If SEO is not going to guarantee my page is on the front page of google search results why am I going through all this work?
Reason #1) All of the suggestions for improving your page ranking through SEO make your website more efficient, easier to navigate, cleaner, meaner, and a better experience for your readers. That’s a good thing in my book. Continue reading
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. Some people think it is an acronym for Put My Website On The First Page Of Google. That would be PMWOTFPOG.
The job of SEO is to optimize your website for indexing by search engines. There is a relationship between how well your site is optimized SEO and its search engine results placement SERP. That relationship is simple. If you optimize your website at least you will not be shooting yourself in the foot. Continue reading
What is my search engine results placement?
Open a google search page. http://www.google.com
In the search box type in site:www.your-domain-name.com (note: replace your-domain-name.com with the name of your domain.)
Press the go button. If you see no results whatsoever, then you are not even indexed in google. Continue reading
In short: quality matters and clarity is the key to quality. Basically clarity works.
When we think of quality content we tend to think of aspects such as:
To get a deeper look at the quality of your page content, consider the following: when a visitor looks at your page are the following key points clear: Continue reading
That’s right. Paypal has made it their business to provide web page design & SEO advice.
Use this link to check out their article.
So, why do you think Paypal would involve themselves? What is their gain? Simple. Paypal makes money processing orders — a few percentage points on every sale a merchant processes through the Paypal system. So, it is simple math.
The more sales a web page generates the more money Paypal makes. So, the quality and functionality of a web page is of intimate concern to Paypal.
Admittedly, the appearance of being helpful can be of benefit to Paypal. I’m sure the marketing boys and girls are happy to use this to enhance the company image. However, the fact of being helpful is of even greater value to the bottom line. So I trust that they did not dredge up miscellaneous waffle to parade in front of webmasters. I believe Paypal either paid for the best advice they could find, or turned an in-house team loose on the challenge of finding their five design element suggestions.
Below you’ll find Paypal’s five points with a few comments from myself. Continue reading
There are many other, perhaps more important, aspects of SEO. However, there is no time better than the present to make sure your website is free from missing pages and that it has clean html and css.
Never forget, google’s fundamental aim is to provide search results pointing to quality content that is on target with the posted search query.
So let’s look at a few things that will help with the “quality” part. Continue reading
The page description is part of the meta tags found in the <head> of an html page.
<meta name=”DESCRIPTION” content=”Description goes here”>
Now that you have a good list of keywords — or at least an excellent beginning list — it is time to work on your page descriptions. There is much that is said about how to write these descriptions. Below is my short list of key principles for generating a description. Continue reading
At this point you should have created your keywords list, organized the list, and expanded it. Now it is time to start using this list. In this blog article we shall go over a few things to do, and a few things to not do.
When it comes to using your keywords on web pages, that’s a most excellent idea. Just be sure to use them correctly, use them enough, and don’t use them too much. Keyword stuffing is a bad thing. Stuff yourself with turkey on Thanksgiving if you insist. But, do not, stuff your pages with keywords — not even one day a year.
In this case, page name means the actual file name or URL that is used to access your page. If possible and reasonable, use keywords in the name. Use the dash (-) separator between the words so that search engines will recognize the separate words — rather than one humongous oddity. For example golf-art has no ambiguity. But if you remove the dash this word can be read in a few different ways — whatever gol means :)
Use keywords in your title. In fact, the few two or three words in the title should be keywords. The page title I am referring to here is the one found in the <head> of your page.
The page description is another prime spot for keywords. First and foremost make sure that your page description actually describes the page — just make sure to use keywords while doing that. The description is the meta tag found in the <head> of your page.
Incorporate keywords into the H1 header of your web page.
The first paragraph visible to search engines should be rich with keywords. The first paragraph that browsers see may not be the same first paragraph that the search engines see. This could easily happen if you have a div that floats to the right of your page. In which case, the first paragraph may end up on the right side of the screen.
If the first visible paragraph happens to not be the same as the first paragraph that search engines find, then make sure that the first visible paragraph (when viewed by browsers) is rich with keywords as well.
Incorporate keywords into a few H2 headers on your web page. The H2 headers will typically define separate sub-sections of a page. This gives you an ideal opportunity to incorporate different keywords.
When linking from one page of your website to another page of your website use keywords as the anchor text.
When linking to your website from your blog, forum postings, friend’s websites, or anywhere other than your own internal website, also use keywords.
When adding images to a web page you should be properly using the image alt. Proper use of the image alt is a little more complex than we can describe in one paragraph here. The point for the moment, is that when entering text for the alt property of images keep your keywords in mind and use them as you are able.
Your website should have a tagline. That tagline should be keyword rich.
You will notice that nothing has been said as yet about the <head> keywords meta tag. That is because search engines still tend to ignore it. They will not penalize you for using it — if you use it properly. They just tend to ignore it. How does one use the keywords meta-tag properly? Don’t include a work in the keyword meta tag for a page unless that word appears on the page. If the word does not appear on the page you could potentially be penalized.
You have just spent a good deal of time brainstorming, organizing, expanding, and cleaning your keywords list. Thus, let’s take it for given that the keywords on that list are important to you. If this is the case, then you should have at least one page on your website with a name created from each keyword and/or keyword phrase in your list. If for some reason you are making a one page website, then this would not be the case. However, unless for some reason you are intentionally restraining your website to a single page, then the more the merrier.
As you may know google plays their cards close to the chest — meaning they do not publish their search engine algorithms. Whatever you have heard about or will hear about search engine algorithms comes from observation, experimentation, conjecture, and perhaps the fantasy of various writers. Some of these writers have suggested that when it comes to pages more is better. The presumption is that the more pages you have on a website the more effort has gone into the website reflecting more intention and perhaps better content. Keep in mind that google is honestly trying to help people find pages with good quality content. Thus all of their algorithms are designed to detect and give higher ranking to pages with good quality content. So for the moment, more pages are a good thing.
So if you are going to be making more pages, make sure to make at least one page for each keyword and/or keyword phrase in your list. If you find it difficult or impossible to make a page for some of your keywords then perhaps they did not belong on your list in the first place.
As you may recall, during the generation of the keyword list there was an organize process. The organization of keywords that was established during the process is very likely an excellent hint on how your website should be organized.
Some social media sites will only allow you to create pages related to your name or the name of your company. However, there are many social media sites that will allow for the creation of auxiliary pages. You should definitely see about nabbing pages created from your keywords. http://www.facebook.com/your-keywords-here would be sweet.
When you embark on using google adwords to market your website you will be using your keywords. This might be pretty obvious since you used google adwords in the generation process. However, the “etc” part includes any promotions and marketing for your website. Brochures need to incorporate keywords from your list. Classified ads in the newspaper should draw from your keywords list. Everything you do in relation to marketing your website should be influenced by the keywords list.
If after reading the above suggested ways of utilizing your keywords list you get the feeling that perhaps you should have put more attention in the process, perhaps now is a good time to go back and redo that work.
Now that you have created a keywords list and organized the list, it’s time to expand the list.
The objective of expanding of the list is not to make it bigger. The objective is to find keywords and combinations of keywords that you may not have as yet stumbled across.
The following list will give you some ideas of where to go to expand the keywords list.
If you have not already done so, expand your keyword list by including product names, name of their manufacturers, and perhaps even product numbers. I like to keep these types of keywords in a separate list — off to the side. I use them in a slightly different fashion during development of the website content and creation of ads. So for the moment, collect them if you have them. But, keep them in a separate list.
Input keywords, one at a time, into a thesaurus program. For each keyword you will be presented with one or more lists of alternative words. This can be a gold mine of previously overlooked terms.
Have you noticed that google (depending upon your browser settings) will offer a drop down box with suggestions for a search based on a partially typed work in the input box. If you start typing a keyword into the input box you may find one or more interesting search suggestions offered. Play around with this for a little — just to see if you get lucky. Don’t belabor it.
Here you will find a wealth of amazing tools for working with keywords.
The UI (user interface) is a little weird. I think they might be testing different interfaces because one day it will look one way. Another day it will look another way. Here is a link for Google Adwords Tools in case you can’t find it. Usually I will find it after a little poking around. It’s annoying to me that the tools do not have an entry in the top menu. Perhaps by the time you read this there will be such an entry.
When you find the tools play with them. There are several tools of great utility and value. They are more than a little tricky to understand. Adwords is a deep subject from which you will benefit by studying. But, that study is beyond the scope of this blog article. Google does have quite a bit of help on each topic. Hopefully you can blunder your way through. I would recommend the Keyword Tool (top of the list) as your first stop.
Once again, don’t overlook those close to you. Being a stranger does not grant automatic knowledge. And being a family member or friend does not automatically disqualify someone as having potentially valuable input. Admittedly since you’ve been subject to observing the eating and mating habits of those close to you it is harder to imagine them as knowledgeable.
However, keep in mind you are looking for keywords that the common folk would use to search for your services and products. I think it is eminently possible for family members and friends to be of the common variety.
Now is the time to look back over your list and remove any keywords that in hindsight you don’t believe belong on the list. Be brave, but don’t be brutal. Just remove those keywords you honestly believe don’t belong. The judgment here should not be based on strength of the keyword. It is appropriateness you are looking for. The reason for not removing keywords based on strength is because in the next blog we will use these keywords to expand our list and find stronger alternatives.
See if the keywords fall into natural groups. If there is more than one group, definitely divide your keywords
list into groups and put the keywords into whichever of the groups they belong. It may happen that some
keywords belong in more than one group — well, put them into each group it belongs.
Now look at each group and prioritize the list for each group. Put the keywords in order of importance — most important at the top, least important at the bottom. The importance is measured by your standard. The keywords that you believe to be the more important go at the top of the list.