The Basics Of Search Engine Optimization And Why It’s Still Important
Written by George Manty · February 16, 2010
With the huge growth of Social Media sites some people are claiming that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is no longer important. Those people are SO WRONG!
One of the reasons that Search Engine marketing will continue to be important for a long time is that all traffic is not created equal. With social media traffic you have a lot of people who are coming to your site looking for something interesting to read. On the other hand, people using Search Engines to find your website are often people searching for answers to their problems, specific products and services. In other words, they are much more likely to buy the products and services you are offering.
Now, that we have established that Search Engine traffic is important, what are the main things you can do to get more Search Traffic?
To keep things simple, I am going to give you an overview of the three most important factors in Search Engine optimization.
1. Choosing Keywords
Keywords are words that people use to find your website. Keywords are the words entered into the search field of a Search Engine to search for website pages related to or including those words. For example, if you are looking for blue shoes, you would type “blue shoes” into a Search Engine and find websites related to “blue shoes”.
The phrase “blue shoes” is called a keyword phrase. To increase your Search Engine traffic you should choose a 1-3 word keyword phrase for each individual page of your website. You also should choose two or three keyword phrases that constitute the overall theme of your website. There are many methods that can be used to choose keywords, but we won’t go into all of them here. Choosing the right keywords is one of the biggest keys to running a successful Search Engine Optimization campaign.
Google provides a really good free tool that you can use to research keywords with:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
There are MANY other keyword research tools you can use; the best ones you have to pay for. I am not going to go over all your choices here because that would take too much time. I recommend checking out Allan Gardyne’s site keyword workshop for a detailed look at most of the choices out there.
2. Title Tags – On Page factors /HTML SEO
On page SEO can be a little more tricky than off page SEO. From what I have observed, Yahoo®, and Bing® give more weight to on page SEO than Google® does. However, like I have said before the Search Engines constantly adjust their algorithms, so don’t worry too much about which factors are stronger than others and make your best effort at taking as many factors as you can into consideration when creating your pages.
The bottom line is that having good on page optimization will help your site get ranked well in the Search Engines, but be careful not to over-optimize as some Search Engines might penalize keyword SPAM (repeating keywords everywhere possible in what appears to be a very unnatural way).
The most important on page factor is the title tag.
The TITLE Tag is an HTML tag that is located in between the <head> and </head> tags in the HTML code for your site. The text in between the <title> and </title> title tags is the title text. It is displayed by the browser in the Title Bar at the top of your browser (see image below):
The TITLE makes a big difference in where your page ranks in the Search Engines for a given keyword phrase.
The title tag should be relatively short. Most Search Engine experts say you should keep your title tag between 6 and 12 words and under 80 characters. However, I believe that shorter tags 1-5 words can be equally as effective, if not more effective in some cases (especially if you are only targeting one short keyword phrase for that page). Too many words will dilute the effectiveness of having keywords in your title, so limiting your title text to 12 words or less is a good guideline to follow.
Your Title tag should contain the keywords you would like people to use to find that page. Take one of my old websites for example:
http://websitepromotionbook.com.
Look at the Title tag for the main page. You can do this by either viewing the source or looking at the text in the very top left hand corner of the browser window.
To view source code for a page in Internet Explorer:
1.Click on the top pulldown menu “View”.
2.Scroll down and click on the menu item “Source”.
When I wrote this book the Title tag said “affordable website promotion, increase website traffic”.
The keywords that I was targeting on the main page of this website to rank high for were:
1.“affordable website promotion”
2.“website promotion”
3.“increase website traffic”
These keywords appeared in the title tag for the home page. In most Search Engines the keywords at the beginning of the title tag contain more weight than the keywords at the end of the title tag. This means they are considered more important in the Search Engines eyes. For this reason, you should consider putting your main keywords first in the title tag. I could have put something like the “Great ebook by George Manty” in the title tag.
However, none of my targeted keywords appear in the title, which does not help the Search Engines know that my website is about affordable website promotion and increasing website traffic. In fact, a really good way to look at on page Search Engine optimization is that you are helping the Search Engines understand what your website is about. That is why you need to put your main keywords in your Title tag. You need to let the Search Engines know what this page is about.
3. Links Are King
In the world of Internet marketing it is often said that “content is king” and while content is extremely important with Search engine optimization, links are more important. In fact…
THE single most important factor that affects your Search Engine Ranking in Google®, Bing and Yahoo is inbound LINKS pointing to your website.
In general, the more quality, related links that point to your website the higher your website’s Search Engine ranking will be for the keywords that people use to link to your website. While some Search Engines don’t place as much weight on links, the three major Search Engines (Google®, Bing®, and Yahoo®) do place a significant amount of weight on inbound links.
The reason for this is that Google and other Search Engines rank websites based on the number of websites that link to them. One of the Google algorithms that does this is the Page Rank algorithm. Basically, the Page Rank algorithm calculates the number and quality of all incoming links to a website.
Each link to your website is viewed as a ‘vote’ for it. For example, I just went and checked Yahoo® for the number of links from other websites to mantywebdesigns.com using the following command:
linkdomain:mantywebdesigns.com -site:mantywebdesigns.com
The Yahoo® command above lists all the web pages that the Yahoo® Search Engine thinks links to this website, not including links on this site. The result today was 2,640 sites.
According to the Google® Page Rank® algorithm this is equivalent to 2,640 votes for our website. However, all these votes are not created equal. Each link to this site is given different weight. A link from a web page with more links, is more important than links from websites with less links. Also, links from “related” sites count as more votes than links from non-related sites. For instance, if you run a Houston Plumbing company, then links from a houston directory or links from a home repair site are given more votes than links from a site about hummingbirds. This is good to keep in mind when you are getting links to your site. In fact, I have found that related links are often more important then links from high page rank sites. So, get as many links as you can from related sources.
There is more to LINKING then just getting links from powerful related websites. Not everyone realizes this, but the text that others use to link to your site is extremely important (especially to Google®). Let me explain…
The text that a person clicks on to get your site is called the “anchor text”. By default “anchor text” is blue text with an underline. Search Engines consider anchor text very important. In fact, the number of links to your site and the anchor text used to link to your site predominantly determine what keywords your site will rank highest for in Google®. If you don’t do any other SEO work on your website do this one thing:
Place the keywords your web page is targeting in the anchor text that you ask others to use to link to your website with!
While you can’t always control what anchor text other people use to link to you site, when you do have an opportunity to choose the anchor text, use your main keywords in the anchor text.
Back when I started in Internet Marketing, all you had to do to rank high in the Search Engines was to exchange links with other webmasters and have them link to your site with the keywords you wanted to rank high for. That technique doesn’t work as well anymore.
Search Engines have gotten smarter over the years. A few years ago, the Search Engines started to detect if people were using the same exact text to link to your site over and over again. The Search Engines determined that this technique was easy to spot as an “unnatural” link pattern. In other words, when websites get links without asking for them, the links usually are done using a variety of anchor text. Some of the most common links used are “click here”, the full URL (ie. http://www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com/), and the website or page name. Due to this fact, the Search Engines started to lower the ranking of sites that had too many links with the same anchor text linking to them.
That is why when you trade links, buy links, and interlink your sites you should be sure to vary the anchor text between AT LEAST 2 keyword phrases (preferably more).
For example on my son’s website that’s about dinosaurs for kids, I might have people link to it using the following anchor text variations:
“Dinosaurs for kids”
“Dinosaur Toys”
“Dinosaur Games”
Another method might be to include the same keywords in your anchor text, but to use different variations of that text. For instance, for our dinosaur site, if we were targeting the keyword phrase “dinosaur for kids” we might use the following three anchor text links (all of which include the words, “dinosaur”, “for”, and “kids”):
“Dinosaur website for kids”
“Dinosaur for kids”
“Dinosaur Time Machine for kids”
Either method is a good method of varying the text you ask for in your reciprocal links. Search Engines are always changing, but at the moment it is very important to vary your anchor text (especially for Google).
In Summary, The 3 Most Important Keys to Successful Search Engine Optimization are:
1. Finding Good Keywords
2. Using the Keywords in your Title Tags
3. Getting Links To Your Site That Use Your Target Keywords As Anchor Text
If you need help doing this, then click here to fill out our free website analysis form and we’ll be in touch with you.
Comments
Got something to say?