Blogging Search Engine Optimization Tips and Tricks

Best Practice for Using Keywords in File and Directory naming

2005-06-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

There is strong sentiment among SEO experts that architecting a web sites directory structure using keywords for file and directory naming will increase the popularity of the site in the search engine rankings. Some SEO experts will swear by it and others will argue that the degree of any increase in rankings will be marginal. Mostly all believe that there is benefit without cost.

If you plan on using multiple words in the file or directory names, here are some useful tips:

Avoid underscores as they simply "disappear" in underlined links on screen. Search engines also don't treat the words as being separate words.

Avoid spaces as they get converted to %20, which makes the URL difficult%20to%20read.

URLs with %20 in them, typed into a browser also usually fail too.

Use hyphens or dots instead. These are then treated as being separate words.

They are easier to write down or remember too.

How to increase your websites Page Rank (pagerank)

2005-06-17T09:34:00.000-07:00

PageRank is a family of algorithms for assigning numerical weightings to hyperlinked documents (or web pages) indexed by a search engine.

The higher the page rank you have for your site, the more weight Search Engines put on this when dishing out their Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and the higher rankings you'll get.

Now that you know what it is, how do you increase it?

Charles Nixon from webpronews offers these 5 steps:

1. Join forums, forums are a great way to achieve links to your website. In most forums you are allowed to have a signature and in your signature you can put a link to your website. But another important note to look on is making sure the forum is somewhat related to your website. You will still get credit if it's not, but if it's related to your website than you will be accomplishing two tasks at once.

2. Submit to search engine directories. Search engine directories are a good way to get a free link to your website. They also increase your chances at being listed higher on popular search engines like Google, and overture.

Most search engine directories allow you to submit to their website for free. This will allow you to increase your web presence by being listed on another search engine, and it will also be a free link.

Remember the more links you have the higher your PR will be

3. Using ezine ads (or newsletters). Creating an ezine will probably be the most beneficial step you can take to increasing your web presence. When you create an ezine you will be able to keep visitors coming back to your website for more by using signatures and giving special deals.

Ezine's will also allow you to increase your back links. By creating an ezine you can submit your information about your ezine to an ezine directory. This directory will than link to your website(thus giving you a free link).

4. Creating and publishing articles. Articles are an easy source of generating new traffic. You can include your signature in your article. This will bring in more traffic from article submission directories.

Your signature usually consists of 4 to 8 lines. Usually the first line would be the title of the website that you are trying to advertise. The last line would be the link to the website and the lines in between these would be a sales pitch to draw your viewers into your website.

5. Links from related websites. Gaining links from related websites can be one of the most frustrating tasks you can attempt.

So in practice, by myself linking to the original text on 5 Steps To Increase Your Google Page Rank. I have just effectively increased this sites PR.

Build Google Sitemaps Easily

2005-06-15T06:56:00.000-07:00

Feedbuzzard is a site that offers a plethora of information regarding Google optimization in the effort of increasing Google Adsense revenues.

The trick of course is to increase the total amount of traffic to your site. THis idea correlates to the premise of this site. Hense, Feedbuzzard is on my recommended site list

Feedbuzzard makes mention of an important new event for those focused on doing well within google in the launching of the Google Sitemap

I'm not going to go into detail as to what this is or the importance of it, I'll let you read the articles listed below.

The purpose of this article is to simply direct you to a great tool out there that will allow you to easily generate sitemap.xml files for submittal to Google.

Site Map Builder allows you to create the Google Site Map XML (Google SiteMaps) needed in your root directory in order to provide information about your site to Google. This XML must have some sintax that Site Map Builder will generate for you. Just copy and paste the result xml on a gzip the result and save it on your site root directory, then register your map at http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/.

This free tool has put this whole process into the "no-brainer" category. It is That simple to use

Check it out !

How to properly use META tags for best SEO performance

2005-06-14T18:37:00.000-07:00

This is sourced from a great post by

Posted: 06/14/2005 12:53 pm
g1smd
JimGuide
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 4924

How to properly use META tags for best SEO

Your document should begin with a !DOCTYPE (this tells the browser what sort of HTML is in the file) followed by the [html] and [hea] tags:

(you would replace all [ with < and ] with > )
[!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"]
[html]
[head]

For your page to actually be valid you MUST declare the character encoding (lets the browser know whether to use A to Z letters (latin), or Chinese, Japanese, Thai, or Arabic script, or some other character set) used for the page, with something like:

[meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"]

There are also other schemes such as UTF-8 and many others.

It is also a good idea to declare what human language the page is in, using:

[meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="EN-GB"]

The language and country codes come from ISO 4217 and ISO 3166. This is useful for online translation tools as well. Change the "en" and "gb" to whatever language and country you need.

You need a [title] element for the page:

[title] Your Title Here [/title]

This is displayed at the top of the browser window, and stored as the name of the bookmark if someone bookmarks the page URL in their browser. Most importantly, it is the [title] tag that is indexed and displayed by search engines in the search results page (SERPs).

You need the meta description tag, as this is very important for search engines, and it is useful but not vital to have a meta keywords tag:

[meta name="Description" content=" Your Description Here. "]
[meta name="Keywords" content=" your, keyword, list, here "]

Most search engines do obey the robots meta tag. The default robots action is index, follow (index the page, follow all outbound links) so if you want something else (3 possibilities) then add the robots tag to the page in question. If you want to exclude whole directories then use the robots.txt file for this instead of marking every HTML file with the tag.

[meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"]

The last parts of your header should have your links to external style sheets and external javascript files:

Use this if the stylesheet is for all browsers:

[link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" src="/path/file.css"]

Use this for style sheet that you want to hide from older browsers, as older browsers often crash on seeing CSS:

[meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"]
[style type="text/css"] @import url(/path/file.css); [/style]

Use this for the javascript:

[script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="/path/file.js"][/script]

End the header with this:

[/head]
[body]

and then continue with the body page code.

It is as simple as that.

Code within the page:

I use: [a href="somepage.html" title="some text here"][/a] for links.

I use [img src="somefile.png" alt="some text"] for images.

Headings are done with [hx][/hx] tags, properly used from [h1][/h1] downwards.

Google Sandbox - does it exist?

2005-06-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

After spending the time to develop a web site following the proper standards and submitting the finished quality site to Google, it turns out that you are still not seeing any traffic?

Why is that?

Well there could be the possibility of the google sandbox effect.

As Matt Colyer writes from www.123webmarketing.biz

"What once many people thought they had a penalty, is now being called the Sandbox Effect and is causing new web sites not to rank very well in the search results of Google, not even for the least competitive phrases. Meaning that a filter is being placed on new web sites and cannot rank very high for most words or phrases for a certain amount of time.

This does not mean it's punishment for anything the webmaster did with their site, such as using Spam or anything like that. The probation likely don't apply to the web site, but instead to backlinks. After the link stays on the web site for a certain amount of time it will no longer be on probation and fully counted as a backlink to your web site. Even if your site is better than your competitors it will still be in the Sandbox."

Quick and Easy Google Ranking Checks

2005-06-08T11:24:00.000-07:00

www.googlerankings.com

Here is a free search engine optimization tool to quickly check where your website ranks in Google SERPs for your keywords.

I'm recommending this for its simplicity. It think it is probably one of the easiest tools to use to quickly check your standings.

Its called the Google Ranking Checker

If you want to quickly find out where you websites sit in googles searches for your keywords, give this a try.

There are obviously better tools for deeper analysis but there is something to be said about the KISS factor (keep it simple stupid) and this program sticks to this strategy very well...

The Search Engine Secret That Is No Secret At All

2005-06-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

Ok, I want to give credit to the source of this article: 123webmarketing written by Herb and Monica Leibacher

This is one of the first articles I have come across that really puts things into perspective for getting proper traffic to your site.

When you are starting off in the web development world, there are so many things and techniques you need to be aware of when developing sites to attract visitors

Unfortunately, your probably so busy keeping up with your coding commitments that you don't have time to digest all the information that is available.

so, this article quickly summarizes a really important point

It starts off with a very simple statement:

"Create a great web site with useful information, and have more relevant links pointing back to your web site than your competitors."

Which you hear all around, but then goes on to provide effective strategies to implement this.

So, what can you do today?

1. Write a new, fresh article on the topic of your web site.

You don't have to be Stephen King to create an article for the web. Anyone can do it. Just sit down and think about what you know that other people might like to hear. Not an advertisement for yourself, but real useful informaiton others can use. Then, write it out - just like you are talking to someone. Go back and edit, proof read, and edit again. Then, post your new article on your web site.

2. Share your article with others to get links back to your site.

People all over the internet want useful information to post on their web sites. You can give it to them, and in return ask for a link back to your site. Check out these sites, where you can submit your article for free, and other people can pick it up, post it on their site, and link back to you:

Repeat steps 1 and 2 above, and you will build content and links. And that will help your search engine rankings. And that's no secret.

Google still leads in the Search Engine Stats

2005-06-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

The biggest way to increase traffic to your site is to improve your ranking in search engine SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). The common rule of thumb is that if your not listed in the first three pages, you won't get seen.

, Further to the point, when focusing on rankings, most SEO clients want to focus on ranking well in Google.

Here are some basic stats that explains why:

SOURCE: Nielsen/Net/Ratings

Google continues their reign in 2005 with 47.1% of all searches conducted at Google.com (that's down from a May 2004 survey showing 56.4% of users searching Google 1st).
Next is Yahoo, with 21.2% of all searches being conducted at Yahoo.com - consistent with May 2004 figures.
Third comes MSN Search, with 12.8% - up from 9.2% in May 2004.

Here is a little more info for your reference

AOL, AT&T and Netscape, currently contract with Google to feed them search results. In Feb.'04, Yahoo dropped Google, in favor of search engine technology it purchased (Inktomi). One year later, much like Yahoo's independence from Google-powered results last year, Microsoft severed the contract with its former search partner (Yahoo!), to create their own proprietary site index and search engine. MSN Search officially launched this Feb., 2005.

Google - 26 steps to 15k visitors a day

2005-06-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

When I was first starting out, I read this and it changed the way I developed sites. I continued to re-read this until I memorized all the steps. Brett Tabke has done a terrific job in highlighting the major steps involved with building a successful (and profitable) site

I am including this article in its entirety, if you want to go to the direct link it is here

Originally posted as Successful Site in 12 months with Google Alone A step by step guide to building a website in 26 steps that will achive high rankings and produce up to 15k a day within a year. Copyright, WebmasterWorld Inc. & Orielly Publishing The following is part of the Orielly Google Hacks Series of Books By Brett Tabke, Feb 2, 2002 Updated Feb 2, 2005

The following will build a successful site in 1 years time via Google alone. It can be done faster if you are a real go getter, or everyones favorite: a self starter.

A) Prep Work:

Prep work and begin building content. Yep, long before the domain name is settled on, start putting together notes to build at least a 100 page site. That's just for openers. That's 100 pages of "real content", as opposed to link pages, resource pages, about/copyright/tos...etc fluff pages.

B) Domain name:

Easily brandable. You want "google.com" and not "mykeyword.com". Keyword domains are out - branding and name recognition are in - big time in. The value of keywords in a domain name have never been less to se's. Learn the lesson of "goto.com" becomes "Overture.com" and why they did it. It's one of the powerful gut check calls I've ever seen on the internet. That took resolve and nerve to blow away several years of branding. (that's a whole 'nuther article, but learn the lesson as it applies to all of us).

C) Site Design:

The simpler the better. Rule of thumb: text content should out weight the html content. The pages should validate and be usable in everything from Lynx to leading edge browsers. eg: keep it close to html 3.2 if you can. Spiders are not to the point they really like eating html 4.0 and the mess that it can bring. Stay away from heavy: flash, dom, java, java script. Go external with scripting languages if you must have them - there is little reason to have them that I can see - they will rarely help a site and stand to hurt it greatly due to many factors most people don't appreciate (search engines distaste for js is just one of them). Arrange the site in a logical manner with directory names hitting the top keywords you wish to hit. You can also go the other route and just throw everything in root (this is rather controversial, but it's been producing good long term results across many engines). Don't clutter and don't spam your site with frivolous links like "best viewed" or other counter like junk. Keep it clean and professional to the best of your ability.
Learn the lesson of Google itself - simple is retro cool - simple is what surfers want.
Speed isn't everything, it's almost the only thing. Your site should respond almost instantly to a request. If you get into even 3-4 seconds delay until "something happens" in the browser, you are in long term trouble. That 3-4 seconds response time may vary for site destined to live in other countries than your native one. The site should respond locally within 3-4 seconds (max) to any request. Longer than that, and you'll lose 10% of your audience for every second. That 10% could be the difference between success and not.

D) Page Size:

The smaller the better. Keep it under 15k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 12k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 10k if you can - I trust you are getting the idea here. Over 5k and under 10k. Ya - that bites - it's tough to do, but it works. It works for search engines, and it works for surfers. Although no one knows for sure, and the data is sketchy, it is estimated that 50% (circa jan 2005) of your surfers will be at 56k or even less. This figure will increase dramatically if you target countries outside the US.

E) Content:

Build one page of content and put online per day at 200-500 words. If you aren't sure what you need for content, start with the Overture keyword suggestor and find the core set of keywords for your topic area. Those are your subject starters.

F) Density, position, yada, yada, yada...

Simple, old fashioned, seo from the ground up. Use the keyword once in title, once in description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic, once high on the page, and hit the density between 5 and 20% (don't fret about it). Use good sentences and speel check it ;-) Spell checking is becoming important as se's are moving to auto correction during searches. There is no longer a reason to look like you can't spell (unless you really are phonetically challenged).

G) Outbound Links:

From every page, link to one or two high ranking sites under that particular keyword. Use your keyword in the link text (this is ultra important for the future).

H) Cross links:

<1>(cross links are links WITHIN the same site) Link to on topic quality content across your site. If a page is about food, then make sure it links it to the apples and veggies page. Specifically with Google, on topic cross linking is very important for sharing your pr value across your site. You do NOT want an "all star" page that out performs the rest of your site. You want 50 pages that produce 1 referral each a day and do NOT want 1 page that produces 50 referrals a day. If you do find one page that drastically out produces the rest of the site with Google, you need to off load some of that pr value to other pages by cross linking heavily. It's the old share the wealth thing.

I) Put it Online:

Don't go with virtual hosting - go with a stand alone IP. Make sure the site is "crawlable" by a spider. All pages should be linked to more than one other page on your site, and not more than 2 levels deep from root. Link the topic vertically as much as possible back to root. A menu that is present on every page should link to your sites main "topic index" pages (the doorways and logical navigation system down into real content). Don't put it online before you have a quality site to put online. It's worse to put a "nothing" site online, than no site at all. You want it flushed out from the start.
Go for a listing in the ODP. If you have the budget, then submit to Looksmart and Yahoo. If you don't have the budget, then try for a freebie on Yahoo (don't hold your breath).

J) Submit:

Submit the root to: Google, Fast, Altavista, WiseNut, (write Teoma), DirectHit, and Hotbot. Now comes the hard part - forget about submissions for the next six months. That's right - submit and forget.

K) Logging and Tracking:

Get a quality logger/tracker that can do justice to inbound referrals based on log files (don't use a lame graphic counter - you need the real deal). If your host doesn't support referrers, then back up and get a new host. You can't run a modern site without full referrals available 24x7x365 in real time.

L) Spiderlings:

Watch for spiders from se's. Make sure those that are crawling the full site, can do so easily. If not, double check your linking system (use standard hrefs) to make sure the spider found it's way throughout the site. Don't fret if it takes two spiderings to get your whole site done by Google or Fast. Other se's are pot luck and doubtful that you will be added at all if not within 6 months.

M) Topic directories:

Almost every keyword sector has an authority hub on it's topic. Go submit within the guidelines.

N) Links:

Look around your keyword sector in Googles version of the ODP. (this is best done AFTER getting an odp listing - or two). Find sites that have links pages or freely exchange links. Simply request a swap. Put a page of on topic, in context links up your self as a collection spot. Don't freak if you can't get people to swap links - move on. Try to swap links with one fresh site a day. A simple personal email is enough. Stay low key about it and don't worry if site Z won't link with you - they will - eventually they will.

O) Content:

One page of quality content per day. Timely, topical articles are always the best. Try to stay away from to much "bloggin" type personal stuff and look more for "article" topics that a general audience will like. Hone your writing skills and read up on the right style of "web speak" that tends to work with the fast and furious web crowd.
Lots of text breaks - short sentences - lots of dashes - something that reads quickly.
Most web users don't actually read, they scan. This is why it is so important to keep low key pages today. People see a huge overblown page by random, and a portion of them will hit the back button before trying to decipher it. They've got better things to do that waste 15 seconds (a stretch) at understanding your whiz bang flash menu system. Because some big support site can run flashed out motorhead pages, that is no indication that you can. You don't have the pull factor they do.
Use headers, and bold standout text liberally on your pages as logical separators. I call them scanner stoppers where the eye will logically come to rest on the page.

P) Gimmicks:

Stay far away from any "fades of the day" or anything that appears spammy, unethical, or tricky. Plant yourself firmly on the high ground in the middle of the road.

Q) Link backs:

When YOU receive requests for links, check the site out before linking back with them. Check them through Google and their pr value. Look for directory listings. Don't link back to junk just because they asked. Make sure it is a site similar to yours and on topic.

R) Rounding out the offerings:

Use options such as Email-a-friend, forums, and mailing lists to round out your sites offerings. Hit the top forums in your market and read, read, read until your eyes hurt you read so much. Stay away from "affiliate fades" that insert content on to your site.

S) Beware of Flyer and Brochure Syndrome:

If you have an ecom site or online version of bricks and mortar, be careful not to turn your site into a brochure. These don't work at all. Think about what people want. They aren't coming to your site to view "your content", they are coming to your site looking for "their content". Talk as little about your products and yourself as possible in articles (raise eyebrows...yes, I know).

T) Build one page of content per day:

Head back to the Overture suggestion tool to get ideas for fresh pages.

U) Study those logs:

After 30-60 days you will start to see a few referrals from places you've gotten listed. Look for the keywords people are using. See any bizarre combinations? Why are people using those to find your site? If there is something you have over looked, then build a page around that topic. Retro engineer your site to feed the search engine what it wants. If your site is about "oranges", but your referrals are all about "orange citrus fruit", then you can get busy building articles around "citrus" and "fruit" instead of the generic "oranges". The search engines will tell you exactly what they want to be fed - listen closely, there is gold in referral logs, it's just a matter of panning for it.

V) Timely Topics:

Nothing breeds success like success. Stay abreast of developments in your keyword sector. If big site "Z" is coming out with product "A" at the end of the year, then build a page and have it ready in October so that search engines get it by December. eg: go look at all the Xbox and XP sites in Google right now - those are sites that were on the ball last summer.

W) Friends and Family:

Networking is critical to the success of a site. This is where all that time you spend in forums will pay off. pssst: Here's the catch-22 about forums: lurking is almost useless. The value of a forum is in the interaction with your fellow colleagues and cohorts. You learn long term by the interaction - not by just reading. Networking will pay off in link backs, tips, email exchanges, and in general put you "in the loop" of your keyword sector. Take Giacomos first post in the other thread mentioned above - he could have lurked, read, made his judgements, learned, and went off to write up his thesis. However, the step forward and the interaction has probably taught him far more about what he is concerned with than if you would have read the forums front to back. In the process he met some people that may in turn be useful resources in the future.

X) Notes, Notes, Notes:

If you build one page per day, you will find that brain storm like inspiration will hit you in the head at some magic point. Whether it is in the shower (dry off first), driving down the road (please pull over), or just parked at your desk, write it down! 10 minutes of work later, you will have forgotten all about that great idea you just had. Write it down, and get detailed about what you are thinking. When the inspirational juices are no longer flowing, come back to those content ideas. It sounds simple, but it's a life saver when the ideas stop coming.

Y) Submission check at six months:

Walk back through your submissions and see if you got listed in all the search engines you submitted to after six months. If not, then resubmit and forget again. Try those freebie directories again too.

Z) Build one page of quality content per day:

Starting to see a theme here? Google loves content, lots of quality content. Broad based over a wide range of keywords. At the end of a years time, you should have around 400 pages of content. That will get you good placement under a wide range of keywords, generate recip links, and overall position your site to stand on it's own two feet.

Do those 26 things, and I guarantee you that in ones years time you will call your site a success. It will be drawing between 500 and 2000 referrals a day from search engines. If you build a good site with an average of 4 to 5 pages per user, you should be in the 10-15k page views per day range in one years time. What you do with that traffic is up to you, but that is more than enough to "do something" with.

Google Forum at WebmasterWorld.com
Selecting Keywords The importance of selecting good keywords.
WebPage Size The need for speed revisited.
Theme Based Site Pyramids How to build a site around keyword themes.

Search Engine Optimization - The Basics Part 3

2005-06-02T12:01:00.000-07:00

Part III: Off Page Factors

Once you have selected your keyphrases and optimized your pages for them, the last step is to make sure that you get linked from the best directories, and from lots of quality sites with a topic related to your site's. The best search engines, and in particular Google (who alone can deliver 80% of the search engine traffic to your site) "crawl" the web looking for links to your site. They interpret a link to your page as a vote, and the more links (votes) you have coming from quality sites the higher your page rank will be, and the higher the possibility that your page will achieve a good position in the search results pages. It's that simple. Following these four steps is the best way to get the quality links you need:

Get listed in DMOZ: The Open Directory Project ( http://www.dmoz.org ) is the world's largest directory. It is maintained by voluntary editors who review your site prior to inclusion. Being listed in this directory is important because it is used by Google and America Online to build their directories. Getting listed is free, but it may take a few weeks or even months to get listed, which can be a bit frustrating. However, there is a strong believe among search engine optimization experts that an Open Directory Project listing can significantly increase your page rank in Google, so you must take the time to submit your site and do it right (list your site in the right category and strictly follow their submission guidelines). For how to get listed in the Open Directory Project go to: http://www.dmoz.org/add.html .
Get listed in Yahoo!: Submissions to Yahoo! are no longer free for commercial sites (your site can be reviewed in about a week for a fee of $299 although inclusion in the directory is not guaranteed. However, if you do get accepted, the $299 fee will be due every year if you want your site to continue to be listed). A link from Yahoo’s directory is still one of the best links you can get, and it is worth the money you spend getting listed. For tips on getting listed in Yahoo! go to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/ .
Submit articles: There are many sites where you can publish articles in your field of expertise. This is a great way to establish yourself as an expert and to drive quality traffic to your site. The key is to include your resource box at the end of your article. A resource box is a small paragraph with a brief description of you and your business, where you include a link to your site. This way, every time somebody picks up your article and publishes it in their website or newsletter, your link will be there for readers and search engines to see and follow. For tips of getting traffic by writing articles you can visit: http://www.theinternetdigest.net/archive/write.html .
Exchange links with reputable sites: You must try to find quality sites that are compatible to your site's topic (not direct competitors), and ask the webmaster for a link exchange. This will give you highly targeted traffic and will improve your score with the search engines. For tips on a good link exchange campaign, visit: http://www.theinternetdigest.net/archive/inboundlinks.html . If you liked this article and feel inclined to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you may want to check out Aaron Wall's SEOBook.

You can freely reprint this article provided that you include the following resource box:

Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), an internet marketing content site packed with useful articles and resources, and SEO Tutorial ( http://www.seotutorial.info ) where you can learn the basics of search engine optimization in four easy steps.

Search Engine Optimization - The Basics Part 3

2005-06-02T11:49:00.000-07:00

PART II: Web Page Optimization

Once you have chosen your keyphrases, the next stage is to optimize your page for those keyphrases. You do that by positioning your keywords in strategic locations within your page. What follows is a checklist of tips and steps you must follow to optimize your page:

Keyphrases in the web page title:

Create a descriptive title for your page: Your web page title is very important because it is what the search engines display as link text as the result of a search. The title must include your main keyphrases, while at the same time it must describe your business very well and should entice readers to click on it.
Unless your business is big and well known (like Microsoft or Coca Cola) don't start your page title with the name of your company. Start your title with the words search engine users will most likely use (your keyphrases)
Put your main keyphrase at the beginning of your page title (keyphrase prominence) and keep your keyphrase together (keyword proximity).
Put your second keyphrase somewhere else in the title.
Make the title short (8 words or less).

Keyphrases in your Keyword Meta Tag: Search engines rarely use the Keyword Meta Tag any more (Google completely ignores it). However, place a list of your main and secondary keywords in the Keyword Meta Tag of your page, just in case search engines decide to use them again in the future.
Keyphrases in your Description Meta Tag: The Description Meta Tag is still important, since some search engines use them to elaborate on the results link. Remember to:
- Include your keyphrases (main and secondary) in your Description Meta Tag.
- Make your description 'descriptive', concise and professional. Avoid using hype.
- Make it short (25 words or less).
- Don't make your description sound just like a collection of keywords.
- Keep your keyphrases together.
Keywords in the body of your page: It is important to use your keywords heavily on your page, since this will help the search engine determine the topic of your page. Follow these tips as much as possible, since they will help search engines determine your page's relevance to your chosen keyphrases:

Use your keyphrases several times, and place them as close to the top of the page as possible.
Place your keyphrases between Header Tags (H1, H2 or H3) in the first two paragraphs of your page.
Place your keyphrases in bold type phase at least once.
Repeat your keyphrases often to increase your keyphrase density. Repeating your keyphrases between 5 to 10 times for every 100 words in your page is considered effective.
Since you have to repeat your keyphrases often, you must be especially careful not to make your text sound awkward. Your visitors should be able to read your page fluently and effortlessly. Remember that ultimately it is your readers who will decide if your page is worth the time they spend on it. A pleasant experience will make them more likely to come back.

A good resource on how to write search engine friendly copy without losing readability is this special SEO writing report by Jill Whalen.

Other Web Page Design Considerations:

You must make your page easy to navigate by the search engines. Search engines heavily favor text over graphics, and HTML over other editing formats.
Use text heavily, especially in your navigation bar. Avoid placing text in graphic format since the search engines won't be able to read it.
Avoid frames. Search engines have trouble following them, and they may index only the framed content page and not the navigation frame.
Avoid Flash and JavaScript: search engines don't follow either one. If you use flash, make an HTML version of your site available to your readers and the search engines. If you use a JavaScript navigation menu, include an alternate text menu at the bottom of the page, so it can be followed by the search engines.
Create a Site Map that includes all the pages in your site, and place a Site Map link close to the top of the homepage. When the search engine follows the site map link, it will find and index all the pages in your site!
If you use a left navigation bar, the search engine will read it before the body of your page. Make sure you include your most important keywords there, too.
Make sure that all your internal pages link to your homepage.
Don't try to describe all your products or services in one page. It will confuse the search engine and dilute your page's relevance to your selected keyphrase. Instead, create different very focused pages, each with its own content and keyphrases, and optimize them too.

This is pretty much all you have to do to make sure that your page is optimized for your chosen keywords. The next and final step to increase your site's ranking is to get as many links to your site as possible, from quality sites that have a topic related to yours. This is what we will see in Part III: Off-Site Factors.

Search Engine Optimization - The Basics Part 2

2005-06-02T11:10:00.000-07:00

A search engine optimization campaign can easily be divided in three fundamental stages

Choose the right keywords (keyword optimization)
Optimize your pages for your selected keywords (web page optimization), and
Get quality inbound links to your pages (off-site factors).

In the next few pages, we will teach you how to follow a systematic approach to complete these three steps, using free tools available on the net.

PART I: Keyword Optimization

The first step in a search engine optimization campaign is to choose your keywords or keyphrases for each of your web pages. Keywords are the terms that search engine users type in the search box to conduct a query. The right keywords are those that:

clearly describe the purpose and content of your site, and,
allow your site to show up as close to the first results page as possible.

A good position doesn't depend only on your choice of keywords. It also depends on how well do you position those keywords in your web page, and how many quality external pages link to you. However, choosing the wrong keywords can throw off your entire search engine optimization strategy, so you need to invest a few hours and make sure you do it right.

Let's start with your homepage. Look at it carefully and write down the words and phrases that best define your site. Try to form two or three word phrases, since competition for one-word keyphrases is fierce, and it is virtually impossible to get a top position for them. That is why, from now on, we will talk about keyphrases, not keywords. Once you have developed your list of potential keyphrases you are ready for the next step: to analyze the demand and supply for those keyphrases, and choose the best ones (those with good demand and not enough supply). We will first check the demand for your selected keyphrases. For this, we will go to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ Overture is a popular pay-per-click search engine. You will then type each of the keyphrases you selected, and see how many people search for those terms. This tool will show you only those searches conducted in Overture (and only in one month time). However, the relative popularity of each search term will be very similar in other search engines as well. In addition to telling you if your selected keyphrases are popular, this tool will show you other keyphrases that you may not have thought about, which may even be more relevant to your site.

For example, if your first keyphrase was "Italian Restaurant", the Search Term Suggestion Tool will also display other popular search terms, like: "Gourmet Italian Restaurant", "Northern Italian Restaurant", "Italian Restaurant Pizzeria", "Italian Restaurant Miami", etc. You may also try other keyphrases, for example: "Italian Cuisine",

and come up with more specific keyphrases, like: "Fine Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Miami", "Northern Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Fine Dining", "Gourmet Italian Cuisine", etc.

What you have done is to validate and enlarge your pool of popular, in-demand, potential keyphrases for your web page. The next step is to check the supply, or, in other words, to see how much competition there is for your selected keywords. Naturally, you want to focus on keyphrases where competition is less fierce. For example, choosing "Italian Restaurant" alone will certainly hurt you. There are so many of them that your chances of showing up in an advantageous position within the search results are pretty slim. Having said that, get your list of keyphrases, go to Google ( http://www.google.com ) and type-in each of them in the search box.Enter your keyphrases within quotation marks (to filter-out less relevant results), and see how many results each individual query produces, making a note of those with a relatively small number of results (less competition). You will stick with the keyphrase that:

Best describes the topic and content of your page
Is a popular search term according to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool.
Generates a relatively small number of results after performing the Google search.

If "Gourmet Italian Restaurant" is the keyphrase that best meets these three criteria, it will become your primary keyphrase. To get even better results, you can choose a second keyphrase to make your page more relevant to an even more specific niche. For example, if your restaurant is in Miami, you can consider "Miami" a second keyphrase. Once you have chosen the keyphrases for you homepage, do the same for the other pages on your site.

After this, you will take your selected keyphrases and optimize your pages heavily for them. This involves placing them in strategic locations in the title, headings and body of each page, as we will see in Part II: Web Page Optimization.

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Best Practice for Using Keywords in File and Directory naming

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Related

Search Engine Optimization - The Basics Part 3

Part III: Off Page Factors

Search Engine Optimization - The Basics Part 3

PART II: Web Page Optimization

Search Engine Optimization - The Basics Part 2

PART I: Keyword Optimization