Keyword Research
Before you can start optimizing your site for the search engines, you must first know which terms you want to target. A good start would be to choose 3 or 4 keywords you would like your website to rank well for. With these keywords in your mind you can then set a goal to rank in the top 10 results on Google for each of them (we refer to Google because if you can rank well there, you'll rank well on the other search engines). These keywords can be either broad or specific, but you'll want to study our list of pros and cons of each before choosing.
Broad Keywords
A broad keyword is one that many people search for, because they may only have a vague idea of what they're looking for. Broad keywords tend to be very short and aren't very specific (e.g. "shoes" or "sports"). These keywords are difficult to rank #1 for because so many other websites might have an article or two that mention shoes. However, if you can rank well for a broad keyword, you will be receiving a great deal of traffic.
Summary: Hard to rank for, but worth it in the long run. We recommend that beginners only choose a broad keyword if their industries are not very competitive.
Specific Keywords
A specific keyword is something that contains many adjectives or words that make the search very targeted. The people doing these types of searches know exactly what they want (e.g. "used black high heel shoes"). These keywords are much less competitive and are easier to rank for on search engines. The downside is that they receive a great deal less volume of searches per month. In terms of traffic, you will need to have several #1 rankings for specific keywords to equal one #1 ranking broad keyword.
Summary: Easier to rank for and it's highly targeted traffic. The only downside is that the number of visitors you will receive is relatively low.
Unique or Branded Keywords
These are the words that are specific to only your company. They are one of the most easiest ways to get traffic. However, some companies will release a new product, with a unique name, and then forget to optimize for that keyword on their website. Their SEO savvy competitors can then pick up the slack and take over the top rankings for these terms. If you have a popular brand or product, make sure that you have optimized for these freebie keywords.
Keyword Research Tools
Keyword research tools are 2 parts voodoo magic and 1 part hard statistic. This is partly due to Google not releasing actual numbers and partly due to overeager SEO Tool developers trying to sell their products. Because there is such a sizable uncertainty in all keyword research tools, it is best to use as many different sources as you can,. Even with multiple sources, you should only take the information you gather as a recommendation, rather than a fact.
Yahoo has been releasing their keyword search information for years, and many tools are based off of this specific data. We've collected a wide variety of helpful tools that will give you a general idea of which keywords you should target when making and optimizing your websites.
Picking a Short List
To put the optimizing tactics that we teach to good use, we recommend that you try to target no more than 2 or 3 keyword phrases per page. A common mistake by many SEO beginners is to stuff 500 different keywords on one page and wait for the #1 rankings to roll in. That might have worked 10 years ago, but the algorithms that search engines use these days are much more sophisticated and are not tricked by this. That's why it's best to start small, and be concise with the keywords that you choose. New sites in particular will find it nearly impossible to rank well for many keyword phrases upon first starting out.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Instead of a conclusion (seo)
Instead of a conclusion: promoting your site step by step
In this section, I will explain how I use seo in promoting my own sites. It is a kind of systematic summary where I briefly recap the previous sections. Naturally, I use Seo Administrator seo software extensively in my work and so I will show how I use it in this example.
To be able to start working with a site, you have to possess some basic seo knowledge. This can be acquired quite quickly. The information presented in this document is perfectly adequate and I must stress that you do not have to be an optimization guru to achieve results. Once you have this basic knowledge you can then start work, experimenting, getting sites to the top of the search listings and so on. That is where seo software tools are useful.
1. Firstly, we create an approximate list of keywords and check their competition rate. We then evaluate our chances against the competition and select words that are popular enough and have average competition rate. Keywords are selected using the keyword suggestion tool. This is also used to perform a rough check of their competition rate. We use the PageRank Analyzer module to perform a detailed analysis of search results for the most interesting queries and then make our final decision about what keywords to use.
2. Next, we start composing text for our site. I write part of it on my own, but I entrust the most important parts to specialists in technical writing. Actually, I think the quality and attractiveness of the text is the most important attribute of a page. If the textual content is good, it will be easier to get inbound links and visitors.
3. In this step, we start using the HTML Analyzer module to create the necessary keyword density. Each page is optimized for its own keyword phrase.
4. We submit the site to various directories. There are plenty of services to take care of that chore for us. In addition, Seo Administrator will soon have a feature to automate the task.
5. After these initial steps are completed, we wait and check search engine indexation to make sure that various search engines are processing the site.
6. In this step, we can begin to check the positions of the site for our keywords. These positions are not likely to be good at this early stage, but they will give us some useful information to begin fine-tuning seo work.
7. We use the Link Popularity Checker module to track and work on increasing the link popularity.
. 8. We use the Log Analyzer module to analyze the number of visitors and work on increasing it. We also periodically repeat steps 6) - 8).
In this section, I will explain how I use seo in promoting my own sites. It is a kind of systematic summary where I briefly recap the previous sections. Naturally, I use Seo Administrator seo software extensively in my work and so I will show how I use it in this example.
To be able to start working with a site, you have to possess some basic seo knowledge. This can be acquired quite quickly. The information presented in this document is perfectly adequate and I must stress that you do not have to be an optimization guru to achieve results. Once you have this basic knowledge you can then start work, experimenting, getting sites to the top of the search listings and so on. That is where seo software tools are useful.
1. Firstly, we create an approximate list of keywords and check their competition rate. We then evaluate our chances against the competition and select words that are popular enough and have average competition rate. Keywords are selected using the keyword suggestion tool. This is also used to perform a rough check of their competition rate. We use the PageRank Analyzer module to perform a detailed analysis of search results for the most interesting queries and then make our final decision about what keywords to use.
2. Next, we start composing text for our site. I write part of it on my own, but I entrust the most important parts to specialists in technical writing. Actually, I think the quality and attractiveness of the text is the most important attribute of a page. If the textual content is good, it will be easier to get inbound links and visitors.
3. In this step, we start using the HTML Analyzer module to create the necessary keyword density. Each page is optimized for its own keyword phrase.
4. We submit the site to various directories. There are plenty of services to take care of that chore for us. In addition, Seo Administrator will soon have a feature to automate the task.
5. After these initial steps are completed, we wait and check search engine indexation to make sure that various search engines are processing the site.
6. In this step, we can begin to check the positions of the site for our keywords. These positions are not likely to be good at this early stage, but they will give us some useful information to begin fine-tuning seo work.
7. We use the Link Popularity Checker module to track and work on increasing the link popularity.
. 8. We use the Log Analyzer module to analyze the number of visitors and work on increasing it. We also periodically repeat steps 6) - 8).
Common search engine principles
To understand seo you need to be aware of the architecture of search engines. They all contain the following main components:
Spider - a browser-like program that downloads web pages.
Crawler – a program that automatically follows all of the links on each web page.
Indexer - a program that analyzes web pages downloaded by the spider and the crawler.
Database– storage for downloaded and processed pages.
Results engine – extracts search results from the database.
Web server – a server that is responsible for interaction between the user and other search engine components.
Specific implementations of search mechanisms may differ. For example, the Spider+Crawler+Indexer component group might be implemented as a single program that downloads web pages, analyzes them and then uses their links to find new resources. However, the components listed are inherent to all search engines and the seo principles are the same.
Spider. This program downloads web pages just like a web browser. The difference is that a browser displays the information presented on each page (text, graphics, etc.) while a spider does not have any visual components and works directly with the underlying HTML code of the page. You may already know that there is an option in standard web browsers to view source HTML code.
Crawler. This program finds all links on each page. Its task is to determine where the spider should go either by evaluating the links or according to a predefined list of addresses. The crawler follows these links and tries to find documents not already known to the search engine.
Indexer. This component parses each page and analyzes the various elements, such as text, headers, structural or stylistic features, special HTML tags, etc.
Database. This is the storage area for the data that the search engine downloads and analyzes. Sometimes it is called the index of the search engine.
Results Engine. The results engine ranks pages. It determines which pages best match a user's query and in what order the pages should be listed. This is done according to the ranking algorithms of the search engine. It follows that page rank is a valuable and interesting property and any seo specialist is most interested in it when trying to improve his site search results. In this article, we will discuss the seo factors that influence page rank in some detail.
Web server. The search engine web server usually contains a HTML page with an input field where the user can specify the search query he or she is interested in. The web server is also responsible for displaying search results to the user in the form of an HTML page.
Spider - a browser-like program that downloads web pages.
Crawler – a program that automatically follows all of the links on each web page.
Indexer - a program that analyzes web pages downloaded by the spider and the crawler.
Database– storage for downloaded and processed pages.
Results engine – extracts search results from the database.
Web server – a server that is responsible for interaction between the user and other search engine components.
Specific implementations of search mechanisms may differ. For example, the Spider+Crawler+Indexer component group might be implemented as a single program that downloads web pages, analyzes them and then uses their links to find new resources. However, the components listed are inherent to all search engines and the seo principles are the same.
Spider. This program downloads web pages just like a web browser. The difference is that a browser displays the information presented on each page (text, graphics, etc.) while a spider does not have any visual components and works directly with the underlying HTML code of the page. You may already know that there is an option in standard web browsers to view source HTML code.
Crawler. This program finds all links on each page. Its task is to determine where the spider should go either by evaluating the links or according to a predefined list of addresses. The crawler follows these links and tries to find documents not already known to the search engine.
Indexer. This component parses each page and analyzes the various elements, such as text, headers, structural or stylistic features, special HTML tags, etc.
Database. This is the storage area for the data that the search engine downloads and analyzes. Sometimes it is called the index of the search engine.
Results Engine. The results engine ranks pages. It determines which pages best match a user's query and in what order the pages should be listed. This is done according to the ranking algorithms of the search engine. It follows that page rank is a valuable and interesting property and any seo specialist is most interested in it when trying to improve his site search results. In this article, we will discuss the seo factors that influence page rank in some detail.
Web server. The search engine web server usually contains a HTML page with an input field where the user can specify the search query he or she is interested in. The web server is also responsible for displaying search results to the user in the form of an HTML page.
How Do I Optimize for the Search Engines?
Search engine optimization begins even before designing your site. It starts by selecting a very narrow and focused topic for your site, and choosing the right domain name. You must then select the right keywords for each of your individual pages (keywords, or search terms, are what you expect search engine users will type in the search box to find a page like yours).
After that, site design can begin and, with it, web page optimization. Web page optimization involves optimizing page copy for your selected keywords and making your web page design friendly to search engines. This usually translates into using your keywords several times in your web page copy, and building a site that offers good navigation, a straightforward architecture, plenty of text, and easy access to all the site's pages by following links from the most important pages.
The third step, the most difficult and time consuming, involves getting inbound links from quality sites related to your topic, with your keywords in the anchor text. It is virtually impossible to rank high in the most important search engines without a wide array of quality inbound links. Until now, reciprocal linking has been a common way to get inbound links. Search engines, though, tend to favor one-way links developed naturally (over time) coming from many different sources.
As far as submitting your website to the search engines is concerned, it is not necessary. Search engines find pages by following links on other pages. Therefore, by getting a few inbound links (we'll explain how in our link building section) your site will be found and listed by the search engines.
This site is organized around the four main SEO tasks:
* Domain Selection
* Keyword Selection
* Web Page Optimization, and
* Link Building
After that, site design can begin and, with it, web page optimization. Web page optimization involves optimizing page copy for your selected keywords and making your web page design friendly to search engines. This usually translates into using your keywords several times in your web page copy, and building a site that offers good navigation, a straightforward architecture, plenty of text, and easy access to all the site's pages by following links from the most important pages.
The third step, the most difficult and time consuming, involves getting inbound links from quality sites related to your topic, with your keywords in the anchor text. It is virtually impossible to rank high in the most important search engines without a wide array of quality inbound links. Until now, reciprocal linking has been a common way to get inbound links. Search engines, though, tend to favor one-way links developed naturally (over time) coming from many different sources.
As far as submitting your website to the search engines is concerned, it is not necessary. Search engines find pages by following links on other pages. Therefore, by getting a few inbound links (we'll explain how in our link building section) your site will be found and listed by the search engines.
This site is organized around the four main SEO tasks:
* Domain Selection
* Keyword Selection
* Web Page Optimization, and
* Link Building
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often considered the more technical part of Web marketing. This is true because SEO does help in the promotion of sites and at the same time it requires some technical knowledge – at least familiarity with basic HTML. SEO is sometimes also called SEO copyrighting because most of the techniques that are used to promote sites in search engines deal with text. Generally, SEO can be defined as the activity of optimizing Web pages or whole sites in order to make them more search engine-friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results.
One of the basic truths in SEO is that even if you do all the things that are necessary to do, this does not automatically guarantee you top ratings but if you neglect basic rules, this certainly will not go unnoticed. Also, if you set realistic goals – i.e to get into the top 30 results in Google for a particular keyword, rather than be the number one for 10 keywords in 5 search engines, you will feel happier and more satisfied with your results.
Although SEO helps to increase the traffic to one's site, SEO is not advertising. Of course, you can be included in paid search results for given keywords but basically the idea behind the SEO techniques is to get top placement because your site is relevant to a particular search term, not because you pay.
SEO can be a 30-minute job or a permanent activity. Sometimes it is enough to do some generic SEO in order to get high in search engines – for instance, if you are a leader for rare keywords, then you do not have a lot to do in order to get decent placement. But in most cases, if you really want to be at the top, you need to pay special attention to SEO and devote significant amounts of time and effort to it. Even if you plan to do some basic SEO, it is essential that you understand how search engines work and which items are most important in SEO.
One of the basic truths in SEO is that even if you do all the things that are necessary to do, this does not automatically guarantee you top ratings but if you neglect basic rules, this certainly will not go unnoticed. Also, if you set realistic goals – i.e to get into the top 30 results in Google for a particular keyword, rather than be the number one for 10 keywords in 5 search engines, you will feel happier and more satisfied with your results.
Although SEO helps to increase the traffic to one's site, SEO is not advertising. Of course, you can be included in paid search results for given keywords but basically the idea behind the SEO techniques is to get top placement because your site is relevant to a particular search term, not because you pay.
SEO can be a 30-minute job or a permanent activity. Sometimes it is enough to do some generic SEO in order to get high in search engines – for instance, if you are a leader for rare keywords, then you do not have a lot to do in order to get decent placement. But in most cases, if you really want to be at the top, you need to pay special attention to SEO and devote significant amounts of time and effort to it. Even if you plan to do some basic SEO, it is essential that you understand how search engines work and which items are most important in SEO.
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