Do you want to improve your web site’s search engine rankings? Don’t know where to start?
Can’t afford to hire a professional search engine optimizer?
Then you need to read our search engine optimization tutorial!
Search engines are the starting point for most people when they’re looking for something on the Internet. This is why the most popular web sites are search engines and web portals with search functions.
Over 86% of all the Internet users reach web sites through search engines.
If your Website isn’t ranked at the top of the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, HotBot, and Lycos, you’re losing out on a lot of free traffic.
This tutorial is designed for complete novices. It’s suitable for all ages and no experience is required whatsoever.
Things I am about to explain:
01.What Is Search Engine Optimization?
02.Meta Tags
03.HTML Tags
04.Keywords
05.Link Popularity
06.Search Engine Submissions
07.Directory Submissions
08.Search Engine Submission
09.Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising
10.FAQ
01. What Is Search Engine Optimization? (SEO)
What is search engine optimization?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves making Web pages more search engine friendly to promote them as the most relevant solutions for the search engine’s users.
The improvements can mean the difference between achieving top rankings, which can result in thousands of free monthly visitors, and being lost in space.
Why is search engine optimization important?
Search engine optimization is basically about following search engine rules. If your Web page fits the criteria that a search engine considers the most important factors in terms of relevance, then it will reward you with a top ranking.
Search engine optimizers simply modify Web pages to fit these criteria. This gives the Web pages a better chance of being selected by the search engines as the most relevant page for the search query.
The importance of keyword research.
The Internet is basically a massive disorganized library. Search engines are like librarians. They both try to organize the content, so that people can find what they’re looking for without too much effort.
With books, librarians have the benefit of bibliographic databases and the information on the book covers to help them organize their library.
Search engines don’t have that luxury. There aren’t databases of every single Web page ever created. The Internet is just too big. There’s too much information to index.
The only way a search engine can try to organize the mass of information available on the Internet is by the use of keywords and links.
It makes sense to think that if a Web page contains enough keywords related to a certain topic, it should be relevant to a search for information on that particular topic.
So part of the search engine optimization specialist’s job is to make sure the Web pages target the keywords that people search for when looking for products, services or information related to what the Web page offers.
The variety of keywords used to search for the same product, service or information is quite staggering.
For example, here are the most popular keyword phrases used by people searching for information on search engine optimization:
search engine optimization
search engine ranking
search engine optimization
search engine placement
website optimization
search engine positioning
web site optimization
high search engine ranking
web page optimization
search engine promotion
top search engine ranking
high search engine rankings
search engine rankings
better search engine placement
high search engine placement
search engine optimizations
high search engine positioning
engine optimization resources
high seo
high page rank
You notice how many different variations people use to search for information on the same topic?
The fact is, unless a page contains all of the keywords in a search query, then it will have very little of appearing at the top of the rankings.
Before Web pages can be optimized, you must conduct research to determine which keywords to target. This involves finding targeted keywords, determining their popularity, assessing the amount of competition, and then deciding which keywords to use in your Web pages.
Fortunately, there are tools to help you find out what people are really searching for. Look at the keywords chapter for more information.
02. Meta Tags.
Meta tags are hidden HTML tags used to describe various aspects about a Web page. The two most important meta tags are the meta description and meta keywords tags. Let’s take a closer look at each meta tag.
Sample meta tags:
Code:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Meta Tags</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Guide to what meta tags are and how you should use them.">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="meta, tags, free, keywords.">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Meta description tags.
The contents of meta description tags are indexed by some search engines as the page description in its search engine results.
However, meta description tags is often misused, with misleading or even false descriptions about a page. As a result, the relevancy of search results are often compromised, so search engines have begun to de-emphasize the importance and even totally ignore the contents of the tag.
Some search engines, such as AltaVista and Inktomi, do still index the contents of a meta description tag for its search results. But if the meta description tag is missing, the search engine will usually extract a description from the body text.
In general, search engines will index the first 135-249 characters of the meta description tag contents. Write a description that sells the page.
Include the most important keywords at the beginning of the tag. But, don’t just fill the description tag with keywords.
Meta keywords tags.
The contents of a meta keyword tag is used to help define the important keywords of a page. It sounds good in theory. However, in practice, the meta keywords tag is often misused, including the addition of excessive or irrelevant keywords. So much so, that most, but not all, search engines totally ignore the contents of the meta keywords tag.
03. HTML Tags.
Find out how to optimize the essential HTML tags.
The 3 most important HTML tags in search engine optimization are title tags, header tags, and ALT text. Let’s take a closer look at each HTML tag.
Title tags.
Most of the major search engines give the most relevance to keywords in the title tags within the Web page. As such, every page should have a title tag. In general, I have found that short keyword rich descriptions in title tags work best.
Good title tag:
Code:
<TITLE>Search Engine Optimization</TITLE>
Bad title tag:
Code:
<TITLE>prosoftstudio.com - Search engine optimization tips, tricks, news, resources, tools and much more besides!</TITLE>
Header tags.
Many of the major search engines place a lot of relevance on keywords in header tags (H1, H2 and H3). As such I recommend that you sprinkle keyword rich header tags on your Web pages.
Sample header tags:
Code:
<H1>Search Engine Optimization</H1>
<H2>Search Engine Positioning</H2>
ALT text.
Always include ALT text to describe the contents of an image. Use keyword rich descriptions in the ALT text, as some search engines index the keywords.
You will also provide a text description to visitors with slow download connections or have their images turned off. But to ensure that the text is visible, you must set the image’s width and height dimensions.
The use of ALT text also enable visually disabled visitors using screen readers, or reviewers. Images can be translated, only if there is alternative text describing the image.
04. Keywords.
Keywords contained within a Web page are the most important element to achieving high search engine rankings.
Keywords are by no means the only relevant factor in how search engines rank a Web page. Other factors also count. But the majority of search engine optimization strategies involve a Web page’s keywords in one form or another.
Therefore, it’s fair to say that keywords are the most important element to achieving top search engine rankings. After all, if a page had no text at all, there is nothing for a search engine to index!
Perfect keywords.
You should create each Web page by concentrating on the following (in order of importance):
* one keyword or keyword phrase matching the page content,
* and most frequently used by the target audience,
* and has the least number of competing pages in the search engines.
Admittedly this is not easy and is not always possible. And how do you go about finding the one perfect keyword phrase that matches the page content, that is most frequently used by the target audience, and has the least number of competing pages in the search engines?
Keyword frequency.
Keyword frequency refers to the number of times a keyword phrase appears within a page. The theory is that the more times a keyword appears within a web page, the more relevant the page is likely to be for someone searching those keywords. But do not abuse the system by repeating the same keywords over and over again.
Keyword density.
Keyword density is the ratio (percentage) of keywords contained within the total number of indexable words within a web page. In general, I suggest using a keyword density ratio in the range of 2-8%.
Keyword prominence.
Keyword prominence is about improving the prominence of keywords by placing important keywords at the top of a Web page. Basically, the closer your important keywords are to the start of a page, a sentence, title or meta tag, the better.
I generally recommend registering keyword rich domain names for search engine optimization campaigns.
By the way, if you’re looking to register a domain name for your search engine optimization campaign, or for any other reason, please try http://www.prosoftstudio.com
Keywords separated by hyphens.
Did you also notice that the domain name used a hyphen to separate the keywords?
I have yet to find conclusive proof that separating keywords in a domain name improves rankings. But I do suggest that you do use this format, just to be on the safe side. After all, you wouldn’t want a search engine to index the wrong keywords.
For example, what are the keywords in this domain name, “newshut.com?” Are they “news” and “hut,” or “new” and “shut?”
You can see how a search engine can easily index different keywords from those you had in mind. If the domain name is, “news-hut.com,” it would be clear to a search engine exactly what the keywords are.
05. Link Popularity.
Guide to link popularity and how it affects your search engine rankings.
Link popularity refers to the number of links pointing to and from related sites and is an extremely important method of improving your site’s relevancy in search engines.
There are three types of links that will increase the link popularity of your site; internal, incoming and, to a lesser extent, outgoing links.
Let’s take a look at each one in more detail.
There are free Open Source Link Popularity checkers to download or use all over the internet, just use your favorite search engine to look for them.
Internal links.
Internal link popularity refers to the number of links to and from pages within a site. I recommend cross linking your important related pages. This helps search engine spiders find and index your most important pages quicker, especially if some pages are buried deep within your site.
Site maps.
Site maps are visual models of a site’s content that allows users to find specific content or page.
Site maps are like interactive table of contents, with links leading to most, if not all, pages of a web site. Site maps are organized hierarchically, breaking down the site’s information into increasingly specific subje
ct areas.
If you have more than a dozen pages, I recommend you include a site map in your site. The add a link to the site map page from the home page, and on other pages. This way search engine spiders will find the site map, crawl the links and index your entire web site.
Incoming links.
Incoming link popularity refers to links pointing to a site from other related sites. In addition, there are two types of incoming links:
1. Links from sites you control.
I recommend cross linking all of your web sites. Select keywords that describe the site you’re linking to. The reason for doing this is because some of the major search engines, such as Google, place a great importance on the text used within, and close to, links.
2. Links from sites you don’t control.
There are two ways of finding sites to link to yours. The best way to get other sites to link to yours is to ask them politely.
06. Search Engine Submissions.
Guide to what search engines and web directories are and how to submit your web site to them.
The term “search engine submissions” is as the name suggests about submitting to the search engines, in order to get your site indexed by the search engines and web directories, so that people can find your site. Search engine submission is also known as search engine registration.
Search engine optimization on the other hand refers to search engine positioning and placement, a concept whereby you improve your site’s design and content to achieve higher rankings in search engines. Do not confuse search engine submission with search engine optimization.
Free submissions doesn’t guarantee inclusion.
You’re going to learn how to submit your Web pages to the search engines. Where possible, I will discuss free search engine submissions. Most search engines offer a “paid inclusion” service which guarantees inclusion of your Web pages, for a fee.
However, I haven’t covered the paid services in this course, so as not to confuse those of you completely new to search engine optimization.
Please note that submitting your web site via free submission forms in search engines and web directories doesn’t guarantee inclusion into an index. You may have to resubmit again and again get all of your Web pages indexed.
What are web directories?
Web directories are human edited lists of web sites organized into categories of topics and subtopics. Web directory submissions are an essential part of the search engine marketing and optimization process.
I highly recommend that you spend a bit of time selecting appropriate categories and composing your web directory titles and descriptions, as they will ultimately determine the success of your listings in the directories, and can also contribute a major part to the success of your listings in the search engines as well.
Each web directory have its own set of editorial and submission policies. So study the policies carefully before making any submissions. I recommend you submit your web sites to the top web directories, before submitting them to the search engines.
As search engines often crawl these directories.
07. Directory Submissions.
I will ad this later on, as my research is outdated on this topic, if someone else would want to write a piece about this, be my guest.
08. Search Engine Submission
How to submit your web site to the top search engines.
Here are the 2 major search engines that you should submit to.
Google
Google is the most popular search engine, powering Google, AOL and Netscape search.
Google searches over 4 billion Web pages, supports 82 languages and processes more than 200 million searches a day.
Submit your site to Google for free.
http://www.google.com/addurl/?hl=nl&continue=/addurl
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Is called, “Yahoo! Search Technology.” It powers Yahoo!, AllTheWeb, AltaVista, and MSN. Yahoo! offer a free site submission program. Expect a delay of several weeks before your URL is crawled.
http://www.help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/su…st-01.html
You can find a list of 49 search engines you can submit to elsewhere on these forums. This article is also writen by me and should be easy to find.
09. Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising.
How to get top rankings in major search engines in no time at all.
Pay Per Click (PPC) search engines are also known as Bid For Location, Bid For Position, Cost Per Click (CPC), Pay For Performance, Pay Per Performance, Pay For Placement, Pay Per Placement, Pay For Position, Pay Per Position, Pay For Ranking, Pay Per Ranking and Pay For Result search engines.
Pay per click search engines refer most of their traffic via partner sites. The main advantage of advertising in pay per click search engines is that they can guarantee top listings in the search results of top search engines, web directories, Web portals and meta crawlers. You only pay for click through to your web site.
10. FAQ.
May I link to your web site?
Of course! Please help us spread the word by adding a link.
You should ad the link to: http://9beta.blogspot.com
Source: profitstudio.com
Google Zeitgeist looks at the big events, memorable moments and emerging trends that captivated us in 2008. The top 5 fastest rising search terms after Sarah Palin are beijing 2008, facebook login, tuenti, heath ledger. Obama comes on 6th position and Sarah Palin sure beats him here. “Fastest rising” means they looked at the most popular searches conducted for 11 months of 2008 (list is out by early December) and rank them based on how much their frequency increased compared to 2007.
I’ve seen a bunch of other bloggers list ideas on how to find .EDU and .GOV blogs by utilizing advanced search queries in the popular search engines. Some of the search queries I’ve seen listed are useful, but many seem to create an extensive list of false positives (i.e. websites that are not blogs or blogs with closed comments). To combat this, I’ve tweaked out a few queries to make them more accurate. While the queries certainly aren’t perfect, they do take you to .EDU and .GOV domains that are actually hosting blogs with visitor comment capabilities.
