SEO Tutorials

Here i will talk about the main aspects of SEO from keywords to techniques....enjoy!

Define SEO...
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to many a confussing topic but in retrospect is very simple: SEO is used to try and get your website recognized by search engines with new content added and your website generally kept up to date and hopefully reach the top of most of them.

SEO techniques...
Known design techniques can be used (or not) by Web designers to improve a search engine’s ability to “read” the content of a Web site and its pages.  Wonderful and complex Web sites can easily be created without using any SEO techniques, or by using techniques that directly interfere with a search engine’s ability to “read” the content of a site. If you want to determine whether your Web site has a fighting chance of being highly listed by a search engine, you need to be aware of these known and non-mysterious techniques.

SEO downfalls to your website
If your website like mine http://www.yours4free.co.uk is mainly images or for others flash content SEO's dont pick this up, which can be a big drawback for getting a high rank so try to include as much HTML text as possible.

Why do you need text content
Search engines love text content, its their food which they continue to go back to eating every few days and when you add new content the search engines love it even more, this will enable you to get a higher rank basically which is what hopefully you want, never adding new content and letting it stay the way it is over a period of time could damage your rankings unless you have a serious amount of backlinks.

Text Content?
What do you mean? simply written words or phrases like this blog, search engines crawl this using something called 'spiders' which detect text content on your website, so the more the better.

If you have a load of pictures or flash images whcih you think will look great and cant wait for a search engine to start tracing your page it wont, they will simply not notice it at all, like i said before you need text to get a good ranking without this you are wasting your time in trying to get a high rank.

The 'spiders' see code in your website not what you and I would see so make sure you know some good html coding before starting your website.

Does my text content work?
Well this all depends on how well you put it into your website by using good key phrases and keywords. For example, the key-word “free stuff” can be repeated in several different places within the page code:

Domain name. Ideally, your Web site’s domain name should contain your most important keyword. For example, if you are in the business of selling doo-hickies, a great domain name would be “www.doo-hickies.com.” Unfortunately, most keywords are already employed in someone else’s domain name.  If possible, use your most critical keyword or phrase in your domain name. If that is not possible, see URL names, below.

“Your Title” meta-tag. Ex.: “Free stuff at www.yours4free.co.uk”

“Your Description” meta-tag. Ex.: “Tired of paying for things expecially with the recession then why  not get your stuff for free.”

“Your Keywords” meta-tag. Nowadays keywords are not really that essential as google dont tend to track these anyore but other giants like yahoo and msn still do so its still worth while putting some in, "Free, Stuff, Free Stuff"

URL names. If your URL has your main keyword(s) in it then this is a big bonus for example www.yours4free.co.uk with a keyword being free would do alot better than www.yours4.co.uk

“ALT” tags (for graphics and photos). Example: “Free” “ALT” text is always visible to the search engine, but is only displayed to the Web visitor when the mouse is hovered over the graphic or photo for which the “ALT” text has been edited..

“H1,” “H2,” etc. Search engines pay more attention to text that is emphasized with heading, bold “B,” underline “U,” or italic “I” tags. An “H1” heading may look like this on a Web page

<center><B>Free Stuff</B></center>

The search engine will see something like this: “H1”Free Stuff”/H1”

Links. Search engines rate text contained in links as more important than regular text. For search engines, Example A below is more important than Example B, even though both contain the same keywords and point to the same Web page (the bolding serves to illustrate links:

Example A: <B><u>Free Stuff</u></B> testimonials.

Example B: Free Stuff <B><u>here</u></B>.

Real text, not graphical text. Real text is any text that can be read by a search engine because the text is contained within the underlying Web page code. Graphical text is any text that is contained within an image, graphic or Flash movie, and is not actually present within the underlying Web page code. Keywords that are contained within well-written, contextually appropriate sentences, paragraphs or lists are rewarded with higher ratings by search engines.

Page placement. Keywords place higher on the page rate higher than keywords buried within the text further down on the page.

Keywords...
The use of keywords on a page should be natural but purposeful, not forced or overdone. Your Website should not resort to certain “tricks” to put keywords in the Web page’s search engine readable text. Here are some guaranteed ways to get penalized, banned or ignored by all search engines:

Dont stuff your page with keywords. On some Websites you will see some words repeated over and over and over again, assuming that this give them a great search engine ranking. When infact the opposite actually happens. Search engines identify the over-use of keywords as “spamming,” and can actually ban your Website from their index for doing this.

Use invisible keywords or text for that matter. Invisible keywords are invisible only to you, not to the search engine. Web site creators can make words invisible by simply making them the same color as the background.  If the underlying code for a Web page contains invisible keywords, it will be penalized, or even banned, by all search engines.

Use unreadable tiny fonts. If your Website containes extremely tiny font (less than say 5pt) size to hide key words, search engines would probably penalize your site.

Use keywords in your <Keywords> meta-tag that aren’t actually on the page. Search engines that still use the <Keywords> meta-tag fully expect to find the keywords within the readable text on the page itself. If they don’t, they may ban your website.

Do These Things!

Robots.txt. Include this file in your root directory. It can contain instructions for search engine robots regarding which directories and files it should spider, mainly every website will have this including mine.

A Sitemap. Create a Sitemap. A Sitemap.html page can be created that contains links to each Web page that needs to be spidered. If a link is created on the Home page to the Sitemap.html page, then the spider will follow the link to the Sitemap.html page where it will, in turn, follow all the links on the Sitemap.html page. This helps search engine spiders know which Web pages to index, sitemaps can be created for free just sitemap generator on google.

Then upload your sitemap.xml to google, i can imagine you have indexed your site to so once you have done this go to the sitemap tab and upload it from your computer.

Info.txt File. Create this file and place it in your Web site’s root directory. Some search engines use an info.txt file that contains specially formatted information about the Web site, including the site URL, site name and descriptive text.

Links (Backlinks) from “Like” Sites. Google loves other websites with your link on them, this can increase your popularity and PR rank (PageRank) with all search engines and is a definte must for every website.

Local Listings in Search Engines. Google, Yahoo! and MSN enable you to list your business information, including the Web site URL, in a special section called Local Listings. Take advantage of this to help increase your page rank and page listing.

The Use of Smaller Search Engines. Google, Yahoo! and MSN aren’t the only important search engines. There are a hundreds and thousands of smaller search engines which can contribute to improved listings and Google PageRank. Also, some smaller search engines are specialized search engines that someone may reach through a Google search anyway, so it would be good to be listed in such specialized search engines and most just require you to submit your website URL.

Write Articles On Submission Sites. Another way to increase your Web site’s visibility and listing is to publish quality articles and documents on the various document submission sites. These sites will publish your (approved) document on their own site, and it will usually be picked up by other sites or blogs looking for good content. The result is that a number of links are created from those sites back to your Web site.

Avoid These Things

Dynamic Web Pages. Don’t use them unless you absolutely have to. Search engines have problems reading them. Dynamic Web pages are created “on the fly” as a visitor navigates from page to page. The content of dynamic Web pages is usually stored in a database, and is not loaded for presentation until the content is requested. Dynamic Web pages are usually identified by punctuation characters in the page URL:

http://www.cpaforyou.com/Default.aspx?tabid=29

In this case the dynamic Web page is identified by the “?” in the last portion of the URL. Dynamic websites can make it easier to maintain a website but can cause your site to be difficult to find by search engines.

Broken Or Non Active Links. Make sure that all links on your Web pages work properly. Search engines hate broken links, these can be that when you click on a link it redirects you to a "Address not found" page.

Link Farms. Do not use link farms or link sharing schemes. Search engines very much value links from like-site to like-site; they do not like links from unrelated site to unrelated site. Your listing rank may be lowered if your Web site is part of a link farm. Here’s what Google have said:

Linking schemes will often do a site more harm than good. Many sites that advertise link-sharing programs not only offer little value, but will distribute your email address without your permission, resulting in an increased volume of unwanted mail.

The Looks...
Your site could be the ugliest in the world on the web, but if you have a good build with relevant text and alot of brilliant Backlinks then there is no reason why you wouldnt be number one on a search engine, most do not care what your site looks like as remember they dont trace what it looks like only the relevant content.

Dont Always Trust...
Website companys claiming they can get you to page 1 on google, remember there are only 10 spots on the first and what if 100 people have brought this package?. For example, they may claim, “We Can Get Your Website to Page One’. Here’s what Google says:

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!

Some SEOs may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar, do not trust these either.

Others may claim “Guaranteed Search Engine Listings.” Understand that this is a claim that even the search engines will not make without spending some money. No search engine that I know of guarantees that your Web site will be listed (except for those accepting payment for listing), so how can any company make it? They can’t. However, most Web sites are eventually listed by search engines for free.

In my own experience, most search engines pick up a well-designed, search-engine-optimized Web site within 72 hours of a free submission like mine was. It may not be listed highly at first, but it is listed and from there you can start buliding on it.

So What Can an SEO Company Really Claim to Do for You?

Most can do what i have mentioned in this blog but for a charge, they can evalute your website with their own software, or they could create a website for you with good SEO optimization but again this will not come cheaply, the best way of SEO is to research and DIY (Do It yourself) there are hundreds of websites and blogs out there helping people out with SEO without charging you just like mine because of how simple it is to learn and then apply to your website.

Breakdown...
I hope in someway this has helped you with your websites SEO here is a breakdown of what you should do

Gain Backlinks

Update Content Regularily

Index your site with search engines

Use relevant keywords

If you already have a Web site, it is not too late to make it SEO compliant. It may take some hard work but at the end of the day what will you get? a good ranking on search engines which is what everyone wants.

Some Helpful Links :

WebCEO - A brilliant piece of free software which most SEO companys would use to optimize your site, once you have created your site download WebCEO and start the process of optimizing your site, once completed it will tell you all the areas where you can improve your site wheter it be keywords or html coding.

http://www.webceo.com

Ranking high in Google’s search results can have a phenomenal impact on the success of your website or business.
You can either spend the money of a Search Engine Optimisation company, or if you want to try it yourself, there are some things you can do the hlep your site out without spending money.


<b>Step 1: Keyword Research</b>
What keywords do you think other people would type in to search for your products/website? A keyword can be one word (e.g. “money”), but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferred, because they are more specific and more likely to be what people are searching for. example : insted of just Laptop they could be more specific : Acer Aspire 5920 Laptop.


Write down as many as you can think of. Brainstorm your ideas. Think of alternative words. Consider phrases if they were searched by an area example “laptops bristol”. Also, get some ideas from other websites. Try to make a a good list of keywords.

Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched the most. But remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings.  If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “computers" you will have a very hard time to get up near the top spots. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to your website but that are not too farfetched. It’s also a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase example "affordable cheap computers".


This next step shows you how to make some improvements to your websites home page.

<b>Step 2: Web Copy </b>
Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords.  The more prominent they are, the better. (Keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.)
    

Here’s how you can increase each keyword’s prominence:

•    Importantly if you have your keyword in your URL this will be a great boost example if your keyword was computers then www.computers.com would be brilliant.

•    Make sure you include your keywords in your headings and titles of each page.

•    Include keywords towards the top of the page and towards the end.

•    Bold or italicise main keywords.

•    Instead of having a link to another page that says "Click here", re-word it to include your keywords, example "Click here for Computer parts".


Once you have edited your website, consider adding new fresh content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer,  an FAQ and useful informative articles about your products/services.


It’s also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Like many sites i create in photoshop this can be a sever drawback for SEO but with a little work you can incorporate HTML text into them anyway onto step 3.


<b>Step 3: Linking</b>
Each link from another website [Backlinking] to your website [not from your website] is considered by search engines to be in plain terms good and the more you have the higher you will rank.


But its the quality, not quantity, of the backlinks that is crucial. The other websites should be relevant to your industry, and preferably have a high PR [Page Rank] themselves or in simple terms be popular with search engines as an example ten backlinks with a PR of 5 would be alot better than 100 backlinks with a PR of 0.

 
Try to think of some websites that could link to you, and then try to write a friendly email to each describing what benefit their visitors would get in going onto your website, and request them to create a link to your website. Most websites will not respond to you and will simply click delete others might charge you for a backlink and some might be generous and simply add your link to their site, it does vary.


How do I monitor my results?
Find your website in Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and remember your ranking.

Remember to keep updating your content, and continually increase the number of backlinks to your website, this is very important to get a good ranking.

If you start to see yourself climb you will notice an increase in traffic to your website aswell so make sure you have enough traffic available from your hosting service.

So make sure you have alot of quality Backlinks and keep updating your website regularily to stay ahead of the game.

Q1. What is search engine optimization (SEO)?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of guiding the development or redevelopment of a website so that it will attract visitors by gaining top ranking on the major search engines such as google for selected keyword phrase searches.

Q2. Why should I go in for search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization is required to gain more exposure and get more traffic on the Internet. This helps to improve your websites popularity.

Q3. How long will it take me to get to the top of the search engines?
This depends on how much you are willing to put into it, the more new content you add and the more backlinks you aquire the higher it will rank.

Q4. Are search engine rankings guaranteed?
There is no guarantee as to where you will end up on search rankings no matter how much work you put in, but the more you do effectively the higher you will rank.

Q5. What are the factors on which your site rankings depend?
The below listed factors are responsible for good rankings.

o The competition for your keywords

o Number of backlinks you have.

o How long your website has been listed on the web.

o How much good and new content is provided on your site

o The design quality of your site.

One of the most important sectors in SEO but yet its overlooked so many times. In order to drive a good amount of traffic to your site you need to rank high for keywords that get searched for basically. Ok you mught be numer 1 on Google but what good is it if no one is searching for the keywords that got you there?

To go about keyword research you need to figure out what keywords you would like to use. We will use “FREE” for an example. Your next step is to go look for some keywords that have to deal with rabbits. To do this you can use wordtracker, keyworddiscovery, or overtures tools to check searches per day. Now remember these are not always accurate searches per day so don’t always trust them and compare the results with each other.

Now when you do your search for “FREE” you are going get a return of popular searches with the word FREE in them. Now you take all of these keywords and run them through a search on Google using the command (allinanchor:keyword). This will return all the results of pages that use that keyword in their anchor text. This will give you a rough idea on how competitive that keyword is. If you return a result less than 1,000 then that keyword is pretty easy to rank for and won’t take much effort, but up in the lets say millions then you will have some trouble.

Now once you found a keyword that has little competition and is searched for a decent amount of time per day you can take it to the next step. This would be to evaluate all the sites that are listed in the first page results. To evaluate them you are looking basically on how many incoming links are going to that page. The fewer the better.

Now you just rinse and repeat until you find enough keywords to bring in some decent traffic and thats it!