10-05-2009, 01:43 PM
Before you read: This was taken from my full web construction guide, I decided against posting the whole thing here as I feel this forum is not the correct place for it. Feel free to copy, modify, sell this document as long as you link back to it and give credit where it is due. If you would like to view the full guide I can PM you a link.
SEO Search Engine Optimization
According to a recent study, more than 60% of websites lack the proper web programming to be ranked properly by Internet search engines.
The following steps aim to take your site out of that 60% and bring it into the 40% of websites that do have the proper web programming to be ranked properly by Internet search engines. The sites in this 40% are the successful websites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Hackforums.
1. Know your target audience
This is an essential step to optimizing your website, I cannot stress enough how important this is. A quote from http://textlinkbrokers.com will confirm this:
...Your target may be a 30-45 year old female, in middle management, who drives a mini-van and takes her 3 kids to school before she goes to work. She makes $45,000 per year and has a bachelors degree in finance. This is the type of detail you need...
Your target may not be customers, you may be targeting businesses to sell your stock to, for example my mother owns a florist in my hometown and she gets her flowers shipped from Holland every morning but when she first started off their were over 15 of these suppliers offering their services. She did some research and found a suppliers website from a search engine, the content appealed to her so she decided that she would use this supplier. They didn’t have the lowest prices (although they are very good) but their website made her feel welcome and when I talked to her recently about what made her choose that supplier she said that she felt like she knew the person who was writing to her. Anyway, enough ramble, time for step 2.
2. Keywords
Your keywords are so important to your website, they are the foundations for the search engines finding your website, because of the importance of this I find that it is more effective to use some tools to find your keywords instead of thinking of them off the top of your head. A great tool to use is Google’s Keyword Suggest Tool (found here: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/Keyw...External). I recommend using the first option, enter a word or phrase and let Google generate keywords for you. Do this and wait a few seconds for the results to appear. When they have appeared click on Local Search Volume: [month] now your list is in order of the most searched words to do with your phrase that were searched in your county last month. (Try saying that without breathing.)
The following was written by Rob Sullivan on Sep 19, 2005. I take no credit for the following.
Once you have a huge list of words, the next place to go is a site like Wordtracker, (http://www.wordtracker.com/) which has a keyword analysis tool. This tool can be used for a one time fee, or if it’s something you might want to return to you can purchase a subscription. It is a fairly simple tool to use and will give you a good idea of just how likely your site will be able to compete for a phrase.
A warning about Wordtracker: The software uses search volumes from some fairly minor sites such as Dogpile, so the estimates could be a little skewed. But again, unless you deal with an SEO firm that has their own proprietary software, this is about your best alternative.
Also remember as you are culling your words, don’t just focus on the competitive factors. These won’t account for your target audience. Therefore you need to have that picture in your mind of the target as you are selecting phrases that they might use. If you are unsure, you could always ask for help from friends and family that fit the target profile.
End of Rob Sullivan’s article.
3. Your Content
If you have already written your content, do not attempt to re-write you whole website, just make sure that you add key phrases to each page.
It is recommended that you keep the content on each of your web pages from 400-600 words. Obviously going 50-60 words over or under this range is not a problem but if there is too little content on a page it looks bare, blank and bad. If there is too much writing a lot of people will look at the page, say to themselves: I’m not reading all that and find another website. So it is recommended to stick to these guidelines unless the page requires a lot of text (EG a tutorial like this, a terms and conditions page ect.)
When writing your pages make sure that you include a key phrase 2-4 times, don’t make your page sound weird by repeating the same phrase 10 times, people will think that you are trying to gain more customers (which to be fair, you are) but they will not feel valued and again find a different website.
Also, make sure the content on each page is appropriate for the target audience, there is no point putting pictures of Beats by Dre headphones on the front page when you are selling coffee mugs. (You get the point)
4. Optimize your META
Before I start, if you don’t know what a meta tag is then you need to go over the HTML tutorial at the start of this tutorial again. Meta tags are important to your website being found in search engines. The first and second-most important meta tag to fill in is the meta description tag. This should be a few hundred characters (200-400), maybe just a couple of sentences that explain your website. Make sure this includes your keywords and phrases.
You can also choose to fill in the meta keywords tag. None of the major search engines use this anymore but some smaller search engines do, and as mentioned before a customer is a customer no matter what services/software they use. You can add as many of these as you like, they should be in the following format:
red green blue cheese virtual dj software
It’s just like adding tags to a YouTube video, if you have ever done that.
5. Meta Title
This is left separate because it is the most important step in SEO, this is the title seen on the results page of search engines, for example on http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=flowers we see a page of results. Look at them and which one jumps out at you, for me it was Flowers UK “ Flower Delivery by Flowers Direct UK “ Buy Flowers Online. This is a very optimized title, perhaps optimized too much, but you can begin to see my point. The word flower is repeated 4 times in the title. You should aim to repeat a key word in your title too, if you are stuck for a title, below is a good structure.
Cheap Keyword Online “ Buy keyword at Low Prices
I came up with that in seconds, so it would be a good idea for you to try and be a bit more creative, but if you are stuck you are welcome to use that structure.
Summary
...In the end, the more you know who your customer is, the better you will be in all your online ventures, from introduction of your product or service, to closing the sale. It is up to you to cater to them, and not force them into a more generic mold. This is because today’s web searchers are much more savvy and willing to browse more if a site doesn’t appeal to them...- Rob Sullivan
SEO Search Engine Optimization
According to a recent study, more than 60% of websites lack the proper web programming to be ranked properly by Internet search engines.
The following steps aim to take your site out of that 60% and bring it into the 40% of websites that do have the proper web programming to be ranked properly by Internet search engines. The sites in this 40% are the successful websites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Hackforums.
1. Know your target audience
This is an essential step to optimizing your website, I cannot stress enough how important this is. A quote from http://textlinkbrokers.com will confirm this:
...Your target may be a 30-45 year old female, in middle management, who drives a mini-van and takes her 3 kids to school before she goes to work. She makes $45,000 per year and has a bachelors degree in finance. This is the type of detail you need...
Your target may not be customers, you may be targeting businesses to sell your stock to, for example my mother owns a florist in my hometown and she gets her flowers shipped from Holland every morning but when she first started off their were over 15 of these suppliers offering their services. She did some research and found a suppliers website from a search engine, the content appealed to her so she decided that she would use this supplier. They didn’t have the lowest prices (although they are very good) but their website made her feel welcome and when I talked to her recently about what made her choose that supplier she said that she felt like she knew the person who was writing to her. Anyway, enough ramble, time for step 2.
2. Keywords
Your keywords are so important to your website, they are the foundations for the search engines finding your website, because of the importance of this I find that it is more effective to use some tools to find your keywords instead of thinking of them off the top of your head. A great tool to use is Google’s Keyword Suggest Tool (found here: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/Keyw...External). I recommend using the first option, enter a word or phrase and let Google generate keywords for you. Do this and wait a few seconds for the results to appear. When they have appeared click on Local Search Volume: [month] now your list is in order of the most searched words to do with your phrase that were searched in your county last month. (Try saying that without breathing.)
The following was written by Rob Sullivan on Sep 19, 2005. I take no credit for the following.
Once you have a huge list of words, the next place to go is a site like Wordtracker, (http://www.wordtracker.com/) which has a keyword analysis tool. This tool can be used for a one time fee, or if it’s something you might want to return to you can purchase a subscription. It is a fairly simple tool to use and will give you a good idea of just how likely your site will be able to compete for a phrase.
A warning about Wordtracker: The software uses search volumes from some fairly minor sites such as Dogpile, so the estimates could be a little skewed. But again, unless you deal with an SEO firm that has their own proprietary software, this is about your best alternative.
Also remember as you are culling your words, don’t just focus on the competitive factors. These won’t account for your target audience. Therefore you need to have that picture in your mind of the target as you are selecting phrases that they might use. If you are unsure, you could always ask for help from friends and family that fit the target profile.
End of Rob Sullivan’s article.
3. Your Content
If you have already written your content, do not attempt to re-write you whole website, just make sure that you add key phrases to each page.
It is recommended that you keep the content on each of your web pages from 400-600 words. Obviously going 50-60 words over or under this range is not a problem but if there is too little content on a page it looks bare, blank and bad. If there is too much writing a lot of people will look at the page, say to themselves: I’m not reading all that and find another website. So it is recommended to stick to these guidelines unless the page requires a lot of text (EG a tutorial like this, a terms and conditions page ect.)
When writing your pages make sure that you include a key phrase 2-4 times, don’t make your page sound weird by repeating the same phrase 10 times, people will think that you are trying to gain more customers (which to be fair, you are) but they will not feel valued and again find a different website.
Also, make sure the content on each page is appropriate for the target audience, there is no point putting pictures of Beats by Dre headphones on the front page when you are selling coffee mugs. (You get the point)
4. Optimize your META
Before I start, if you don’t know what a meta tag is then you need to go over the HTML tutorial at the start of this tutorial again. Meta tags are important to your website being found in search engines. The first and second-most important meta tag to fill in is the meta description tag. This should be a few hundred characters (200-400), maybe just a couple of sentences that explain your website. Make sure this includes your keywords and phrases.
You can also choose to fill in the meta keywords tag. None of the major search engines use this anymore but some smaller search engines do, and as mentioned before a customer is a customer no matter what services/software they use. You can add as many of these as you like, they should be in the following format:
red green blue cheese virtual dj software
It’s just like adding tags to a YouTube video, if you have ever done that.
5. Meta Title
This is left separate because it is the most important step in SEO, this is the title seen on the results page of search engines, for example on http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=flowers we see a page of results. Look at them and which one jumps out at you, for me it was Flowers UK “ Flower Delivery by Flowers Direct UK “ Buy Flowers Online. This is a very optimized title, perhaps optimized too much, but you can begin to see my point. The word flower is repeated 4 times in the title. You should aim to repeat a key word in your title too, if you are stuck for a title, below is a good structure.
Cheap Keyword Online “ Buy keyword at Low Prices
I came up with that in seconds, so it would be a good idea for you to try and be a bit more creative, but if you are stuck you are welcome to use that structure.
Summary
...In the end, the more you know who your customer is, the better you will be in all your online ventures, from introduction of your product or service, to closing the sale. It is up to you to cater to them, and not force them into a more generic mold. This is because today’s web searchers are much more savvy and willing to browse more if a site doesn’t appeal to them...- Rob Sullivan
