Dominate the Search Engines: A Beginner’s Guide to SEO

Businesses who build websites should know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most effective marketing strategy that exists in the World Wide Web. A few simple lines of code can get you listed on top search engines including Google, Yahoo, and MSN. However, if you do it wrong, your website can disappear in the cyberspace universe forever. The consequences of that disaster are something you really do not want to handle.

Since there are more than 100,000,000 websites listed on the World Wide Web, how do you make a website standout from the crowd and make a business succeed? I have spent many years on the Internet in one form or another keeping up with the latest changes in technology. Today, I am going to show you some basic steps you should take to help get that website noticed by the search engines.

The primary thing to remember is that SEO is the most cost-effective marketing strategy for a business website. Yes, it is true that other methods do exist including pay per click (PPC), pay per traffic (PPT), and pay per action (PPA). PPC means that you pay to have your ad (text or graphic) listed in the search engine and you do not pay until the search engine actually sends traffic to your site. That’s great but it comes with a cost in the form of pay per clicks that can quickly add up and when they’re gone, so is your advertisement. PPT stands for pay per traffic and is generally charged by placing a banner ad with a link (this is generally based off of 1000 views) on a website for a flat fee. And PPA is a cost per lead method including the generation of a permission-based email address or the sale if the product itself.

The primary benefit of adopting an SEO initiative is that organic search results are free! Since the early days of the Web, search engines have used the search engine algorithm to analyze and return the most relevant and useful links from its massive database index for specific keyword searches.

Understanding Search Engines

When search engine optimization (or SEO) first became a well-known term in the early 90s, search engines were relatively simple creatures. Some factors, such as keywords appearing in the text, title, meta tags, and URL, helped sites to dominate the search engines. Others, such as the domain name and the length of time that the domain had existed, also played a significant role. Depending on the search engine, other “dark arts” might also encourage higher search engine rankings. Unfortunately, this made search engine rankings a matter of opportunity rather than relevance.

Today, the algorithms that many of the major search engines use to determine search engine rankings are far more focused on relevance. However, the thumbprints of those old algorithms are still in place. It’s just that the relative share of the thumbprints of the old algorithms to the new ones has changed. In addition, there are fewer loopholes around the rules than there used to be. There are also more ways of optimizing a site. Today’s search engines closely guard the structure of their algorithms, but generally speaking, search engine algorithms rely on two main factors: information retrieval based on a query’s relevance to the information on the site and trust that the information on the site has not been manipulated to influence search engine rankings.

How Search Engines Work

The best way to reach an audience on the web is not by paying for advertising, but by getting your website high on the list of “natural” search results obtained using search engines. This process is called search engine optimization. Apparently, 80 to 90% of the traffic to most sites comes from search engines. Ignore optimization at your peril. The simplest SEO and hence easiest checklist of what makes a good site: – Use XHTML – Clean up your URLs with mod_rewrite as shown in Recipe 9.2. Escape question marks and ampersands if you can. Numbers indicate the numeric entity for JavaScript or PHP arguments. – Break up key phrase list into Title, Description and Keywords-Metadata. – Head first, then h1 h1 … h2 h2 … or strong on most HTML’s content. – Include key phrases in the HTML text that creates the objective hyperlink (not mouseover or timer).

How exactly search engines such as Google and Co. determine their search responses are closely guarded secrets. To try to make certain that they produce the most relevant responses, search engines use very sophisticated algorithms to guide their searches. These algorithms take into account many signals. Four common ones are: – The number of times a word or phrase appears in a website. – The number of other websites that link to a website is very important. It’s not just the number of links that are important, but how important these links are. Links from important websites count more than links from trivial websites. – When a search engine witnesses that a search for “quaint doilies” almost always leads to a view of a particular site then that website is using search term “quaint doilies.” It describes the kind of website clue that few sites have been able to pay to generate. – Descriptions just above and titles that appear in a search result list.

Key Search Engine Algorithms

Many companies that want search engine traffic do a poor job of optimizing their sites for the search engines. They spend tens of thousands of dollars in pay-per-click advertising to funnel traffic to their sites but spend almost nothing on optimizing their sites for organic search traffic. This is generally a mistake. When many people perform a search, they skip the sponsored links and go directly to the organic search listings. With some basic search engine optimization knowledge, you can improve the organic search positions of your sites. This will help you build a steady stream of visitors that you don’t have to pay for. You can, at most, break even or make a small profit from pay-per-click advertising. But the search engines can drive a lot of profitable business to your site for free.

Google was launched in September 1998. Google’s home page didn’t change much in the first few years. But the algorithms powering Google became increasingly complex. Most Google algorithms, like PageRank, focus on webpages and not entire websites. We’ll describe Google’s algorithms in reference to web pages for simplicity’s sake even though most algorithms can be applied easily to websites. Writing about Google can be dangerous. The search engine is extremely secretive about its technology. Well-written articles have been known to disappear from Google’s search results never to return again after they upset the wrong people. Many companies like directories and portals that give tips and suggestions about SEO are banned from Google as soon as Google discovers their operations and techniques. However, the principles of Google’s search technology are not a secret, and the basic concepts of Google’s algorithm are not difficult to understand. There are, basically, two types of search engine: those that use automated directories or databases of hand-categorized info (like Yahoo and others) and those that use automatic text searching (Google). On-page factors relate to webpage, and off-page factors relate to the links pointing to a webpage.

On-Page SEO Techniques

The first three search engine optimization techniques that I will cover are known as on-page SEO. These techniques are performed on your actual web pages. These are three of the most important SEO techniques for an optimized web page.

Keyword-rich content: The content that is displayed on your web pages should be very keyword-rich. A good rule of thumb is to maintain a density of at least 2% for your targeted keywords. As an example, if you have a 400-word article that discusses a specific keyword, that keyword should be stated 8 times. It is also important to note that the search engines will take notice of keyword phrases, so be sure to pepper your web pages with keyword phrases as well.

Title tag: The title tag will appear in a couple of key places. First, it will appear at the very top of the browser window that is displaying your web page. Then, it will appear as the title of your listing in the search engines. It is important to note that a good title tag acts like a headline in a newspaper. The main keyword should appear first in your title tag. Then, you would follow with other keyword phrases later in the title tag. You should take extra care to write a title tag that makes you stand out from the competition for that specific keyword.

H1 and H2 tags: The h1 and h2 tags (header tags) are your article title and subtitles. They give weight to your content. They should also be as keyword-rich as your body content. The keyword phrase should appear at least once within your h1 tag, and it is helpful to repeat the keyword phrase within your h2 tags.

Meta Tags and Descriptions

Meta tags tell your visitors and search engines the most important data regarding your webpage. However, unlike the title, the meta tags are hidden from visitors. In the stats below, note the following definitions and always implement these tags in your web page: Meta Description – In this meta tag, write a short description about your web page. Choose the right words and phrases. The essence is to use words and phrases that will entice or persuade a potential visitor to read your web page. Unlike the title, use more than one word and phrase. You have 200 characters or so to play with, but be disciplined. Your detailed description must be readable because it can dissuade unhappiness after reading the web page. It is very likely that search engines use the content in the meta description tag to build a snippet.

Keyword Research and Placement

To utilize SEO in your website successfully, you need to maintain keyword density at around 2% to keep the search engines happy. When you are viewing your website, your keyword count may not be exactly right. With all the important site components we have mentioned, it is not unusual to have a 5% keyword density. Here is a solution: you do not have to disrupt your website design or be concerned about getting a change from a designer; just add similar pages to your website where you can place enough content without worrying about design. When creating these pages, be sure to take the easy way – start with your keyword!

The goal is to have at least 500 words of keyword-rich content on this page in order to have an impact. With your main content in the proper area of each page, the search engine will send viewers to this page. Do you have a website with many products? Split it – create a single page for selling each product and keep the keyword-rich content on these separate pages. A perfect example of this system can still be seen in a search for almost any product; you can see that the company can have about 5-20 products and there is content on many pages of their website.

Off-Page SEO Strategies

Keep in mind that some website owners don’t always practice SEO the “right” way so you might run across a website owner who is doing spammy things in the name of their website. Always avoid those site owners if at all possible. Do participate in guest blogging but do so with integrity in mind. If you’re guest blogging and providing valuable and engaging content that’s relevant to the audience, awesome! Unfortunately, if you are guest blogging on an irrelevant site or one that is packed with autospun garbage, those can and will get penalized, making your efforts worthless. Remember: integrity always. Remember, building links is a marathon, not a sprint.

Link Building

Link building can be a fairly simple process. Sure, it takes time, but it consists of little more than finding the types of sites you’d like to get a link from and asking the webmasters of those sites for a link. Of course, finding the sites you would like to link to and getting a link from them can be quite difficult and time-consuming. You should constantly be on the lookout for good sites to build relationships with. Dealing with firms that have related and complementary businesses is a good way of getting started.

But what are some ways of building sites? How do you find sites you want to link to? Some good ways of building links are: – Add testimonials for plugins or extensions you use – Submit your site to directories in your area – Get your suppliers to link to their site – Comment on do-follow blogs and always include a link to your own site – Ask for a link in exchange for a link to them

Of course, getting a link on another site isn’t always that simple. These are just the most basic ways to get a link, ones that you could implement today with minimal effort. There are other, more difficult techniques, some of which will be explored in later chapters.

Social Media Engagement

Add social media share buttons to your blog or other locations of your site so others can easily share your content.

Create a company Twitter account.

Create a Facebook page and use Facebook Ads.

Start a LinkedIn profile (if you don’t already have one).

Use other social media sites, like Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Reddit, and more.

Join a blog community like MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog.

Use an old-fashioned method to increase your audience – attend lunches, send press releases, etc., so more people find your site, and more bloggers write about you.

Subtly make the most of your social media efforts. When you announce blog posts, tell people to Digg them or share them on Facebook. Over time, this can make a significant difference and over a period of years, can increase audience significantly over what you’ll see with just SEO and word of mouth alone.

Measuring SEO Success

So, when can you expect to see the fruits of the hard labor you are putting into SEO? Before you start researching keywords, writing content, and building links, it’s important to know how to measure SEO success first. In the early 2000s and before, you could see immediate results from the keywords meta-tag, buying a few thousand links, and blast out page after page of auto-generated, spammy content. Now, it can take from a few weeks to a few months to see results. But showing up on page one of the search engine results pages (SERPs) for a competitive term is not the end of the game. You need to be in the top few positions to get the most click-throughs to your website. In order to do that, you will have to build more links, add more keyword-rich content, and gain social shares.

Your biggest indicator of successful SEO is high-ranking keywords that drive organic search engine traffic. Search for your site online, or use a rank-checking tool like the one provided here at Rank Power to see if your website appears in your desired search terms. Note that if you have been checking repeatedly via Google, you may notice Google usually serves up different SERPs on multiple queries. So who’s watching your close competition? They are. They’re watching what you’re doing and trying to stay one step ahead. They’re competing with you for your web traffic.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Key performance indicators (KPIs) estimate the value that a specific marketing activity has delivered. By monitoring KPIs, you can review the impact of marketing activities and refocus resources on those that generate the best return on investment. The web is the most measurable advertising channel in history, and online marketing offers a far greater range of KPIs than traditional media. Quantifiable data lets you track progress, benchmark against competitors, and identify your biggest successes and disappointments. It is also invaluable when justifying budgets and demonstrating the effect marketing activities have on the bottom line.

The rule of thumb is to use KPIs that reflect the objectives of each project. For example, an ecommerce site’s main objective may be to sell products, in which case ‘visitor-to-sale conversion rate’ and ‘average order value’ would be the most appropriate KPIs. A social media project could aim to increase awareness of a specific health-related issue, in which case ‘brand reach’ and ‘social shares’ would be the KPIs. Don’t just track those KPIs related to the objectives of the project itself. Compare results against other relevant activities so that you know which work best and have the greatest overall impact.

Tools for Tracking and Analyzing SEO Performance

So, it is worth looking at the last piece of the SEO plan puzzle – how you track your search engine performance. I actually do not check my ranks on a regular basis, but I have spent years building my ranks and in most cases, my ranks are simply not of a concern. Most do not need to check their rank in Google on a daily basis (a major piece of advice for SEO is to avoid looking at your ranks every day – this is not good for the health). We will, however, leave you in the capable hands of the SEO experts and end you with some tools that should help you monitor your website’s performance in search engines.

By far and away, the most well-known of these rank checking tools is the Advanced Web Ranking tool. This tool is so thorough in its rank checking that you can also use it to check your rankings on Amazon. It records your SERPs and does well in including and reporting your position within the paid-for ads on Google, the 10 universal search results, image search, video search, and blog search. The software provides an end-to-end solution to rank checking, starting at $99. Another tool that you can use to check your rankings and also your backlinks is Good Keywords. All you do is type in your URL and select a URL, bookmark, or pages that are linked back to this URL. You can also select to see the words used in the body of these sites.