Search Friendly

The SEO is back

So i confess its been a while since my last post, and i never really got round to completing my 10 SEO Steps To Perfection series, but the truth to it is that the most important step of all is constantly refreshing your content. take a site ive been working on recently. There a provider of Uk Web Hosting solutions, and it has taken a lot of my time. but i do think its at the stage for great things. take the Reseller Web Hosting page, perfecting the text for that page takes time and effort, and definatly a set of usefull SEO tools ive found over at SEOMOZ.org. theres h1 headers, h2 headers, bold keywords, relevant texts, strong link structure, branding images, a good amount of imformation and a clear feature list. This is essentually what your site needs to contain to do well in google, and thats exactly what a Search Engine Optimization Specialist would do for you (although i would never turn down the work!).

check out some keywords for SearchFriendly:

Search Friendly: 3rd for google.co.uk search Result 3 of about 30,200,000 sites
10 SEO steps: 1st for google.co.uk search Result 1 of about 2,260,000 sites
seo location: 3rd for google.co.uk search Result 3 of about 2,570,000
SEO Domains: 2nd for google.co.uk search Result 2 of about 583,000

not bad for a few SEO optimization articles?

if you feel you have a shining example of how to optimize a site, feel free to drop me an email, and ill be more than willing to show how your site is a shining example of SEO and give links. if anyone has any usefull seo information, drop me an email aswell and ill be more than happy to post it.

peace.

Search Engine Optimization - 10 SEO Steps To Perfection - Part 3

Today im going to be talking about the need for SEO relevant links.

SEO relevant links are a massive step of SEO. Seo relevant links help google and other search engines find your website, and rank it on the weight of the links it has. E.G if the BBC.co.uk had a link to your website, google sees that link, sees its from a top respected domain with allot of visitors, is linking to your page, which must mean the BBc thinks your site is an important site, so the link weight is high. BUT there is a twist to this.

SEO Relevant links means exactly that, links from relevant sites.

For example say you were selling computer parts. you had your site SEO’ed for all your computer keywords. now if you were to get a link from a highly ranked Sports website, this is unrelevant content, so the link weight decreases. but say you had a link from a hardware reviewer, this link is more relevant, so the link weight is higher.

Google has unoffically talked about this in a few videos available from google video about how they rank websites, and SEO Relevant links is a big part of this.

I recommended for getting decent exposure in google is to have around 100-200 SEO Relevant links.

What do you guys think?

SEO - Tips to Optimize Your Webpage to Compete for a High Ranking

Search engine optimization (SEO) is very important to websites. If you rank high in search engines, your website are shown to a huge number of target users.To start with, you have to pick a list of target keywords. Try the google Adwords: Keyword tool for selecting the best keywords for your site.

Remember, be specific with your keywords! eg trying to rank well for “web Development” is going to be hard, but trying to rank well for “asp.net web development” is easier to achieve.

Go to google.com, search on the target keyword your website has planned to work on. Then check the top ranking website, learn from it, and do better.

How to do better? Here’s some basic practices…

1. place your optimizes keyword in titles, and make sure you have 1 title per page. to do this all you need to do is use the <h1> tag in very top of the page.

2. place keyword phases in a paragraph or 2 of text at the top of your site.

3. On your web page, set your first graphic with ALT set to your target keyword

4. build a text based sitemap, add ALT if it is an image

5. OPML / RSS site map

6. bold or underline keyword (1 or 2 times only)

7. The key word/phrase should be used again very near the end of the page.

8. try to register a good domain name with keyword (I guess keyword in subdirectory is ok)

9. navigation menu on the right, since google bot looks from top and left.

How To Plan For Search Friendly Websites

So you have a fantastic website but no one ever visits. You may ask? Why? Your website should be designed with search engines in mind. Too many web designers are graphic artists that excel at image manipulation, but lack a basic understanding of search engine optimization. Web design and search engine optimization (SEO) should not be mutually exclusive. Webmasters should have a clear understanding of both design techniques and how the search engines work.

Incredible graphics on a website without any traffic, will do little to fill the coffers. Follow these basic guidelines to ensure that your website will be visited and attractive.

1. Navigation
Both humans and crawlers (search engines) need to be able to navigate your website. Avoid using technology that prohibits the search engine’s ability to spider web pages. The majority of search engines have the ability to follow the links on a website if you use standard HTML. Observe normal convention and make the links obvious and available to all website visitors.

2. Easy to Read
Fonts should be legible and webmasters should utilize white space judiciously. Text on the web page should be easy to read.

3. Speed
Avoid using overly large graphics that are slow to load. Remember you only have mere seconds to capture the visitors attention, do not waste precious seconds with web pages that are slow to load. Search engines too will become impatient and give up on your website if it takes too long to view the content. As a result you should avoid using free hosting services that might be unreliable or slow to respond if you receive any web traffic surges.

4. Consistency
Your website should maintain a consistent look and feel. In other words, all the pages on the website should have a similar look, color scheme and navigation.

5. Above the Fold
The most important information on the your web page should appear above the “fold”. This means that the website visitor should be able to view the most important content without having to use the scroll bar.

6. Contact Information
Include corporate contact information on the website. This lends your company credibility, anyone can pretend to be anyone or anything. Including contact information on a website shows that you are a serious and legitimate business entity.

7. Avoid Javascript /Ajax
Javascript and Ajax are cool, but they are not search friendly. It is best to stick with good old HTML. Search engines at this point are unable to spider the website contents that are displayed using Javascript. This is also true of websites that are dynamically updated with Ajax. Chances are the body of your website will help your website rank well; do not waste the search engine opportunity by using Javascript or Ajax.

8. Meta Data Matters
Each and every web page on the website should contain a unique title and description. Many search engines extract meta data from the website header and use it to classify and categorize the web pages listing. The web page title and description should relate to the webpage contents.

9. Keywords Naturally
Use website keywords and keyword phrases in the web copy in a natural way. Search engines are starting to discern unnatural text, machine generated content and content that is cobbled together by a bot. Write your website’s content for humans not search engines.

10. Web Page Focus
Each web page on a website should focus on one or two keywords or keyword phrases, no more no less. The keywords should be incorporated into the meta tags, and web copy.

An optimized website can bring search traffic and visitors who have a natural interest in your product or service. Optimization should be part of the design process. Before hiring a web designer make sure they understand both your design needs and search engine optimization.

How To Pick Your Keywords

Keywords have turned into big business on the internet. If you pick the keywords that your customers are typing in, then your product is finally exposed to your perfect customer. That keyword is gold. Either you have run out of keyword ideas, you don’t know where to look, you haven’t had time, you need an easy to use tool, whatever the reason, I’m here to help.Let me give you THREE sources that will help you pick the PERFECT Keyword.

1. Google AdWords: Keyword Tool - This is Google’s Adword keyword tool. It allows you to look at keyword search volume, Cost and add position estimates (for paid listings on google), Search volume trends (eg when britney spears cut of her hair, the search volume shot up, and then shot down again, this tool shows that), and any possible negative keywords. This tool is probably my favourite, as its free and more relevant to my Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) Than Overture is for me.

2. Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool - This is a keyword suggestion tool from Overture (yahoo) many SEO experts use this, but it boggles my mind why use a tool for yahoo when most people use google. I can understand that if your targeting women, yahoo is the site to choose (most women use yahoo, whilst most men use google).

3. WordTracker - Word tracker is probably the leader in keyword selection, but it will cost a low monthly fee. It’s worth it if you make ONE sale that covers the cost of Word tracker.

Get Listed in Google in 24 Hours

So, you launched your new site. And you are waiting for the traffic to come. An waiting, and waiting, and waiting,…
It currently takes Google 6 to 9 months to index any new site. Yes, 6 to 9 months and that is not to rank that is just to be indexed. As a site owner you can’t wait that long. You can pay for search engine submissions but what if there was a FREE way to accomplish the same thing. And to have it take affect quickly.

Yes, there is a FREE way and it doesn’t involve any complicated programming or massive amounts of your time.

Find websites in your category and at least one that is a Page Rank of 5 or higher and get them to exchange links with you. It is that simple. I’ve found this also works well with sites that have been live for a while but aren’t indexed.

(Google has a system to give every site a Page Rank. You can download the google toolbar to view a pages rank here, http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/index.html.)

How do you find sites in your category? It’s easy. Go to Google and type in one of your search terms. Select some suitable sites and ask them to exchange links.

This is simple and it works every time.