SEO
Search Engine Optimization Tutorial
On page vs Off page characteristics
Where does SEO begin?
"The first thing that one must realize about search engine optimization is that to be implemented correctly it must be broken down into 2 distinct factors "onpage" and "offpage" criteria."
Always remember that search engines do not consider "websites" they consider the "pages" of those websites. There should never be a debate as to which is more important between "on page" and "off page" characteristics as the truth is both are equally as important. However once one defines the two there is a logical order in which they should be considered.
On page/Off page characteristics defined
Simply stated, On Page Characteristics are anything you can effect within the construction of a single page. This includes everything that is placed in the headers, body, and on-page links (both internal and external). Special attention should be given to: Title, meta description, H1, H2...H6, <b>, <i>. Keyword proximity, keyword density and relevance...more on this later.
Off Page Characteristics refer to all links (both from pages contained within your own website and from pages of other websites) that point to your specific page(s). The term "pagerank" is specifically designated to evaluate and weight "off page" criteria. Special attention should be given to: anchor text, Reference_tags, "title" attribute and "target_"... more on this later.
Preparing for a search engine optimized website
Step 1: Know your market
Before building a website that showcases your products or service you must first identify who it is that will be purchasing said products and services. Not all traffic is good traffic. Many webmasters target the "high traffic terms" that have little relevance to their market instead of the "targeted terms" that have the highest conversion. Target all your relevant terms ("highest traffic first") and don't go for so called "hot terms" that will eat up their bandwidth and produce no sales.
Blue widgets Green Widgets
Scenario: Green widgets are the hottest item on the market, you create a great looking web site perfectly optimized for green widgets to take advantage of this traffic flux. You own the market and you are #1 for every possible term targeting the green widget field! But you sell blue widgets and no one who wants green widgets will buy blue widgets. Now you are stuck with a bandwidth bill, hosting fees, development costs and NO SALES!
You are not the only one to make this mistake, many other blue widget dealers saw that "green widgets" had 1,000,000 searches and "blue widgets" had 10,000 and they also chose to target the green widgt terms. There was however that one "blue widget" dealer who saw the light, he targeted "blue widgets" while you were all confused and now owns the top results for all "blue widget" terms and is enjoying a hefty 5% conversion rate and has made 500 sales from his 10,000 hits. With a low bandwidth bill and little effort as no one was competing our smart little "blue widgets king" is laughing.
You however have a 0% conversion and can brag about your 1,000,000 hits all day long but at the end of the day you are broke because you did not do your research lest you would have known that "green widget" buyers hate "blue widgets"
It seems that the prevailing idiom is that the more traffic one receives the more money one makes, NOT TRUE! The more sales one makes the more money makes WHAT A CONCEPT!
There is a finite number of people on the net that will buy your products and services PERIOD! This of course includes those not looking for your exact products but that you are able to convert into customers. Target these people and you can't go wrong.
Proper keyword research is the cornerstone of building a successful business online.
Keyword research
The life blood of SEO
Keyword research truly is the life blood of internet marketing. If you know who is searching and what they are searching for then it makes your choices as to "what and where" to offer your products much more obvious. For the purposes of this tutorial however we will strictly concentrate on evaluating the best keywords to use in order to increase conversions from visitors that come by way of the major search engines.
What keywords are people searching with?
This is the basic question that needs answering before you can start constructing you site. The first and most natural thing that comes to mind is asking yourself "what would We type in if We was looking for my product?" and this is a great place to start. Type in the terms you use and see what comes up, If the sites you see at the top of the search results are offering similar products and services then you are right on the money. Sadly this is where most people stop.
Try to reverse engineer those at the top (if they have done the research, then you won't have to) pay particular attention to what they place in their <title></title> meta desc H1, H2...H6 <b><i><strong> and their anchor text.
In order to acurately guage who is searching for your products and services you must use statistical data which will provide the historical search volume as well as suggest permutations on your keyword phrases that perhaps you have not yet concieved of. A few such tools such can be found at:
Google adwords suggestion tool
Wordtracker
We have no affiliations with any of the aforemention sites but all of these pages contain great places to do keywords research based on popular opinion as well as my own personal experience.
As a secondary research project try putting together a quick questionaire 5-10 answers based on 2 questions:
Describe the top 5 products/services on my site?
1._______________________________
2._______________________________
3._______________________________
4._______________________________
5._______________________________
What would you type in a search engine to find these products/service?
1._______________________________
2._______________________________
3._______________________________
4._______________________________
5._______________________________
Finally to test emphasis (where you should concentrate the most) you must determine keyword conversion value. To us this is easy, once We have created our keyword list (at least 50 keywords should be present) We go to all of the major PPC engines that offer "bid for placement" and We check the cost per click of each term. Those with the highest costs usually have the highest conversion assuming that those paying for those terms are also in your market. Our logic for this is as follows: (cost per click * conversion rate) must = at least a break even point to justify paying said amount for each unique visitor. The math for any ROI (return on investment) calculation is very simply and only requires any 2 of the 3 variables considered.
Variables: Cost per click, Average sale, Conversion rate
A question people often ask us is how can "Phentermine" dealers afford to pay $12.00 per unique to remain at the top of the PPC for that term? My answer is this: Go to the sites and find out what the average "phentermine" sale is (It's around $160.00) Now determine the cost per click? (in this instance its $12.00) Therefore the breakeven point (assuming they earn 100% of the gross sale which is unlikely) is at least 7.5% or mathematically $12.00/$160.00=.075 However in the real world most "phentermine" affiliates earn no more than 50% so either the conversion is 15% or that person is losing money on that keyword.
Search engine friendly design
SEO it from the ground up
You have done all of your keyword research and you know what keywords people are using to find and purchase your products and services. It is time to build a site that will not only reflect those product and services but will raise to the top of the search engines for those terms so that the people who are searching for your product and services will be able to find them.
Plan on grouping your keywords
For each page of your website you will want to target different keywords. Most webmasters commit the grievous error of copying the header of their index page onto all their pages to save time DO NOT DO THIS!
To maximize the potency of each page for its targeted keyword search phrases plan on optimizing for a "maximum" of 3 keyword terms. Also group "like terms" so that you may increase your keyword density with much less effort.
Example:
Keywords: widget, blue widgets, wingdings, widgets, green wingdings, wingding. In this list you have two very obvious groupings "wingding group" and "widget group" Therefore the proper way to optimize is to assign "Page A" to one group and "page B" to the other. If these 2 pages and subjects were your entire site then the more competitive group would be optimized for on the index page as it usually has the highest page rank
Page A Page B
widget blue widgets widgets wingdings green wingdings wingding
Now that you have your keywords organized you must choose which pages are best optimized for which keywords. If you have 30 keywords then you must have at least 10 pages. (Of course you will never let the number of keywords limit the number of pages within your site hence the "at least"*)
Now start thinking about your topics ask yourself "how many products do We have?" and "what other services do We offer?" also consider what else you want to provide within your architecture. Do you want to tell people about yourself or your company? Do you need an order page, a contact page or a disclaimer? All these things should be adressed so that you are not creating "extra" pages that are unnecessary just to fit your keywords in somewhere.
Finally once you have decided which pages fit with which keywords name each page to reflect the most competitive keyword for that page. Create an excel reference file so that later when consider your "off page" characteristics you have an easy map THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT!
(most important keyword of this page).html Keyword A,B,C
(most important keyword of this page).html Keyword D,E,F
(most important keyword of this page).html Keyword H,I,J
You will reference this spreadsheet when considering the target location and anchor text of inbound links. More on this later...
Optimizing your visible text
The optimization you can see
From the last page you learned that each page of your site is going to target a maximum of 3 search phrases (keyword phrases). We will now cover how to write these pages.
Think headings
The H1, H2 ...H6 tags are given special relevancy weight by virtue of this logic "if something has an entire paragraph labeled and dedicated to it, it must be important" man the logic!
It is for this reason that you should plan to integrate your keywords into your heading, you don't have to go extreme just use one H1 for your most important keyword and two H2's, one for each or your secondary keyword phrases.
Also it is not necesarry to try to find ways to use H4,H5,H6 as they are not weighted heavily enough to consider. In fact We only use them in my external css file so that We can avoid color font and size tags altogether in my text.
Be the first in line
You should try to get your main keyword phrases as high up in your source code as possible this is again for a logical reason, the logic being "the higher up a word or phrase is in the body of a document the more important it must be." Again ya gotta love logic.
Here is an example of what your page should look like:
Heading with most important keyword This is the paragraph where your most important keyword should be and if it makes sence try to get your second and third most important keywords in as well here.
Either One of your 2 minor keywords In this paragraph repeat the above pattern of 1st 2nd and 3rd most important keywords and as you can see bolding and italicizing them at least once doesnt hurt and actually gives you a very small boost ( recomend it but dont go bolding every keyword on the page) don't forget to repeat another H2 for your third keyword phrase.
Now that you have each of your keywords in your body text at least once feel free to finish writing your page in a logical manner but try to sprinkle your keywords throughout the center of the document.
Once you reach the final paragraph this is a good time to "rinse and repeat" step one as without the headings. Try to write a keyword rich last paragraph as spiders pay particular attention to the beginning and then the end of the document.
The reason for this (GO LOGIC) is that if you started off a document talking about a certain subset of topics and you are still talking about them at the end of a document then THEY MUST BE IMPORTANT and search results try to reflect this. It is a bit like trying to write a Thesis statement and then trying to write a conclusion that reiterates the main points covered. Now isn't this easy.
Keyword Density
The final point on visible text is keyword density. Simply stated keyword density is the number of occurences of a keyword divided by the total word count. For this We try to keep my initial density to between 3-7% however this number may have to change depending on the level of competition.
Also be warned that the text used in anchors <a href="page.html">this is your anchor text </a> effects your density. Don't worry if your initial density is lower than that of your competitors as you will learn later in this article there are many ways to effect your keyword density other than placing your keywords in your visible text.
Optimizing your header
Get a-head in your SEO
Ok now we get to the fun stuff, your page's headers. We have seen some ridiculous things in our SEO career and many of the most ludicrous spam attempts we have encountered deal with the header of a webpage. Folks if you learn anything from this tutorial it should be that you do not have to come up with shady ways to trick search engines. The best way to optimize a website is by following the rules.
Got a basic website, use a basic header.
Just for clarification the header is the portion of your webpage that remains unseens and lies between the <head></head> tags.
Here is an example of what a basic header should look like:
<head>
<title>A maximum of 3 keyword phrases and 55 characters</title>
<meta name="description" content="Many SE's use this to describe your site so make sure you not only repeat each of your keyword phrases (max 3) at least once but make this a true representation of the page that the visitor will be viewing, and try to keep it under 144 chars"> <meta name="keywords" content="Only permutations of your keyword phrases should be placed here"> (Google all but ignores this tag DONT STUFF IT!) <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> (some debate whether this is necessary but it certainly does not hurt - tells robots to follow links) </head>
There are some times when more code in the header is necessary to operate JAVA script and call css etc. In such instances there are advanced techniques that will allow you to pack away the javascript and css in external files so that it is called from .js and .css external files.
To call your JAVA script simply cut the JAVA from the header from <script> to </script> and save in a file called java.js and call it using this line of code:
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="java.js"> </SCRIPT>
Similarly to call your css from and ext file use this line of code:
<link href="css.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
Finally, recall the spreadsheet you created for which keywords went with which page. Add to that spreadsheet your pages titles and descriptions beside the list of keywords so that when you need to boost those keywords you can link directly to the page that is optimized for them and have a complete synergy between: Inbound anchor text (see next section), Title, description, headers, <strong>, <i> and density.
It makes sense that when a spider sees that all important elements of your page (both on page and off page) all contain the same keyword phrases that It will rank you very high for those phrases.
Finishing your onpage optimization
Header and body done, what's next?
So now you have the perfect initial keyword density for the combination of your header and your page text, you have keyword loaded headings, bolded keywords, italicized keywords, and a large proximity near the very beginning of your source code. What's next?
Alt tags, Anchors and Links
The final 3 factors that must be addressed to complete your "On page" optimization are your alt tags, anchors, and links. The combination of appropriate usage of these final 3 items in conjunction with the framework optimization you have already done will make you unbeatable once Page Rank is thrown into the mix.
Using alt and title tags:
The alt="" and title="" attributes on images are a great way to increase your on page density by naming your images using your keywords. These attributes are read by special software for the visually impaired so make sure these descriptions make sense.
This tool is especially useful when the image is a link however then we must get into the logistics of whether your destination is more important than your onpage density. This falls into the realm of "on page" vs "off page" more on this later...
Here is a code form example of an alt and title tag in action. You can view the effect by mousing over the center of the car pic above "SEO Car Pic" in a drop down text box:
Using anchors: Anchors are used to reference specific locations on a page from other locations on that same page. These "on page links" are yet another place to get your main keywords in and boost that "on page" density.
To place an anchor first decide what is the best use, an easy way to do this is the old "back to the top" at the end of a page. Except as we are smart little optimizers and we know use our keywords instead of phrases like "back to the top". Here is an example:
At the top of my page We place my anchor using this code <a name="seo"></a>
At the bottom of my page We place this href <a href="#seo">SEO </a>
This produces this link: SEO and now We have created a same page link containing my keyword and thus increased my density as well as received added weight by virtue of it being an anchor.
Using your links for "on page" optimization
There are two ways you can utilize your links for search engine optimization. 1. You can use your links for your "on page" optimization; 2. you can use your links for "off page" optimization.
When using your links for onpage optimization consider the following:
Your ">anchor</a> text effects your density
Href="these words all count towards what is called reference_tags density"
Your title="attribute adds a very small amount of extra weight" Use it like an "alt"
Knowing these 3 facts allows you to incorporate your keywords into your links from inception and when you have a page that you think is written to perfection and you don't want keyword loading clogging up the flow, using your links is a great way to make up added density and keyword weight. .
href="http://www.mydomain.com/page.html" vs href="page.html" Which do We use?
The only time you use the full mydomain.com is if the domain itself has keywords that the page the link is pointing to or the page the link is on, is targeting those keywords, otherwise you should go with page.html as this drastically reduces filesize especially for pages with a lot of internal links. * note one other exception is for the index always link to your index using http://www.domain.com so that your internal PR boost matches your externap PR boost, your link partners linked to you with http://www.domain.com and so should you.
Utilizing your inbound links
Pagerank - where do We begin?
When considering how offpage characteristics effect your sites ability to rank well for given keyword terms It cannot be stressed enough that "Page rank is Page to Page, (NOT SITE TO SITE) and independent of URL designation". What this means is that once your site enters into the PR system ie: indexed by Google by virtue of backlinks from and external source domain, then a link from an internal page with "X" amount of PR contributes exactly the same PR weight as a page from a different URL with "X" amount of PR weight to distribute (all other factors being equal).
Getting my link popularity started - what does it take?
In order for pagerank to be calculated by Google's algorithm for any page on your site that page must first have been found by the Google spider (robot) through a backlink.
"Backlink: a link from one unique URL designation to another - alternatively: a link from one page to another."
Once you have recieved a backlink from a page that has been indexed by the Google spider you are eligible to compete for PR.
A link counts twice
There are 2 ways you can benefit from backlinks:
First you get a certain amount of PR weight points as dictated by the google PR calculation algorithm (see article on the Google pagerank ) Second, and some argue more importantly, you also get an added ranking boost for whatever keywords are contained within the anchor text href="yourdomain.com">Anchor</a> and this precisely describes why sites almost always rank #1 for their domain name. It is a common misconception that there is special weight given to domain names when in fact the reason a site generally ranks well for its domain name is because all of the links pointing to that domain place your domain name in the anchor text. ie: href="yourdomain.com">yourdomain.com</a>
This is a great opportunity to utilize this little know anchor text boost to place well for your chosen keywords. The way to take advantage of this added boost is to request that your keywords are placed in your backlink anchor instead of your domain name.
Here is how to properly utilize a link acceptance
When a request for a link from another webmasters has been accepted send a thank you letter and include your specific HTML code so that you not only save them effort but you get a backlink that reflects your keywords and not your domain.
Your thank you letter should look like this:
Dear webmaster,
Thank you for your gratious willingness to provie a text link to my site. For you convenience We have written out the source code that best reflects the page you are linking to please cut and paste this exact code into your source to reflect the most appropriate link: <a href="http://www.mydomain.com" title="keyword">Keyword</a> We thank you again for your linking to my site and will gladly link back to your site with any specific html that you provide. Warmest regards
Greatful webmaster
In short, backlinks are a great asset if utilized correctly and remember that the same principals apply to internal links as apply to the links you recieve from other domains and other webmasters. If your index page is optimized for keyword "a" then make sure that all of your internal pages that link back to the homepage use "a" as the anchor text DO NOT USE "home" for a link back to your index page or you waste the most controllable opportunity to boost your own keyword search engine positions.
Optimized Duality
Optimization is about "bringing and selling"
My entire tutorial has been dedicated to bringing search engine surfers to your perfectly optimized web property and now that they have arrived NOW WHAT! Sell them thats what.
WEBMASTERS do not let what you have learned in this tutorial go to waste. Don't bring visitors to your website just so they can be unimpressed and click the "back" button and soon as they see (or worse don't see) what it is that your website has to offer. Remember that as long as you don't break any of the groundrules laid out in this tutorial it is ok to use a little flair, splash a little color and even heaven forbid, use a little FLASH!
The ultimate goal of a website is to sell the visitor
The best converting websites are those that have:
Clearly marked navigation
Well laid out access to order pages
Obvious and logical click choice
Esthetically pleasing design
ITS THAT SIMPLE! Make sure you clearly lay out what it is that you have to offer and how the visitor can obtain it and your done.
As a rule accessing a particular products description and "buy" option should never be farther than 2 clicks away from the index page.
Why conversion is so important
A website that gets 100 visitors and sells all 100 visitors is much better than a website with 10,000 visitors that sells 100 visitors, why? Because of bandwidth thats why. Remember that you have to pay for your bandwidth and the higher your conversion rate, the lower your sale to bandwidth ratio will be thus producing a higher return on investment (ROI) and that is why you have read this far YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY!
Complicated SEO Issues
We 'm not getting spidered, why?
Frames:
There are many pitfalls in design that can hinder a spiders ability to completely (or even partially) index the content within a given page. One of the biggest mistakes webmasters are still making is that of using "frames".
Frames are a design convention used to utilize independant scrollable regions within a single URL designation (or so it appears). Frames are actually divided into multiple URL designations and are generally not spiderable by the search engines.
We do not want to get into how to optimize framed sites here as this is a tutorial about "proper seo" not "patchwork seo" if you have frames in your website then my advice is to redesign, as you can use CSS to give an equivilant effect if that scrolldown is really something you are not willing to give up. We will however be writing an article for those of you who are absulutely unwilling to give up your frames so that you can at least provide something for the spiders to love you for and thus improve your rankings somewhat but these techniques are far inferior to just building your website the right way in the first place.
Javascript
Again, real pretty but excessive use is generally not necessary. Don't get us wrong even We use javascript on almost all of my sites but the key is to use it sparingly. The reason for this is that spiders cannot read javascript and thus any link or text portrayed by such Javascript will not be counted in your indexing and thus produce lost opportunity. My suggestion is for all webmasters to "STOP USING JAVASCRIPT FOR NAVIGATION" use HTML text links instead. Your images can be called in Java as with your pretty little rollovers but when it comes to things you want indexed Java is not the way to go.
Pack your javascript away
When calling javascript editors place the Java protocalls in header of your page: In order to save file size and maximize load times cut out that java protocall and paste it in an external file (i usually call mine java.js) then to call the java We place just this one line of code: <Script src="java.js"></script> this reduces the filesize considerably with no adverse side effects.
Flash
Myself, We love flash. In fact my favorite sites all incorporate some type of flash into their design but the key phrase here is "some flash". To have a site with a flash image is great, it will impress your visitor and increase the estethic quality of your site for sure, but this flash must still be accompanied by a healthy portion of good old fashioned text, written in html, and readily accessible to the SE spiders. Also, if it absolutely necessary to use flash navigation (which it never is) then make sure to include html text link counterparts so that your internal pages will be found and indexed. It is possible to embed text into flash but that is for another article...
Search engine optimization summary So what have we learned?
Basic search engine optimization is:
A combination of On page and offpage criteria
Knowing your market
Researching your keywords
Implimenting search engine friendly design
Optimizing your visible text
SEO-ing your header
Utilizing alt tags, anchors and links
Taking advantage of inbound links and pagerank
Making it easy for the visitor when they get there
Avoiding frames - Java and flash in moderation
We have covered many of the basics of search engine optimization in this tutorial and this knowlege base will be a great starting point for anyone who is willing to take the time to implement the suggestions here.
We hope that the information provided here has been both informative and easy to understand and We will continue to develop our knowlege and offer free search engine optimization advice to any and all that want to learn.
If you would like to enlist our seo services please feel free to fill out this form and we will get back to you with a free quote.