SEO Tutorial

Knowledge Base » Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO Tutorial

In order for your website to be listed in search engines like Google and Yahoo, the site needs to be built so that it is search engine friendly.

However, just being listed is not enough. You wouldn't want to be number 401,000 when searched. No one would ever find you. Obviously, placement is extremely important. That's where SEO comes in. By following some basic rules, you can improve your website's position with the search engines.

Step 1: KEYWORD SELECTION AND ANALYSIS (this is most critical step in SEO)
1. First, determine the keywords you want to optimize your website for. Start with your home page.
  - Keyword Selection. Find keywords that are searched most often. Here are 3 very useful tools:
    Be more specific in your keyword selection. For example, the keyword phrase "real estate" is extremely broad. A better choice would be "real estate property listings" (based on Keyword Effectiveness Index or KEI).
  - Choose keywords/keyword phrases with higher KEI.
  - See what keywords your competitors are using.
2. Next, analyze your keywords.
  - Determine which of your web pages your keywords are targeted for. In order to do this, your website will already need to be indexed by the search engines (see Step 6 below).
  - To determine which pages your keywords are already targeted for, go to your search engine of choice (i.e., Google.com, Google.co.uk, etc.), and in the search box type, keyword phrase site:www.yourdomain.com
  - Here's an example: real estate listings site:www.realtor.com
  - A list of your web pages for that particular keyword phrase will be listed. The most relevant page first. Work on this page for that keyword phrase.
  - Keyword Analysis. How keywords are highlighted and used are very important.
    - How to highlight keywords:
    - • Place keywords near the top of the page.
    - • Place keywords within heading tags <H1>Keyword</H1>.
    - • Make keywords bold and italic.
    - • Capitalize the first letter of a keyword.
    - • Put keywords into bulleted lists.
    - • Use a larger font size on keywords compared to other text on your page.
    - Check how well you highlighted your keywords.
    How to effectively use keywords:
    - • Make sure links to your pages and between your pages contain keywords.
    - • Use Alt tags within your image tags.
    - Example: <img src="images/real-estate-listings.gif" alt="Real Estate Property Listings">
    - • When naming your pages, directories, and images, include your keywords.
Step 2: WEBSITE FLOW

The search engines need to be able to follow links throughout your website and determine the prominent information.
1. The term prominence refers to where the keyword appears (the body text, the TITLE tag, and so on). A word near the top of the page is more prominent than one near the bottom; a word at the beginning of a TITLE tag is more prominent than one at the end; and so on.
2. NO flash or frames pages! Search engines cannot index these types of pages. This means NO domain forwarding with URL masking/cloaking. Domain Forwarding is fine if you do not intend on submitting the website to the search engines.
3. Create a custom 404 error page. (Most Web hosts include this feature.) If a server is unable to find a page on your website, a 404 error displays. If you have a custom 404 error page, that will display instead. Links from other websites into yours get broken, bookmarks broken, having a custom error page will help the visitor and search engines find their way around.
4. Create a sitemap for your website. A sitemap is like the Index in a reference book. Sitemaps contain links to the different areas of your website. An example can be seen at http://www.i-dentity.com/sitemap.html.
5. Do NOT have dangling pages — pages where visitors and search engines cannot find a link back to your main website. Suppose someone linked to one of your pages. If a visitor clicks on that link and there's no link to any of your other Web pages, then the visit (or in the case of a search engine, indexing) stops here.
6. Include navigation text links on all pages — links at the bottom of your pages so that visitors and search engines can easily find their way around.
Step 3: PAGE CONTENT
1. The most important factor in search engine optimization is content — for search engines this means words and lots of them (at least 100 unique words).
2. Use keywords multiple times on a page — not too much though. More than 10 percent of all the words on the page could be considered "keyword spamming" or "keyword stuffing". The search engines will penalize you for it.
3. Check your keyword density. Make sure the targeted keywords are at the top.
Step 4: META TAGS
1. It is critical that your site be designed with TITLE and META tags.
  - The TITLE tag should contain 40 to 80 characters. Start your title with your keywords.
  - DESCRIPTION META tag — up to 180 characters. Include your keywords. Write a description that makes sense - not just a list of keywords.
  - KEYWORDS META tag — limit to 8 keywords (separated by commas). NOTE: Google does not use the KEYWORDS META tag at all to index pages, while other search engines still do.
  Here are examples of TITLE, DESCRIPTION, and KEYWORDS tags:
  
  <TITLE>Poodle Grooming</TITLE>
  <meta name="description" content="We specialize in grooming pink poodles.">
  <meta name="keywords" content="pet grooming, Palo Alto, dog">
  
  When you do a search, the page's TITLE is displayed in the search engine's results. The description tag contents may not always be displayed in the search results. What may display is content from your page that is relevant to the query.
2. Don't use the same TITLE and META tags in all your pages. The tags should be relevant to each page.
3. After creating your tags, analyze them.
Step 5: SEARCH ENGINE WEBMASTER TOOLS

Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility with the search engine.
1. Create a Google Webmaster Tools account.
2. Create a Bing Webmaster Tools account.
Step 6: SITEMAPS AND SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION

Create search engine sitemaps. Upload the files (sitemap.xml and urllist.txt) to your root Web folder.
1. Google
  
  Submit your sitemap (sitemap.xml) and verify your website with Google.
  
  Submit your website URL to Google.
2. Yahoo
  
  Submit your sitemap (urllist.txt) and website URLs to Yahoo.
3. Bing (Live.com/MSN)
  
  Submit your sitemap (sitemap.xml) and website URLs to Bing.
To save time, you can automatically and quickly submit your website to hundreds of search engines and directories including Google, MSN, and Yahoo!
Step 7: DIRECTORY SUBMISSION
1. Submit your website URL to The Open Directory Project.
2. To search for other directories to add your website to, Google keyword phrase add url. For example, if your keyword phrase is "real estate property listings", you would type real estate property listings add url in Google's Search box.
Step 8: INWARD LINKS

Links to your website provide traffic and can greatly improve search engine rankings.
1. Links to your website add credibility, importance, and relevance to your website in the eyes of the search engines. Inward links (one-way links to your website) are valued more highly than reciprocal links (exchanging links with other sites).
2. When creating your links, make sure the links to your website include your keywords. Start the link with your primary keyword or keyword phrase. Also, make sure the site linking to you relates in content.
3. Who to contact for links:
  - Association sites
  - Manufacturer's websites
  - Companies you do business with
  - Ask to be a featured client
  - Apply for online awards
4. STAY CLEAR of Free For All (FFA) websites. They are automated directories to which you can add a link. They bring no traffic, but will generate lots of spam (when you register you have to provide your email address).
5. Check your website's link popularity. Check your website's Google PageRank.
Step 9: PAID ONLINE ADVERTISING

Paid online advertising such as pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and paid listings could help your placement; however, these options should be considered carefully as they can get expensive.
Step 10: WEB ANALYTICS

Monitor your website's visitor statistics. Webalizer and Wusage provide very good information such as referring sites (how visitors got to your website), top searched keywords, top entry pages, top exit pages, etc.

HitsLink is a leading online service to track hundreds of real-time website statistics. Easy to implement.
Step 11: TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG

This takes commitment. If you cannot write (or have someone else write) at least 1 article per month, don't do it. If this is a commitment you can keep, by all means blog away!

Register your blog's RSS feeds with as many RSS directories as you can.

Now that your website is optimized, you can automatically check its ranking weekly.