded company. Yahoo listing is as important as that in the phone book.
Google.com open in a garage in September 1998 in Menlo Park, California. Google handled more than 100 million search queries a day by the end of 2000.
In February 2002, Google launched Ad Words, a self-serve cost per click advertising model. In December 2002, Google launched Froogle, a free product search service. 2004 brings Local Search and Gmail, as well as a public offering under the ticker GOOG.
No longer a garage business, Google reaches an average of 148,800 million users each day. Being included in the next Googlebot Internet crawls is as important as drinking milk.
Ask Jeeves Inc. was founded in 1996 and is now a publicly traded company with headquarters in California. Its syndicates search technology and advertising units to a affiliate partner network including Excite, http://Ask.com, Teoma, Ask Jeeves Kids, MyWebSearch, MySearch, MyWay, MaxOnline, iwon.
Ask Jeeves began as a human-edited listing but has since abandoned this for algorithmic search results. Smart Search allows users to search keywords such as celebrity names and receive an instant biography and photograph above results. Binocular icons next to certain results allow quick web page previews.
A Overture Services business, AlltheWeb’s index (provided by Yahoo) includes billions of web pages, as well as tens of millions of PDF and MS Word files. AlltheWeb offers specialized search tools for the major browsers and advanced search features, supporting searches in 36 different languages, news, images, audio, video and multimedia files.
AlltheWeb is powered by FAST and considered by some as a likely candidate to exceed Google’s success. The search engine’s strongest asset is fresh information, re-indexing sites and removing broken links every 7-11 days. AllTheWeb is also know for its SafeSearch filtering option that removes offensive content from SERP’s.
The information provided here should give you a good insight into understanding how the major search engines got their start. Market your website to these top search engines and improve traffic to your online business.
Don’t give up! If at first you don’t succeed, TRY, TRY, AGAIN! There is a lot to learn when starting a online business. Give yourself a break and don’t set unrealistic goals. Contrary to popular beliefs, having a successful, profit making, online business doesn’t happen overnight.
ShirleyA Kelly
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/facts-you-never-new-about-yahoo-google-ask-jeeves-and-alltheweb-97683.html
Organic Search Engine Optimization – 17 Tips for Better Pagerank
Optimizing your website so you will obtain a high search engine results position is what SEO Techniques are all about. It is reported that 65% of all websites visited start with a search from a search engine.
What is Organic Search Engine Optimization? Simply put, it is designing each page to not only be pleasing for the users to read but also pleasing for the spiders. Always keep in mind that a good measure of a site’s importance is the usefulness of the information to the users.
There is no need to go to some overpriced firm to get your site ranked well in the search engines as most of theses techniques can be accomplished by anyone with a basic knowledge of HTML. Organic Search Engine Optimization will help your page rank well and drive traffic to your site without the expense of using PPC programs or placing banners all over your site as well.
There are no tricks here, just a bit of work and some time. So let’s get started by reading the following list of Organic Search Engine Optimization Techniques!
1. Domain & File Names:
Choose your site domain name that contains words from your primary keyword phrase. Your domain name should also be easy to spell and easy to remember. You can also try to use your keyword or keyword phrase as the name for the actual filename of the page you are creating as well.
2. Keyword Phrases:
Use keywords that are being searched for. You can check your keyword phrases with either the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool or the Overture Keyword Popularity Tool to find out how often they are being searched and then incorporate these phrases into your content. You can also look at Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions for suggestions for different keyword phrases.
3. Keyword Density:
Keyword density is a very important part of search engine optimization. Keyword density is the percent that your keyword or keyword phrase are of your web page text. You may want to look that your competition to see what keyword density they are using. Too high of a keyword density will be considered search engine spam and can get you blacklisted. A good measure of keyword density is between 3 and 7 percent. Your keywords should be toward the top of your page and your keyword phrase can be in either every paragraph or every second paragraph depending on your paragraph length.
4. Bad Techniques:
Bad search engine optimization techniques can get you blacklisted from a search engine. Some techniques that are considered spam are cloaking, invisible text, tiny text, identical pages, doorway pages, refresh tags, link farms, filling comment tags with keyword phrases only, keyword phrases in the author tag, keyword density to high, mirror pages and mirror sites.
5. Title & Meta Description Tag:
Construction of your title tag is one of the most important things you need to do. Each page should have a different title with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. When search engine results are displayed the title is the first thing people see. Below the title is a description which will be either be taken from your meta name description content=”Description phrase” or from the first sentence on that page. Your description should also have 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning as should your first sentence. You should have a different title, description and first sentence on each page. You many also what to try shorter titles with only one keyword or keyword phrase as this will raise you keyword relevance.
6. Meta Keywords Tag:
The meta keywords tag is not as relevant as it used to be and some say Google doesn’t ever look at it anymore, but put it in anyway.
7. Author & Robots Tags:
The Author Tag should contain the name of the company that owns the site. This tag will help you get a #1 position for your company’s name.
Use a generic Robots Tag on all pages that you want indexed. This instructs the robots to crawl the page. The following is the generic robots tag.
8. Quality Content:
Quality content will bring people back and as people always want to tell others about a good thing it will get you forward links from other sites. Your content should be written with your keyword phrases in mind
9. Quantity Content:
The more the better. Just remember your content will need to be both quantity and quality.
10. Changing Content:
You can do this by hand or with a script. For example you can have a php script that draws five paragraphs from a pool of twenty paragraphs when the content is different each time the php page is accessed. By creating dynamic pages with a script randomly drawing different content from a database, you can get several different home pages indexed by Google and optimize for several different keyword phrases.
11. Avoid Dynamic URLs:
Are your pages served via php, asp, or cf? Some search engines may have a problem indexing them. Try to create static pages whenever possible. Avoid symbols in your URLs like the “?” that you will often find in php, asp or cf pages.
12. Frames:
Many search engines can’t follow frame links. Make sure you provide an alternative method for the search engines to enter and index your site.
13. Site Map:
A good menu system is really a site map. A well constructed menu system that is on each page and contains a link to every page on the website is all you need.
14. Site Themes:
All of the top 3 search engines look for site themes or a common topic when they crawl a website. If your site is about one specific topic you will rank better than if you have more than one theme or topic on your site. By using similar keyword phrases in each page the search engines will detect a theme this will be to your advantage.
15. Site Design:
You may think, “what does site design have to do with organic search engine optimization”? Well if your website has a bad color scheme that is hard to read, is not organized, is a cheesy looking site, then all of your site optimization has been a waste of time. Make your site attractive to the viewer, make things easy to find, have you graphic header and menu bar the same place on each page. These things will keep your visitors on the site and bring them back. A well optimized site with a high search engine results position that is ugly and is hard find information on, will not keep the visitors your optimization has brought to the site. Use W3C Link Checker to make sure all your page links are good. If you have broken links on your site this can effect the ranking you are given. Put a proper doctype on each page. If you don’t have a proper doctype on each page Internet Explorer will go into quirks mode and display it different. Use The W3C Markup Validate Service to verify that your pages are Validate HTML or XHTML code. The W3C validation will verify that your HTML or XHTML is not broken. This validation shows you any broken code that could keep your webpages from displaying properly in all the different browsers and browser versions.
16. Separate Content & Presentation:
Put all your presentation code into Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS). This separates the presentation from the content and makes your html files up to 50% smaller. It is reported that the search engine bots prefer this and the more content you have compared to presentation in your file, the better you get rated. Read why tables for markup are stupid for an overview.
17. Robots.txt File:
While this file is not really required it should be included so that the search engine bots don’t get 404 errors when they look for it. Just include the following 2 lines and drop it in the root.
User-agent: *
Disallow:
For more help with Organic Search Engine Optimization, please visit Help My Pagerank
Michael Sweet
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/organic-search-engine-optimization-17-tips-for-better-pagerank-91804.html
