What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to a website, by obtaining a prominent position in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

top-10-search-engine-optimization-SEO-tips

SEO refers to securing optimal placement in the organic search results for certain keywords or phrases, as opposed to Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which involves paid inclusion such as Google Adwords.

A highly optimized website will drive high volumes of targeted traffic to a website for FREE.  The best part of the process is that the ‘searcher’ is actively seeking the information, so they are more likely to make a purchase at that website as opposed to when they are suddenly presented with a banner ad / pop up which is a form of ‘interruption marketing’.

The Statistics

Recent data from Internet World Stats reveals that there are over1.1 Billion Web users worldwide conducting over 210 billion searches per day across the search engines.

Crucial scientific studies have revealed that the vast majority of web surfers never look beyond the first two pages of search results.

In fact, search marketing firm iProspect revealed that more than 40% of web surfers stop reading after the first 10 results, and only 8% will bother searching past the top 30 results.

This information means that it is essential that your website is prominently positioned inside the top 20 results, preferably the top 10 results.

How do Search Engines Work?

Search Engines such as Google send out spiders to crawl the web and index the content of each page they find.  “Googlebot”, Google’s spider, indexes over 100 webpages per second.

The spiders use such factors as the keyword density on a webpage to determine what a website is about, and they then store that webpage in their vast database under those keywords.  Whenever a searcher searches for those keywords or phrases, that web page is returned to them.

The difficult part is getting your website to the top of the search engine results.  Individual search engines have their own ranking system which uses algorithms to determine which web pages are most relevant to the search keyword or phrase.  They then present the results in descending order of relevance on their SERPs.

Search Engines such as Google and Yahoo are in constant competition with each other to fine tune their algorithms and present web users with the most accurate results.  Their core customer is the searcher so their algorithms are constantly in a state of flux.  If you the business owner knew their algorithm you could manipulate the SERPs and gain a top position.  That is why they ensure web masters have limited insights into the algorithm.

There are however certain steps that you can take which have been proven to maximize your chances of appearing inside the top 20 results.  These top 10 tips should be implemented immediately.  Remember it can take months before the search engine spider revisits your website, so be patient.

Tip # 1: Submit Your Website URL to the Search Engines

If your website does not have any inbound links from external websites, then the search engine spiders will not be able to find your website and it will not get listed.  We will talk about back links later as they are arguably the single most important factor for achieving top ranking.

SEO-Google-Add-URL

However, the very first step you need to take with SEO is to submit your website to the search engines.  This will simply ping the search engine spiders and say “hey come here and index my new web page”.

So submit to your URL to each of the major search engines by visiting the following links;

• Google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html
• Yahoo: http://submit.search.yahoo.com
• Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx

WARNING: Do NOT send your link to the search engines more than once.  It will have no impact on your listing and may even mark you as a spammer.

Tip # 2: Capture Your Keywords in your URL where possible

One of the first places a search engine spider will look to determine what your website is about, is your URL.  If at all possible you should place your primary keyword phrase in your URL.

Search engines place more weight on web sites that have the primary keyword placed within the root of the domain – between the “www.” and the “.com” like:

www.{YOURKEYWORD}.com

I always exercise this rule where possible with my products e.g.

http://www.ArticleMarketingDevastation.com – Keywords: Article Marketing

http://www.VideoMarketingDevastation.com – Keywords: Video Marketing

If your website is already established or the keyword phrase is too long to reasonably embed in the root of the URL, then you could do the following.

Include them as a Sub domain

You could include them as a sub domain e.g.
http://{YOURKEYWORD}.domainname.com
Include them as a sub directory

You could include them as a sub directory e.g.

http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com/{YOURKEYWORDS}

If you own a Blog you should ensure that the URL uses this sub directory style using the ‘permalink’ option.

So to summarize; a powerful SEO tactic is to embed your keywords within the URL.  You have three methods for achieving this;

1. Within the root of domain (most powerful method)
2. Within the sub domain (necessary if root is not possible)
3. Within the sub directory (least powerful method, necessary for Blog posts)

Tip # 3: Place your major keywords inside your title tag

Your title tags refer to a simple piece of HTML code placed within the source of your webpage.

Inside the source of your title page it looks like this;

<title> Insert keyword rich description here</title>

This is the second most powerful position for keyword phrases behind the URL.  It is important for both the indexing of your webpage by the search engines, and to give web surfers and indication of what your site is about.

What ever text you place inside the title tags will appear on the top blue horizontal line at the very top of your webpage.  It will also appear as the headline in your search engine results description.

This means your title tag is one of the best places to attract both human searchers and search engine spiders to your website.

Warning: Do NOT engage in keyword stuffing

Many internet marketers think the title tag should be ‘stuffed’ with a list of keywords.

For example if your webpage is about article marketing, do not engage in ‘keyword stuffing’ as follows;

<title>article marketing, article marketing tips, article marketing software, article marketing tactics, article marketing strategies</title>

This will look unprofessional to web surfers in the SERPs, likely confuse them and lead them to click on a competitor who provides an accurate description.

Instead write a descriptive piece of text that contains your primary keywords in a manner that makes sense to a human reader.  For example;

<title> Video Marketing Devastation: Discover Video Marketing Strategies That Get #1 Position in Google</title>

This offers readers an alluring benefit and it contains several keywords to be indexed by the search engine spiders.

Bear in mind that there are character limits to your title tags.  Google allows only 70 characters in title tags and will cut off the text after the last whole word.  Yahoo will cut off the title at the 115^th character even if it’s in the middle of a word.

Tip # 4: Place your major keywords inside your keyword meta tags

In the early days of search engine optimization, marketers used to stuff their keyword meta tags with keywords.  It was the most important place to put keyword, as it was one of the main areas used by the spider for indexing.

However, many scrupulous marketers started placing keywords in their keyword meta tags that had little if anything to do with the actual content on their site.

This was a means to attract additional traffic, albeit non targeted.  Many ‘adult’ sites were guilty of this practice, as they targeted other things that they knew their target market would be searching for e.g. ‘sports cars’, ‘Ferrari’, ‘BMW’ etc.

As a result the search engines changed their algorithm such that it greatly reduced the importance of keyword meta tags for indexing purposes.

However, consider it is a placeholder within your source code that is designed specifically for optimized keywords; you might as well use it.  Certainly some of the lesser search engines, still place some degree of relevance on these meta keywords. So it won’t hurt you to make use of same.

Keyword meta tags look like this;

<meta name=”keyword” content=”{PLACE YOUR PRIMARY KEYWORD HERE}”>

3 important guidelines for writing spider friendly keywords are;

1. List your top 3 / 4 keyword phrases in descending order of importance, commencing with your most important.
2. Separate each phrase with a comma and a space.  Do not use ‘qualifiers’ such as ‘and’ / ‘or’ as these are ignored by search engine spiders.
3. Do NOT engage in mass keyword spamming, 3 / 4 phrases are sufficient.

Tip # 5: Write a compelling phrase that incorporates your keywords inside your meta description

The meta description describes the purpose of your webpage.  It has greater importance than the meta keywords because the content is printed as a description of your website in the search engine results.

For that reason the search engine spider realizes you will make an accurate description, because it is in your best interests given that it is what web surfers will see in the search engine results.

An example of a meta description is as follows;

<meta name=”description” content=”Discover how the top article marketers use article marketing to drive hordes of targeted buyers to their websites”>

This includes a meaningful description of what the site is about, it stirs the reader’s interest and encourages them to click on the link the visit your site.  From an SEO perspective it includes the primary keywords: “article marketing”.

Tip # 6: Place your primary keyword towards the beginning or each paragraph

The actual content on your webpage itself is vital aspect of your SEO efforts.  Search engine spiders crawl every element on your webpage in order to determine its keyword density and determine what your webpage is really about.

You should ensure that the following elements are peppered with your primary keywords;

1. 1 – 3 times in the first paragraph of your content.  Ensuring one time as near to the beginning of the paragraph as possible.
2. 1 – 3 time sin the last paragraph of your content.  Again nearer to the beginning of the paragraph is preferable.
3. Several mentions throughout the main body copy.

Again avoid keyword spamming.  Too many marketers focus on a strategy called ‘keyword density’ i.e. the number of times your keyword appears on a page relative to all the other keywords on the page.

So if your keyword is ‘golf’ and your entire webpage repeats the line “I love playing golf”, then your keyword density will be 25%.

{Keyword Density = One instance of “golf”, divided by 4 words, multiplied by 100 = 25%}

A simple tip is to write your content like you were having a conversation with a person.  If the content reads like a certain word is mentioned far too often, then the search engine spiders will realize what you are doing and you will be penalized.

A good strategy is to use variations of your keywords to maximize your search engine traffic.  For example use “article marketing tips”, “article marketing advice”, “article marketing tactics” interchangeably.

Tip # 7: Place your primary keywords at the beginning of each title and sub title

Title and sub titles within your content will have more SEO weight than regular content.

The heading tags contained within your source code look like the following;

<h1> This will make content your main title </h1>

<h2> This will make content your main sub-title </h2>

<h3> This will make content your main sub-sub-title </h3>

The smaller the number before the h the larger the title size e.g. <h1> is the largest title size and are used for the main title.  By comparison <h2> would represent a sub title and <h3> a sub-sub title.

You can increase the weight even further by emphasizing the title i.e. by using; Bold, Italics or Underline.

<b>This will make your title bold</b>

<i> This will make your title italicized </i>

<u> This will make your title underlined</u>

This is understood to give your title even more Google juice.  In fact making primary keyword bold / underlined throughout the content will add more importance to those keywords from a SEO perspective.

Tip # 8: Upload images to your site that are named using your keywords

Many marketers upload images and web graphic to their websites without giving any though to the naming convention of those images.  For example their main product image might be; 00001.jpg.  Their header graphic might be; abc.jpg etc.

This is a terrible waste of prime keyword real estate.  What many searchers forget is that search engines enable web surfers to search by ‘images’.  Therefore Google and the other search engines index images on websites.

I ensure every single graphic on my webpage is named using one or more of my keywords.

It is important to use the following naming convention when uploading your images to your server.

Keyword1-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4.jpg

So separate each keyword with a hyphen.  Do not leave spaces between the keywords.  Start with your most important keywords first i.e. in the above formula keyword1 is more important than keyword 3.

No only will this boost your SEO, but it will drive additional traffic to your website when web surfers search e.g. Google images.

Tip # 9: Develop a well organized site map

Search engine spiders will only index the pages that they can find for your website.  If for example you have submitted your url to the search engines (see Tip # 1) and have multiple backlink pointing to your home page, then that page will get indexed.

If however you have no links pointing to your other web pages, they will not get indexed.

The best way to get all your webpages indexed is to create a sitemap that links all the pages of your website back to your homepage.  Place this site map at the bottom of every page and you are virtually guaranteed that all your pages will be indexed.

The best tool for building a site map is found by visiting the following Google Sitemap Generator;

http://www.google.ocm/webmasters/sitemaps.

You simply enter the URL of your website and Google will send a spider to crawl and index it, automatically creating a site map for you.

Tip # 10: Increase your backlinks

As of December 2009, Google has 68% of the worldwide market share for search, with 87.8 billion searches.  Yahoo with 7% comes in at a distant second.

It is thus worth your while focusing your SEO efforts on what is necessary to get a dominant position on Google.

The cornerstone of Google algorithm is a concept called Page Rank or PR.  It refer to the democratic nature of the internet i.e. Google sees a link from website b to website a as a vote for website a.  If there are thousand of websites linking to website a, then Google will view that website as an authority site for the keywords relevant to that site and thus give it a high PR.  The higher the PR the more prominent the position in Google.

PR values range from 0 – 10, with 10 being the maximum possible mark.  If you have a PR 10 website then you will rule Google.

The higher the PR of the websites linking to you, the greater the importance of your website.  However this does not mean that have hundred of PR 1 sites linking to you is a bad thing, quite the opposite.  100 PR 1 sites are just as important as several PR 7 sites.

It is thus in your best interest to gain as many quality back links to your website as possible.

There is a tactic called ‘reciprocal links’ whereby website ‘a’ and website’ b’ agree to swap links with each othe

In order to create a massive number of inbound links I recommend the following;

1. Article Marketing – Write an article every day and submit it to 500+ sites at the click of a button using such software as Article Post Robot or SubmitYourArticle.  This will create thousands of one way links over the course of a year.
   
2. Video Marketing – Visit Video Marketing Devastation and discover how you can create thousand of in bound links using video marketing.  You can use a program such as Content Buzz to submit your video to 50+ video sharing sites at the click of a button.
   
3. Photo Marketing – Name your images using your primary keywords and submit them to the top video sharing sites such as Flickr, photobucket and others.  Having keyword rich images on your site will equate to traffic from people finding your images on Google.
   
4. Social Bookmarking – Join high PR communities such as digg and stumbleupon, and link to your content.  Be warned these are communities so you need to share other valuable content outside of your own.  Otherwise you will have your website banned form these communities.  Also certain of these sites have a ‘no follow’ policy, which means they are invisible to the search engine spiders and thus not useful for indexing.
   
5. Press Release Sites – Send regular press releases to sites such as PRlog.com  This is a great way to get quality high PR back links.
6. Forum Posts – Visit forums in your niche and post links back to your content.  DO NOT SPAM these forums.  Read their community guidelines first.  Many will allow you to place a link to your website in your signature which is appended to every comment you post on the forum.  This is usually the only acceptable form of posting links on forms.  Do not abuse this.
7. Blog Comments – Use my FREE software application “Blog Whiz” to discover a list of high PR blogs that do not have a ‘no follow’ policy.  Leave value added comments in these blogs that add value to what the blogger is blogging about.  These will be very powerful sources for quality one way back links.

An important element to bear in mind when building back links is the concept of ‘anchor text’  This simply means turning your primary keywords into active links back to your website.

It is a very powerful technique because it links your keywords to your website URL.  To create anchor text use the following html code.

<a href=”http://yourdomain.com”>Your Anchor Link Text Goes Here</a>

This was a pretty long article, but it certainly drives home the major components in an effective SEO strategy.  If you take the time to use each of these tips, you will almost certainly steal a top 10 ranking on Google and the other search engines.