Search engine tutorial continued from the
previous pageProfessional expert search engine optimization
tutorial for your website and web pages.
SEO - Keyword Phrases - headings - meta tags - Alt tags
Keyword phrases in your content.
For the best search engine optimization results you must optimize each individual page for one or two key word phrases. Use
WordTracker
or another keyword tool
to find out the optimum keywords for your each of your pages. If this
tutorial does nothing else for you, at least do your keyword research.
Don't try to get too many keyword phrases on a page. I think it's
best to target one main set of keywords, since it can be quite difficult
to come up with pleasing sentences that make sense to a human visitor and
still get several sets of keywords in. If due to the subject material it
is easy to do and reads smoothly for a human then go for it.
One of my techniques is to optimize more than one page for a particular keyword
phrase with variations in the base phrase, to help pickup those long-tailed keyword phrases. Each page
has a different pattern to the keywords and phrases and thus give a
better shot at being ranked well in the engines.
The engines assign more value to keywords occurring near the
beginnings of pages, paragraphs, sentences, and alt tags etc., so try to
work in a phrase near the beginning of the first sentence and then a
couple of times through out the body of your content. Near the end
sometimes helps too.
I use a statistics package provided my my hosting service and I've
discovered I get found by searchers from Google using 10, 12, even 15
word keyword phrases! Talk about long-tailed keywords!
Try to have your keywords and keyword phrases show up in your body text
near the beginning, once or twice near the middle of the page, and again
near the end of the page. Don't cram in keywords wherever you can.
Your content should read normally for a human reader. The
A key part of expert SEO is the stickiness of your site. Let's face
it, the search engines are getting pretty smart. They know that if
someone visits your site, and then returns to the search results page to
try something else within a few seconds then it probably means your site
was obviously not very relevant for the key words that were being
searched for.
If you don't show back up again for a long time then
it's more likely that your site was what the searcher was looking for. So it's
vitally important that your site actually offers up to your
visitors what ever it is that they are expecting. This makes
choosing the right keywords even more important.
Using meta and other tags
Heading tags are critical. Use them.
Use a H1 heading near the very top of your page with either the title
of your page or something similar. Address it to your visitors, but get
a keyword phrase in there. Next work in a sentence or two and then
put in a H2 sentence. Now put some more text, a sentence or two,
and then insert a sentence with a heading H3.
Organize the bulk of your content using headings and sub-headings for
your paragraphs or groups of paragraphs and if you need sub-sub headings
under them use H5 tags.
Use only one heading 1 tag, one H2 tag, one H3 tag. You can use any
number of H4 and H5 tags.
This hierarchical arrangement of information with keywords worked
into your headings and sub headings is just the kind of thing that the
search engines love. Your visitors like it to since so many of
them are "skimmers", they like to scan the headings and just read
certain parts that interest them. Don't make them wade through
large amounts of text looking for whatever it is that they are seeking.
Give them headings and sub headings to scan.
You don't have to accept whatever the default format is. You can make
the headings any size etc. and they will still be a heading tag.
However, they should stand out in some way even if it is just making
them bold. Google is watching and gives more weight to keywords
that stand out for the reader.
The title tags are the "king of the tags".
Often I see page titles like "Home Page" or the name of
the business, and even pages with no title at all. Now if you were a
search engine don't you think the page title would give you a clue about
the contents of the page?
Work your keywords into the page title. (between the title tags in the
header). Since
the page title is likely to be shown in the search engine results, be sure
it makes sense to a human. Even if you show up at the top of the
results, if the human doesn't find the site to be of interest from the
short description given by the search engine, then he won't come to your
site.
Don't make the Title too long though. It's generally felt that
the title tag should be 5 to 10 words long.
Expert SEO for your title tags.
Description Tags.
The description in the meta description tags in your header is
extremely important! It should be
written primarily for human readers since it will often end up in the text
returned by the search engine results. Try to work in some of your
keywords there too. Since the description often becomes the only
thing a searcher sees under your page title, you need to write it in
such a manner as to pull the searcher to your site. Do it in the
first 10 words of the sentence since the engines generally won't show
the whole description.
Using the image alt tags.
If you have images on your page, put into the
alternative text tags a description of the picture incorporating some of
your keywords if you can. Make it relevant. Do not stuff inappropriate
keywords in just to use keywords. Write the picture descriptions for
humans.
Meta keywords tag.
Although the search engines in general no longer look at the meta
keywords tag, it won't hurt to put your keywords in anyway. But
limit it to about 8 words. The engines possibly check it for abuse even
if they don't use it for ranking purposes.
Navigation links.
Include some of your keywords in your navigation link text. It
wouldn't hurt to embed some navigation links in the text of some of your
pages. That way the text around your link influences the importance of
the page being linked to.
The closer to the beginning of an element such as a page, paragraph,
sentence, or hyperlink anchor text (the blue underlined part), the more
important the keywords are considered. Avoid the frivolous use of
keywords though...make it smooth reading for a human. If you can't
work in a keyword phrase then just move on.
Be sure the links are easy for the search engine spiders to read.
This means avoiding the use of image maps, java script menus, and such.
If you do use them then put some text links at the bottom of the page so
the spiders can see the links and use them to relate the pages in your
site to each other properly.
Clutter and page layout
One of the factors that Google and other engines use to help
determine the value of a webpage is the amount of clutter on the page.
Imagine the last time you landed on a page that was so cluttered with
Ads and pop-ups that we couldn't even figure out where to go.
Google can count the ads, and examine the number of links, lists,
gifs, etc on your page and analyze them to determine whether your page
is a pain or a panacea of "seemingly" useful information. So don't
clutter up your pages. Keep them fairly simple and straight forward.
Your visitors will appreciate it as well.
General Reminders for expert search engine
optimization
Use basic HTML and avoid the use of Java, Flash, and use text links
where you can. Text links give you keyword opportunities.
Use your meta tags, and use them appropriately.
Pay special attention to your page title and description tag.
Use the same keywords in your opening sentence as in your title tag. Some Search Engines use this as
your descriptive phrase.
Tightly focus each page of you site on a single topic.
Try to have at least one hundred pages of text on your site.
Do not use duplicate content.
Don't expect immediate results from your search engine optimization
efforts. It can take a few weeks to over a
year to
get indexed well in Google. Patience is a virtue when it comes to
website optimization. While you are waiting for that good ranking
in Google you can be getting some decent traffic from the other search
engines and other promotional methods.
Keep updating and adding content to your site consistently over time.
Google and the other biggies like fresh content.
Don't expect quick or even guaranteed results, even if you did everything
correctly. There are other factors including incoming links.
Incoming links can in some cases override all webpage optimization.
So use good keyword research to target keywords that will get you good
rankings. If your competing with behemoths who have zillions of
incoming links you might consider targeting different or longer
tailed keyword phrases.
More about search engine optimization and tutorial pages elsewhere on
this site...look around, there is lots of tips and techniques you can
find.
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