Put them where they count - keyword prominence Prominence refers to where you place your keyword phrases on your webpage. Search engines will put a higher value on keywords near the top of the page, so make sure your first paragraph is keyword optimized as well as all your Title and H1 tags.So, we can easily assume this big online competition. Keep in mind that the Google search results page often includes paid advertising and free organic search results. More Optimization That Visitors Will See Look at your headers. Did you put any key words in an H2, H3, and/or H4 header? And are you wondering why I didn’t mention an H1 header? Headers of course are a way to let the search engines know that something is an important theme for your page, but again, you need to watch out for over-optimization. Gary did some tests that seemed to indicate that Google sees key words in the H1 header as over-optimization “when combined with other factors.” In his thread, he notes that “Using H2-H4 still sets it apart and provides any benefit the H1 used to, without having to eliminate them altogether.” Getting Technical Now let’s take a look at the more technical aspects of your web site. What is the code-to-text ratio of the site? At a minimum, you should have more text (content the visitor sees) than code on your site.It’s a truism – confirmed with actual studies – that a web surfer won’t wait longer than eight seconds for a page to load. I venture to say that those are the patient ones; you’d best make your pages load even more quickly than that. Let’s move on to the stuff that we know visitors are going to see. Did you remember to put key words in the first sentence of the first full bodied paragraph? Fight the temptation when you do so to make them “pretty;” do not use bold, italic, or any styling on them at all. They should be plain text. Since this is the first usage, if you try to make them stand out at all you could set off over-optimization flags with the search engines. 14.Defending Against Black Hat and Negative SEO Tactics Even if you don’t engage in black hat SEO tactics, you may be affected by them. Black hat SEO can be used to maintain a position at the top of the search engine results pages that isn’t really deserved based on the site’s content. 6. Keep them together - keyword proximity While you do not have to keep all the words in your keyword phrase together for search engine optimization, keeping them close together will add search engine value.The good news is that most black hat SEOs are too busy with all of their own sites to directly attack their competitors’ sites. When asked about blackhat SEO tactics, dzine, a regular poster to the SEO Chat forums for the past two years, said that proper black hat SEOs “can’t be [asked] to (willingly) lower competitors’ ranks. They just churn out website after website.” Finally, let’s look at content again, from the keyword perspective. That brings up keyword density. Please don’t start obsessing over getting the perfect percentage of keywords in your content. Yes, they should be in your text, but as I mentioned before, you don’t want them to overwhelm things. Please remember that you’re not writing for the search engines; you’re writing for human readers. And we get tired when we see the same word over and over again. Let your text flow naturally. If you’re writing on a topic that is relevant to your site, the keywords will fall naturally into place. Good luck! 7. Don't forget to vary your keywords - LSI In addition to keywords, search engines look for phrases that they expect to see relating to that keyword on the webpage. The presence of these phrases increases your search engine ranking. LSI is designed to make sure keywords are used in context and that irrelevant content that is stuffed with keywords is penalized. There are other ways to abuse keywords that may not hurt as badly, so much as make you pull your hair out. If you’ve heard of the long tail, then you know you shouldn’t be targeting overly general keywords. They’re nearly impossible to rank for. If you’re an accountant in San Francisco, you should be trying to rank for “San Francisco accountant,” not “accountant.” You could even try “San Francisco small business accounting,” if that’s your specialty. If you optimize your site for keywords that are both relevant and specific, you will receive targeted traffic that is much more likely to convert. 8. Dynamic Linking To achieve a high search engine ranking it is important to get other sites to link to your membership site. These will be one way links, or reciprocal links, where you link to another site in return for them linking to you.Make sure your membership site has a site map and that all major pages of your site are easily accessible from your members home page.You can’t do that anymore, if you ever really could. Most browsers have at least a few quirks, with Internet Explorer still a little quirkier than the rest. Don’t even think of coming up with devious ways to do keyword stuffing, such as hidden text (using white text on a white background so only the search engines see it). Yes, the search engines are wise to this trick, and it’s likely to get you penalized. If you think you can get away with it by using external cascading style sheets (CSS) to control the font color, think again. The search engines know about that trick too.Check with the server administrator that it is okay to proceed in this fashion. Or perhaps he or she would rather configure the .htaccess file. 9. Don't make them stop to ask for directions. Structure your site so it's easy to navigate. If a person can easily find their way, then the search engine spiders will also have an easier time getting around your web pages. There are a number of places you should not use your keywords multiple times. That is called keyword stuffing, and may be treated like spam by the search engines. These include your meta tags, image alt tags, titles and headers (write good titles and headers; don’t stuff them!), and so on. Frankly, you should just avoid keyword stuffing altogether. Likewise, please do not include the same meta description and keywords on every page! Search engines look at these when they perform duplicate content checks, so you could actually be penalized for a lack of creativity. You want to have different title elements and headers on your pages, too. 10. Captivate with attention grabbing headlines. Use informative headlines throughout your webpage content, including your keyword phrases where appropriate.Broken links degrade the usability of your Web site, and are strongly advised against by major search engines. Many search engines recommend checking your Web site for broken links and for correct HTML as part of their Web master guidelines. Costly SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid - Keyword Abuse The misuse of keywords could almost fill a chapter in a book of SEO mistakes all by itself. This can cover a lot of ground, really, because there are so many creative ways you can hurt yourself with these things. From the reading I’ve done on the subject, keywords should be treated like the spices in a mild curry -- use enough so that they're noticeable, but not so much that the flavor integrity of the whole dish gets drowned out. 11. Tag, you're it. Include descriptive Alt tags on your graphics. These need to make sense and explain what the graphic is, but you'll want to also include your keywords if possible.3) Meta Tags – Meta tags (title, description, keywords) are used to show your keywords and phrases to the search engines and to online visitors that what services you are offering. Always use unique and relevant title, description and keywords in meta tags content for any particular web page. 4) Directory Submission – Always choose the most relevant category for submission of your website in free / paid directories available on internet. 5) Link Popularity – Link exchanging is still considered as a major practice in the search engine optimization for good rankings in search engines for any website. Link exchange with only relevant websites is only the way for the right traffic toward a website. If you even go for a 3 way link exchanging, please do not go for any irrelevant website in 3 way LE too, all three website must come in the same theme. Another mistake many sites make is not having enough real content. Maybe you think your customers don’t want content. Or maybe you think your field or the way you have your web site set up doesn’t lend itself to producing good content. Recognize these for what they are: excuses. Web surfers go on the web looking for content. If you want them to visit your site and link to you – thus increasing your traffic and possible conversions – you need to offer them some value. That means content. Can’t think of any way to add content to your site off the top of your head? How about a glossary of terms for your field? Perhaps a frequently asked questions page makes sense. You might even be able to come up with some how to articles. The list can go on and on, if you get a little creative. 12. Tag, you're it again Use descriptive title tags on all of your web pages to show what the page is about. Limit these to 59 characters. Add descriptive description tags to all web pages, and limited to 150 characters. Your content is worthless if visitors can’t find it. If they can’t find you in the search engines, that reduces their chances of being able to find your content. And they won’t be able to find you in the search engines if the spiders can’t crawl your site. Back in July, Search Engine Land ran an article that listed some of the reasons a site may be uncrawlable. These include: * An incorrect robots.txt file. * Using session IDs or too many variables in your URLs. * A convoluted navigation menu. * Too much use of Flash, graphics, or AJAX. 36.What Every Search Engine Optimization Company Should Know about Keyphrase Choice Knowing the Prospect There are many powerful and specific keyphrases available from which a search engine optimization company can choose to bring traffic to your site. But marketing on the Internet should go beyond traffic for the sake of traffic and instead focus on getting the right traffic. A search engine optimization company can target a phrase that is very popular, but 90 percent of those searching on it will not be true prospects. Or, the company can target a phrase that might be less popular in general but that is more likely to bring in the right types of prospects. Guess which is easier. Guess which is more effective. For the best results when marketing on the Internet, you can segment your prospects in three ways: * By geographic region * By level of service desired * By place in the buying cycle If you’re a regular reader of our SEO Chat newsletter, you probably saw in a recent Spotlight that Google is now treating domains and subdomains a little differently. What this means is that, if SEO considerations dominated whether you split up your content among several subdomains (i.e. trying to get as many spots in the SERPs as possible) you need to change your focus. Instead, look at it from your visitors’ point of view. Does it make sense based on the kind of content to split it up among several domains or subdomains?You cannot afford lame content that has searchers lazily hitting the back button to leave your site. If your content is based on articles, then do get articles that will create some buzz. If it is just your web copy then you should have copy that calls your searchers to action. How popular is your website in social media? I’ll go into that a little more in the linking section. For now, note how many incoming links you have from Technorati and Del.icio.us.If the site owner or head of the business does not have the time (or possibly temperament) to blog for the site, the task can be delegated to someone who does. It can even be shared among several employees, as long as their responsibilities are clearly outlined and they all have at least a modicum of the necessary skills and background. Content That Works Apart from having a focus, your content must be sufficiently interesting. Just as Technocrati (mouthful) is more interesting than Blogspot to pronounce, an article that says "Ugly Websites Sell!" is more entertaining to readers than "How to Build Trust in Your Web Site." Even if both have exactly the same content, I dare say the "Ugly" article will get more hits over the long term.The search engines do not place any sort of premium on Meta tags for ranking; I have seen and ranked sites with absolutely NO META tags. This said, please add Meta tags, they make your site look neater in the SERPs. By Geographic Region If your business only offers services in a particular part of the country, then you don't need to be marketing on the Internet with generic phrases that will bring in people who cannot take advantage of your company. A knowledgeable search engine optimization company will suggest specific phrases with geographic modifiers to bring in the traffic that will be most helpful for you. Costly SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid - A Question of Content Some of the issues surrounding content also deal with other areas of concern. For example, you want to make sure your website looks fresh and that you address your customer’s concerns, right? The firm had pages where customers could leave feedback. Imagine her surprise when she saw that they had let some extremely negative feedback from one of their customers sit on their feedback pages for at least a year! Somebody should have noticed that content and addressed the issues it raised. For example, the keyphrase "real estate agent" may bring in a great deal of traffic, but if you are in Georgia and the searcher is looking for a home in California, this isn't helpful. Instead, your search engine optimization company would target "Atlanta real estate agent" and you would see true leads coming to your website. What about getting a link to your site from Wikipedia? The vast majority of articles in that volunteer-edited online encyclopedia do link to relevant web sites. However, Wikipedia uses rel=”nofollow” on those links, which means that they don’t get crawled by the search engines. On the other hand, those who read the article might choose to click on one of the reference links to find out more information, and a rel=”nofollow” certainly doesn’t prevent that. Just remember that if your link isn’t truly relevant, it can be removed by one of Wikipedia’s editors. Are you using images on this page? Images can really help you add more key words. Make sure you have a key word in the filename of all your images. Boost both your SEO and your page’s accessibility by adding key words to the ALT tags of your images as well. Finally, add key words to the title attribute of your images. After your first usage of the key word in the page’s first full paragraph, you can begin using it in ways that are designed to draw the eye: bold (second paragraph if possible), italic, and in a subscript/superscript. It also makes sense to use key words as part of your URL (a directory name, file name, or domain name). But do not duplicate the key word in the URL, or – you guessed it – you might set off over-optimization warning flags. By Level of Service Desired Another way to target your keyphrases when marketing on the Internet is by the level of service desired by your customers. For this, your search engine optimization company will want to find out from you (or your sales department) what types of customers you attract. Don’t do this even if they say that they’ll submit it to thousands of search engines and directories. That strategy might have worked five or more years ago, but it certainly doesn’t work today. The problem is, most of the directories you’re likely to get your site submitted to this way are link farms, and those do get penalized by Google. The only directories which I have consistently heard might still be worth submitting to are DMOZ and Yahoo’s directory. For example, if you are an email marketer that offers high-level packages and when you are marketing on the Internet you use the phrase "email marketing," you will again be attracting a large amount of traffic that is not really interested in your services. Your search engine optimization company should instead be targeting a keyphrase like "premium email marketing," which may be less popular but will still bring in more leads than the generic phrase. Likewise, submitting your URL to search engines is a waste of time. They’ll come and index it soon enough; sooner than you might think, in fact, if you get some good links from other sites for the spiders to follow. That’s assuming you’ve set up your site so that they can crawl it (more on that in a bit).If you want to achieve higher rankings of your web pages, you can avail of the services of excellent SEO service providers. It is always encouraged to go for one that guarantees high rankings for your site and one that has a comprehensive list of available services. By Place in the Buying Cycle Your search engine optimization company should be asking you what your goal is for marketing on the Internet. Make no mistake; good backlinks are worth their weight in gold. But the good ones take real time and effort to generate. The ones that you’ll be getting for your $50 or $100 will be unrelated to your content, and therefore not counted as particularly valuable by the search engines. Besides, if your site suddenly gets tons of backlinks, that’s going to look very suspicious to the search engines, and could result in a penalty. So if you are a real estate firm that is marketing on the Internet, you have two directions in which you can go. Your search engine optimization company can target phrases like "Atlanta real estate," which will bring in prospects that are early in the process and looking for general information about the area. In this case, you would want to make sure you have whitepapers and other informational pages available on your site. Costly SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid - Wastes of Time and Money Okay, if you don’t do your own SEO, I sincerely hope you know better than to hire the SEO company that just sent you an e-mail out of the blue saying that they can drastically improve your position in the SERPs. That is spam. No, you can’t buy hundreds or thousands of good links for $50; no, you can’t believe them when they say they can quickly get you a top position in the SERPs for whatever keywords you want. You can also target a phrase like "Atlanta real estate agents," which is more likely to be searched on by someone who is ready to buy a home in the area. Those searchers will come to your site ready to close the deal.Now I don't want to sound like a suspicious, cynical individual who can find nothing better to do than to "spy" on my competition. I do, however, try to find out what other SEO firms are doing for my own benefit. So when a company offers a free analysis, I ask for one. I have several other websites that honestly have nothing to do with SEO. I have my own personal website with a blog, pictures of my kids, and my writing portfolio. You can certainly put a note on the site explaining that the principals are on vacation and the business is temporarily closed, mentioning when you’ll be back – but by all means leave the rest of the site up. It will give your site a chance to climb in the SERPs, and rather than abandoning your site completely, visitors might consider what they’d like to purchase when you get back. It’s better still, of course, if you set up your site so that they can still place orders, with the understanding that you’ll fill them as soon as you can when you get back. Knowing the Company In much the same way, marketing on the Internet should involve knowing the specific goals of your company. Your search engine optimization company can hone your keyphrases in three ways: * Those that bring in higher margin business * Those that boost underperforming business areas * Those that focus on new services Myth Three: Resubmitting Your URL Repeatedly to Search Engines I don't submit URLs to major search engines; I only submit them to niche sites that would take forever to index a URL if it is not submitted. Sometimes when you submit a URL it takes a very long time before it is listed. It is okay to submit a URL once; resubmitting it does not make sense. In fact, according to some websites, it could even affect the submitted page adversely. That is hearsay; however, submitting a URL multiple times does not affect rankings positively. Submitting your site in itself is also totally useless if the site is not search engine friendly. Another situation Jordan mentioned involved one of her now ex-clients, who took her site down for three whole weeks during her Christmas vacation, without telling Jordan. She’d just spent a month getting good rankings for the site, too, which all went down the drain. A web site is not like a brick-and-mortar business. Even if you have no one there to take phone calls, the site can act as a sort of “information stand-in,” letting people know what you have to offer.
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