Search Engine Optimization Basics for Beginners
Search Engine Optimization
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) there is much to know. In this tutorial I will cover the basics and go further in depth in later tutorials. We will start with a brief history of SEO, what it is and the different techniques used.
What Is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO is the process of editing the HTML code and or content of a web page to increase visibility in search engines, such as Google. �This process is used to increase the �organic� or un-paid traffic from these search engines. �The goal of all SEO is to gain web presence; this in turn generates traffic and potentially revenue.
Are there Different Types of SEO?
The term SEO encompasses a few different types of optimization; we can target specific markets through Image Searches, Local Searches, Video Searches and Industry Specific Vertical Search Engines.
As with almost everything in life, there are White Hat and Black Hat SEO techniques.
Now that we know what SEO is and how we can use it to our advantage lets learn how to implement it properly. I will go ahead and forewarn you that Search Engine Optimization is constantly changing and in order to remain ranked high in search engines we have to put a lot of work in.
Search Engine Optimization and Web Design:
You may be asking yourself at this point, how can my web design affect my SEO efforts? Well, a properly coded website is much easier for a search engine�s robot to read, and interpret what is important information.
When designing your website, we have a few basic things we need to remember. The robots that crawl our web pages read the content from Top Left to Bottom Right. With this being said, we need to ensure our robots are able to find our keywords quickly and easily. �
I will explain further on this subject as we discuss the different techniques we will be using.
Content and Keywords
When filling our web pages with content we need to remember a few things.
Original content is always best, and we also need to include our keywords in our articles. Also when writing articles we need to ensure our readers know exactly what we are offering with the first few sentences. �Our readers will want to know what we are selling, what sets our products apart, how affordable our products are if you are a storefront business, you will always want to include where you are located.
When it comes to keywords it is best to choose four to five keywords to target, the keywords we select will be based upon our products or services being offered. When selecting your keywords, we want to select keywords with the least amount of competition.
For instance, if we were optimizing an antique toys website, searching for the term �Antique Toys� Google would return us 415,000 related web pages, but if we searched for �Hand Crafted Antique Toys� instead Google would return us 184,000 related web pages. It is easier to compete with a lower number. �Wouldn�t you agree?
Before we have finished selecting our keywords we need to check the page rank of the top five listings on each keyword. If you don�t already know how to check page rank, please download and install the Google Toolbar for your browser of choice. Ideally we want our top five listings to have a page rank of 4 or less. This will make it much easier to get a top listing on these terms.
So now we have our keywords selected and are ready to write our content. When writing our content we need to position our keywords strategically and have a proper density throughout the article. �(There is some controversy on if this makes a difference or not, but always better to play it safe.) Our main keyword should be used in the first few words and also in the last few words of our article. We will want to keep around a 20-30% keyword density as well. You can determine your keyword density with the following formula:
For this example we will assume our article is 100 words and our keyword �Toy� has been used 20 times. Resulting in a keyword density of 20%
20 (number of times our keyword is used) / 100 (total number of words in our article) =.20 (20%).
Now that we have covered the selection of keywords and proper placement of our keywords on our web page, I will move on to formatting our html code.
Formatting HTML Code for SEO:
During this section, I will discuss parts of our HTML page from top to bottom just as if we were coding it from scratch.
Meta Tag Optimization:
We want to make sure every page has a title. A good title is important as robots read this, and it is what will show as our search result in Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Our title should be short, to the point and contain our main keywords.
Hand Crafted Antique Toys � Toy Store
In that example we have used our main keyword phrase along with our company name in our title tag.
Next we will add a description to our site. Most search engines also post this in the search results, so we need it to also contain keywords but carefully written. This description should contain no more than 170 characters.
Hand Crafted Antique Toys � Toy Store
In the above example we have used, keywords relevant to an antique toy store in the title also in the Meta description. Next we will add Meta keywords, Google no longer uses them for ranking a web page but some of the older search engines still do.
Hand Crafted Antique Toys � Toy Store
In the above example we have added a Meta keyword element, once again Google no longer uses this but it is an added measure to include it for some of the older engines such as AltaVista.
Our head tag is now complete. Keep in mind we only want the most relevant information in it, stuffing it full of non pertinent information will only penalize us in the rankings.
Moving on down our page we need to emphasize our keywords in our html code. We will do this by using our heading tags. There are 6 heading tags at our disposal, we can use them all, the robots will determine the value of the keyword emphasized based on which heading number it is, i.e.
will be held more important than
.
Antique Spinning Tops
Do you remember playing with spinning tops as a child? We sure do, that is why we are pleased to offer hand crafted antique spinning tops for sale at inexpensive prices.
In the above example we have a web page discussing Antique Spinning Tops, but the search engines do not know what is important on this page. In order to let them know we should add our heading tags, once again highlighting the most important information.
Antique Spinning Tops
Do you remember playing with
spinning tops
as a child? We sure do, that is why we are pleased to offer
hand crafted antique spinning tops
for sale at inexpensive prices.
In the above example the robots will realize our page holds information on Antique Spinning Tops, Spinning Tops, and Hand Crafted Antique Spinning Tops and will hold that information in consideration for ranking.
Before we move on I should mention that the heading tags all have special formatting by default. I suggest you create your own formatting rules in a Cascading Style Sheet. �
So we have now discussed using our title tags, Meta tags, and heading tags. Next we will discuss making sure the robots know what information our images contain.
Antique Spinning Tops
Do you remember playing with
spinning tops
as a child? We sure do, that is why we are pleased to offer
hand crafted antique spinning tops
for sale at inexpensive prices.
In the above example we have added a picture of a spinning top. Unfortunately our little crawler friends have no idea what we are displaying here, so the information is not helping us. We want all the information on our site taken into consideration by the robots right? Right! In order to make the robots know what our image is we will use an alt tag inside the img tag.
Now if we were to go to our website and put our cursor over this image, that text will pop up as well as having our spiders know what it is.
SEO Friendly URLs:
What is a SEO friendly URL? It is simply an easy to remember and easy to follow link. Another point to remember with SEO friendly URLs is we can include keywords in these where with dynamic URLs we can�t.
An example of this is www.mysite.com/mykeyword.html . Links structure similar to that are much easier to follow then random links generated by many scripts, an example of a non friendly URL would be www.mysite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=45&id=546574 while many sites use this form of URL it can be confusing to the robots that index our web pages. There isn�t much I can tell you here, except to always use shorter URLs with less random functions.
Besides what we have discussed the following are good practices to assist in search engine optimization.
Include your keywords in your page title
Use the ‘|’ symbol to separate words
Use only your main keywords. Don’t use filler words. The ‘|’ character will act as
filler
Use
and
header tags
Bold, italicize, and underline some keywords
Place your main keyword at the beginning and end of your webpage
Include your keyword in the copyright footer of your webpage
Use image tags and include your keyword, plus the word “image” or
“graphic” etc.
It is always a good practice to go to http://validator.w3.org/ and ensure all your web pages pass their tests. If it does not you should correct any and all issues reported. The cleaner your code is the easier it is for the robots to crawl your page and the easier it will be to get ranked.
So we have covered the basic On Page Optimization techniques of SEO, we will now move on to Off Page SEO.
What is Off Page SEO?
Off page search engine optimization consists of building back links to your web site or web page. Google�s Page Rank is similar to a popularity contest when discussing Off Page SEO. Our goal here is to get as many quality back links as possible with proper anchor text. There is a multitude of ways to gain back links, I will touch on the most popular ways.
What are back links?
Back links are links on other web pages that link back to your web page. If you have a back link from a high PR web site Google will take this into account when giving you your PR.
Ok so we have a basic understanding of what we need to do now, so how do we do it?
Directories:
We can gain quick back links by using web site directories. There are general directories, industry specific directories, paid directories and free directories. All of these can be good depending on what our site is. �When choosing a directory we would like to find a high PR ranking and also it should contain a category specific to what we are submitting. An example of this would be if we go to
www.myexampledirectory.com and want to submit and SEO website, we want to find a category for either SEO services specifically or a broader approach would be Web Services.
Paid Links:
Another way to gain back links is purchasing text ads on blogs, forums, etc. These can be great options as we are able to directly target our market and they are typically �do follow� links with proper anchor text. I will touch further on �do follow�, �no follow� and anchor text in links later on.
Reciprocal Links:
This is the same as paid links, except we place a reciprocal link on our site linking back to another site. This can be a good strategy once again so long as we make sure the site we are linking to is relevant to our site and they are linking back to us. We will want to make sure it is a �do follow� link with proper anchor text again.
Article Submissions:
Another great way to gain back links and visitors is by writing articles related to your industry and submitting these articles to blogs and other sites. When submitting these articles we want to ensure we include a link back to our site at the bottom.
Forums:
We can use forums as a tool to gain back links and credibility, by actively participating in forums related to your industry. When using forums you can place a link to your website in your signature. It is important to read the forum rules to ensure the link won�t violate their rules.
Two Types of links:
No Follow � this is the most common type of link. If a link is a no follow link it will not help you in search engines. It will still drive traffic if it�s on a popular site, but the robots will not follow it.
http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>example site
Do Follow � this is the best type of link, robots will follow this link back to your site which will help it get indexed as well.
http://www.example.com/” >example site
Anchor Text � This is a very important part of link building, when setting a link up, we want the text of the link to say our keywords instead of click here. For example
http://gothost.net” >VPS Hosting
This about wraps up my tutorial on Search Engine Optimization, I hope you have enjoyed reading it and learned a few things.