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 2

Today i am going to talk about Title Tags and Header tags.

This is probably the second most important step in Search Engine Optimization.

When google looks at your page, the first thing it sees is your title tags. Its very important to have keyword relevant<title></title> tags, and not just tags like “web hosting” which would return over 200 million results on google. You should have relevant tags such as “UK Shared Cpanel Web Hosting” which will give you a higher ranking, and a more specific type of viewer.

The next thing you need to do is use the <h1></h1> tags to do the same thing as the title, tell google what it is this page is talking about.

You also need to use the <h2></h2> tags to split up the content further, e.g. if your talking about a web hosting, put the keyword relevant tag in <h1></h1>, then you may talk about the control panel, put that in the <h2></h2> then you may want to talk about the operating system, split the content up for more relevancy.

Google is a document reader, googles bot reads your site as if it was reading a book. therefore we have to structure your site for search engine optimization is this way. a chapter header is an important part of a book, and its the same with a web page.

A Few Mistakes in Search Engine Optimization

In Search Engine Optimization, SEO, there are many mistakes to be made. Below is a list of a few most common mistakes that website owners do.

Badly Designed Websites
If your website is designed badly i.e. lack of proper navigation, using frames to save on design times, and large graphics which takes more time to load, and reduce text that you would use instead of the image, these all makes effect on listing in Search Engine. Search engine spiders can actually be blocked from crawling sites that are not well-designed. Therefore a proper web design is very important part of search engine optimization.

In many sites, images and other script languages are used for fine looks. These are good but not crawl-able i.e. not advisable for search engine optimisation. Try to make your useful links in HTML rather than using images or use of other web script languages. If your page layout change then place HTML link on bottom of your page. It is also good chance to use keywords in anchor text.

Large image size will cause more time to download page, people don’t have time to wait for long time. Make your images in more pieces so it will take less time than single image. Try to make low resolution file where high resolution graphics are not required. If it is essential to use large images then consider using thumbnails and open it in separate page. This may give additional benefit of creating more pages and more text that spiders and bots crave.

Badly written of Content
If we have to rate single largest factor for high ranking in search engine i.e. “content”.

Clarity of content written in site is a very important aspect for search engine spiders, search engine and directory users. If your content is badly written and not relevant to what you want to find for or content which are never updated, than your site is neither search engine friendly nor user-friendly. Well-written content is what search engine spiders feed on, and content is the key to high rankings. In addition, your content absolutely must have targeted keywords and phrases. If content is written properly, you can make more targeted keyword and appropriate phrases.

Ideally, you will use those words throughout your copy frequently and may also include them in bold or italics to show search engines that those words are very important in the scope of the page!

Absence of targeted keyword and phrases can break your site. When users go to search engine and type particular keyword related to your site, but if you have not entered that keyword in your body text than your site will not come in listing.

Another common mistake made by some SEO professional is their choice of keywords placed in the META keyword tag. Make sure it might seem logical to your content.

Any irrelevant keyword or phrase can increase your ranking but think about it – even if you succeeded in ranking well for such a competitive term that you don’t want, how many of the people visiting your site as a result of this search would leave as soon as they see your home page? That’s right, because most of them don’t find what exactly they are looking for. Misspellings, odd spacing, and product feature-specific variations should also be considered. Thorough keyword research can save money and future disappointments.

Does it become clear now that targeting such a generic word is a waste of time? What you need to do instead is optimize your site for search terms and phrases that are highly targeted to your precise business. Use a tool such as Word tracker to find what people are actually typing in to the search engines to find goods and services similar to yours and concentrate on ranking well for those terms. The more qualified your site visitors are, the more likely you are to convert those visitors into paying customers.

Replica of Content
Do not copy content from other’s website. When Search engines compares your site with other site; if your page is updated later that it consider your site as spamming and it may result into penalty or low ranking of your site. If you use duplicate pages means if you prepare more than one pages with different name and link but if content in page are same search engine will considered as trick and it definitely affect your ranking.

Also, search engine algorithms have become smarter and are now checking that sites contain highly relevant content before including them in their index.

Improper use of Meta Tags or Site without Meta Tags
Without Meta tags or improper Meta tags can misguide search engine for irrelevance search that may cause improper listing of your website. Meta tags are used to include Keyword and description tags. It is reserved part especially for search engines. Meta tags help search engines for quick search. It is also helpful to increase ranking in search engines. Make sure to include these Meta tags in all page of your site, and target them for each individual page.

If your website is good in content and also have proper keywords, but not place page title or not used descriptive and appropriate page title than it might harm your ranking. It is better to have different title on every page also use descriptive page title.

Use your title tag, URL, and H1 tags when optimizing site. In a website these are the three most simple and most important for search engine, when it comes to search engine optimization.

Absence of Sitemap for website with more than 10 pages
Without sitemap, user need to search entire site for the content he is searching for which is very tedious and sometime user may quit without going further. For the reason it is very important to prepare sitemap in the website to help searcher and search engine. Sitemap assist web crawlers in indexing websites more efficiently and effectively. Sitemap provides structure of entire site in one page which is very useful for search engine optimization. The sitemap drives the search engine to go directly to the page instead of search for links. This helps a lot in optimization of website in search engines.

Google has introduced an option for generating sitemap of your website. Google sitemaps is an easy way to tell Google about all the pages on your site, which pages are most important to you, and when those pages change, for a smarter crawl and fresher search results.

Google Sitemaps also answers questions you might have about how Google sees your site.

Page Cloaking
The website that contains contents that is specially designed for the search engine is called cloaking site. The search engine checked IP address and keywords of the search query. There are cloaking techniques where the homepage is altered to each and every keyword to make search engine think that your site contains very relevant contents especially designed for the queried keyword or key phrase. Cloaking can result in a penalty that may damage your business as well as ranking.

Over optimisation affects your web site
When you put weight only on search engine ranking then it becomes over optimisation. When you prepare content in your site with more numbers of keywords i.e. keyword stuffed body text; having a too high keyword density may cause an over optimization penalty. This also applies to your page title, your Meta description and Meta keywords, as well as the ALT attributes of your images. That means you can not place stuff of keywords as body text in the site. Therefore, avoid optimizing your pages very much by all way. Try to make website for human being rather than making for search engine robot.

Absence of Back Links or broken links
Your site must be link properly. For example if you open some page in new window and there is no back link or any navigation in that page to return main page than it is just as a deserted island. The other example is if you have placed banner of some of your partner or relevance to your business, when user click on that link and you have not place back link than user may not find way if he wants to back to your site.
It is a good way to link sites that are related to your business and ask them to link of your website. But take care of proper linking. Try and think in terms of traffic and avoid the page rank trap. If a link will bring your site traffic then go for it. If you are in a highly competitive market try to build quality links.

Inadequate Marketing Plan
Ranking will not help if you don’t know what your target market is. Your ranking has to lead with proper marketing strategy that hit your target audience and not just useless hits. Before spending time and money a perfect marketing plan is essential.

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.

The Power of Search Engine Friendly URLs

I recently invested quite some time into generating search engine friendly URLs for several of my websites to increase my ranking and to have more pages indexed. I can highly recommend to look into this if your own website does not have Search Engine friendly URLs. Especially Google (the most important search engine nowadays) can be very picky in regards to URLs that are not Search Engine friendly.
Example (the 2 URLs below bring you to exactly the same page):

http://www.mywebsite.com/ShowCategory.php?CategoryID=13

This URL is not Search Engine friendly and search engines will eventually ignore any page behind it or rank it much lower in search results. Visitors will have difficulties to remember this URL. These kind of URLs often come from dynamic database driven websites. Each page is dynamically created when requested. Look at the forums URL this moment, too. It is dynamically created and not very friendly to search engines or the visitor. You get the idea.

http://www.mywebsite.com/Web-Hosting/

This URL is Search Engine friendly and search engines will spider the page behind it easily. It is keyword enriched to increase search engine ranking. Overall - this URL is easy to be spidered and easy to remember by a visitor.

For one of my own sites I was able to increase the number of pages indexed from 36 to over 150 pages - just by making the URLs search engine friendly. The additional pages were ignored by the search engines because they could not read the URLs properly. The domain used in my example went from 20 pages to 80 within 2 weeks and should go to over 120 pages indexed (by Google) with the next Google update.

How do you make your URLs search engine friendly?

Your web host/web server needs to support the Apache Web Server module “mod_rewrite”. This module allows to rewrite URLs a certain way. By using a “.htaccess” file you can give the web server the necessary commands to work with Search Engine Friendly URLs.

If you need some advice on a host that can provide this service, i would personally reccomend Power-core.co.uk , they are one of the better UK Web Hosts at providing Customers with specific needs. a smaller host is always better for more freedom in website help, a larger host wont waste time on such things, but smaller firms choose to do this to provide a better hosting environment.

How does this really work?

In general - you are faking the nice clean looking URLs and fool search engines and visitors to believe that the URLs of your website are Search Engine Friendly.

Search Engine Friendly URLs work in 2 steps.

1) Your site needs to display the se-friendly URLs.
2) mod_rewrite and htaccess ‘translate’ the Search Engine Friendlyv URL and redirect the traffic to the ugly looking Search Engine Friendly URL in the background (invisible to anyone). You will need to setup the htaccess file with the command how you would like the URL to look like and what does it translate to (a certain ugly looking dynamic URL).

The code that generates the URLs dynamically needs to be adjusted to match the rules from your .htaccess file. You upload the code changes and the htaccess and off you go.

Can every website be modified?

Most websites with dynamic URLs can be modified if the server environment meets the requirements. Each website needs to be looked at separately to get the best results.

The learning curve on creating Search Engine Friendly URLs can be quite challenging. Spend the time and resources on creating Search Engine Friendly URLs. The results can be overwhelming.