Search Engine Optimization in a Nutshell

This is a no-nonsense guide to understanding Google and Search Engine Optimization. It is quick and dirty and covers a broad spectrum of topics. For more information give us a call at 613-379-3051

The top 3, and only important, search engines are Google, Yahoo and Microsofts Bing in that order.

Google is the biggest search engine with the vast majority of world market share.

Web pages actually get listed in the search engines by being found, not by being submitted.

Google places more trust in pages that it finds naturally through links that are pointing at it than it does in pages that are submitted to them.

If you do not follow the rules and Google finds out, you will be penalized and lose your rank.

Google Summarized:

Google assigns relevancy toweb pages based on a proprietary and continuously evolving algorithm that takes into account page qualitities and assigning them a weighting factor:

These web page qualities are as follows:

  • Incoming Links
  • Keywords in URL
  • Page Content
  • Link Content
  • Page Title
  • Page Rank Score

SEO in a Nutshell:

95% of professional SEO is really all about focusing on these three basic steps:

  1. Keywords: Assemble a smart list of relevant search words that your target audience is using to locate your products and services. Strategically insert those keywords into the proper locations within your Web pages.
  2. Links: Accumulate as many as possible of the right incoming links coming from the right places.
  3. Search Friendly: Build your site so that it is easy for search engines to locate and properly index.

Keywords

Keywords apply in the following locations:

On Page:

  1. Important on-page keyword locations include your:
  2. title tags
  3. header tags
  4. internal link anchor text
  5. bold and italicized text,
  6. text in HTML lists
  7. alt and title tags for images and links

Off Page:

Important off-page keyword locations include your:

  1. Anchor text: the actual keywords you click in a link that point to your Web site
  2. Keyword text within the paragraphs surrounding that anchor text
  3. Keywords within titles of the pages that link to you
  4. Keywords within the body content of the pages that link to you
  5. Directory categories your site is listed in
  6. Directory categories of the sites that link to your page
  7. The authoritative strength of the sites that link to you
  8. The authoritative strength of the sites that link to the sites that link to you.

Single keywords are highly competitive€�in fact so competitive that it is unrealistic to expect that your Web pages can score at the top of the search results for a single keyword.

The search terms that convert best to sales are typically very specific key phrases comprised of two to five words sometimes called a keyword phrase.

There are 3 different types of searchers:

  1. Academic Information Searchers- no purchase ever intended€“ students, scientists, etc.
  2. Product or Service Research Searchers - research prior to making a future purchase.
  3. Buyers that already know exactly what they want and are searching to make a purchase right now!

Make sure your pages score well in the keyword searches your customers are using to buy.

Reverse engineer the web site building process by building buy keyword-pages first, before broadening the focus toward crafting their information-pages that'll capture the researchers as well.

Make a list of every possible search term that people might use when searching for whatever you're selling. Avoid stand-alone words that are too general. People who buy things do not typically search using only these general keywords.

Put Yourself in Your Customer's Shoes. Ask: What problem does my product or service solve for my typical customer? Do not make the mistake of assuming you know what customers call your products. Do the necessary research to find out what keywords that customers are actually using. Glean Keywords from your Web site's Referral Logs.

Check out Your Competition. Scouring their pages can help you uncover the keywords your competitors are actually targeting, some of which you may have overlooked. View their source code and check their title tags.

Keywords sandwiched between the start <title> and the end </title> tags is where Web pages generally place their best keywords.

Cover All Your Keyword Variations. Look for variations on keywords including misspellings, plurals, synonyms, merged words, or keywords separated-by-hyphens. Avoid competitors names and trademarks.

Here's an example of text that works all of the related synonyms with typically descriptive terms into a single paragraph focused on selling car parts:

"Looking for the best price on car parts and accessories? You've come to the right place. We're your vehicle's one-stop source for the lowest priced auto parts and accessories. If we don't have the high quality automobile parts you're looking for, no one does!"

Be Descriptive. Add descriptive terms to augment your existing terms. For instance, cheap, low cost, affordable, or inexpensive can go with most consumer products, as can superlatives like best, high quality or cheapest.

Consider using questions for which your site provides an answer in the form of a solution to their problem.

Target Local Markets. If your product or service is geographically relevant, then be sure to mention the location in the text.

Domain Names:

Google gives preference to keyword-rich domains and so do people when they're choosing which link in the search results to click.

As long as your keywords are somewhere in your domain name, search engines will generally assume your domain is relevant for those keywords.

Compared to having an old established site, the domain name is way down the importance-list of ranking factors.

.com .net .org .biz . These are given equal billing with search engines. But .com is preferred because it is the most recognized by people and will also gather "type in the domain name" traffic.

Avoid .info as it is a favourite of spammers.

Title Tags:

Your Web page title tag is the most important aspect of Web page design in regards to SEO.

The most critically important location to place keywords is within your Web page's HTML <title> tag. Avoid wasting this important space with useless words. Limit your title tag to 65 characters or less€�usually about 7 to 10 words.

Header Tags:

After your title, your Web page's header tags are the next most important place for your keywords.

An <h1> tag (because it is typically a larger font), is considered more important than an <h2> tag, which is larger and considered more important than an <h3> tag, and so on.

Text Content:

Feature your keywords throughout the rest of your page within the <body> content. Search engines respond favorably to keywords placed within boldface and italic fonts as well as bullet points.

Place your best keyword-rich text as high up within the visible content of your Web page as possible. Search engines give priority to keywords found closest to the top of your Web page. Avoid placing images, JavaScript, and other HTML code before your keyword rich text.

Use a Small Number of Keywords on Each Page. In most cases, each Web page should be focused on no more than two or three keywords and these keywords should be related to each other.

If you optimize a page for too many keywords, you'll end up diluting the focus of that page in respect to those keywords. If you want to rank for a greater number of keywords, then you should increase the number of Web pages on your site.

Link Anchor Text:

Search engines look for keywords located within the anchor text when ranking Web pages in the search results.

Getting your keywords placed within the anchor text of links that point to your pages is arguably the MOST important ranking factor of all!

Place your best keywords into your site's own internal text (anchor) links €“ those links that point to each of your Web pages throughout your site. Keywords placed in the anchor text of links on your Web pages are given a higher priority by Google.

Even better is when other sites link to your Web pages using your keywords in their link anchor text. Therefore, whenever possible, try to influence what keywords are being used in the link anchor text of other sites that point traffic in your direction. This is arguably the single most effective strategy for boosting your page's rankings.

<Images Alt=" "> Tag:

Search engines can't index your image. They are oblivious to everything but text. The only indexable keyword aspect of images is in the text content that you place within the <image alt="put text here"> tag.

If your logo image loads higher on your page (re: the linear source code ) than your keyword text, then your page starts out with a disadvantage. Avoid placing images higher on your page than keyword text.

Key Word Density: Optimum Keyword density is a tactic on which SEOs place way too much emphasis. Here is why:

keyword density doesn't take into account the location of the keywords on the page.

keyword density also ignores the distance between keywords on a page, known as keyword proximity. The closer your keywords are to each other, the better.

Insert your keywords into the natural flow of descriptive text without wasting time stressing over the exact number of times a keyword should appear on a Web page.

Links

Building high-quality incoming links is the single most effective strategy for boosting your site's search engine rankings.

Providing great content is clearly the most effective part of a search engine optimization campaign.  If you have great content you will naturally draw links.

Some inbound links will help, while others can actually damage your ranking efforts.

Many of the standard link building strategies that once formed the backbone of an SEO campaign are no longer effective. Some of them are actually detrimental to your Web site's ranking efforts.

Getting your keywords into the visible anchor text of the links that point to your Web pages is one of the most important rankboosting strategies you can employ.

If another Web site links to your Web page with the anchor text, budget widgets, then Google tends to believe that your site is about budget widgets. This factor is known as page reputation and Google places a lot of weight on page reputation.

Avoid a lot of reciprocal links. They are generally useless. The cancel each other out in value.

You want the search engines to think your pages are important. Here's how to do that:

  1. Get some links.
  2. Get a few more links from important pages.
  3. Use both 1 and 2 to attract more links.

Getting links from important Web pages is the quickest and most effective way to get your page highly ranked.

Directory examples would include sites like Yahoo and DMOZ and others specific to your industry.

Submitting to directories is a great way to begin acquiring links and driving traffic to any site, new or old.

Directories are more like catalog listings and they require that you actually submit your site (and sometimes pay a fee) if you want to be listed.

The Best Directories:

  1. DMOZ: Otherwise known as The Open Directory Project (ODP), DMOZ is one of the oldest directories. It's free to add your site, but it could take a year or more to actually be included. DMOZ is a directory compiled with the help of volunteer editors and it can take a very long time for your site to get listed.
  2. YAHOO Directory: Not related to the Yahoo Search Engine. Yahoo Directory is considered to be the oldest surviving directory on the World Wide Web. Getting listed is free only for non-commercial sites. Commercial sites are charged an annual $299 fee. This is the easiest place to get what is considered to be a highly relevant and important link in the eyes of Google. Your listing also quickly gets transmitted to Yahoo's International Directories.
  3. Directories specific to your topic or business.

Well trusted sites like PBS.org, National Geographic, and  CNN will give you the weightiest links if you can get them.

The higher the Web site's PageRank means the better the link.

If a page is showing a PageRank=0, or the PageRank bar is ghosted out, then you don't want a link from that site. It could mean that Google doesn't trust that site.

These linking pages should be on-topic€�i.e. they match the topic of your page.

The fewer the number of links on the referring page, the better. Having your link on a page that hosts a hundred other links is almost pointless because the value of your link will be divided by the number of links on the page.

Maintain Format Consistency of Your Incoming Link URL's. Standardize your incoming URL-format in order to consolidate your PageRank.

Get your keywords into the text of the link (anchor text) that other sites are using to point visitors your way.

Natural Links:

Search engines like natural link structure€�they hate artificial link structure.

Natural links vary in anchor text while artificial links tend to be identical.

Natural links increase gradually as referral sites add links one by one over time; artificial links sprout great numbers suddenly.

Natural Links have anchor text that varies. Artificial links have anchor text that is suspiciously uniform.

Natural links are occasionally reciprocal. Artificial links have an unnaturally high percentage of reciprocal links.

Refrain from linking to link farms, web rings, link brokers, and mininets. If you participate in link schemes, you are courting disaster. Google is getting very good at detecting these.

Use Deep Links - links that point to your Web pages within your site - important sites have lots of deep links.

Check that your incoming links from off-site pages do not include the rel="nofollow" attribute (often referred to as a tag) within the source code of the link; nofollow renders the link useless to Google.

Avoid run-of-the-site links. These are links where every page on another Web site links to your homepage. It will appear to Google that your link count is artificially inflated. Link brokers are notorious for selling you run-of-site links. It will also look like you purchased the links€�something that Google does not like.

Be Careful Who You Link To! Linking to a site that has been penalized for policy infractions (i.e. search engine spam) can cause your site to be penalized as well. Their PageRank score is also one indicator of how important Google thinks the site is. Beware of linking to sites or pages with a PR=0 (zero).

Avoid linking to sites with controversial topics. Examples of such sites would include gambling, adult, pharmacy, or loan/debt sites.

How to get Links:

Look for On-Topic internet directory sites and get links from them to your site.

Participate in topic-related forums that allow a text link to your site within your forum signature. Look for topics that you are knowledgeable in and begin posting€�asking and answering questions.

Get Professional services links from suppliers and merchants with whom you do business.

Get links from Associations where you are an alumnus or a member.

Build a blog and link from it. Blogs are easier to get highly ranked than just about any other type of Web site but require a lot of ongoing effort to keep them fresh.

Write good content. One of the most powerful link-building strategies that search engines love involves content articles. Write articles with valuable content for your own site that others will link to. If you lack writing talent, then you simply must hire a good writer.

Press releases, once they are initially syndicated by news agencies, can send you a quick burst of traffic. Then these same press releases will often be archived in a number of locations. They typically remain online and indexed in the search engines for years. This, in turn, provides you with mature links.

Buy old established sites from dead businesses and use their domain name, established links or link to your main site. Older sites (before 2000) have a distinct advantage in rankings.

Try to get links from .gov and .edu sites as search engines place high value on these links. Donate to a school for a link back? Offer a student discount?

Build a tool on your site that is a popular resource and it will attract links.

Having an affiliate program can also be an excellent way to build incoming links.

Use social networks to build links to your relevant content.

Check your competitors to see who is linking to them.

Employ Link Baiting. Have content that is so interesting that people will link to it. Use You Tube to generate publicity and links.

Buying Links:

Avoid buying links from known link brokers. Google discounts these and could penalize you for having them.

Whenever buying links for the purpose of ranking better, be discreet. Make a private arrangement and keep the purchase details confidential.

You want your link worked into the content of the other Web page and surrounded by lots of relevant keywords and above the fold if possible.

Don't pay for links on pages with a lower than PageRank=3. They will not provide enough ranking boost to justify paying for them.

The best kinds of links to buy are newsletter links. Newsletters are typically archived on the host site providing a permanent link.

Links take time to take effect on ranking so you may have to continue paying to keep that link up for several months before you see any kind of ranking boost.

Search Friendly Pages

Have a site map link on every page on your site.

Keep your pages under 101k file size of HTML code, and to put no more than 100 links on a page.

When an HTML sitemap approaches 100 or so links or the file size of your sitemap Web page file size approaches 101k (excluding images), then it's time to start splitting up your sitemap into smaller ones.

Site quality. If your site is the most useful site to customers in your keyword category, then search engines want to rank you at the top of the search results.

Keep the site shallow. Avoid making a spider crawl any deeper than three links beyond your home page to locate the rest of your pages.

Also use an XML site map. The XML Sitemap (aka a Google Sitemap) is a special file that provides search engines with specific directives about what pages to crawl and how often.

If your site is already ranked in the search engines, be very careful about changing your URLs. Carelessly modifying your URLs after your pages have already been indexed and ranked is one of the worst SEO mistakes you can make! If you do change any URL, you must redirect the old URL to the new location.

Use your robots.txt file to make sure search engines don't waste time indexing your shopping cart. Use this very carefully as you can inadvertently block the entire site from being crawled.

If your Web site is laid out in a disorganized fashion, or if the links between your pages are difficult for a search engine spider to find, your site is not going to be crawled efficiently and thus not ranked well.

Avoid using dynamically generated URLs with non-numerical, non-alphabetical characters, such as ?, &, +, and, =.

Meta tags have no impact on Search Engine results but the Meta description tag is used by many search engines as the summary description for your page when your page is listed in the search results and helps the searcher decide whether or not your page is relevant to their search.

Be Careful with Session IDs and Dynamic URLs. For search engine spiders session IDs can cause a problem. They can inadvertently create a huge number of links for the spider to crawl as they keep assigning a different tracking session ID variable. They can get caught in a spider trap. This is why search spiders typically avoid links that look like they might have session or tracking variables embedded in them.

Be Careful with using Frames, JavaScript, and Flash.

If you must use Frames, use a <noframes> tag within which you can place a description of the content of the frame for the spider.

Google can now find and follow JavaScript links, but Yahoo and Bing cannot. Currently, if the code called by the onclick() event is on the same page, Google will process the code, crawl the URL listed and pass anchor text and PageRank to that URL. However, if the code is in a separate file, then Google does not process it.

Flash cannot be easily optimized for search engines. Any part of your Web page that uses Flash will generally not lend itself to top rankings. Make sure your page has abundant indexable content outside your Flash file.

Don't make your entire page one big Flash file. If most of your page is embedded in a Flash file, then it will be very difficult for a search engine to know what your page is about. Use the <noembed> tag and put the HTML version of whatever Flash you're using on that page.