Practical tips for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Jun/091
Search Engine Optimization has been in practice since the 1990’s and quickly caught on as a method of ranking high in search engine query results, attracting web traffic, and increasing sales for businesses. The nature of the internet has changed drastically since then and is now indispensable for the modern person. Having grown up during the internet boom I have often thought to myself, “Where did people go for information before the internet?”. The answer is surprisingly similar to how we find information today: encyclopedias, dictionaries, periodicals, newspapers, yellow pages, but the method of finding the information is what has changed. Search engines like Google and Yahoo! have become entire libraries at our fingertips, connecting us with more information than any building could hold on old-fashioned paper. As of March 2009, Google averages 293.8million searches per day, an astonishing number that more than ever depicts how technology has impacted our “modern” lives.
If you have a website, or have ever created a website, then you should at least be familiar with the term SEO. Simply put SEO is the art of achieving high rankings within the results of search engine queries. There are “black hat” methods of SEO which employ guerrilla internet tactics such as cramming their web pages with excessive keywords, irrelevant material, and repetitive content, but I will be covering “white hat” methods that are used by most individuals and companies. It should be noted that these methods will not guarantee that your site will be listed after a search engine query due to details of how search engines work which will not be covered herein.
PART ONE: Let’s start at the very beginning with keywords, page titles, and content.
Keywords: Keywords are used in web pages to indicate the possible content for a web page page and should pertain the subject matter of the website. Choosing a list of keywords that relate to the purpose of your site is a fundamental step of SEO and is the easiest to do. It is a matter of analyzing your content and figuring out what people would search for to find your website (not just what you would search). For example, if you have a website for banana flavored foods, then keywords relevant would be: food, foods, banana, bannannas, bannanna, bannanas, banannas, bananas, banana flavored, flavored food, flavored foods, flavored treats, flavored candy, flavored candies, banana candy, banana candies, banana ice cream, banana fruit, banana gum, banana beer, banana beer, banana flour, etc..
Notice how the keyword content has singulars, plurals and misspellings. These should all be taken into consideration because they are all handled differently by the search engines. People missppell (<—) words all the time, so why not take into account others’ inability to type?
Where to put keywords: Keywords belong in a “meta tag”. This tag must be contained between the opening and closing of the <head> tags.
Example:
<html>
<head>
<title>title here</title>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”food, foods, banana, bannannas, bannanna, bannanas, banannas, bananas, banana flavored, flavored food, flavored foods, flavored treats, flavored candy, flavored candies, banana candy, banana candies, banana ice cream, banana fruit, banana gum, banana beer, banana beer, banana flour” />
</head>
</html>
Another method of gathering keyword ideas is to research what keywords your competition is using. All HTML pages on the internet can have their code examined by any user and it is very easy to do. To view a website’s page source in Mozilla Firefox simply click View =>Page Source, or press Ctrl+U. To view a website’s page source in Internet Explorer click View =>Source, or press Alt+V then C. I do not recommended copying word for word because that would be unethical, but I do recommend taking a look for inspiration and critical terms.
Page Titles: As you can see above there is a tag called “title” which is the information that will be displayed at the top of the browser window or tab. Titles are important to search engines and should contain carefully selected keywords that describe precisely what the website is about. Many webpages have titles like ‘XYZ Company’, ‘Welcome to XYZ company‘, or ‘Home Page’, but these are not beneficial in any way for improving SEO. A better solution would be (referring back to the bananas example) would be ‘Distributors of banana flavored foods, banana candy, and everything else bananas’. Choose your title carefully, because it will have an impact on your SEO results.
Content: Content is perhaps where wording is the most crucial for SEO. As I have just learned when making Stulock&Stone.com, writing content for your site can be a very frustrating and time consuming effort, but one that should not be taken lightly. It is important to include your keywords in your content often; this will increase your page ranking on search engine queries because one of the methods that search engines use is looking for word frequency. This is commonly referred to as keyword density. Keyword density is the measurement in percentage, the number of times a keyword or phrase appears compared to the total number of words in a page [source]. There are many free tools online to measure your keyword density.
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/
PART TWO: Submitting your site to search engines and directories
Search Engines: After you have created and examined your web pages for keywords, title, and content, it is time to submit your site to search engines. The Internet is a vast and ever growing network, and without submitting your site it is essentially invisible to search engines. Since many search engines use the same indexes it is only necessary to submit your website to a few. The links below will take you to the pages where you can submit your website URL.
Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
(Microsoft) Bing: http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx
Directories: Unlike search engine submissions, which are general in nature, getting your site listed in directories is a more involved (but not harder) process. Directories allow site owners to enter their site into their directory permanently to be accessible for web users looking for a specific topic or service. You name it and there is probably a directory for it, and the good news is that most of them are free. By doing a Google search for ‘website directory‘ I received exactly 215 million hits. Here are some quick links to the top results:
http://dir.yahoo.com/ (commercial listings are not free)
http://www.wowdirectory.com/ (free, express, and sponsored available)
http://www.allthewebsites.org/
Closing Remarks: While this information is by no means exhaustive it should give you insight on the process of Search Engine Optimization. It is a practice that takes time and patience without guaranteeing results, but do not be disgruntled since it does often take time to move higher up in the rankings. For more information I suggest reading Search Engine Optimization for Dummies and SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible, as both are excellent sources of information and go into much greater detail than I have. Good luck with your SEO endeavors!
Until next time,
Alexander Stulock
Designer/Developer – Stulock&Stone Designs
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12:24 AM on June 24th, 2009
Pretty good post. I just found your site and wanted to say
that I’ve really liked reading your posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your blog and I hope you post again soon!