The Link Popularity Blog is a forum for Webmasters, link exchange partners and search engine marketers who want to learn how to improve their Website rankings, to find link partner options and use link popularity and search engine optimization. With BigLinx, you also have the option of using our link exchange SEO tool and a whole arsenal of items that will drastically improve your page rankings.
The universe of search engine optimization is constantly changing. So, unless you are going to hire an SEO professional, it would be wise to stay abreast of the ongoing changes in the SEO community and the tools available to aid in your pursuit of rankings.
To that end, below is a list of useful search engine forums. It is a good idea to register for one or more of them, read regular updates and participate in the discussions.
SEO Chat - A free service with articles, news and tips for SEO.
This is a tale of two cities -- no make that universes. In one universe, you have traditional marketers, whose purpose in life it is to create content shaped to a customer's needs and behaviors. In the other universe, you have programmers, whose existence is dedicated to building efficient, flexible and reliable platforms for delivering that very content.
This is not a new tale. Anyone who has worked in a technology environment has probably observed the clash of marketing and product development. But today, the setting has changed. Today, the "rise of search" has compelled these two groups to cooperate at an ever-increasing depth and frequency. Search engine optimization or search marketing has become central to the success of both groups and, therefore, has become the a new fertile ground for breeding success (and waging war).
The world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be quite a mystery to your average marketer. More often than not, search marketing consultants are vague about the techniques they employ. Often, this is for a good reason. After all, how many traditional marketers are equipped to understand the SEO implications of a simple website decision like using Flash or graphics.
And, while programmers have a deep understanding of the technology distinctions -- say, client-side versus server side scripting -- they are rarely concerned with the nature and quality of the content displayed.
Fortunately for both groups, the SEM community has a new bible of sorts at its disposal. Search Engine Optimization with PHP (and the soon to be released ASP version) is designed to be a bridge between these two communities. The book is a collaboration between Jaimie Sirovich, a search marketing consultant, and Christian Darie, a software engineer.
It seems unlikely that an experienced marketer will learn much about marketing. Nor will a good programmer learn much about programming. But with this book, each group has the opportunity to learn about the other's area of expertise.
So, who should read this book? Well, if you are a search marketing consultant, you probably (hopefully) are quite familiar with the concepts covered. You may benefit from the fairly comprehensive coverage of systems or foreign language SEO. But in general, if you've been at this for a while, you will most of this book to be light reading.
Overachieving programmers, will certainly have more to benefit here. This is especially true in areas such as site planning, content relocation and inadvertent black hat mishaps.
Marketers will benefit the most from this reading. This is true even if they avoid all the sample code and acronyms. Ultimately, marketers are responsible for the search-engine rankings of their sites. And therefore, having a solid, yet high-level, understanding of SEO is critical to their success. It also helps to ensure that there is less feuding and more collaboration.
In 2005, Google acquired Urchin's popular web analytics technology and has since re-branded as Google Analytics. The service has become a popular choice among search engine marketers (SEM) who want better insight in to the conversion rates of their various campaigns. Last week, Google released a new version of Analytics and it is worth using for two reasons. First, the service is pretty decent -- offering a slew of data views in a pretty user-friendly interface. Second, the service is free -- a price that is tough to beat.
While the interface remains boring, there have been some updates to the dashboard and some of the reporting features. Google has attempted to the interface more powerful for advanced users, yet simple to beginners. Unfortunately, while the service is pretty-looking and feature rich, in general the data views are about the same as you'd see in any other web stats service.
There are several new features that users will find useful, including:
Email reporting
Cleaner graphs
Customizable dashboards for each viewer type (e.g., marketer, webmaster, etc.)
Although this is not a revolution in the way users will see their website stats, it is an evolution. And, because it is free, it is solid choice that webmasters and web designers should consider using, if they prefer instead to invest directly in internet marketing and link popularity.
SEO - Do You Need Reciprocal Link Manager Software?
by Chris Angus
An examination of reciprocal links software and whether deploying such software on your website can be part of a good SEO strategy.
Reciprocal links are one of the most cost effective forms of web advertising. It is also cost effective because it you don’t have to pay a cent for it. However the problem is that checking to see whether or not all of your link exchange partners are still linked to you can become a very tedious chore. Reciprocal links may be free but the entire endeavor ends up costing you in the man-hours it takes to go through every single reciprocal link on your site to see if it is still working! This is time that could be spent promoting or developing your web site in other ways so reciprocal link manager software might just be a good idea.
There are almost a hundred practical benefits to using this link software to trade links and monitor their functionality. One drawback is that the best of these types of reciprocal manager links are written in PHP/MySQL which handle unlimited tasks and data to do with your traded links. Although it sounds complex, most web hosts provide PHP and MySQL and usually programs like this are easily downloaded and up and running within fifteen minutes.
A really good reciprocal manager program can organize the look of your links on your site by creating professional looking HTML pages that make it easier for search engines spiders to crawl your links and index them. The best programs will list the links in a neat arrangement. Really good reciprocal link manager programs can also make these pages match the design of your website as well as display the link's title in the browser bar thus once again making your pages more search engine friendly than ever.
Also if a partner decides to trade links with you this amazing software can run all of your link directories together so that he or she has the option of submitting links to your other sites as well which can be another great convenience for the busy webmaster.
Christopher Angus is a SEO and Website Marketer. He can be contacted at: Sales (at) Brilliantseo.com Copywriter
Perhaps, you are a small business owner using your website to sell products or find qualified leads. By nature, you are a do-it-yourself kind of person, so you are orchestrating your own search marketing campaign. The good news is with time and persistence your website should begin paying dividends shortly. The bad news, you've now got yet another full time job.
Yes, search marketing is a complex blend of art and science. Pushing your web site to the top rankings requires a lot of work. And, there is no easy road mpa to follow because every site represents a different set of opportunities and challenges.
Hopefully, you've done the basics:
You have spent a fair amount of time researching your "keyword cloud" - finding highly-relevant keywords with good search volume;
You've signed up for Google and Yahoo pay-per-click campaigns -- setting your bids low initially and tracking results;
You've initiated a link trading or link exchange strategy to help your site's link popularity develop;
You may have already integrated a blog or other content management system in to your site, so you can post your thoughts and articles from others on relevant topics; and
If you are really diligent, you may have already started posting articles for others to repurpose.
So, you are doing all this work. But how do you know whether you are getting good results? For that matter, how do you measure results?
The true measure of success is difficult to capture. Of course, you can check the search engines to see what rank your site is for a given keyword. While that is useful, it does little to give you a big picture view of whether your efforts have converted in to any progress.
So, here's a list of a few tools that I like to use to help track the big picture:
Google's Webmaster Tool provides status information of your site as it actually exists within the Google search engine. Information includes, a list of indexed pages, lists of external sites linking to individual pages on your site as well as a number of index, query and crawl stats.
Use this PageRank Checker to see what your site's PR is across a number of Google's servers.
urlTrends (http://www.urltrends.com/) offers a nice wide view of your web site through a variety of sources. In addition to providing all the basics like Google PageRank and inbound link information, urlTrends provides historical trand graphs of many key data points. The service is free and there is an upgrade option that will track your results more regularly and send you the results.
iWebTool's Backlink Checker (http://www.iwebtool.com/) lets you see which sites are linking to you and provides the PageRank information, as well. Total links are not provided, so you cannot gather any objective data here. But, you can visually glance at the quality of sites ranking to you pretty easily.
SEOmoz (http://www.seomoz.org/) has a handful of tools. But the best tool in the bunch is the Page Strength tool that displays some common results, but also includes links in Technorati, del.icio.us and other cool tools.
WebmasterEyes (http://www.webmastereyes.com/) lets you see your site as if you were wearing special "Google Vision" goggles. Go to the urlTrends homepage and type in URL, hit submit and suddenly you will see your site with Google PR built right into your site. In fact, every link within your website will display the corresponding PR for the destination page. This is a handy way to understand which pages on your site are actually beginning to develop search engine credibility. Do a "link:" search of your most popular pages and you might find that the link popularity of those pages just happens to b higher than the poorer performing pages.
iWebTools's (http://www.iwebtool.com/) tool for "predicting" your Google PageRank. The site expressly disclaims any accuracy. Nevertheless, it is another objective algorithm to monitor your sites momentum.
“How can I target the demographic that I am most interested in reaching?” The answer to that question is rather difficult.
Leave it to Microsoft to give us the tools that just might possibly answer this question. I highly recommend that you try out the AdCenter Lab suite of tools. These tools are designed to give keyword and demographic data to help with the set up of your AdCenter PPC campaign. While they are not always entirely accurate, they provide a good basis to work from. Make sure that you are using the Internet Explorer browser, or they will not work.
Search Funnels show which keywords searchers use before and after a search. For example: 3.79% of surfers search for hotel after doing a search for bed and breakfast.
I searched for vacation packages and you can see that the query rises in January and drops in September. (Click on the image for a larger view). The drawback is that there are not many words added to this tool yet. I tried a search adding snowboard, ski, rafting, and whitewater, and did not get any results for those terms. My suggestion is to also try Google Trends.
Content Categorization Engine: Search engines are putting more emphasis on categories. It is extremely important to see what the search engine thinks your site is about. Pay-per-click campaigns are also checking the landing page for the keywords that are being bid upon. If the landing page is not on topic to the word being bid, then the cost for that click is higher. I put a website for a chamber of commerce into the tool. The results are exactly what you would want those for a chamber to be all about.
Demographics Prediction is the tool to target the question at the top of the article. It will predict a customer’s age, gender, and other demographic information based on search behavior. You can type in your top keywords and determine what type of client is looking for your product. Example: “vacation package” is generally a female between the age of 25 and 34.
As with any tool, use the data carefully. While we don’t recommend basing your entire marketing strategy around the results, you find some valuable information to keep in mind when planning your campaigns.
Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a site to the various engines which would run spiders, programs to "crawl" the site, and store the collected data. The default search-bracket was to scan an entire web page for so-called related search words, so a page with many different words matched more searches, and a web page containing a dictionary-type listing would match almost all searches, limited only by unique names. The search engines then sorted the information by topic, and served results based on pages they had crawled. As the number of documents online kept growing, and more webmasters realized the value of organic search listings, some popular search engines began to sort their listings so they could display the most relevant pages first. This was the start of a friction between search engine and webmasters that continues to this day.
At first search engines were guided by the webmasters themselves. Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as category and keyword meta tags, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta-tags provided a guide to each page's content. When some webmasters began to abuse meta tags, causing their pages to rank for irrelevant searches, search engines abandoned their consideration of meta tags and instead developed more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account factors that elevated a limited number of words (anti-dictionary) and were more diverse, including:
Pringle, et al. (Pringle et al., 1998) [1], also defined a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page which were often manipulated by web content providers attempting to rank well in search engines. But by relying so extensively on factors that were still within the webmasters' exclusive control, search engines continued to suffer from abuse and ranking manipulation. In order to provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their SERPs showed the most relevant search results, rather than useless pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters using a bait-and-switch lure to display unrelated web pages. This led to the rise of a new kind of search engine.
Development of more sophisticated ranking algorithms
Google was started by two PhD students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and brought a new concept to evaluating web pages. This concept, called PageRank, has been important to the Google algorithm from the start [2]. PageRank relies heavily on incoming links and uses the logic that each link to a page is a vote for that page's value. The more incoming links a page had the more "worthy" it is. The value of each incoming link itself varies directly based on the PageRank of the page it comes from and inversely on the number of outgoing links on that page.
With help from PageRank technology, Google proved to be very good at serving relevant search results. Google quickly became the most popular and successful search engine. Because PageRank measured an off-site factor, Google felt it would be more difficult to manipulate than on-page factors.
However, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine. These methods proved to be equally applicable to Google's algorithm. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links on a massive scale. PageRank's reliance on the link as a vote of confidence in a page's value was undermined as many webmasters sought to garner links purely to influence Google into sending them more traffic, irrespective of whether the link was useful to human site visitors.
Further complicating the situation, the default search-bracket was still to scan an entire web page for so-called related search-words, and a web page containing a dictionary-type listing would still match almost all searches (except special names) at an even higher priority given by link-rank. Dictionary pages and link schemes could severely skew search results.
It was time for Google — and other search engines — to look at a wider range of off-site factors. There were other reasons to develop more intelligent algorithms. The Internet was reaching a vast population of non-technical users who were often unable to use advanced querying techniques to reach the information they were seeking and the sheer volume and complexity of the indexed data was vastly different from that of the early days. Search engines had to develop predictive, semantic, linguistic and heuristic algorithms. Around the same time as the work that led to Google, IBM had begun work on the Clever Project [3], and Jon Kleinberg was developing the HITS algorithm.
A proxy for the PageRank metric is still displayed in the Google Toolbar, though the displayed value is rounded to be an integer, and the data updated infrequently, so it is likely to be outdated. For these reasons, and the fact that PageRank is only one of more than 100 "signals" that Google considers in ranking pages, experienced SEOs recommend ignoring the displayed PageRank.
Today, most search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to compete for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors in ranking the listings on its SERPs; the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ widely: a web page that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine.
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEOs have carried out controlled experiments to gauge the effects of different approaches to search optimization. Based on these experiments, often shared through online forums and blogs, professional SEOs form a consensus on what methods work best.
SEOs widely agree that the top signals that influence a page's rankings include:
Google wants to create quality search engine results just as badly as you want to acquire high search engine rankings. Fortunately for us, Google provides web masters with plenty of guidelines and tips for building a Google-Friendly site.
Unfortunately, many web masters simply aren't listening. Most web masters seem to be pulling tips and strategies from almost every source but Google itself. However, Google has some of the most beneficial SEO tips to be found online.
Below are just a few of the questions that you can find answered directly by Google.
Q.Does Google index dynamic pages?
A. Yes. Google indexes dynamically generated pages. This includes pages with the following file extensions: .asp, .php, and pages with question marks in their URLs. However, these pages can cause problems for the Googlebot and may be ignored.
Fortunately, there is a solution. If you feel that your dynamically generated pages are being ignored, you may want to consider creating static copies of those pages for the Googlebot. Keep in mind, if you choose to do this, be sure to include a robots.txt file that disallows the dynamic pages so that Google doesn't see those pages as duplicate content.
Q.Does Google index sites that use ASP?
A. Yes. Google is able to index most types of pages and files with very few exceptions. This includes pdf, asp, jsp, html, shtml, xml, doc, xls, ppt, rtf, wks, lwp, wri, swf, cfm, and php. This is not a complete list, but it gives a good overview.
Q.Does Google index sites that use Macromedia Flash?
A. Yes. Google indexes pages that use Macromedia Flash. However, Google may have problems indexing Flash pages. If you are concerned that your Flash content is inhibiting Google's ability to crawl your site, you may want to consider creating HTML copies of those Flash pages. As always, you will need to include a robots.txt file that disallows the Flash pages so that Google does not recognize those pages as duplicate content.
Q.How do I add my site to Google's search results?
A.According to Google, inclusion in Google's search results is free and easy. They also state that it is unnecessary to submit your site to Google. Google uses software known as "spiders" to crawl the web on a regular basis and find sites to add to the index.
When a spider misses a site, it is often because of one of the following reasons:
The site is not well connected with other sites through an inbound linking structure.
The site launched after Google's most recent crawl was completed.
Poor web site design makes it difficult for Google to effectively crawl your content.
The site was temporarily unavailable at the time of crawling or an error was received. You can use Google Sitemaps to see if the Google crawlers received errors when trying to crawl your site.
Q.How can I get my web site into Google's Mobile index?
A. Google Mobile offers Google Web Search, Local Search, and Image Search for web sites that are configured for mobile devices. Google adds new sites to their mobile Web index every time they crawl the Web.
To let Google know about your mobile site, it is best to submit a Mobile Sitemap. To help ensure that Google's mobile crawlers can crawl and index your site, you should:
Use well-formed markup
Validate your markup
Use the right DOCTYPE and Content-Type for the markup language that you are using.
Q.Will participation in Adsense or Adwords affect my listing in Google's free search results.
A. Google's advertising programs are independent of their search results. Participation in an advertising program will have no effect on your organic search engine rankings.
Q.Why does my site have a PageRank of zero?
A. Yes. Google has an answer for this as well. According to Google, a page may be assigned a rank of zero if Google crawls very few sites that link to that particular site. In addition to this, pages that have recently been added to the Google index may also show a PageRank of zero. This is simply because they haven't been crawled by Googlebot yet and haven't been ranked yet.
The key is to be patient. A page's PageRank score may increase naturally with further crawls.
Q.My URL changed. How can I get Google to index my new site?
A. Google cannot manually change your URL in the search results. However, there are steps you can take to ensure a smooth transition.
First, you can redirect visitors to your new site. To do this, simply use an HTTP 301 (permanent) redirect. This ensures that Google's crawler will discover your new URL.
To preserve your rank, you will need to tell others who link to your site about your change of address. To find a portion of the sites that link to yours, you can go to the Google search engine and type in: site:www.mydomain.com . To obtain a comprehensive list of links that point to your page, perform a Google search on your URL in quotes: "www.mydomain.com".
Q.How often does Google crawl the web?
A. Google's spiders crawl the web on a regular basis to rebuild their index. Crawls are based on a number of factors, including Pagerank, links to a page, and a web site's structure. This is just a small list. There are a variety of factors that can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.
Q.How do I create a Google friendly site?
A. To help Google find, index, and rank your site, it is suggested that you follow their Webmaster Guidelines.
Here are some of the general guidelines that Google offers to web masters:
Have other relevant sites link to yours.
Submit a sitemap.
Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo. For a complete listing of web directories, go to StrongestLinks.com.
Make sure each and every page is reachable from at least one static text link.
Offer your visitors a site with links that point to the most important parts of your site. If your sitemap is larger than 100 links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
Keep the links on any given page to a reasonable number (less than 100).
Check for broken links and correct HTML.
Create a useful site that is full of information-rich content. Your pages should be written in a way that clearly and accurately describes your content.
Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.
Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your web site. Most search engine spiders see your site in much the same way as Lynx would.
Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session Ids or arguments that track their path through the site.
Make use of the robots.txt file which tells crawlers which directories they can or cannot crawl.
Q.How can I report a site that is spamming the Google search results?
A. Google is constantly working to improve the quality of their search results. Therefore, they have implemented a program that allows web searchers to report spam that they find within the search engine results. These Spam Reports are submitted directly to Google engineers and are used to devise long-term solutions to fight spam.
However, before you submit a site as being spam, Google highly suggests that you take a look at their webmaster guidelines to determine if sites are acceptable or not.
A. Sites may be blocked from the Google index if they do not meet certain quality standards. Google does not comment on the individual reason for pages being removed. However, they do reveal that certain actions such as cloaking, writing text that can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling the search engines may result in removal from the index.
If you receive a notification that your site violates Google's quality guidelines, you can correct your site to meet their guidelines and then request reinclusion.
So there you have it, some of the many tips that Google is handing out for free. If you want to obtain high search engine rankings for the long-term, Google actually provides some very good advice.
When the World Wide Web began, web developers either generated content themselves, or took existing documents and coded them into hypertext markup language (HTML). In time, the field of web site development came to encompass many technologies, so it became difficult for web site developers to maintain so many different skills. Content developers are specialized web site developers who have mastered content generation skills. They can integrate content into new or existing web sites, but they may not have skills such as script languageprogramming, database programming and graphic design.
Search engine optimization specialists commonly submit content to Article Directories to build their website's authority on any given topic. Most Article Directories allow visitors to republish submitted content with the agreement that all links are maintained. This has become a method of Search Engine Optimization for many websites today. If written according to SEO copywriting rules, the submitted content will bring benefits to the publisher (free SEO-friendly content for a webpage) as well as to the author (a hyperlink pointing to his/her website, placed on a SEO-friendly webpage).
It's very common for SEO's to focus too much on trying to figure out a search engines algorithm. They believe if they can crack the algo of Google for instance their page will be get a better rank.
Maybe, maybe not. But here's why I think this isn't the best mindset.
1. Things change. These algorithms are changed from time to time. They are maintained and managed by humans who will flip a switch eventually and your crack will no longer be effective. You're chasing smoke.
2. Search Engines aren't your customers. They aren't going to buy your products. Write your pages and content for the people whom you serve. People whom you want for customers.
3. Google has some number of factors that influence a sites rank, people usually think it's around 100. Spending a huge amount of time cracking the Algorithm is to focus on only one or two of a hundred factors. It's like going on a blind date, spending two hours picking out a pair of shoes meanwhile you have spinach in your teeth.
Take a different tack.
Isn't the real goal to achieve top rankings that remain high and translate into business and customers?
Don't lose the forest for the trees. If traffic doesn't turn into sales then what is the point? You're kissing your sister. You've spent all your time and energy making sure Google's algorithms like your site, and your users needs haven't been properly addressed.
5 ways to Achieve Top rankings without Chasing Algorithms.
1. Stop focusing on the Search engines. They aren't your audience. Write for your audience. In the longer term this will add value to your site that will translate to indelible traffic.
2. Remember the basics. Always use your main keyword phrase in your title tag. Use META description and keyword tags, link text, heading tags, and the like.
3. Each page should have it's own unique tags and be focused on a keyword. One per page.
4. Write your content well. Content and Context are crucial. Keep it new. Keep it coming. Always remember to be mindful of your keyword phrase, synonyms, related words and surrounding text. Try using ThemeMaster if you need help with this. It's a great program.
5. On Page and Off page factors are important. Focusing on one at the expense of the other will end up hurting you. Find the balance. On-page factors to consider are your tags, body text, prominence, relevance, and the like. Off-page factors include link popularity and link reputation (what those inbound links "say" about your Web page when they link to you).
Is search engine research important? Yes. It's critical. By way of an example: Earlier this year pages began falling in Gooogle's ranking and SEO's everywhere were trying to figure out how to preserve their hard won rankings.
Doing our research, we learned that it was a compliancy issue. With a pretty simple solution. Make sure you use a DOCTYPE tag and an ISO statement at the top of every Web page.
For example: If you didn't know about this compliancy issue you could have waste a lot of time trying to chase the algorithms and end up doing more harm than good.
Keep doing your research and stay current on the search industry.
In conclusion.
If you spend 100 hours cracking the Google's algorithm that may translate into x number of visitors per day. In those same 100 hours you could have written unique, high quality content for many sites that generates more overall traffic. Put people above search engines and you'll increase your traffic.
There is so much talk out there about what the ‘perfect’ web page looks like. In this article we give you tips on what we consider perfectly optimized as well as tips on helping turn the page into a great conversion tool.
Step one – Know who you are targeting As with any marketing campaign the first step in optimizing ANY web page is to know your target audience. Is your site B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer). This is important because this not only affects the tone of your site, but also the keywords you chose.
It is imperative that you nail who your target is before you do anything else because if you don’t it doesn’t matter how big your site is, or how many pages you have. If you don’t write to the right crowd you aren’t going to get too much business.
The best thing is to write down who you think the target is. Be as detailed as possible. For example, your target may be a 30-45 year old female, in middle management, who drives a mini-van and takes her 3 kids to school before she goes to work. She makes $45,000 per year and has a bachelors degree in finance. This is the type of detail you need. You should be able to picture this person in your mind. Not just the abstract idea of her, but a physical look as well. the better you can picture them in your mind the more successful you will be.
Once you know who you target is the next step is choosing keywords.
Step two – Choosing the right keywords
This may be the most difficult part of your journey, especially if you don’t fit the target profile. That is, picking the keywords they will use to find your site.
You can start by using free tools like Yahoo!s keyword suggestion tool. It gives you a good place to start picking keywords.
Start with a phrase you know your site is about (i.e. if you sell widgets, then simply put “widgets” in the search box). The tool will then not only spit out other related words, but also the search volumes associated with each for the previous month.
A word of caution however: Sometimes, depending on when you use the tool, the search volumes are from a couple months ago. So if your product is seasonal based, the numbers may actually be lower or higher than represented.
Don’t be afraid to get a few hundred words to start. Remember, right now you are just gathering ideas – phrases that could drive traffic to your site. They aren’t all necessarily being used by your target customer.
You can also go to Google’s Adwords site and perform the above steps. Start with a phrase or two which describe your site or product and use Google’s suggestion tool to help expand your list.
At this point you want as many phrases on your list as possible. Don’t worry, you will cull the list pretty quickly.
Once you have a huge list of words, the next place to go is a site like Wordtracker, which has a keyword analysis tool. This tool can be used for a one time fee, or if it’s something you might want to return to you can purchase a subscription. It is a fairly simple tool to use and will give you a good idea of just how likely your site will be able to compete for a phrase.
A warning about Wordtracker: The software uses search volumes from some fairly minor sites such as Dogpile, so the estimates could be a little skewed. But again, unless you deal with an SEO firm that has their own proprietary software, this is about your best alternative.
Also remember as you are culling your words, don’t just focus on the competitive factors. These won’t account for your target audience. Therefore you need to have that picture in your mind of the target as you are selecting phrases that they might use. If you are unsure, you could always as for help from friends and family that fit the target profile.
A good rule of thumb would be to chose about one phrase per page. That doesn’t mean that you will only have one page per phrase, but it gives you a good target. So if your site is 300 pages, consider having a list of 300 phrases.
Step 3 – Write your pages
Now that you have your keywords its time to write, or re-write, your content to make them more appealing to the target audience, inserting the key phrases you’ve selected whenever possible.
Keep in mind that you don’t want to over do it. Also now is a good time to ensure you have proper keyword density’s and page length.
I recommend pages that are 400-500 words long. If they are a little longer or shorter that is fine, however if they are approaching 1000 words or more you should split them up, trying to hit that 400-500 word limit.
On this 400-500 word page you should have 2 or 3 occurrences of a key phrase, and you want to limit the key phrases used to 2 or 3. In other words you could have between 4 and 9 occurrences of all your key phrases per page. This should provide you with optimal keyword density.
Above all, make sure the pages are readable. Don’t optimize for optimization’s sake. If only one key phrase applies to the page, then only use one.
Step 4 – Optimize your Pages
This can be done in conjunction with the writing. In fact it should be done at then to save time. I purposely made this a separate step so that I could outline the finer points of optimization.
Provided that you are following the guidelines found in step 3, your pages should already have good keyword density, now is the time to improve that optimization by adding optimized meta tags and if appropriate, some image alt tags.
First is to write the meta description tag. While many engines will index thousands of characters in your description, I recommend no more than a couple hundred characters. That is about how long this paragraph is.
The meta description should be a readable sentence or two with the same keywords that you wrote the page for. In other words, the same phrases should appear in the meta description as the body. They should also appear as near to the front of the tag as possible however don’t sacrifice readability for this. If the tag doesn’t make sense with them at the front, then reorganize until they do make sense. Be sure to use proper punctuation as well.
Also preferred but not mandatory is a meta keywords tag. While none of the major engines use this tag, other smaller ones, and some specialty engines do use the meta keywords tag. If your target uses one of these engines then it makes sense to have that tag in place.
Also, with the keywords tag there is a lot of debate over using commas or not. Personally I do not use commas. I just combine the phrases and remove duplicate words. For example, if the page is about blue widgets, yellow widgets and red widgets then the keywords tag could be: “blue yellow red widgets.”
Common sense should be used when deciding if you will use image alt tags as well. If your keywords match the image and you can make a compelling image description, then do it. Otherwise don’t.
Step 5 – Write a compelling title tag
I purposely left this as a separate step from meta tags because this is the most important part of your optimization program. Again, it can be done at the same time as the previous two steps, but it’s importance can not be over-emphasized.
This is because the title tag is the tag which is displayed in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). It is the link that people click on, and also the tag which is generally read by the visitor before they decide to visit.
Therefore, if your title tag isn’t compelling, it doesn’t matter how well optimized your page is, it may not get that click.
For this step, you need to look at your competition to determine what they are doing. Perform a search to see what is compelling about their listing? Is there one that stands out? If so what are they doing? For example, if on every other site the keyword is the first phrase on the title, then consider moving your keyword in to the second or third phrase.
This is because, as you will notice, engines like Google bold the search term in the title and snippets or description. One way to make your title stand out is to have the term in a different position than the competition. That way the bolding stands out like this:
key phrase in title tag key phrase in title tag title tag with key phrase key phrase in title tag
Notice how the third one stands out from the rest?
I can not emphasize enough how important that title tag is. As I said, it is the “hook” to get visitors to your site. If the title is ineffective, then it won’t get clicked which means you don’t get the opportunity to woo that client.
Summary
As you can see, optimizing a page has less to do with optimal keyword density and more to do with knowing who it is that will be using that page.
If you don’t know who your target audience is you will never be able to properly optimize your pages. Sure you can optimize it for whatever keywords you choose, but if they aren’t the words that your customer will search for, what’s the point?
In the end, the more you know who your customer is, the better you will be in all your online ventures, from introduction of your product or service, to closing the sale. It is up to you to cater to them, and not force them into a more generic mold. This is because todays web searchers are much more savvy and willing to browse more if a site doesn’t appeal to them.
For years, search engine optimizers have included their important keyword phrases in ALT text for images, feeling confident that many of the search engines considered the contents of ALT text when determining relevancy.
The big question is, has this changed?
Yes . . .
None of the Major Engines Considers ALT Text When Determining Relevancy
According to research by expert SEO researcher Jerry West of WebMarketingNow and Search Engine Academy, at the present time, none of the “Big Three” search engines (Google, Yahoo!, nor MSN ), considers ALT text when determining relevancy.
West explains, “Over the last six months, we have seen a trend on our testing servers that shows that using ALT text for SEO purposes has not only diminished, but adversely affects the rankings in the SERPs. It is clear that search engines continue to catch up to 'SEO tricks' that are intended to improve search engine ranking while damaging the visitor experience. The American Disabilities Act (ADA) has strict guidelines as to what your site needs to contain in order to be ADA compliant. I guarantee you, they do not look favorably at ALT text that has been keyword stuffed.
“Have you ever witnessed a visually impaired individual use the Web? With a device which reads aloud the contents of a Web page, the impaired individual will be inundated with what I refer to as, ALT Text Spam. Sometimes the reader is stuck on one graphic for more than 40 seconds reading all of the keywords that have been stuffed.
“According to a Google engineer, what you should do is create an ALT tag that is relevant to the picture, so it gives the user a good experience, including the visually impaired. The ALT text is indexed, but it is down graded in the algorithm. The reason?
"'We see ALT text as relevant as the Keyword Meta tag,’ said the Google engineer. That should say it all as Google has never used the Keyword Meta tag due to the high spam rate.
"How do we test? I have outlined our testing methodology below," continues West.
"Our Testing Setup:
We have four servers (Two Apache servers, one Windows, one Sun Solaris);
Each server is located in a different part of the United States;
Each test sever has 16 test domains;
Domains are matched in pairs for A/B testing;
All domains are "dot com"; no testing is done with other extensions for the algorithms;
The 8 pairs are configured as follows: 3 pages, 8 pages, 25 pages, 50 pages, 100 pages, 150 pages, 300 pages, 500 pages;
When performing testing, one of the domains in the pair is tested while the other remains constant;
Due to varying issues within the algorithms, it takes approximately six weeks to see consistent numbers in order to formulate accurate conclusions."
What Does This Mean to SEOs?
Search engine optimizers no longer need to use keyword phrases in the ALT text of images on their Web pages.
However, let’s look at a smarter approach.
I’ve been recommending to my online and offline SEO students for a long time that they needed to use ALT text in the manner in which it was designed to be used by the W3C: to describe the image. Then, they can include the keyword phrase in one or two images on the page, if appropriate.
Continuing with that strategy is still viable. The major engines don’t consider the contents of ALT text now, but that doesn’t mean they won’t six months from now. Always remembering the “basics” is one of the best strategies to follow.
Other ALT Text Tips . . .
Remember that the purpose of ALT text is to describe the image for the benefit of those who surf the Web with images turned off and for those who have the contents of Web pages read out loud to them. The WC3 highly recommends that Web site owners use ALT text to describe images.
Use your keyword phrase in one or two instances of ALT text on the page – no more. Use moderation in everything you do in search engine optimization.
Don’t use text that is non-relevant to the image. Don't keyword stuff. Jerry West adds, “Give the visitor information that is worthwhile, especially for the visually impaired.”
“Consider using a description below the graphic. Based on recent test results, this is read often,” states West.
West continues, "Basically, remember to be compliant, not just with the W3C, but also with the ADA. It all comes down to intent. If your intent is to fool the search engine into giving you a higher ranking, you are performing 'grey or black hat' strategies. Stay on the right side of the path and the engines will bless you.J"
Remember . . . ALT text is Just One “Piece of the Pie”
Relevancy and ranking are determined by over 100 different factors. ALT text was just one piece of that pie, a sliver at that.
Don’t ever focus on just one piece of the pie. Always remember the basics – the SEO foundation – and make sure it’s solid.
If you know you’re weak in one or two areas, you know you'll have to beef up on other pieces of the SEO pie.
We’ll talk more about the “SEO pie” in future articles.
For more information about Jerry West and his research, visit his Web site and consider signing up for his newsletter. It comes out every week and is backed by solid research.
Improve your search engine ranking with this approach to search engine placement from UK search engine consultant NCS
Introduction:
In this article we assume you want to improve the number and quality of visitors to your web site through improved search engine placement. You may be setting up a site or have one already.
As a search engine consultant dealing with a wide range of businesses, we have developed an approach to search engine placement in the US and internationally to produce improved search engine ranking for even the smaller business cost-effectively.
The Basics – Search Engines
There are several types of search engines but for simplicity we shall consider 3 main categories:
Search engines: The classic search engines examine your pages and record the words and phrases you actually use in their databanks. The engines then search against these databanks for the particular search term requested. Examples include Google, Yahoo and MSN. The detailed content of your site is very important in ensuring these engines will point users to you.
Directories: These are like a telephone directory - your site is categorized, possibly by a human being or on the strength of what you tell them, into a classification. People search in that class or cell for your type of service. The best known one is DMOZ which is also used by many search engines. Others include Amfibi, BigFunWeb and Best of the Web The detailed content of your site is much less important in ensuring directories will point users to you.
Pay per click (PPC): With these you bid for profile on a single keyword or phrase. You then usually pay the bid amount for any user who clicks on the link to your site. The content of your site is not directly used although it may be assessed for relevance by the engine to ensure meaningful results are returned to searchers. Overture, which was purchased by Yahoo, was the originator of PPC, although Google's Adwords is a larger an more popular PPC site.
Some other points of note:
There is a lot of co-operation between different types of engine. For example, searching a directory may produce results from a pay for click engine as ‘sponsored sites’ (read ‘adverts’), the directory itself, then backup searches from a traditional search engine.
Many engines now require admin fees (sometimes annual) for placement of your web site. Even with free engines, it can make sense to pay for quicker registration – historically it can take months to appear in some engines.
Different engines should be selected for different national markets - and there are local and niche market specialists too.
The classic search engines mostly have different algorithms for assessing and ranking your site. They are being constantly refined and improved but generally give more profile to:
Pages which use the search term at least once (preferably more) and which best reflect the subject matter in their view
Pages which have been selected by other (relevant) websites as good ones to link to. The more relevant sites that link to you the better as it ‘implies’ your page is likely to be more appropriate to this enquiry than one which few people have thought it worth linking to. (N.B. Relevant sites are those that may, for example, share some theme with your site – e.g. a widget manufacturer linking to a widget retailer would be highly relevant)
Search engines do not like people trying to fool them into giving a page a top search engine ranking which does not fairly represent the content visible to normal viewers. Playing tricks like this (spamming) can and does get sites banned.
Our Approach for Improved Search Engine Placement
1. Understand the objectives of the site, its target market and main content:
Who are the target visitors?
What would they be coming to the site for?
What would they be likely to use as search phrases?
2. Target the most effective keywords and phrases.
It is absolutely vital to target the most productive keywords and phrases.
Research real internet searches using keyword tools from Overture and Google to help select the words and phrases the target individuals are actually using to find the client’s product or service. These are sometimes surprisingly different and more varied than originally expected.
Also assess the number and quality of competitor pages in your geographic area or worldwide (if relevant) competing for these same searches. This helps us select the search phrases that should yield you the best return. Ideally you want high volume keywords with low numbers of other sites using them. If you are a local or regional business, consider adding those keywords to your phrases, as well. For example, instead of "computer consultant" try "los angeles computer consultant".
On existing sites, the site logs should be examined to reveal the search terms currently being used to successfully find the site and to identify those that, by their absence, seem to be failing.
3. Build the target key words and phrases into your site text and page coding.
Your text needs to put across your message and help attract the search engines. Many sites have text which reads well but contains few significant keywords. Both are required.
Many businesses understandably want to write the text themselves. However, this is arguably a specialised area, requiring creative sales writing, search engine knowledge and time away from the urgent priorities of a busy office. You may find you do not have the time or skills to do this internally to the levels required - and projects sometime stall because of this. (N.B. NCS can help with internet copy writing to get the job done smoothly and effectively.)
