SEO HowTo
On page vs Off page characteristics
Where does SEO begin?
"The first thing that one must realize about search engine
optimization is that to be implemented correctly it must be
broken down into 2 distinct factors "onpage" and "offpage"
criteria."
SEO GUY seo central
Always remember that search engines do not consider "websites"
they consider the "pages" of those websites. There
should never be a debate as to which is more important between
"on page" and "off page" characteristics
as the truth is both are equally as important. However once
one defines the two there is a logical order in which they should
be considered.
On page/Off page characteristics defined
Simply stated, On Page Characteristics are
anything you can effect within the construction of a single
page. This includes everything that is placed in the headers,
body, and on-page links (both internal and external). Special
attention should be given to: Title, meta description, H1, H2...H6,
<b>, <i>. Keyword proximity, keyword density and
relevance...more on this later.
Off Page Characteristics refer to all links
(both from pages contained within your own website and from
pages of other websites) that point to your specific page(s).
The term "pagerank" is specifically designated to
evaluate and weight "off page" criteria. Special attention
should be given to: anchor text, Reference_tags, "title"
attribute and "target_"... more on this later.
Preparing for a search engine optimized website
Step 1: Know your market
Before building a website that showcases your products or service
you must first identify who it is that will be purchasing said
products and services. Not all traffic is good traffic. Many
webmasters target the "high traffic terms" that have
little relevance to their market instead of the "targeted
terms" that have the highest conversion. Target all your
relevant terms ("highest traffic first") and don't
go for so called "hot terms" that will eat up their
bandwidth and produce no sales.
Blue widgets Green Widgets
Scenario: Green widgets are the hottest item on the market, you create a great
looking web site perfectly optimized for green widgets to take advantage of
this traffic flux. You own the market and you are #1 for every possible term
targeting the green widget field! But you sell blue widgets and no one who wants
green widgets will buy blue widgets. Now you are stuck with a bandwidth bill,
hosting fees, development costs and NO SALES!
You are not the only one to make this mistake, many other blue widget dealers
saw that "green widgets" had 1,000,000 searches and "blue widgets"
had 10,000 and they also chose to target the green widgt terms. There was however
that one "blue widget" dealer who saw the light, he targeted "blue
widgets" while you were all confused and now owns the top results for all
"blue widget" terms and is enjoying a hefty 5% conversion rate and
has made 500 sales from his 10,000 hits. With a low bandwidth bill and little
effort as no one was competing our smart little "blue widgets king"
is laughing.
You however have a 0% conversion and can brag about your 1,000,000 hits all
day long but at the end of the day you are broke because you did not do your
research lest you would have known that "green widget" buyers hate
"blue widgets"
It seems that the prevailing idiom is that the more traffic one receives
the more money one makes, NOT TRUE! The more sales one makes the more money
makes WHAT A CONCEPT!
There is a finite number of people on the net that will buy
your products and services PERIOD! This of course includes
those not looking for your exact products but that you are
able to convert into customers. Target these people and you
can't go wrong.
Proper keyword research is the cornerstone of building a
successful business online. The next page is possibly the
most important page in this tutorial and the most important
step to get right if you want to succeed online.
Keyword research
The life blood of SEO
Keyword research truly is the life blood of internet marketing.
If you know who is searching and what they are searching for
then it makes your choices as to "what and where"
to offer your products much more obvious. For the purposes
of this tutorial however we will strictly concentrate on evaluating
the best keywords to use in order to increase conversions
from visitors that come by way of the major search engines.
What keywords are people searching with?
This is the basic question that needs answering before you
can start constructing you site. The first and most natural
thing that comes to mind is asking yourself "what would
I type in if I was looking for my product?" and this
is a great place to start. Type in the terms you use and see
what comes up, If the sites you see at the top of the search
results are offering similar products and services then you
are right on the money. Sadly this is where most people stop.
Try to reverse engineer those at the top (if they have done
the research, then you won't have to) pay particular attention
to what they place in their <title></title> meta
desc H1, H2...H6 <b><i><strong> and their
anchor text.
In order to acurately guage who is searching for your products
and services you must use statistical data which will provide
the historical search volume as well as suggest permutations
on your keyword phrases that perhaps you have not yet concieved
of. A few such tools such can be found at:
We have no affiliations with any of the aforemention sites
but all of these pages contain great places to do keywords
research based on popular opinion as well as our own
experience.
As a secondary research project try putting together a quick
questionaire 5-10 answers based on 2 questions:
Describe the top 5 products/services on my site?
1._______________________________
2._______________________________
3._______________________________
4._______________________________
5._______________________________
What would you type in a search engine to find these
products/service?
1._______________________________
2._______________________________
3._______________________________
4._______________________________
5._______________________________
Finally to test emphasis (where you should concentrate the
most) you must determine keyword conversion value. To me this
is easy, once I have created my keyword list (at least 50
keywords should be present) I go to all of the major PPC engines
that offer "bid for placement" and I check the cost
per click of each term. Those with the highest costs usually
have the highest conversion assuming that those paying for
those terms are also in your market. My logic for this is
as follows: (cost per click * conversion rate) must = at least
a break even point to justify paying said amount for each
unique visitor. The math for any ROI (return on investment)
calculation is very simply and only requires any 2 of the
3 variables considered.
Variables: Cost per click,
Average sale, Conversion rate
A question people often ask me is how can "Phentermine"
dealers afford to pay $12.00 per unique to remain at the top
of the PPC for that term? My answer is this:
Go to the sites and find out what the average "phentermine"
sale is (It's around $160.00) Now determine the cost per click?
(in this instance its $12.00)
Therefore the breakeven point (assuming they earn 100% of
the gross sale which is unlikely) is at least 7.5% or mathematically
$12.00/$160.00=.075
However in the real world most "phentermine" affiliates
earn no more than 50% so either the conversion is 15% or that
person is losing money on that keyword.
Search engine friendly design
SEO it from the ground up
You have done all of your keyword research and you know what
keywords people are using to find and purchase your products
and services. It is time to build a site that will not only
reflect those product and services but will raise to the top
of the search engines for those terms so that the people who
are searching for your product and services will be able to
find them.
Plan on grouping your keywords
For each page of your website you will want to target different
keywords. Most webmasters commit the grievous error of copying
the header of their index page onto all their pages to save
time DO NOT DO THIS!
To maximize the potency of each page for its targeted keyword
search phrases plan on optimizing for a "maximum"
of 3 keyword terms. Also group "like terms" so that
you may increase your keyword density with much less effort.
Example:
Keywords: widget, blue widgets, wingdings, widgets, green wingdings,
wingding. In this list you have two very obvious groupings "wingding
group" and "widget group" Therefore the proper
way to optimize is to assign "Page A" to one group
and "page B" to the other. If these 2 pages and subjects
were your entire site then the more competitive group would
be optimized for on the index page as it usually has the highest
page rank
Page
A |
Page
B |
widget
blue widgets
widgets
|
wingdings
green wingdings
wingding
|
Now that you have your keywords organized you must choose which
pages are best optimized for which keywords. If you have 30
keywords then you must have at least 10 pages. (Of course you
will never let the number of keywords limit the number of pages
within your site hence the "at least"*)
Now start thinking about your topics ask yourself "how
many products do i have?" and "what other services
do i offer?" also consider what else you want to provide
within your architecture. Do you want to tell people about yourself
or your company? Do you need an order page, a contact page or
a disclaimer? All these things should be adressed so that you
are not creating "extra" pages that are unnecessary
just to fit your keywords in somewhere.
Finally once you have decided which pages fit with which keywords
name each page to reflect the most competitive keyword for that
page. Create an excel reference file so that later when consider
your "off page" characteristics you have an easy map
THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT!
(most important
keyword of this page).html |
Keyword A,B,C |
(most important keyword of
this page).html |
Keyword D,E,F |
| (most important keyword of
this page).html |
Keyword H,I,J |
You will reference this spreadsheet when considering the target
location and anchor text of inbound links. More on this later...
Optimizing your visible text
The optimization you can see
From the last page you learned that each page
of your site is going to target a maximum of 3 search phrases
(keyword phrases). I will now cover how to write these pages.
Think headings
The H1, H2 ...H6 tags are given special relevancy
weight by virtue of this logic "if something has an entire
paragraph labeled and dedicated to it, it must be important"
man I love logic!
It is for this reason that you should plan to integrate your
keywords into your heading, you don't have to go extreme just
use one H1 for your most important keyword and two H2's, one
for each or your secondary keyword phrases.
Also it is not necesarry to try to find ways to use H4,H5,H6
as they are not weighted heavily enough to consider. In fact
I only use them in my external css file so that I can avoid
color font and size tags altogether in my text.
Be the first in line
You should try to get your main keyword phrases
as high up in your source code as possible this is again for
a logical reason, the logic being "the higher up a word
or phrase is in the body of a document the more important it
must be." Again ya gotta love logic.
Here is an example of what your page should look
like:
Heading with most important keyword
This is the paragraph where your most important keyword
should be and if it makes sence try to get your second and third
most important keywords in as well here.
Either One of your 2 minor keywords
In this paragraph repeat the above pattern of 1st
2nd and 3rd most important keywords and as you can see
bolding and italicizing them at least once doesnt hurt and actually
gives you a very small boost ( recomend it but dont go bolding
every keyword on the page) don't forget to repeat another H2
for your third keyword phrase.
Now that you have each of your keywords in your body text at
least once feel free to finish writing your page in a logical
manner but try to sprinkle your keywords throughout the center
of the document.
Once you reach the final paragraph this is a good time to "rinse
and repeat" step one as without the headings. Try to write
a keyword rich last paragraph as spiders pay particular attention
to the beginning and then the end of the document.
The reason for this (GO LOGIC) is that if you started off a
document talking about a certain subset of topics and you are
still talking about them at the end of a document then THEY
MUST BE IMPORTANT and search results try to reflect this. It
is a bit like trying to write a Thesis statement and then trying
to write a conclusion that reiterates the main points covered.
Now isn't this easy.
Keyword Density
The final point on visible text is keyword density. Simply
stated keyword density is the number of occurences of a keyword
divided by the total word count. For this I try to keep my initial
density to between 3-7% however this number may have to change
depending on the level of competition.
Also be warned that the text used in anchors <a href="page.html">this
is your anchor text </a> effects your density.
Don't worry if your initial density is lower than that of your
competitors as you will learn later in this article there are
many ways to effect your keyword density other than placing
your keywords in your visible text.
Optimizing your header
Get a-head in your SEO
Ok now we get to the fun stuff, your page's headers. I have
seen some rediculous things in my SEO career and many of the
most ludicrous spam attempts I have encountered deal with the
header of a webpage. Folks if you learn anything from this tutorial
it should be that you do not have to come up with shady ways
to trick search engines. The best way to optimize a website
is by following the rules.
Got a basic website, use a basic header.
Just for clarification the header is the portion of your webpage
that remains unseens and lies between the <head></head>
tags.
Here is an example of what a basic header should look like:
<head>
<title>A maximum of 3 keyword phrases and 55 characters</title>
<meta name="description" content="Many
SE's use this to describe your site so make sure you not only
repeat each of your keyword phrases (max 3) at least once but
make this a true representation of the page that the visitor
will be viewing, and try to keep it under 144 chars">
<meta name="keywords" content="Only
permutations of your keyword phrases should be placed here">
(Google all but ignores this tag DONT STUFF IT!)
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
(some debate whether this is necessary but it certainly
does not hurt - tells robots to follow links)
</head>
There are some times when more code in the header is necessary
to operate JAVA script and call css etc. In such instances there
are advanced techniques that will allow you to pack away the
javascript and css in external files so that it is called from
.js and .css external files.
To call your JAVA script simply cut the JAVA from the header
from <script> to </script> and save in a file called
java.js and call it using this line of code:
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="java.js">
</SCRIPT>
Similarly to call your css from and ext file use this
line of code:
<link href="css.css" rel="stylesheet"
type="text/css">
Finally, recall the spreadsheet you created for which keywords
went with which page. Add to that spreadsheet your pages titles
and descriptions beside the list of keywords so that when you
need to boost those keywords you can link directly to the page
that is optimized for them and have a complete synergy between:
Inbound anchor text (see next section), Title, description,
headers, <strong>, <i> and density.
It makes sense that when a spider sees that all important elements
of your page (both on page and off page) all contain the same
keyword phrases that It will rank you very high for those phrases.
Finishing your onpage optimization
Header and body done, what's next?
So now you have the perfect initial keyword density
for the combination of your header and your page text, you have
keyword loaded headings, bolded keywords, italicized keywords,
and a large proximity near the very beginning of your source
code. What's next?
Alt tags, Anchors and Links
The final 3 factors that must be addressed to
complete your "On page" optimization are your alt
tags, anchors, and links. The combination of appropriate usage
of these final 3 items in conjunction with the framework optimization
you have already done will make you unbeatable once Page Rank
is thrown into the mix.
Using alt and title tags:
The alt="" and title="" attributes
on images are a great way to increase your on page density by
naming your images using your keywords. These attributes are
read by special software for the visually impaired so make sure
these descriptions make sense.
This tool is especially useful when the image is a link however
then we must get into the logistics of whether your destination
is more important than your onpage density. This falls into
the realm of "on page" vs "off page" more
on this later...
Here is a code form example of an alt and title tag in action.
You can view the effect by mousing over the center of the car
pic above "SEO Car Pic" in a drop down text box:
<img border="0" src="images/seoguy_r3_c1.jpg"
width="680" height="76" alt="seo car
pic" title="seo car pic">
Using anchors:
Anchors are used to reference specific locations on a page
from other locations on that same page. These "on page
links" are yet another place to get your main keywords
in and boost that "on page" density.
To place an anchor first decide what is the best use, an easy
way to do this is the old "back to the top" at the
end of a page. Except as we are smart little optimizers and
we know use our keywords instead of phrases like "back
to the top". Here is an example:
At the top of my page I place my anchor using this code <a
name="seo"></a>
At the bottom of my page I place this href <a href="#seo">SEO
</a>
This produces this link: SEO and now I have
created a same page link containing my keyword and thus increased
my density as well as received added weight by virtue of it
being an anchor.
Using your links for "on page" optimization
There are two ways you can utilize your links for search engine
optimization. 1. You can use your links for your "on page"
optimization; 2. you can use your links for "off page"
optimization.
When using your links for onpage optimization
consider the following:
Your ">anchor</a> text
effects your density
Href="these words all count towards what is called
reference_tags density"
Your title="attribute adds a very small
amount of extra weight" Use it like an "alt"
Knowing these 3 facts allows you to incorporate
your keywords into your links from inception and when you have
a page that you think is written to perfection and you don't
want keyword loading clogging up the flow, using your links
is a great way to make up added density and keyword weight.
.
href="http://www.mydomain.com/page.html" vs href="page.html"
Which do I use?
The only time you use the full mydomain.com is
if the domain itself has keywords that the page the link is
pointing to or the page the link is on, is targeting those keywords,
otherwise you should go with page.html as this drastically reduces
filesize especially for pages with a lot of internal links.
* note one other exception is for the index always link to your
index using http://www.domain.com so that your internal PR boost
matches your externap PR boost, your link partners linked to
you with http://www.domain.com and so should you.
Utilizing your inbound links
Pagerank - where do I begin?
When considering how offpage characteristics effect your sites
ability to rank well for given keyword terms It cannot be stressed
enough that "Page rank is Page to Page, (NOT SITE TO SITE)
and independent of URL designation". What this means is
that once your site enters into the PR system ie: indexed by
Google by virtue of backlinks from and external source domain,
then a link from an internal page with "X" amount
of PR contributes exactly the same PR weight as a page from
a different URL with "X" amount of PR weight to distribute
(all other factors being equal).
Getting my link popularity started - what does it take?
In order for pagerank to be calculated by Google's algorithm
for any page on your site that page must first have been found
by the Google spider (robot) through a backlink.
"Backlink: a link from one unique URL
designation to another - alternatively: a link from one page
to another."
Once you have recieved a backlink from a page that has been
indexed by the Google spider you are eligible to compete for
PR.
A link counts twice
There are 2 ways you can benefit from backlinks:
First you get a certain amount of PR weight points as dictated
by the google PR calculation algorithm (see article on the Google
pagerank )
Second, and some argue more importantly, you also get an added
ranking boost for whatever keywords are contained within the
anchor text href="yourdomain.com">Anchor</a>
and this precisely describes why sites almost always
rank #1 for their domain name.
It is a common misconception that there is special weight given
to domain names when in fact the reason a site generally ranks
well for its domain name is because all of the links pointing
to that domain place your domain name in the anchor text. ie:
href="yourdomain.com">yourdomain.com</a>
This is a great opportunity to utilize this little know anchor
text boost to place well for your chosen keywords. The way to
take advantage of this added boost is to request that your keywords
are placed in your backlink anchor instead of your domain name.
Here is how to properly utilize a link acceptance
When a request for a link from another webmasters has been
accepted send a thank you letter and include your specific HTML
code so that you not only save them effort but you get a backlink
that reflects your keywords and not your domain.
Your thank you letter should look like this:
Dear webmaster,
Thank you for your gratious willingness to provie a text link
to my site. For you convenience I have written out the source
code that best reflects the page you are linking to please
cut and paste this exact code into your source to reflect
the most appropriate link:
<a href="http://www.mydomain.com" title="keyword">Keyword</a>
I thank you again for your linking to my site and will gladly
link back to your site with any specific html that you provide.
Warmest regards
Greatful webmaster
In short, backlinks are a great asset if utilized correctly
and remember that the same principals apply to internal links
as apply to the links you recieve from other domains and other
webmasters. If your index page is optimized for keyword "a"
then make sure that all of your internal pages that link back
to the homepage use "a" as the anchor text DO NOT
USE "home" for a link back to your index page or you
waste the most controllable opportunity to boost your own keyword
search engine positions.
Your site is not getting spidered, why?
Frames:
There are many pitfalls in layout or design that can hinder a
spiders ability to completely (or even partially) index the content within a
given page. One of the biggest mistakes webmasters are still making is that
of using "frames".
Frames are a design convention used to utilize independant scrollable
regions within a single URL designation (or so it appears). Frames are actually
divided into multiple URL designations and are generally not spiderable by the
search engines.
I do not want to get into how to optimize framed sites here as this is a tutorial
about "proper seo" not "patchwork seo" if you have frames
in your website then my advice is to redesign, as you can use CSS to give an
equivilant effect if that scrolldown is really something you are not willing
to give up.
There are techniques however, for those of you who are absulutely unwilling
to give up your frames, so that you can at least provide something for the spiders
to love you for and thus improve your rankings somewhat but these techniques
are far inferior to just building your website the right way in the first place.
Javascript
Again, real pretty but excessive use is generally not necessary.
Don't get me wrong even I use javascript on almost all of my sites but the key
is to use it sparingly.
The reason for this is that spiders cannot read javascript and thus any
link or text portrayed by such Javascript will not be counted in your indexing
and thus produce lost opportunity. My suggestion is for all webmasters to "STOP
USING JAVASCRIPT FOR NAVIGATION" use HTML text links instead. Your
images can be called in Java as with your pretty little rollovers but when it
comes to things you want indexed Java is not the way to go.
Pack your javascript away
When calling javascript editors place the Java
protocalls in header of your page: In order to save file size
and maximize load times cut out that java protocall and paste
it in an external file (i usually call mine java.js) then to
call the java I place just this one line of code: <Script
src="java.js"></script> this reduces
the filesize considerably with no adverse side effects.
Flash
Myself, I love flash. In fact my favorite sites all incorporate
some type of flash into their design but the key phrase here is "some flash".
To have a site with a flash image is great, it will impress your visitor and
increase the estethic quality of your site for sure, but this flash must still
be accompanied by a healthy portion of good old fashioned text, written in html,
and readily accessible to the SE spiders.
Also, if it absolutely necessary to use flash navigation (which it never is)
then make sure to include html text link counterparts so that your internal
pages will be found and indexed.
It is possible to embed text into flash but going into this matter is beyond
the scope of this little tutorial...
Search engine optimization summary
So what have we learned?
Basic search engine optimization is:
I have covered many of the basics of search engine optimization
in this tutorial and this knowlege base will be a great starting
point for anyone who is willing to take the time to implement
the suggestions here.
I hope that the information provided here has been both informative
and easy to understand and I will continue to develope my
knowlege and offer free search engine optimization advice
to any and all that want to learn. I would also like to encourage
those of you with suggestions and tips that will make this
tutorial even better to send me an email: morgan@seocentral.com
and together though education and co-operation we can regain
relevant search engine results and positive user experience.
It has been my pleasure serving you and encourage you to
contact me at any time with your feedback.
Warmest regards
Morgan Carey AKA "SEO Guy"
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