Learn Search Engine Optimization: SEO Tutorial Guide -Marketing
March 23, 2009 by Erich Mosier
Filed under SEO You Should Know
SEO… what is it?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In essence, it is a game that websites play with Google to achieve different goals. The goal of the website is to get placed as close to the top of the Google rankings (SERPs) as possible, thereby getting the most traffic. Google’s goal is to provide their customers with the best, most relevant results that they can. Each side takes turns trying new things, and trying to achieve their goal. Sometimes it’s fun and sometimes it’s frustrating, but unfortunately in the life of an Internet marketer, it is something that cannot be avoided.
So what exactly is Google’s algorithm. Here’s a little secret that most SEO experts won’t tell you… we have no idea. Well okay, that may not be exactly true, but the fact is nobody knows exactly what the algorithm is or how exactly it works, except for Google. However by testing and trying new things over and over we have been able to determine, fairly accurately, how the algorithm works and what it is actually looking for when it looks at a website.
One other thing to keep in mind is that the algorithm is constantly changing. So when you hear about somebody getting a Google slap, basically it means that Google has made a change to their algorithm, so it’s time for everyone to go back to work and try to figure out exactly what the change was. There are many ways that you avoid getting Google slapped, and we talk about them on the other parts of this site. Because the algorithm is always changing, you should never consider SEO work on your site complete. It is always an ongoing process.
So you may also be wondering why we’re talking specifically about Google. There are obviously many other search engines out there such as Yahoo and MSN.
Why not a guide on those? In short, volume. Google is, by a wide margin, the undisputed king of the search engines. Not only does the power its own search engine, but it is also responsible for powering several other search engines on the web. For instance, if you have a top ranking in Google, you also have a top ranking on AOL, Netscape, EarthLink, CompuServe, Lycos, IWon.com, Go.com, and AT&T Worldnet. That accounts for roughly 70% of all search engine traffic to websites.
The key to SEO is relevancy. You are trying to make your website the most relevant for whatever someone types into search box. The more relevant your site appears to be to Google, the better your ranking will be in the SERPs. Another important factor is the importance of your page. Page importance is determined by the quality, and quantity, of links that point to your webpage from other websites. It is estimated that inbound links account for roughly 60% of your ranking.
The Google algorithm (what we think we know)
According to most experts, including myself, but Google algorithm has two major components.
On page factors (keywords)
The algorithm looks at how, when, and where keywords are used on the page. This determines page relevance.
Off page factors (links)
The quantity and quality of inbound links to your site from other sites determine your page importance. This is also a factor in Google PR (PageRank) values.
Although the PR value is important for some things, in general it is not something you need to worry about. I’ve seen many PR 1 sites out rank PR 4 and 5 sites in the SERPs.
To top things the Google algorithm looks for
It’s estimated that the Google algorithm looks it over a hundred different criteria. We will not try to name them all, because as stated earlier we don’t know for ure. However the following is a list of things that we are absolutely sure make a difference in SEO of your site. They are listed in order of importance.
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Anchor text-the keywords that are used, both on your site and for inbound links, as anchor text are weighted the most heavily. You want to make sure that your most important keywords are being used in your link text both on your site and on the websites that are linking to you.
The more competitive your search term, the more important this is.
- Title Tag – Always use your main keywords in your title tag. Try to place them as close to the beginning of your title tag as possible, preferably at the very beginning. Also capitalize the first letter of ever word. I am not exactly sure why, but this has just become the standard practice.
- Headings (H1, H2) – you want to make sure to use your main keywords as headings in your text. Your main keyword should be in your H1, and your next important keyword should be your H2.
- PR – actually your PR of your site is not as important as the number of one-way links that you have pointing to your site from high PR sites. This is really the only place where PR makes a difference. I have heard it said, although I cannot vouch for its reliability, that it takes a hundred PR1 links to equal one PR6 link. You can take that with a grain of salt.
- Number of words on your page – some say that a page only needs to contain a minimum of 200 words. Personally I recommend that it be a least 350. The more words on your page, the more Google likes it, the better chance you have a ranking well for a variety of different keywords.
- Time between updates – Google like sites that are updated regularly. At a minimum you should try to update your website at least once a month after you have about 20 pages of content. Before that I would update more regularly.
- How quickly are you getting links – although a lot of links are great, getting too many links in a short period of time can be a bad thing. Google may look at this as you trying to cheat the system. When getting links, try to get them at a steady pace.
- Age – how old the site is, and how old links pointing to the site are also play a factor in your rankings. Obviously if you have a new site there is nothing really you can do about it. All you can do is to work on the above factors and do the best that you can.
The best thing to remember when doing your SEO is to "look natural". Almost all of the SEO factors can be overdone. By looking either excessive, unnatural, manipulative, or spammy, you risk poor rankings by Google, or in the worst case having your site deindexed. There is a very fine line between doing it just right and overdoing it. If you think you might be overdoing it, just tone it down a little, and remember to "look natural" and pretend that Google doesn’t even exist.
Please leave me a comment and let me know if this was useful.
SEO For Blogs-SEO Tips To Improve Your Google Rankings for Blogs
March 23, 2009 by Erich Mosier
Filed under Blogging Tips & Tricks, SEO You Should Know
Wordpress Bloggers SEO Guide
Although there are a lot of different blogging platforms out there, Wordpress has become the most popular among them. The two main reasons for this is are its ability to be customized and the number of plugins available to add additional functionality. However, right out of the box, a clean installation of wordpress leaves a lot to be desired, at least from a SEO standpoint.
By making some adjustments, you can increase the effectiveness of your SEO to help improve your rankings in the search engines (a.k.a. Google).
Theme
The first decision to make is which theme to use. There are so many to choose from, sometimes it can be a little overwhelming. The theme should not only look good and convey the appropriate feel for your blog, but you want to make sure that it is structured in a way to take full advantage of SEO. For instance, you ideally want your navigation (sidebars) on the right-hand side. The reason for this is that it increases your opportunity for relevance by making your text the first thing the search engines see.
Depending on your site’s navigation, you may need to have your navigation along the top. If this is the case, just try to make sure to use good keywords as your categories or pages in your navigation. This way, again, it will help to show relevance to the search engines by being the first thing they see.
Permalinks
In the default installation of Word press, the URL of your post will be shown as a number:
http://yourblog.com/?p=321
what you actually want is your title (keywords) in the URL
http://yourblog.com/your-article-title
Both are valid and the major search engines do not have an issue indexing dynamic content anymore. However, when considering a SEO, you should remember that it is better to have your keywords in your URL to help increase your relevancy. So by making sure that you are using permalinks, you increase
your chance of getting seen.
To make this change, using version 2.7.1, under SETTINGS click on PERMALINKS.
Select CUSTOM STRUCTURE under Common Settings and type this:
%postname%
And that’s it. Your URL will now use your post title and help to increase your relevance for your main keyword.
If you would like more information on how to customize your permalinks, you can visit the wordpress codex here.
Page Title
Another one of the most important factors in your rankings is your page title. You always want to make sure you have your top keywords in your title. You have 65 characters to pack as much keyword power as you can into a readable and compelling title.
To help in managing your titles, I highly recommend the ALL-IN-ONE SEO pack plugin. It allows you to override title, meta-descriptions, and meta-keywords, as well as other important aspects of your page.
For information on the proper settings, see my article on how to configure ALL IN ONE SEO plugin correctly.
It is possible to do this manually in the code, but with every template being a little different, it makes it hard to do a good lesson on it. Besides, it is so much easier to just use the plugin. Why make life harder than it needs to be?
Headings Structure
With blogs there are two separate aspects to dealing with headings, the title of your blog and the headings in your posts and pages.
Header Headings
By default, your blog title is usually set as a H1 tag and the tagline is set as an H2. These are what show up at the very top of your blog page. You can change your blog title and tagline by going to SETTINGS GENERAL.
Depending on your blog name and domain name, this may or may not be an issue. If your domain and blog name include your main keywords for your site (what you are trying to rank for) then this is a big deal. If you blog name and domain name have nothing to do with what you are blogging about, then it really doesn’t matter.
If your domain and blog name DO include your keywords then there are a few things you will need to do. Depending on your graphic ability, or sense of style, you may want to customize your blog and make your entire header into a graphic. Which means not using any text. Here is one of my favorite examples:
The upside is that you get to have it look anyway that you want. The downside is that you are losing some SEO power. Fortunately there is an option to help balance out this dilemma.
Manually adding hidden H1 and H2 tags
By adding these lines to your header.php file you can use a purely graphic header and not handicap yourself in regards to SEO.
<h1 style=”display: none;”>Blog Title Goes Here</h1 >
<h2 style=”display: none;”>Blog Tagline goes here</h2 >