The Title Tag
The Title Tag is the first most essential bit of information you should provide for the Google-bots. When the Google-bots read the title tag they take it to be relevant to the topic, and content within the web-page.
A lot of webmasters simply don’t understand the importance of having a Title Tag which is relevant to its content, and just forget to put one in.
In some cases, people will put the title tags in the wrong part of they’re code, halfway down the page. The Title Tag should be the first tag placed in the head section of the code, in it you should put your most important keywords consisting of between 40 and 60 characters, which includes spaces too.
The Description Tag
The Description Tag which looks like this: META NAME=”description” content=”This is where the description of your page goes”.
This is important because the Google-Bots take this to be the description of the page it belongs to, and quite often will display the information in this tag on the search results when someone enters a search query using the keywords which match those words in the description tag.
Many people do what they did with the title tag, put it half way down the code, or just make it completely irrelevant. The Description Tag should be the next tag under the Title Tag in the head/head section of the code, and keep in mind that the content of the Description Tag should be no more than 250 characters, which includes spaces too.
The Keywords Tag
The Keywords Tag which looks like this: META NAME=”keywords” content=”This is where your keywords go”,can still play a role in some search engines, although it is widely believed that Google doesn’t rate it any more. Never the less, by using the Keyword Tag you will not lose any thing, you can only gain, so include it in all your pages. There are still some search engines that use will use the content of the Keywords Tag to determine the content of a web-page.
The Keywords Tag should contain no more than 10-12 keywords, separate all keywords with a comma and a space, ensure that you use those keywords which are present in the content of the page too, do not repeat your key-words, always use lowercase lettering in the Keywords Tag, and make sure that all Keywords Tags are relevant to each page.
Wednesday, 7 November 2007
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Tips on How to Select the Right Keywords
Has your site been indexed by the search engines? I know it’s not easy to get your site indexed, so I’m going to give you a few little tips which will help the search engines give your site some relevance.
An important element of getting your site indexed by the search engines is to have the right keywords, and many people have no idea of how to select the right keywords, so here’s a tip on how t choose the right keywords.
To start with, log onto www.overture.com. What you’ll see is a tool in which you type in a keyword, and it will give you the figure of how many searches were made for that word.
Select “Advertiser Center” at the top of the page on the right hand side.
Then, near the top of the page, select “Tools”.
Next, in the new page that pops up, select “Term Selection Tool”
Now, in the search box that appears, enter a Keyword or Key-phrase that you think that your target audience might use when searching for your product/service, and click on “Enter”.
You will now see a list related search terms, with the number of searches made in a 1 month time frame.
It might just be that you’ve chose a good keyword, or it may be that there are a better choice of keywords that you’ve come across.
Select the Keywords you wish to target, and now analyze the web-page which is offering the service or product. Ensure that your chosen keywords are present in the various Headings tags, and in the main content. This will ensure that the Google Spiders index your web-pages and show them on the search results pages when someone makes a relevant search query.
An important element of getting your site indexed by the search engines is to have the right keywords, and many people have no idea of how to select the right keywords, so here’s a tip on how t choose the right keywords.
To start with, log onto www.overture.com. What you’ll see is a tool in which you type in a keyword, and it will give you the figure of how many searches were made for that word.
Select “Advertiser Center” at the top of the page on the right hand side.
Then, near the top of the page, select “Tools”.
Next, in the new page that pops up, select “Term Selection Tool”
Now, in the search box that appears, enter a Keyword or Key-phrase that you think that your target audience might use when searching for your product/service, and click on “Enter”.
You will now see a list related search terms, with the number of searches made in a 1 month time frame.
It might just be that you’ve chose a good keyword, or it may be that there are a better choice of keywords that you’ve come across.
Select the Keywords you wish to target, and now analyze the web-page which is offering the service or product. Ensure that your chosen keywords are present in the various Headings tags, and in the main content. This will ensure that the Google Spiders index your web-pages and show them on the search results pages when someone makes a relevant search query.
Thursday, 18 October 2007
3 simple steps on Optimizing your site for Search Engines
By following the 3 quick steps below you will ensure that you have given your websites the best possible start in the World Wide Web.
If you are going to start search engine optimization on your website you can follow these methods to start and do SEO the right way. These method will help you get ranked top in Google.
Step 1
Beging by researching your target Keyphrases and keywords. Choose about 5 keywords to begin with. Your keywords are more worth targeting if the recieve more than 2,000,000 search terms in the Google Search Engine, and recieve approximately 500-700 searches a month, if not more. As you get more experienced in the art of Search Engine Optimization you begin to incorporate new keywords/key-phrases, but for now just stick to 5.
Now, out of the 5 target key-phrases, select one to be your primary keyword.
Step 2
Build your site, and ensure you includ your meta tags, mainly the Description and Keywords meta tags. Now include an article, in addition to the main content on the Home page.
If you have terms and conditions, a disclaimer, or other similar types of links, add the no-follow attribute to these anchors.
Include your primary Keyword at the bottom of your page below the footer are, preferably to the right of the Copyright information.
At this stage it will not be advisable to put links on to other sites from your site.
Although on the page SEO does have its place in optimizing for the seach engines, off-the page SEO is far more important when it comes down to keyword rankings, and can achieved fairly instantaneously, therefor lets just concentrate on the off the page Search Engine Optimization for now.
Step 3
Proceed to obtain as many one-way links as possible to your site from other websites. This is a major strategy of off the page optimization and this is what help you climb up the natural search engine listings.
If you want to do link exchanges, fine, just make sure that they are relevant to your site. But one way links from Directories, Press Releases, and Article Directories, will be more weighty and mean more to Google as these links do not require you to return a link back to them.
Use your chosen keywords in the text for the anchors, and do not keep using the same keyword in every anchor, vary them evenly throughout the course of of your SEO campaign. Do not use same the same keyword all the time. Vary them as much as possible.
The more links you have pointing to your site, the better, and yhe higher you will rank for your targeted keywords. It's a full time job and can get quite laborious and technical at times, especially when you start optimizing for more than 5 keywords, which is why many people choose to take on services offered by On-line marketing companies such as Summit Media.
Your SEO campaign should be a steady one. We're hoping to gain roughly an equal number of back-links everyday. The more links the better. If you can get yourself 15-20 links a month for each keyword, trust me, you're doing great. Otherwise look into hiring a firm who specialize in this sort of game, some one like Summit Media.
Now that you understand the art of link-building, to a certain degree, you can look into the on the page SEO, add a blog, update it regularly with fresh content . Fresh content is adored by the search engines. Don't forget to include a sitemap on your site, the searc engines love looking through these too, and submit it to Google site maps.Create a sitemap on your site and put only the most important pages on it.
Remember, Search Engine Optimization is both on the page and off the page stuff that needs to be done. Neverthe less, Off-the page is far more important than On-the page.
If you are going to start search engine optimization on your website you can follow these methods to start and do SEO the right way. These method will help you get ranked top in Google.
Step 1
Beging by researching your target Keyphrases and keywords. Choose about 5 keywords to begin with. Your keywords are more worth targeting if the recieve more than 2,000,000 search terms in the Google Search Engine, and recieve approximately 500-700 searches a month, if not more. As you get more experienced in the art of Search Engine Optimization you begin to incorporate new keywords/key-phrases, but for now just stick to 5.
Now, out of the 5 target key-phrases, select one to be your primary keyword.
Step 2
Build your site, and ensure you includ your meta tags, mainly the Description and Keywords meta tags. Now include an article, in addition to the main content on the Home page.
If you have terms and conditions, a disclaimer, or other similar types of links, add the no-follow attribute to these anchors.
Include your primary Keyword at the bottom of your page below the footer are, preferably to the right of the Copyright information.
At this stage it will not be advisable to put links on to other sites from your site.
Although on the page SEO does have its place in optimizing for the seach engines, off-the page SEO is far more important when it comes down to keyword rankings, and can achieved fairly instantaneously, therefor lets just concentrate on the off the page Search Engine Optimization for now.
Step 3
Proceed to obtain as many one-way links as possible to your site from other websites. This is a major strategy of off the page optimization and this is what help you climb up the natural search engine listings.
If you want to do link exchanges, fine, just make sure that they are relevant to your site. But one way links from Directories, Press Releases, and Article Directories, will be more weighty and mean more to Google as these links do not require you to return a link back to them.
Use your chosen keywords in the text for the anchors, and do not keep using the same keyword in every anchor, vary them evenly throughout the course of of your SEO campaign. Do not use same the same keyword all the time. Vary them as much as possible.
The more links you have pointing to your site, the better, and yhe higher you will rank for your targeted keywords. It's a full time job and can get quite laborious and technical at times, especially when you start optimizing for more than 5 keywords, which is why many people choose to take on services offered by On-line marketing companies such as Summit Media.
Your SEO campaign should be a steady one. We're hoping to gain roughly an equal number of back-links everyday. The more links the better. If you can get yourself 15-20 links a month for each keyword, trust me, you're doing great. Otherwise look into hiring a firm who specialize in this sort of game, some one like Summit Media.
Now that you understand the art of link-building, to a certain degree, you can look into the on the page SEO, add a blog, update it regularly with fresh content . Fresh content is adored by the search engines. Don't forget to include a sitemap on your site, the searc engines love looking through these too, and submit it to Google site maps.Create a sitemap on your site and put only the most important pages on it.
Remember, Search Engine Optimization is both on the page and off the page stuff that needs to be done. Neverthe less, Off-the page is far more important than On-the page.
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
5 Things to remember about back-links
Back-links are one of the most important factors when trying to attain a higher ranking for your selected keywords in the search engines. My experience teaches me that if we don’t have a specific amount of in-bound links to our site, then it very complicated to get high rankings for selected keywords.
You don’t simply need back-links; you need quality back-links. 10 in-bound from relevant and high page rank websites are far better than 200 back-links from irrelevant and poorly ranked websites
Read on below to see what sets high quality and poor quality back-links apart from one another.
1. Selected keyword/key-phrase in the link text
Say we want to rank higher for a search query such as "cheap properties" then the links pointing back to our site ought to draw on precisely them words. The words that are used to link to our site influence the way search engines rank our sites.
Ensure that the words used to link back to your site are the words that you want to attain a higher position in the search engines for.
2. Links from relevant pages are best
In-bound links from a high page-ranked and relevant website are far superior to in-bound links from low page-ranked and irrelevant websites. Incoming links from low page-ranked and irrelevant websites do not actually harm your website and do actually carry a little weight; however Google prefers back-links related to your site more.
3. The link should go to a relevant page on your site
Although it's not bad to receive inbound-links to the home page it’s far more beneficial to have the in-bound links pointing to the page that is most applicable to the selected link text. If "cheap properties" is to be the link text, then you ensure that the back-link points to a page that has the words “cheap shoes” on it.
If the keywords in the back-link correspond with the content of the page they are pointing back to then it's more probable that you will rank higher for those keywords.
4. Authority site links are best
Websites with high Page-Ranks have a much more valuable link than one from a website with nil page-rank positive effect on the rankings of your own site.
The affect of these links is so positive that it even helps your sites page-rank improve as well as push your selected keywords up the organic search rankings.
Sadly, no one other than Google themselves know what page-rank they actually use, the Google Page-Rank indicator that we see in the Google toolbar just provides us with a guesstimate of how highly Google ranks your site.
There are many who would say that the page-rank indicator is nothing but a gimmick, however in my humble opinion it’s nice to get a small idea of what Google thinks of my site.
The simple fact here is that even just to have a page rank of 1 or 2 is difficult, and you can forget about seeing a page rank of 8 or 9 unless you’re Google, Yahoo!, MSN, or a Government Organization. So don’t pay no attention to those people who say that page rank is irrelevant.
5. No-follow attributes are a hindrance
The no-follow element in html tags tells search engines that they should not follow a link. Back-links with that feature attached to them are not in the least bit helpful to your search engine positioning.
Adversely, to find out if your link partners are using a no-follow attribute you need to check the HTML code of the page from where you should partners they use a no-follow attribute to link to your site.
You don’t simply need back-links; you need quality back-links. 10 in-bound from relevant and high page rank websites are far better than 200 back-links from irrelevant and poorly ranked websites
Read on below to see what sets high quality and poor quality back-links apart from one another.
1. Selected keyword/key-phrase in the link text
Say we want to rank higher for a search query such as "cheap properties" then the links pointing back to our site ought to draw on precisely them words. The words that are used to link to our site influence the way search engines rank our sites.
Ensure that the words used to link back to your site are the words that you want to attain a higher position in the search engines for.
2. Links from relevant pages are best
In-bound links from a high page-ranked and relevant website are far superior to in-bound links from low page-ranked and irrelevant websites. Incoming links from low page-ranked and irrelevant websites do not actually harm your website and do actually carry a little weight; however Google prefers back-links related to your site more.
3. The link should go to a relevant page on your site
Although it's not bad to receive inbound-links to the home page it’s far more beneficial to have the in-bound links pointing to the page that is most applicable to the selected link text. If "cheap properties" is to be the link text, then you ensure that the back-link points to a page that has the words “cheap shoes” on it.
If the keywords in the back-link correspond with the content of the page they are pointing back to then it's more probable that you will rank higher for those keywords.
4. Authority site links are best
Websites with high Page-Ranks have a much more valuable link than one from a website with nil page-rank positive effect on the rankings of your own site.
The affect of these links is so positive that it even helps your sites page-rank improve as well as push your selected keywords up the organic search rankings.
Sadly, no one other than Google themselves know what page-rank they actually use, the Google Page-Rank indicator that we see in the Google toolbar just provides us with a guesstimate of how highly Google ranks your site.
There are many who would say that the page-rank indicator is nothing but a gimmick, however in my humble opinion it’s nice to get a small idea of what Google thinks of my site.
The simple fact here is that even just to have a page rank of 1 or 2 is difficult, and you can forget about seeing a page rank of 8 or 9 unless you’re Google, Yahoo!, MSN, or a Government Organization. So don’t pay no attention to those people who say that page rank is irrelevant.
5. No-follow attributes are a hindrance
The no-follow element in html tags tells search engines that they should not follow a link. Back-links with that feature attached to them are not in the least bit helpful to your search engine positioning.
Adversely, to find out if your link partners are using a no-follow attribute you need to check the HTML code of the page from where you should partners they use a no-follow attribute to link to your site.
Wednesday, 26 September 2007
Best SEO Practices, Techniques and Guidance from SEO Superstars
Best SEO Practices, Techniques and Guidance from SEO Superstars
How long has it been since you updated your websites’ or your blogs’ content?
Adding fresh content to your website is really important. And not only should you add fresh content, you should add it regularly. If possible, daily is the best, otherwise at least once a week.
Although it can be difficult to add fresh content on a regular basis, it needs to done, if it isn’t, then you’re the one losing out. Visitors and search engines love fresh content. This will bring repeat visits from both. From the view point of the search engine, this means your site will be spidered on a much more frequent basis. Fresh content can also suggest that you are an authority on a particular subject.
Don’t forget, the keywords here are: consistently and regularly.
Another question a lot of people might have is whether the purchasing of links to be a good thing or bad thing?
My answer to this would be:
If I wouldn’t do something myself, then I wouldn’t recommend it to any one else either. And there is no way I would ever buy a link from another persons’ site. I’ll vote against buying links. Many people pay for such links thinking that they are good quality links and that they carry a lot of weight. There are loads of scams in the world of Search Engine Marketing which can make links appear as, behave as, and for a short period of time act like good quality links, but in-fact they are of very little value.
Your best bet is to just stick to the more traditional methods of link-building which are:
Make sure you are indexed in all the main Search Engines
Submit your website to relevant directories
Create and publish articles
Request links from relevant websites
By doing these things you will see results and improvements in search engine rankings.
To see first hand how a Google searchbot acts when it crawls your website and what actions can be taken to help improve rankings and visibility, Summit has developed a set of tools - available over the web - that perform mature evaluations when requested, there and then.
The search engine spider simulator will produce a report on features of the page that are used to decide where in the search engine the page appears, as well as giving some general usability advice. Anyone can use the spider sim completely free of charge.
Another interesting tool can be found at Google fight. What you do is, you type in two keywords/key-phrases, then hit the “make a fight” button, then the tool proceeds to tell you which keyword is listed most.
Both are great tools and can be extremely helpful when optimizing your website. The links are in the Favourite Links section. Enjoy playing around with them!
At Google Fight, you can type in two competing key phrases and see which one
is listed more often in the Google database. Have fun!
How long has it been since you updated your websites’ or your blogs’ content?
Adding fresh content to your website is really important. And not only should you add fresh content, you should add it regularly. If possible, daily is the best, otherwise at least once a week.
Although it can be difficult to add fresh content on a regular basis, it needs to done, if it isn’t, then you’re the one losing out. Visitors and search engines love fresh content. This will bring repeat visits from both. From the view point of the search engine, this means your site will be spidered on a much more frequent basis. Fresh content can also suggest that you are an authority on a particular subject.
Don’t forget, the keywords here are: consistently and regularly.
Another question a lot of people might have is whether the purchasing of links to be a good thing or bad thing?
My answer to this would be:
If I wouldn’t do something myself, then I wouldn’t recommend it to any one else either. And there is no way I would ever buy a link from another persons’ site. I’ll vote against buying links. Many people pay for such links thinking that they are good quality links and that they carry a lot of weight. There are loads of scams in the world of Search Engine Marketing which can make links appear as, behave as, and for a short period of time act like good quality links, but in-fact they are of very little value.
Your best bet is to just stick to the more traditional methods of link-building which are:
Make sure you are indexed in all the main Search Engines
Submit your website to relevant directories
Create and publish articles
Request links from relevant websites
By doing these things you will see results and improvements in search engine rankings.
To see first hand how a Google searchbot acts when it crawls your website and what actions can be taken to help improve rankings and visibility, Summit has developed a set of tools - available over the web - that perform mature evaluations when requested, there and then.
The search engine spider simulator will produce a report on features of the page that are used to decide where in the search engine the page appears, as well as giving some general usability advice. Anyone can use the spider sim completely free of charge.
Another interesting tool can be found at Google fight. What you do is, you type in two keywords/key-phrases, then hit the “make a fight” button, then the tool proceeds to tell you which keyword is listed most.
Both are great tools and can be extremely helpful when optimizing your website. The links are in the Favourite Links section. Enjoy playing around with them!
At Google Fight, you can type in two competing key phrases and see which one
is listed more often in the Google database. Have fun!
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