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July 13, 2007
An Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Part 1
This is the first in a series of posts that will discuss SEO and other Web marketing strategies. Before we dig into our first discussion of SEO, it is worth remembering that search engines are not the only way visitors get to your site. Google analytics for this blog (during the past month) showed that 49.32% of visitors came via searches, 41.24% came from referring sites, and 9.44% already knew the link and came here directly of their own accord. Optimizing your site for search engines is important, but it is only one part of your overall marketing strategy.
What is SEO?
According to Wikipedia:
"Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines."
Thus, to optimize our sites we need to know both how people use search engines, and how we can affect our site's search results. This is important because we don't seek high rankings for just any search. We seek high rankings on searches relevant to the content on our site.
Search engine usage habits
We all know, from our own experience, that we are more likely to visit the sites we find on the first page of a search result than we are on the 15th page. Sometimes we visit the first site on the list, sometimes the second, third or 10th, depending on what phrases show up with the results. Other times none of the results seems correct, so we use those results to modify the words or phrases used in our search and begin again.
While user habits may vary, all users are searching for something in particular. Some may search on one word, others a combination of words, others combinations of words and phrases, etc. More experienced users will apply boolean logic, while others may just look for simple word combinations. After typing in the terms, the searcher will review the listed sites, skim the phrases shown below the links, then visit the sites that seem most likely to provide the information they seek. If none of the sites deliver, the searcher will have to keep scrolling through the results pages or refine the search.
As my high school calculus teacher used to say, this is obviously true. I don't want to bore you with the obvious, but for today I want us all to be thinking about the basics. In theory, searchability is simple. If we want searchers to find us, all we need to do is to match our content to their search terms. Of course there is more to it than that, but if we start with a solid foundation we can implement additional strategies later.
Maximizing searchability through content and format
First and foremost, match your content to your goals and the goals of your anticipated readership. If your site is about Pygmy Hippos, then tell us about those hippos. Show us pictures, describe their habits, habitat and physiology. If you think your readers will want more information than you can provide, create a page with links to other sites that you find to be reliable. If your content is good, visitors will read your content, and possibly link to your site in the future. I'll discuss how links factor into searchability in a later post. For now, let's look at the structure of your pages. We'll work our way down from the top, by reviewing some of the coding you should include in your page
- Doctype Declaration
- The Doctype let's browsers know how to properly render your page. Below the doctype, in the <html> tag you should also include information such as the language the text is written in. This is important for users who are searching for sites written in a specific language. This information is followed by <head> Examples of this code can be found on the W3C's Recommended DTDs to use in your Web document page.
- Document Title
- The document title is what users see at the top of their browser (to show them where they are). It is also the title shown in search results. As such it should be descriptive of your site and reflect its content. Here on the Web Development Blog I use: <title>Web Development Blog: Creative Services: Marketing and Communications: Case Western Reserve University</title> for the title. It's simple and also shows this blog's connection to its parent department and the university. I use the same title on my blog pages because the pages are generated by my templates. On a regular Web site you can make the title specific to each page.
- Keywords Meta Tag
- The keywords tag is not a magic bullet—most search engines don't even use it. Clients will often request this, so it doesn't hurt to include it as long as you use it wisely (overuse of keywords in either a metatag or elsewhere, can penalize you). For the search engines that do index this tag, you will have better luck if you keep the list short (less than a dozen keywords/phrases) and only use keywords that are actually found in the text of your page or site. There are those who recommend using currently popular keywords to get more traffic, but this is not a good idea. Even if this worked, why would you want to? Traffic for the sake of traffic doesn't serve your end goal. If you are recruiting students to your Ph.D. program, including "Harry Potter" as a keyword isn't going to bring you students preparing for graduate school, it will only bring Harry Potter fans—only a small number of which plan on studying polymers. The few search engines that support this tag give it very little weight, so don't spend much time on this. Just pick a few words that are directly related to your content, then move on.
- Meta Description Tag
- This tag is important. The search engines not only index the words used in your description, they also display this text on the search results page. Users rely on this when deciding whether to visit your site or someone else's. Your description should reflect the nature of your site, and include relevant keywords or company name as appropriate. For this blog I've used: <meta name="description" content="Case's Web Development Blog offers tips, tricks and a place to exchange ideas with web maintainers on campus." /> It's short and to the point. And while I'm getting pretty good search results (see below), perhaps I could refine it. The words "tips" and "tricks" aren't used very often, except in the category listing. Now that I've had this blog for a few years it might be a good time to review my content and adjust this description accordingly.
- Using Keywords in Headlines & Text
- It's well known that search engines and browsers know that words in headlines such as <h1>'s are more important or descriptive than words in the main text, but there seems to be some debate regarding the effectiveness of using keywords in these areas. I would focus more on making these headings meaningful to readers. If the headlines reflect the topic of discussion many of them will naturally be keywords anyway. As with the Case Web templates, put the name of your site in the <h1> tag, a descriptive topical headline in the <h2> or <h3> and descriptive sub headings in your <h4>'s, <h5>'s and <h6>'s. Be specific rather than vague. If you are making a page about your research in elastomers, make your heading "Elastomer Research" rather than just "Research." Using specific headlines helps readers navigate your content more easily. Choosing key words for your main text should also happen naturally. Users are searching on terms they expect would be relevant to the topic. As such you'll probably be using these words as a matter of course. If you think visitors will search on term X, but you've not used it in your site, don't try to force it somewhere it doesn't fit. Instead find a logical context for it. This may entail writing another page or paragraph, but if you think this word is relevant then you should use it in a meaningful way.
In addition to the above, there are other meta-tags you can consider, but overall if you focus on your content you should be in pretty good shape. I'll continue this discussion of search engine optimization strategies in future posts.
Additional Resources on Search Engine Optimization
- Google's Blog for Webmasters
- Google Webmaster Help Center
- Search Engine Ranking Factors V2
- Search Engine Roundtable
- Search Engine Watch
Web Development Blog Search Results (Google)
This little blog does pretty well in keyword searches. Part of this is due to following the steps outlined above, but mostly it is a matter of continuing to provide topical content. As with everything we discuss here, content is key.
Results by keyword searches done July 17, 2007 (these will vary over time):
- Web development blog: 1 of about 329,000,000
- Case marketing blog: 5 of about 94,000,000
- marketing web blog: 8 of about 239,000,000
- web blog: 149 of about 1,040,000,000. That puts us on the 15th page of the results, so I have some work to do, but to come out that high on such a broad topical search is still pretty good!
Comments to this post are now closed.
I've closed comments here as of January 14, 2008 because we've been getting so many similar responses from people who wish to promote links to their own sites. While I have no problem with allowing links in comments that add value to the discussion, most of the comments received in the past few weeks have been repetitive.
Stumble It!
Posted by: Heidi Cool July 13, 2007 04:56 PM | Category: Heidi's Entries , How-to , SEO , Search Engine Optimization , Tips and Tricks , marketing
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Comments
I would say that content is the most important thing now as search engines are changing the strategies. A great thing is to have a few well-known websites/blogs link to you. Due to their trustworthiness and high traffic, you'll get a good portion of visitors that would potentially come back if you keep your content interesting. Therefore, sometimes it makes sense to create content interesting to "the big fish" in order to gain some reputation and traffic.
Helen is absolutely right about the "big fish." If your content is solid, then well-respected sites in your field will not only be willing to link to your site, but they will want to because it adds value to their site.
In future entries I'll write more about strategies to make this happen.
Interesting post on SEO. SEO gives you 400% more traffic than Adwords Listings. It also gives you 400% higher conversion rate!
Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing a website so as to get a high rank in search engine result pages. Both on-page and off page optimizations are equally important for a website to drive targeted visitors or traffic. Therefore, having a perfect content and getting links from relevant sites as well are worth value.
no doubt, unique contents are the gold to SEO. Here we're back to the very basic point - nobody wants duplicated information, they want something unique, and there's the motivation for them to visit your site.
Great site and thanks for the info.
My personal opinion is that "CONTENT IS KING"
If people come to your site and find good solid information, then the chances are they will come back to the site. It isn't so different from the "Real World". If you have a small store with nothing in there to sell, then people are NOT going to stick around.
Informative Internet info. Thanks for the read!
As far as blogs/websites go, it really boils down to traffic.
I came across a SEO blog with a good video on a free software program for checking on what other websites are linked to your site and why this is important in search engine optimization
The blog is : website traffic builders
the url is:
http://www.websitetrafficbuilders.com/websitetrafficbuilders
Mike, You are so spot on. That's a reason that if a site does not have content, its not going to get a lot of repeat traffic.
I think you have to have not only good original content but a really good diverse link set to help you out as well with ranking in search.
very good information. Btw. the latest information is that Yahoo DOES use the keyword metatag.
Content is king, and in the age of web 2.0 the best you can do is having a block and socialize/bookmark and ping until you are blue in the face. Update your blog frequently with new and unique content.
Of course search engine optimization is important, but if you dont have the content you might have a hard time even with the best on-site SEO and link building.
cheers
Your landing page may have 100s of key phrase variances people use in their search - each person developed that phrase when they considered the content they hoped to find, each person thinks differently. Attempting to create a single meta description to make them all feel warm and fuzzy about the page may do you more harm than good (Remember, searchers are reading your title and scanning the snippet). I say remove the meta description on content rich pages. Put the time into writing the actual content - is your meta description better than what you actually have on the page for your visitors to see? Allow the SEs to freely grab the snippet concerning the actual search! Is the only place they can read that powerful text on the SERP? Meta description IMO has its place - on pages with minimal text content - video, image pages. My content pages have been meta description and Meta keyword free for a few months now...traffic is good :)
If you look at a site like zenhabits.com, you will be interested to know that it reached 1000s of feed subscribers in weeks. This was due to clever posts on GTD (getting things done) and social network and social media optimization. So majority of the traffic did not come from search engines at all in the initial outset. However once the backlinks accumulated search engines naturally gave it credibility and recognition. The entire game is starting to change and I believe it is necessary to use some form of website tracking with these sites to understand the true nature of your audience. To the extent it may actually make sense to market to social media first and to Search engine afterwards!
Hello, you wrote a nice and informative article. I think that when all is said and done, good search engine positioning and increased traffic comes down to 3 basic elements. Keyword and Keyword Phrase selection, search engine friendly On-page SEO (title, meta tags, keyword usage, H1's, H2's, etc.), and good Off-page SEO, which includes your backlink strategy and execution. Additionally, writing and posting articles, press releases and even videos can substantially help search engine placement, especially if you use your Anchor Text to point back to your web site, and not the web site name itself. I hope this helps some.
One of the the hardest concepts that people have trouble understanding is that each search engine looks for different aspects of your website. Your primary goal though is to find what each search engine is looking for and drawing a common ground for a site design to have a natural search engine frindly website. Keep in mind that search engines were built on algorithmic code. It is always a numbers game.
There is no limit for doing SEO for a site. That's one thing that I like about it.More efforts in the right direction , more the results.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not a once-and-done activity. It takes significant knowledge, effort and time to gain and maintain top search engine placement.Keywords are the back bone of any SEO strategy. So using right keywords for the website is the key to success. There are so many other factors as well which need to be kept in mind while doing SEO. Dont ever use black or grey hat SEO to boost search engine rankings, because it could go the opposite side as well. So always stick to ethical ways of SEO and gain mind blowing results.
Excellent site for information.
In my opinion content is still defiantly king when dealing with the search engines.
SEO has to be done very often now to maintain a good position in the search engines.
You bring up many good points and from an overall internet marketing strategy web 2.o and social networking are a great way to extend the reach of content and build relevant link popularity and inturn improve SEO efforts. From an SEO marketers perspective this is exactly what search engines like Google, Yahoo, & MSN want you to do to build your rankings organically because its all about relevance and content that people will link to is generally relevant.
This is a fine reference to use with some common questions evolving around SEO, as i personally work in the SEO field myself i can truly say this is a well thought out reference to use in future cases.
Regards Resonate
This article is a good reminder for us as a search engine marketer. Hard working in optimizing your website will pay off a lot more in long term than achieving short term good positioning on the search engine by using black hat SEO techniques. Helen, I would have to say that you’ve covered lots of good point and present it in such simple way even for SEO beginners to understand starter steps in building a web foundation towards their next project of SEO. I would be very happy to see others participate to keep “The Internet” as the most reliable, informative, and accurate data source.
really a nice reference for newbie and others too.
Thanks Heidi, for such a nice blog, which is brief yet informative. It seems you have put maximum efforts in covering all most all the techniques used for optimization of websites. I found your blog interesting enough.
Thank you for this interessting post.
For those interested in search engine optimization and SEO Education it is essential to focus on the above items mentioned in this blog. I would also note that some universities such as Rice University are offering search engine optimization courses in their continuing studies departments. This is a great step due to the importance of this field of study.
Hey.
Thanks for the interesting Post.
I am new to SEO , so maybe this helps.
Thanks Again
There still is so much to do.
Thanks for the informations. SEO isnt easy that times, best of basics here.
Heidi,
I think you have touched almost all the on-page factors that matter most in a properly optimized site here. If a webmaster takes care of all the above discussed points in his website then there is a greater chance for his site to rank well in SERP.
Thanks for the best SEO Basics on the net..
Really appreciate that.
Some brilliant tips given there but nowadays there are many more tips out.
I think Heidi should right about those also by editing this post.
Good article and information.
Don't forget also the value of the backlinks for your Search Engine Optimization:
- Regulary check if the sites you're linking to are not blacklisted. You can notice that if the site is PR0 and if you type the full URL of the site on the search and get no results, then for sure the site is blacklisted.
- Check if the sites you're link to are still linking back to you.
- Check if the sites that link to you have a link on their homePage to the link directory where your backlink is.
- Check if the sites are not skipping the page your backlink is inside the robot.txt
If you find any of that cases just delete them completely without notification. If you continue linking to them you're just losing positions on the search rank.
I am conducting some research right now on higher ed courses on search engine marketing and search engine optimization. Not much available in the current curriculums. Mostly just cert programs. If anyone know if SEO or SEM programs as a part of a degree, let us know.
I did a Google search that seemed to show a lot of courses. I expect most would be part of either undergraduate or MBA marketing curriculums.
Content is important but some content is pretty useless and just writen for search engine spiders. It always depends on the website you are running if it makes any sence to use a whole bunch of site content.
This is a very helpful article. If anybody wants to learn more about the Social bookmarking websites (Digg, Delicious, Squidoo) and how they help SEO - Seth Godin has a good resource - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/01/flipping_the_fu.html. But generally I agree that Content Is King.
Incoming Anchor Text to a site are also a very important issue
Please help me...
1. Can Google recommended companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?
2. How to Choose a SEO Search Engine Optimization Company for Best Results at Search Engines?
Thanks
Thank u 4 this iformatic article, but i don't think that social bookmarking is very useful especialy for small sites with low rank. Content is king!
to 2nd: look @ their references and search at google for some relevant themes. if they have optimized a toy shop then search for the word "toy"@google. if the site is well ranked then you have found a good company!
I think Content is King.
But still we have to give importance to onpage SEO process and off page seo process
A little secret that most people don't think about is the length of your domain renewal. Google takes this into account. Renew for 5+ years and your site will rise on that alone. Spammers don't usually keep a web site around for more than a year, so it adds weight to your site knowing that it will be around for a long time.. It's even in their patent. I've watched it happen many times over. You can get more tips on our web site and seo blog.
I fully agree with brian seo on the renewal length of a domain. Having rich experiences dealing with many offshore business websites, i noticed many owners simply renew their domain every year which is not improving its SEO value. Like what other members have said, many factors come into play when we are talking about SEO / SEM. Do you know Google might be changing their algorithm?
Please help me...
1. Can Google recommended companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?
2. How to Choose a SEO Search Engine Optimization Company for Best Results at Search Engines?
Thanks
Posted by Best Results on November 23, 2007 02:01 AM
Best Results you can actually help yourself. I have seen through your website. You aren't performing SEO at all. What you are doing now, is known as keyword spamming and has been penalised by Google. You placed "best result" repeatedly everywhere around your site. This is no good.
Trust is an important issue to consider, and one that may become even more important in the future. Search engines are starting to build this factor into the algorithms which determine how web sites are ranked in search results pages. Web sites with easily indexed "security policies", "privacy policies" and other content which helps to build trust with the online viewer may rank above sites which have not addressed these issues. In fact I have already noticed the trust issue affecting the search results of many web sites, particularly with Google search results.
I agreed with Jeff on the trust issue that has been circulating around the web. Few years back when SEO value was affected by higher level domain such as .edu and .gov, i have noticed the change in Google algorithms aimed at getting trusted websites onto the top of SERPs. It is always good to include Terms Of Services, Privacy Policy and Disclaimer on your website.
Good content with keywords spread evenly, well crafted Titles and brief page information in the meta description surely catches the eyes of the visitor and compels him to click
Good and pin point article but for traffic content is more important seo can only generate traffic give you top rank in SERP for your website but if you don't have good content which attract visitor than it's useless.
I´m on the right way i think. Good Article.
Greetings
Great article. I think really helps someone like myself that is just getting the feel of the industry.
Thanks for the SEO tips! This will def. help me with all my SEO needs for my websites. Again, thanks a lot!
Great article ,
appreciate it..would keep an eye on your blog for more seo tips :)
This is an excellent look into the world of SEO. I spent a reasonable amount of time ensuring my site on landlords insurance was upto the spec of everything talked about here so I honestly do appreciate it.
I think you really hit the nail on the head, content is definately king!
Great SEO tips and tricks. This will come in handy in the future. I think I need to do a complete overhaul on my SEO!
Well this is a great article for newbie likes me who have not porper information but I am very happy to find out this article. It's a very informative one and I learn many things which I don't knoe before. Before this I never give importance to meta description tags and document title but now I an understoond how it's important for SEO and I made change with my blog.
Very well made article mate. You have explained yourself very clarly, and its easy to understand.
Keep up the good work.
Leif-Harald
http://www.originalprivatelabelproducts.com
my current job profile is more about optimizing corporate site for better ranking on search engines. And these articles will surely be very useful. Thanks for sharing
SticKer
Well I just want to ask a simple visit on my blog and suggest me some idea to improve my blog. Please visit it.
Sportworld
Nice post!
Have a little knowledge in seo.But i think my knowledge bit developed while reading the post.
Grate tips On Search Engine Optimization, Even for End Users..
Those are indeed good tips that works perfect over yahoo, submitexpress should give a good point for that..
Thanks for explaining how SEO works and making it simple enough that even I might follow it. Hopefully, I'll be able to use this information to do more for my Diet Plan reviews website
Ive doing my own seo for my websites and this article somehow refreshed my seo knowledge. It is a nice find.
Thank you for the great information on SEO. I learned a lot reading your article.
This article helped me a lot, after 2 months i can say this is a good ideas..
Thankyou so much, this information really helped me, SEO has helped my site immensely!
Thank you for the great information. I'm new to SEO and find this information very helpful.
Surely SEO has to be seen as a combination of things. Content has to be the most important (if you haven't got good content then why would you want people to come to your site anyway?) but I think backlinks are still key to google - links coming from trustworthy sites. Get your content right and then build your backlinks.
Being new to SEO, i would say this is a nice article for starters...thanks for your tips, appreciated!
This is a very good article. My personal opinion is that Content is the most important factor. Also avoid using duplicated contents. They have little or no PR. I learnt it the hard way.
one of the most important seo factors is keyword in domain name. the best place is the first word of the url.
keep this always in mind when choosing a domain.
Interesting info. Sad thing is that I have found this blog just now. But I will regularly visit it. Thanks for great info, hope you have fast updates.
Wow, I'm gonna use some of those tips on my Sites, ConnectHost.net and NetXServers.com! Thanks
Nice tips!This will surely help for my Short url website.
Thankyou so much, great info!
this article is great, i followed some of the stepts on My Webdesign blog and i can notice SERP changes.
Thanks,
Tom
thanks, great SEO tips there!
Thanks for the great tips!
It always gives me great feeling to read on EDU blogs. I don’t know if anybody got that feeling I do.
Indeed, thats a good article on SEO. Will come in handy!
Sofia: I agree!
SEO is one of the first things you should know if being webmaster. So it’s never enough info about SEO.
thank you for these great tips
Definitely a good article, thanks. I'm looking forward to implement some of your tips in order to boost SERPS on my F1 News blog. Really appreciated!
Common people, this article needs updating. It's been half a year.
Everybody is talking about SEO. Where is the best place to read about it? EDU blog of course. Thanks for the article
These are interesting tips indeed.. Very useful for any starters in this field!
Interesting article regarding SEO. I will for sure try to follow some steps on my Ip Location Lookup site and see changes.
Great article, thx for sharing and making it simple enought that I can follow it. And it did work, my
digital frames site play good in SERPs now.
Well this should be called "SEO made easy" !
I have been struggling with SEO at my Digital Photography blog for quite some times now I am happy I found this
Great tips thank you and Happy new year
Great article.. Yes SEO is importand part that we must know..Thanks for sharing..
This is a great article for any search engine optimization newbie to read, it contains a great introduction to the topic of SEO.
Being able to know and understand search engine optimization is a very useful tool, especially if you own your own websites or blogs.
Well this tips and strategies is complete and I will surely evaluate this into my website: SEO Services India
Thanks for the info dude...
SEO is very valuable to your website, I highly recommend webmasters to check out this site AdminMania for more tips on making your website or forum sucessful :)
My Seo skills seem to keep improving :) Thanks for the additional tips, it's always helpful. You can check what I have applied on my designer cufflinks website! --- thanks again :)
It would be interesting to know if Google, Yahoo and Live uses the same SEO technique and format. While some of my sites rank very well on Google, some are nowhere to be found on the first few pages on Yahoo and Live.
Neverthless, a great article. Well thought out and written.
What an absolutely fascinating and enlightening post. SEO is never easy at the best of times and posts/articles such as this go a long way in helping the uninitiated along the long, rocky road. Thank you :)
A well written article which will definitely help someone starting out in SEO.
Thanks for the article. Will try to implement some of the advice on my site Designer Sunglasses
Thanks for the tips, will be applying them to my software blog :)
I can definitely see my techniques improving at my website Genital Warts -thanks for the advice and info.
This is a fantastic article and I am very glad I stumbled across it. It looks like my blog Horseracing Tips- is going to see some improvment! Thanks very much.
Thanks for the article will try and use them on my site
Very good article i will try to make 100% use of it, i really appreciate it, and I will try to implement it on my mobile related website i.e. Free Mobile Games
Once again thanks.
SEO is the biggest game nowadays learning and implementing it correctly can make or break a website !
Yes content IS king but without proper SEO content will remain lost for ever !
TechnoGeek
Sharing our best IT knowledge
Very Good SEO article
Thank you for very interesting tips, I use it for my site: ssn search. Hope it help me increase traffic
Great post. While it might be a little outdated, it's still useful for SEO newbies and for people who want to learn SEO.
Regards,
European Sport Service
Very nice Article.Will be certainly a helpful article in SEO.i will follow these tips to my SEO TIPS BLOG
Very much use ful SEO tips.This articles will help me a lot.This article picked up all most main points of SEO.Thank you very much for such a brilliant article.These aricle will certainly help Tamil Movies
Thank you for the valuable article.Some sites have more direct traffic than search engine traffic.Here it is said that 49.32% are of search engines,It is correct to majority of sites,That is the importance of Search Engine Optimization.Will use these tips to
Bollywood Actress Photos
Thanks for the advice, very good intro to SEO.
I'm going to try to make use of this with my site Spiral Botanicals.
The trend in SEO is more towards off-page optimization, but this guide is a good start.
An excellent guide for the newbies!
Cheers!
Great guide for newbies and pros as well. Great deal of detail, I will blog this as well.
Happy New Year, everybody.
Great article, thanks for the tips
Thank you for this post. Lot's of new things i just learned and need to work on my own sites, to make them more search engine friendly. There is so much to know about SEO and i am always looking for tips from people who know what they are talking about.
Cool... It's nice tips to rank my site to make more ranking on search engines.
Thank you for nice tips.
Lots of comments on this topic. The problem with SEO is that it takes a long time to see the results. I good search engine marketing strategy would be o combine SEO and PPC. PPC is great for getting results quickly. SEO is great is you have the time to invest over a long period.
Thanks for the tips , Now my seo knowledges are gooder :D
Thanks so much, this article helped me. I love this words: SEO :X
Good Luck
Hi Heidi, thx 4 the article. I will try it to to optimize my Lyrics Update and Payday Loans Blog
Very useful article. Looking forward for part II.
Cheers
Happy New Year-2008!!! This is really a wonderful article. I'll definitely make use of these simple tips to gain more visitors and also good PR. Thanks for the info!!!
Thank you for the great information on SEO. I learned a lot reading your article.
Thanks for the SEO tips! This will def. help me with all my SEO needs for my websites. Again, thanks a lot!
Nice read. I learned something new today.
this is very basic seo tip
thank for share
It's amazing how SEO is important? I didn't realize it before, really. Will pay attention in the future.
Basic... but still useful. Thanks.
Nice read. But after all, I think the is the most important thing.
SEO is important however having proper code and a solid back links can make all the difference in the world. Along with good content!
Hello,
I am new to SEO, in fact I am new to the web world. I have heard a lot about SEO, and the SERP's. This really got me into it. Will try some of the things you said.
Malina Sky,
Thanks for the complete guide...it really is very useful for newbies like me..thanks alot
I didn't realise how important SEO was ,I'll be more careful to ensure my websites are better for it now :)
Thanks for the heads up, it's mega-appreciated
Thanks for the heads up, i was unaware of how important SEO was :)
Nice SEO blog I wish, I had an SEO blog this huge.
Good work on the very large seo website :D
Thanks for that, it's been a really interesting read, and i'll endevour to take action on it soon :)
The knowledge and information of SEO is always useful for me, because my background is far from computing science.
As I start to learn about web, this article is really worth for me.
Great and interesting post. You have given us many information. I like you ! Post some more !
Is this the same for an e-commerce store? I mean everyone knows that blogs automatically ping when there is a new post. This causes the SE spiders to come back, but for an e-commerce store that is static most of the time, what is the best thing to do?
There are also a number of off page tactics that should be employed in getting any page to rank well in the search engines. I think some sites rank extremely well due to fresh content and others rank well because of incoming links. To focus on one to the exclusion of the other is probably a mistake
Thank you for a very interesting information piece. I passed it along to my son who just started into building web sites. Happy new year and much success.
You bring up many good points and from an overall internet marketing strategy web 2.o and social networking are a great way to extend the reach of content and build relevant link popularity and inturn improve SEO efforts
The few search engines that support this tag give it very little weight, so don't spend much time on this. Just pick a few words that are directly related to your content, then move on.
Choosing key words for your main text should also happen naturally. Users are searching on terms they expect would be relevant to the topic.
match your content to your goals and the goals of your anticipated readership
Great article this.
Thanks
Laffe
Thanks
I know SEO a lot better
Thanks for the info :)
Love the Information
Any more good tips ?
This would help me
This will help me a lot :)
Nice article, want to learn more about SEO and PPC visit Web Marketing Consultant
Info given by you is very appreciated, and had got successful evaluating in my site: ">iPod Nano Accessories
Visit to discuss and share more about SEO and PPC at SEO Forums
This is very good information about on page optimization as it stands now. I would be interested on information about off page optimization as well as other things such as internal page indexing and the effect time has on rankings. Thank you for the information.
These all are internal seo factors, if you say Content is the king then i would say link is the queen,
Backlink from different sites is one of the main external factors that will effect the rankings
This is a great post for SEO Optimization. I will follow along for more information. Thanks.
Great SEO tutorial for Beginners, hope to see more advanced tutorials soon.
There is no limit for doing SEO for a site. That's one thing that I like about it.More efforts in the right direction , more the results.
Thank you so much for this valuable post. Having read that, i strongly believe that applying SEO technology to a website, will not only increase traffic but it will also add some reputation to it due to the high visibility.
Thanks again.
Good point there!
I think when you use a anonymous proxy it will be better.
Just look for it at
1yz.info
Cheers all!
The meta title tag is very important as the article says. That is done with great succes at
oppskrifter på mat. Do not underestimate that tactic. It is widely recognised as one of the most important factors in ranking.
The meta title tag is very important as the article says. That is done with great succes at
oppskrifter på mat and music mp3. Do not underestimate that tactic. It is widely recognised as one of the most important factors in ranking.
Excellent article! Well done.
Thanks for this great post.It will help me to optimize my site coderbari.com.
It is surely a Great SEO tutorial for beginners like me.
nice resources!!! it will definite help all SEO . . .
Thank you for very interesting tips, I use it for my sites: Browse Untraced and Fun Trivia . Hope it help me increase traffic
I think you missed out the content. The content should be in user friendly as well as search engine friendly language. In content some of our major keywords should be included in a manner that user can understand well. Also internal pages should have link from index page. If it will be from content than it will be more beneficial.
Great tips, Thanks. I have been using this method for my sites fast cars and discount tires but have not been using H1 tags as much as I should, but will do after reading this.
This is really a good information for newbie seo's. meta and content always play a great role for your site if you provide unique and useful content to users. Always create page for user not for search engine. Search engine's always give weightage to unique quality sites. They also written in their website guidelines so go through their guidelines and make search engine friendly websites.
I have already read some SEO topics in detail but this blog abridge the extracts of different aspects and present it lucidly in an understandable manner for even newbies about the optimization. Hope more people will be benefited by this blog. Good luck
Very interesting information. I agree whole-heartedly that sites should be built for the user not the search engines.
This is a good primer on SEO. I am going to take a look at our site to make sure it is user friendly and meets our users needs.
Nice basic information, but the center point is "content is the king".
Thanks for a nice article mate.. Very helpful to beginners SEO. Though it would be nice if you add some more information on advanced SEO techniques. I am waiting for it.
I can use this for my report on my site. The info you provided is brilliant!
Sunny
http://www.theadsensesecret.info
Information is quite handy. Link building and updating content regularly is another aspect of seo.
SEO is something you constantly need to work on. You can't expect to do a little work, and then forget about it. By continually working on it, you will see success. After a while you will your site slowly climb up the ranks. Find books about SEO here.
Cheers!
don't forget links.
I've found spreading my links around as much as possible has helped my website Open Fit Hearing Aids more than anything else I have done. Links have helped Centra Active come to the top of search results.
I really do like this informative article on SEO. It really gave me a better understand on this matter. Perhaps a few deeper methods of improving you website using SEO could be mentioned.
-Owner of
http://www.gameinfested.com
Google is only penalizing paid blogging sites, not directories that could give you valuable PR. I think SEO takes a lot of time to do properly, at least 6-8 months if not 12. Yuo must be working the entire time at this to win.
Great article. I'd agree that content is the best for optimization. Update your pages with UNIQUE content and you'll get your ups!
SEO is an interesting subject. Everyone tries to constantly figure out how to be #1 for their keywords.
I just had an experience I blogged about (http://www.fka200.com/2008/01/03/seo-the-smallest-change-can-affect-your-traffic) where I edited my content and my traffic from the Ss just crashed. Weird.
Anyways, thank you.
Sammy Ashouri
http://www.fka200.com
I forgot to mention that SEO is an ongoing process. The algorithms constantly change. Make sure to use tools!
Google Pagerank, Backlinks, Alexa Rank Checker - Domain Optimization SEO Tools
Domain News And Online Revenue Blog
Great tips, Thanks a lot .Hope more people will be benefited by this blog. Good luck
Great SEO advice here. This is what we tell all of our customers...
More back links = Higher Google PR, higher ranking in search engines, Higher ranking = more clicks on links , more clicks = more traffic, more traffic = more $$
-Colin
SEO,Marketing,Hosting and Web Design
It's common for people to enter a new year with a resolution, but this year, I thought I'd try something entirely new (and probably overflowing with hubris) and assign New Year's resolutions to the big players in the search market. Thus, without further ado... Google should resolve to: Build more search demand with the money they've amassed
Nice post
Thanks
Google is only penalizing paid blogging sites, not directories that could give you valuable PR. I think SEO takes a lot of time to do properly, at least 6-8 months if not 12. Yuo must be working the entire time at this to win.
Regarding the Keywords Meta Tag, I agree with what you said about most not using it. It might be help though for people to make a descision if you posted a list of the Search Engines that do use it.
Thanks for all the great info.
@Lasik - SEO does not take that long to do if you do it right and concentrate on it from the start of the website. On you get the site optimized for SEO, the rest is just linking building, which should not be extremely time consuming.
THis article is very informative. But I would like to see something like off page optimization in the Part II. Factors like Domain Age, Link Building, etc. are also important in SEO. Looking forward to seeing it soon.
considering i'm quite new to seo like the other readers the tips really did come in handy, i think i'll take a gander to your other posts, i think my main problem in the past however is deciding what keywords to really target, the ones i want seem to always be too difficult
I think tagging images with the ALT attribute is important for getting additional exposure from image search engines. I seems to take a bit longer to get indexed for images but is work the little time for the potential traffic.
Putting keywords in the headline works wonders. On my blog I use the strategy of putting the keyword as the category, then making the headline with the category a hyphen, and then the keyword somewhere in the title of the post. For example I might have something like: Video Marketing - Video Marketing with YouTube. This has worked wornders for getting traffic from search results.
The basics of SEO :
Research keyword phrases that lead to targeted traffic, build a site that is search engine friendly, create content that us useful, entertaining, and just makes people want to visit
and finally get other sites to link to yours
Good article with some nice tips, but I've found that meta hardly matters with Google SEO. Thanks for this.
Great informational SEO guide and tips, it will help all web masters.
Ben
http://www.economyhandicrafts.com
Thank you
The basics of SEO :
Research keyword phrases that lead to targeted traffic, build a site that is search engine friendly, create content that us useful, entertaining, and just makes people want to visit
and finally get other sites to link to yours.
~~~this is key!
Thanks very much for another detailed, lengthy post.
There are a few other hints and tricks that you might want to consider adding (check out my website for details), but looking through the comments section it seems that most of them have been covered here already by other people.
Keep up the good work!
Hey, This was right on time. Thanks for posting. I used it on my site on the home pages. I need to create a button, using an image, with instructions underneath it and I need it to clear the text. Working perfectly. I had spent hours trying to this with a div. Total waste of time. Thanks again. Keep posting!!!
Thanks Heidi Cool for this beautiful article about SEO. I am a new webmaster and have been trying my best to promote my general blog. I am very amazed by the ways Google works when it comes to PageRanking and SEO. I had been reading a lot about SEO and got into your article and this surely helps a lot to understand the idea about SEO; even the comments given by the readers are helpful. Keep up the good work.
Regards,
Amrit.
Web 2.0 Seo with social bookmarking, pinging, posting youtube videos, posting blogs for spider baits, i mean this is all we do..
SEO is important but with the new technology today, its optional.. The solution is content.
Thats right..
Great to see a university actually involved in SEO education. Many Thanks!!
@WebDesignPhilippines:
The solution is also code, and optimizing your code for SEO helps a lot too.
Take a look at my site code if you want to see some SEO optimized code:
Online Freebies
A nice blog. I got benefited from the tips. Hope to learn more. Thanks
A cute topic and good information.Thanks for the information. Keep it up.
A good blog site. Good tips and information. Great going. Good luck
I don't think meta description plays much part in SEO, but it can increase the click through rate in SERPs.
Arpit
These are only the basics of S.E.O. but, there is much more, right now links are much more important than metatags, your blog is well positioned with these keywords, but, those keywords are not searched by people on the SE's, is very easy to rank high with those keywords. My blog penny stocks has much less competition, but, between 50k and 75k people search monthly for this keyword, and this turn very difficult to rank high, my blog is number 18, page two of google to the main keyword "penny stocks", but, I needed about 6 months of hard work and I'm still not on page 1, my goal.
Right now, unique content and links, lots of links, is the most important to rank high in the SE's.
Anyway your post is very good to guide the newbies in the right direction, congrats.
Because I'm not an expert of SEO, I just Using the All in One SEO Plugin for my web at cowizm . Thanks for the article about SEO, Maybe I need to manually SEO my blog, not just using Plugin :)
Cool info. I might using it for The SEO of my Free Powerpoint Template Website. Thanks for giving me the Basic SEO Stuff... I will learn how to implement it
Some seo experts suggest combining your keywords in the page title. Combining keywords to cut down on the total number of keywords displayed in the title is a great way to boost the strength of each individual keyword. This will greatly have an immediate impact on your seo ranking.
While I agree that on-page seo optimization like bolding text, putting meta tags is something we should do, you may still not see dramatic changes in the seo ranking. It's the off page optimization factors that are more important for top seo ranking.
It’s for this reason that you should focus more on off-page optimization. While this is far more important of the two types of SEO optimization, it is also the harder of the two. Off page optimization basically consists of all off page ranking factors like:
-Which websites and how many of them link to you
-The Google page rank of the website linking to you
-The page title of the website linking to you
-The anchor text used in the link linking to you
-The number and type of links linking to the website that's linking to you.
-The number of outbound links on the website that is linking to you
-The total number of links on the website that is linking to you
-Whether or not the websites linking to you are deemed by Google as an authority website.
Work From Home Ideas
Thanks for sharing this. Its definitely help me to improve my SERP for my new site.
Something I would like to share here is using blog powered by wordpress also will easily improve the score for your SEO. It has built in with almost complete SEO requirement.
It also will get indexed by search engine bot by very fast. I'll use it on my new soccer ball video clips
and best autos video clips ,after updated with new entry, then I'll check again after 5 minutes and the new entry already been indexed. JMHO.. thanks..
This is really a great article. I have just build a new site, Men Fitness so hopefully it can really help me SEO!
Thanks for a great post. I have browsed around and found other useful resources. I'll subscribe to the blog to ensure I don't miss any future posts.
Anyone trying to optimize their own web site needs to focus on the content they place on the page. Start with a plan. Make a list of key phrases you think people will use to search out your site. Write keyword rich content using your list. Personally I hate summarizing keywords and phrases on my pages and I am also a programmer at heart so I wrote SiteClimb a few years ago to handle all my meta tag and title keyword placement issues. It just freed me to focus on writing great content! This is has saved me countless hours of tedious work. Good luck on your own pages!
SEO is great for sending unique traffic to your new web sites, SEO helped my
Kitchen Appliances web site, increase in PageRank, IBLs (In Bound Links) by combining WWW and non-WWW pages.
Great Information
Thankyou
Great information. My friend referred me to this article. Liked it very much! I am a beginner to SEO, so this is like a ladder helping me to reach a greater level of knowledge in the field of SEO.
Great information. Thanks for it. I am completely a noob to SEO. No experience, I have quite a lot of experience with networking though. Basic SEO has helped my friend's website get some backlinks and a PR1!
Great information. Thanks for it. I am completely a noob to SEO. No experience, I have quite a lot of experience with networking though. Basic SEO has helped my friend's Firefox [url=http://www.firefox-download-free.com]Download Free[/url] get some backlinks and a PR1!
SEO is great, First step in optimization is on site optimization, like URLs without parameters and session information, no duplicate info, unique
Titles and meta description.
Thank you
http://www.rubberecycle.com
Great SEO write up
Yes this is great article, looking forward for update.
Look up and down SEO all around. Nice content. Thanks
I read this SEO article and came to a conclusion that optimizing a web site properly is like arts and crafts that simple a talent.
Like how to create a Title
Meta Description
How to write page code
H1, H2 and H3 on a page
ALT Tags and much more.
Thank you for a write up well done
Mark G.
great bit of content dude, its definitly in need of an update but from what i've seen your quite high on the seo for a few keywords for this article alone
Of all things you can afford not to do on your website, SEO is not
Great SEO Primer. As Brad Callen pointed out in his SE Manifesto (written in 2K5), certain things not only still work... But these very SEO tactics are now highly favored by Google.
Just good ol'-fasshioned, back-to-tthe-basics SEO has nor will ever go "out of style".
The fact still remains, however, that a significantly large portion of all SEO is off-site (i.e. Web 2.0 social portals).
A simply excellent free tool that we have found indispensable for this purpose, is the Ultimate SEO Web Development Spy Tool (and it’s Free!):
Excellent post, will try some of these tips on my blog. Thanks!
Regards,
Formula 1 News