What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization is the process of making changes to your web site (the structure) and web pages (in the code and text) that will make it easy for the search engines to ‘see’ what your web site is about. It is also about intelligently making those changes so that you attract the traffic that is interested in what you have to offer. If you are selling jewelry, people interested in video games are not going to help you much!

The key steps to preparing your web site

Don’t use framesets

HTML framesets can be fun (for those crazy people out there! ) But they wreak havoc with the search engines. When most search engines hit a frames based page, the best you can hope for is that they index the text you inserted into the ‘no frames’ section of the frameset.

The ‘noFrames’ tag was designed to display text to people who did not have browsers that could read frames properly. Typically you would put something like:

”This site is designed with framesets, please update your browser …”

There was once a time when frames were new and some browsers didn’t support them! Must seem strange considering framesets are now considered old crap that should not be used!

I’ve been off frames for a long while but about 2 years ago a client insisted on using them (I forget why) so I grudgingly created the frameset-based pages. In the ‘noframes’ tag I inserted text that went something like this:

”Get yourself a browser that wasn’t made in the stone age! In case you didn’t know: browsers are free! ”

I put in that little amusement for myself figuring no one would ever see it because framesets were a 100% supported. About a week later I got a call from my client because his popular web site was re-listed in the search engines with the text from the ‘noframes’ content being displayed in the site listing! Tens of thousands of people, when searching, would be kindly greeted with my ‘little’ joke.

The power of keywords

The first thing you have to do when building your web site is to figure out what keywords and phrases your target audience is using to find web sites like yours. Besides using a little common sense, where you put yourself in your audiences’ shoes, is the use of word search tools that give you the following information:

• How often people search for particular terms or phrases
• How many other web sites are targeting these keywords
• Keywords that are related to your category
• Typical keyword misspellings when people make searches

This type of information is invaluable, and companies traditionally pay a fortune to get this kind of information, so take advantage while it’s still inexpensive. Marketing to your target audience like this is like getting the secret fishing spots from the locals … you catch much more fish!

Effective Site Structure

Search engines find web sites and pages by following links – for your web site to be found by the maximum number of engines, you need to get other web sites to link to yours.

To ensure that the search engines can properly index your pages you need to include text links to all your sub pages that the search engine robots can follow. One of the best ways to this is to create a site map page. A site map is just a simple HTML page that contains links to all your websites pages. The site map should be accessible from your websites home page.

Be careful of Flash or DHTML menus

Fancy Flash and DHTML menus give most search engines a tough time crawling / searching your web site. The site map helps solves that problem as well a secondary text links at the bottom your pages.

Adding you web sites content: seeding your web site with keywords

There are four key spots on your web pages where you need to have your target keywords appear:

• The page’s
• In the META tags description:

Example:

• In your pages section headings: (H1 – H6)
• In the list ( tags) and paragraphs ( tags) of your pages

Don’t use the target keywords too much, just write your sentences as you normally would and use those keywords when appropriate. If you ‘stuff’ your pages with keywords, you could get punished by the search engines.

A note about meta tags

There was once a time when the meta tag ‘keywords’ affected some search engine results. But that never really penetrated very well and the search engines have since dropped them (since 1997) because the results did not come in properly because people kept screwing around. Concentrate on good content, well-named page titles and building links.

Building links

The number one thing that will raise your position in the search engines is the number of links (100 web sites linking to you is better than 10), and quality of links pointing to your web site.

What are quality links?

Quality links are links from important web sites. A good way to evaluate how important a website is (according to Google) is the Page Rank number. Google ranks pages from 0 to 10 where websites like Google.com, Macromedia.com are 10′s and some new website with no links pointing to it has a score of 0.

Getting links from a web page with a rank of 7 is worth much more than a link from a web page with a rank of 4. Page ranks of 7 and up are rare, where as pages with ranks 1 through 6 are much easier to find. There seems to be an exponential scale with every Page Rank number; to go from 5 to 6 is much easier than going from 6 to 7 …

How to find out what page rank a web site has?

For PC users, the easiest thing is to get the Google Toolbar where you get a display of each web sites page rank as you hit it. At this time Google doesn’t make a tool bar for the MAC.

Another thing to do is look at the top 10 web sites that appear in searches that you’re interested in and see if any will link to you.

I concentrate on Google because it accounts for the vast majority of the searches made today. The Google search engine actually powers other search engines like Yahoo, MSN and AOL among others.

What you put in the links makes a difference

When exchanging links with other web sites, it’s good to provide your link code so that they can simply cut and paste it into their web sites. Besides making their lives a little easier, you can control what link text is being used. The words used in links (link text) play and important role in categorizing your web site in the search engines. So remember to include some of your target keywords in your links.

Search engine optimization is not difficult if you understand the basic concepts. If you know what to do, your website will get the best possible rankings on Google and other important search engines.

The following list will help you to better understand SEO or to explain SEO to your clients:

Four things you should know about link building

1. Inbound links are very important

   The more websites link to your site, the easier it will be to get high rankings on Google. Google considers links to your site as votes for your site. The more votes your website has, the better your rankings will be.

   If more pages link to the website of your competitor, then it is likely that your competitor will get better rankings than you on Google.

2. It is important to get the right links

   In addition to the number of links to your website, Google also considers the quality of the links. Links from unrelated websites won’t help your search engine rankings as much as links from related websites that deal with a similar topic as your website.

   A link from a trusted website that itself has many links pointing to it will help your search engine rankings more than a link from a website with few inbound links.

3. It is important to keep on link building

   Many of your competitors will continue to work on their links. If you don’t keep on working on your links, your competitors will pass you in the search engine results sooner or later.

4. Google doesn’t like paid links

   Google considers links to your site as editorial votes for its quality. A paid link is not editorial. Google’s anti-spam team has asked webmasters to report paid links. If your competitors report your paid links, Google might penalize your website.

Three things you should know about web page optimization

1. Search engines rank single pages in the search results

   You should optimize a single page of your website for a single search term. Do not optimize the same page for more than one search term. It is much better if a web page is highly relevant to one search term than somewhat relevant to many search terms.

2. Google considers all pages of your website

   Although only a single page of your website will be listed in Google’s search results for a search term, Google will consider all pages of your website. If you optimize different pages of your website for different keywords that are all related to a certain topic, then Google will think that your website is relevant to this topic and it will be easier to get high rankings for your keywords.

3. Optimized web page content and inbound links work hand-in-hand

   If your website has both optimized content and good inbound links then it will be much easier to get high rankings on Google.

   A web page that has been optimized for the search term “green widgets” and that has many links from other web pages that use the term “green widgets” as the link text is much more likely to get a top ranking on Google than a page that only has the inbound links or the optimized content.

Three things you should know about the technical aspects of your website

1. Redirects can cause problems

   Web page redirects have been used by spammers in the past. That is why search engines don’t like it much. A 301 redirect is the only server side redirect that search engines interpret as a permanent redirect.

   All other redirects (except for a meta refresh redirect in some cases) don’t pass the links from the old page to the new page and they might even be interpreted as a spamming attempt.

2. Search engines don’t like duplicate content

   Google wants to list only one copy of a piece of content in the search results. If your web page contains the same content as another page on the web then Google will pick one version of the content for their search results.

   Google considers exact copies and near copies as duplicate content. Website navigation and boilerplate are usually ignored. Google compares your page’s unique content with other pages and if it has a certain similarity to another page than it is considered a duplicate.

3. You can create duplicate content by mistake

   Technically, the URLs http://example.com, http://www.example.com and http://www.example.com/index.php can contain different content. That is why search engines treat them as separate pages.

   Only link to one version of these URLs. Otherwise, the other versions might be duplicates of the other.

SEO is not a black art. If you do the right things in the right order then you will get the best possible rankings on Google and other important search engines.

PageRank is one of the factors that Google uses to evaluate your web site and determine its position in the Google search engine results. PageRank is a number from 0 to 10.

Generally, if your web site has a higher PageRank, it will appear earlier in Google search results pages, all other factors being equal. In fact, you can see a significant improvement in where your pages appear in search engine results when your PageRank increases.

How do you find your PageRank?

Install the Google Toolbar. You can get it for free at this link:

http://toolbar.google.com

After you install the toolbar, you will see the PageRank in the middle of the toolbar. It may have a small green bar. Hold your mouse over the green bar to see the Google PageRank for the site you are viewing.

So how does Google determine your PageRank?

Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes a page receives, however. Google also looks at the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves important weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important.

How can you improve your PageRank?

By getting votes from important pages (or, links to your web page from other web site pages that themselves have a high PageRank).

You can also be sure to include plenty of relevant, useful, fresh text in your pages. This is useful for Google, since you are providing information for the search engine to index, and it is useful for the people who visit your web site too.

The Myth of Rankings – Beyond Search Engine Optimization

What follows is a condensed version of a conversation that happens all too frequently when I am approached by a prospect interested in search engine optimization (SEO):

Prospect: We need our website optimized, because we aren’t showing up for any searches.
Me: What searches have you tried?
Prospect: We don’t show up for ANYTHING.
Me: Why do you want to show up in searches?
Prospect: Well, it seems like we should. Our competitors do, and our website is WAY better than theirs.
Me: But, really, what would you stand to gain from showing up prominently in search engine results?
Prospect: Well, we could get more people who are looking for our products or services to find out about us.
Me: So, what you are saying is that increasing your search engine results could help you to increase sales and awareness?
Prospect: Yes.
Me: Now we’re on the right track. Since your goals are to increase sales and awareness, have you thought about not only improving your search engine rankings, but also getting more people to take an action on your site that leads to a sale, getting more people to read your press releases or whitepapers so that they can consistently associate your company with your offering, or sending your prospects a regular newsletter to reinforce your name and expertise?
Prospect: Didn’t you hear me? Our website is great. We just don’t show up for searches.

And so it goes.

A consistent problem with the “ranking-centric” mindset demonstrated above is that it doesn’t reflect a powerful rationale for getting involved in SEO. Where is the true business case? What tangible results are desired? In general, if a prospect can’t explain what he or she hopes to achieve beyond “higher rankings” or “more traffic,” we’ll first try to educate, and, if that person can’t move beyond these base subjects, we’ll kindly refer them elsewhere.

More and more frequently, people are getting into SEO for the wrong reasons (and sometimes for no real reason at all). Achieving high rankings for targeted keyphrases, while an admirable and worthwhile goal, is really only a small piece of the entire online marketing puzzle. In this article, we’ll discuss a few additional, but equally vital, pieces.

Website Conversion

Website conversion is the art and science of getting more of the people who come to your website to take the action that you want them to take – fill out your contact form, read your whitepapers, sign up for your newsletter, or (in the case of e-commerce) buy something. For a company that is trying to build offline business, this action is typically something that gets prospects into the sales pipeline through some form of online registration. For a company or organization that is trying to build awareness, this action can be a number of things – getting visitors to a certain page of the site, getting them to stay longer at the site, or getting them to tell a friend about the site. The critical point that is commonly overlooked in a ranking-centric mindset is that no number of high search engine positions will address the real problem if your website is not serving as an effective marketing and sales tool. And, as I have said many times before, the overall net effect of raising your conversion rate from one to two percent is the same net effect as doubling your traffic, and it is almost always easier. Increasing the number of visitors to a site that does not convert them effectively is like pumping high performance gasoline into a car with engine trouble – it might help the car to run a little bit better, but if you’d done repairs before adding the premium fuel, it really would have hummed.

Online PR

Your website is only one potential online destination where people can find out about your company, and a typical user will regard your site as an advertisement since you have complete control over the content. With optimized press releases and expert articles, however, you can have your company name mentioned on popular news sites and industry portals, where credibility is more inherent.

Optimized Press Releases

Press releases that are optimized to appear when certain terms are typed into news search engines are an excellent way to build name recognition and credibility. If someone is taking the time to look for news related to your industry, he or she is probably either in your business, learning about your market, or writing a piece about your industry. The last category is especially significant since a recent study* indicates that 98% of journalists go online daily, 92% use the Internet for article research, and 73% use it to find press releases. Whatever motivation a person has when he or she searches for news related to your industry, you want your company represented in the results.

Expert Articles

Another great way to promote your expertise and business is to write expert articles and submit them to the leading online publications in your field. At least one person in your company is almost certainly an expert in your field – why not let everyone know that? A person that reads an expert article published on an industry portal, and who subsequently clicks through to the website (from the link in the expert’s bio) is extremely targeted and already has a favorable impression of your company. Moreover, the same study cited above found that 76% of journalists go online to seek news sources or experts. When your company has demonstrated that you have experts on staff by publishing articles in credible, non-biased forums, the phone invariably starts to ring. Your experts will be asked to provide their opinions, quotes, or experiences for feature articles, often in prestigious industry publications. The benefits of this, of course, do not need explanation. A side benefit to both of the strategies above is thatthey increase the number of inbound links to your website and, therefore, can help greatly enhance your search engine rankings – which might be the primary reason you looked into SEO in the first place.

Newsletters

Direct mail was once considered a marketer’s dream – but email newsletters can be much more effective. Imagine a direct mail list with a low delivery cost, where every single person on the list has shown an interest in receiving such mailings. Such is the nature of opt-in email newsletters. People have shown enough interest in your company, or, at least, in what your company has to say, to invite you to communicate with them on a regular basis. They are essentially giving you permission to keep yourself “first in mind” whenever they are considering your products or services. Such opportunities are rare in the marketing world. By combining the conversion principles you have applied to your website to your email newsletters, you can also get people to take an action that puts them into your sales pipeline without worrying about getting them to your website itself.

Conclusion

These are only a few of the additional ways to expand an online initiative beyond a misdirected ranking-centric approach. Weblogs (or blogs) are often considered another new frontier in online marketing, and we haven’t even touched on paid media opportunities such as banner ads or pay-per-click marketing. However, the three components mentioned above are important elements of a complete and successful online marketing initiative. An SEO campaign launched without considering them is like driving a four-cylinder car with only one cylinder firing – it will move, but you’d definitely reach your destination more quickly – and more smoothly – with all four.

The Top 3 Components Of Optimizing Your Web Site for Top Search Engine Rankings:

Everyday, the Search Engines average 300 Million searches. In a recent Forrester Research report 81% of consumers on the Internet find products and services by using the Search Engines. Search Engine Optimization allows you to achieve top search engine placement and a tap into a new source of qualified visitors who are actively searching for products and services on the Internet.

Unfortunately, only 7% of all websites are visible on the search engines according to a recent StatMarket.com study. The reason for this phenomenon is that most web sites are not properly optimized and promoted to achieve high search engine rankings.

1) The Content Component

The most important part of the content component (of a search engine algorithm) is keyword selection and where you place keywords on your web pages. In order for your target audience to find your site on the search engines, your web pages must contain keyword phrases that match the phrases your target audience is typing into search queries. Finding these keywords that your target audience uses to find your product is accomplished by conducting keyword research.

2) The Link Component – Internal Linking

The strategy of placing keyword-rich text on your web pages is useless if the search engine spiders have no way of finding that text. The way your web pages are linked to each other has huge impact on your site’s search engine positioning. Be sure to link your pages together with your keywords within your links.

3) The Link Popularity Component – Acquiring In-Bound Links

The “Link Popularity” or Google “PageRank” (PR) component of a search engine algorithm analyzes how many web sites link to your website.

95% of the battle of getting high rankings at the search engine is acquiring quality and relevant links pointing to your web site. Ever since Google entered the search engine market, all the major Search Engines have started using links as the primary way they rank web sites. This is known as your web site’s “Link Popularity” or in Google’s case it’s called “PageRank” or “PR.”

As Google explains, Links and PageRank are critical to ranking high in the search engines. In fact, inbound links and the text within those inbound links account for 95% of effective search engine optimization.

You have heard the phrase LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION. But wait, this is online! You don’t have to worry about location…or do you??!! Location is everything! Let’s take a moment to really think about this. You need to find something. What do you do? Most people will go to their favorite search engine and input what they are searching for. They will type in a few words that describe what they are looking for. The Search Engines come back with the most relevant websites for your search. However, your search for a keyword can result in thousands of links (if not millions).

So now you begin the task of clicking one by one on these links to find the information or service you need. You may go through page one to find what you are searching for, you may go through all of page two, but did you get to the website on page 10? If you are shaking your head No (who has that kind of time?) then you have realized how important LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION is to your website. We need to get your site located on the first page.

The quick and easy answer to this problem is of course PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising such as Google Adwords or Overture). But this is not the smartest way to solve your problem and the cost can put my small business owners of out business. We have found that most website owners state their largest expense is advertising. Imagine if you could cut your advertising in half! Imaging if you could eliminate your advertising cost all together and still achieve the same sales (if not more)!

Search Engine Optimization for your site is the answer.

Everyone wants to be listed in the number 1 spot. But most companies do not get listed under any of their keywords because they do not know how to implement search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is really not as hard as it sounds and most will find that once they understand how it works, it is actually quite simple.

A few things to keep in mind when starting your SEO Journey:

1. Make sure you use HTML Links. Some designers want to use beautiful image map links from their home page. Although this looks great, it does not help you with the search engines. Place links on your pages to the various pages to help not only the search engines find your pages but your visitors as well.

2. Frames…Well this is a hard one. Not only can some people not see frames, the search engines have a hard time with them as well. Also, what if your customer stumbles into one of the pages and does not see the frames? Just stay away from them all together.

3. DO NOT SPAM. Let me repeat this again. DO NOT SPAM. Spamming in any form is wrong. Most people consider spam as only used with emails. Wrong again unfortunately. Spamming will backfire on you. If search engines pick up on the fact that you are spamming, they have and will penalize your site.

Here are two examples of spam:

a. Content Spam. Data within a part of a Web resource designed for humans where that data is designed only for search engines to see.

b. Meta Spam. Data within a Web resource that describes that resource or another Web resource inaccurately or (when the data should be readable by humans) incoherently.

Take your time when it comes to your websites SEO. Make small changes and watch your rankings. If you move up, great! Make more changes. If you move down, undo undo undo. Always keep records of the changes you make so you can easily track what worked and what did not work for your site. Remember, we are in this for the long haul. Do it right the first time and make it last.

Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?

While Google doesn’t have relationships with any SEOs and doesn’t offer recommendations, we do have a few tips that may help you distinguish between an SEO that will improve your site and one that will only improve your chances of being dropped from search engine results altogether.

• Be wary of SEO firms that send you email out of the blue.Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:
  

  “Dear google.com,
  I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories…”

  Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for “burn fat at night” diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or through the Google Sitemaps (Beta) program, and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.
• Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or “throwaway” domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google’s index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it’s best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to “help” you.
• You should never have to link to an SEO.Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of “free-for-all” links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don’t affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines — at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.
• Some SEOs may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar.Most such proposals require users to install extra software, and very few users do so. Evaluate such proposals with extreme care and be skeptical about the self-reported number of users who have downloaded the required applications.
• Choose wisely.While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html. While Google doesn’t comment on specific companies, we’ve encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful.
• Be sure to understand where the money goes.While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they “control” other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn’t work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you’re considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.
• Talk to many SEOs, and ask other SEOs if they’d recommend the firm you’re considering.References are a good start, but they don’t tell the whole story. You should ask how long a company has been in business and how many full time individuals it employs. If you feel pressured or uneasy, go with your gut feeling and play it safe: hold off until you find a firm that you can trust. Ask your SEO firm if it reports every spam abuse that it finds to Google using our spam complaint form at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html. Ethical SEO firms report deceptive sites that violate Google’s spam guidelines.
• Make sure you’re protected legally.For your own safety, you should insist on a full and unconditional money-back guarantee. Don’t be afraid to request a refund if you’re unsatisfied for any reason, or if your SEO’s actions cause your domain to be removed from a search engine’s index. Make sure you have a contract in writing that includes pricing. The contract should also require the SEO to stay within the guidelines recommended by each search engine for site inclusion.

What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?

One common scam is the creation of “shadow” domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client’s behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor’s domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO.

Another illicit practice is to place “doorway” pages loaded with keywords on the client’s site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO’s other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.

What are some other things to look out for?

There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It’s far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:

• owns shadow domains
• puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
• offers to sell keywords in the address bar
• doesn’t distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear in search results
• guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
• operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
• gets traffic from “fake” search engines, spyware, or scumware
• has had domains removed from Google’s index or is not itself listed in Google