How to Use Keywords to Optimize Your Site for Search Engines

You have designed a beautiful web site and published it for the world to see and visit. You wait patiently, however there is either a trickle or no visitors at all and therefore no sales.

You may be 1 of 4 web site owners that has not optimized your site with keywords for ranking in the search engines. You say you have inserted keywords in your site, but are they targeted keywords?

What is a Keyword?
These are words or phrases which people would insert in a search engine to look for information contained in your site. The search engine spiders take those words and display the best sites that relate to that information. Depending on the popularity of the word, you may have a million or more web sites to choose from.

Ideally your web site should appear in the top 20-30 sites displayed, to be included in the persons search. This would result in a continuous stream of visitors.

Targeting the Best Keywords
If your keywords are not tightly targeted to your site, you will dim your chances of being highly ranked in the search engines. Here’s what to do:

Go to the overture suggestion tool or wordtacker.com and insert a word or phrase that one would search on for information on your site.

Create a table (in MS Excel or MS Word) with 4 columns.

Insert 200-300 words or phrases in the first column from the results of your suggestion tool.

Use the second column to record the popularity of each word beside each word in the first column.

The third column is to determine the competing sites for the words you have listed above. Do a search on a few of the most popular search engines (is Yahoo.com, Google.com) for the words or phrases you have listed above. (i.e. if you do a search on Google.com for “Internet Marketing”, your reply will be:
“Results 1 - 10 of about 3,280,000”). Enter this number in the third column for each searched word to determine its popularity.

In the fourth column you can enter the results of the other 3 columns. Mark the words in this column that have a high number of searches but have low competition. Utilize these keywords or phrases in your site, so you won’t have to compete with the millions of other web pages.

Where to place keywords in your web pages?

Title Tag
This tag should contain your most important keyword phrase. Make the title interesting enough to grab the visitor's attention. Only use 5 to 6 words in your title with your most relevant keyword in the beginning.

Description Meta Tag
The search engines often use this tag when they display the description of your web site in the search results. Try to make the description inviting for your visitors. The length should be less than 200 characters, including spaces.

Keyword Meta Tag
This tag will contain a listing of your keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to your page and enable a Search Engine to find you.

Here are some things to remember:

Don't use the same keyword more than 3 times.
Use keywords that occur in your Title Tag and Description Tag.
Use only 200 characters for all your keywords.
Use different keywords for all your pages.
Only use keywords that are relevant to your site.
Use lower case letters.
Use the single and plural forms of your keywords.
Use commas or spaces between your keywords or keyword phrases.

Heading Tags
These tags hold separate topics between paragraphs and range from

, which is very large and bold to

, which is very small and bold. Your page heading should contain your most important keywords or keyword phrase.

Alt Tag
This tag is used to add text in place of the image. The user may have turned off reading the graphics to make the page load faster. Therefore he will read the ALT Tag text instead. Add short keyword rich text to your graphic links. Make sure the ALT text describes the link destination.

Hypertext Links
Include your keywords or keyword phrase in your link text.

Content
Search Engine spiders put more weight on keyword rich content that is higher up on the page rather than in the middle or lower sections. Insert your keywords and keyword phrases in your text at least three times.

Types of Sites that won't get indexed by Search Engines.

Flash and Frame Sites - pages created this way will be avoided by the Search Engines spiders.

Dynamic Pages - any web address that contains a question mark (i.e. ASP, Perl, Cold Fusion), will not be indexed by the spiders.

Password Protected Pages - Search Engines Spiders will not index any area that is protected by a password.

SITEMAP

A site map (or sitemap) is a graphical representation of the architecture of a web site. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.

Site maps can improve search engine optimization of a site by making sure that all the pages can be found. This is especially important if a site uses Macromedia Flash or JavaScript menus that do not include HTML links.

Most search engines will only follow a finite number of links from a page, so if a site is very large, the site map may be required so that search engines and visitors can access all content on the site.

What is a search engine?

A search engine is a program that searches through some dataset. In the context of the Web, the word "search engine" is most often used for search forms that search through databases of HTML documents gathered by a robot

What other kinds of robots are there?

Robots can be used for a number of purposes:

• Indexing
• HTML validation
• Link validation
• "What's New" monitoring
• Mirroring

How do I prevent robots scanning my site?

The quick way to prevent robots visiting your site is put these two lines into the /robots.txt file on your server:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

What if I can't make a /robots.txt file?

Sometimes you cannot make a /robots.txt file, because you don't administer the entire server. All is not lost: there is a new standard for using HTML META tags to keep robots out of your documents.

The basic idea is that if you include a tag like:

META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX"

in your HTML document, that document won't be indexed.

If you do:

META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOFOLLOW"

the links in that document will not be parsed by the robot.

Where can I use a robot?

If you mean a search service, check out the various directory pages on the Web, such as Netscape's Exploring the Net or try one of the Meta search services such as Met Search

KEYWORD TOOLS

§ Keywords Analyzer

§ Keyword Elite

§ Word Tracker

§ Rapid Keyword

§ Golden Keywords

The Google Adwords platform allows you to select four matching options:

Broad Match

Broad match is the default setting for an Adwords campaign. Broad match means your ad will appear in search results when any combination of the words in your keyword phrase are used in a search. Many an advertiser has learned expensive lessons using this setting. Let’s look at an example.

Phrase Match

Phrase match is a matching option that gives you a bit more control over your ads. Phrase match tells the Adwords platform to only show your ad when a search is conducted for the particular order of your keyword phrase. Using the phrase match option for “travel journals”, my ad would appear when someone searches for a phrase with “travel journals” in it, but not “journals travel”. To use phrase match, you simply place quotation marks around the keyword phrase.

Exact Match

Exact match is…exact match. It is the most targeted option. You should use it only if you want your ad to appear in searches for the exact keyword phrase as written. For instance, if I want my ad to appear in searches for “travel journals” and nothing else, I will use exact match. To select the exact match option, simply place brackets (“[]”) around the keyword phrase.

Negative Match

No, the negative match option doesn’t involve cussing, insults or adult sites. Instead, it allows you to designate which keyword phrase search results you do not want to appear in. For example, I may not want my travel journal product to appear in search results for “Amazon travel journals”. I would simply list the keyword phrase with a dash (-) in front of it and my ad will not appear. The negative match option is a tremendous way to eliminate junk traffic from your Adwords campaign.

The Google Adwords platform is a tremendous advertising platform. Effectively manipulate your keywords and it can be a highly profitable one as well.

manual submission

Definition

Adding a URL to the search engines individually by hand.

Information

Manual search engine submission may be more time consuming than automated search engine submission, but a fair amount of optimization specialists stick with the "old fashioned way."

Blog

Definition

A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.

Information

A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

Blogs are alternatively called web logs or weblogs. However, "blog" seems less likely to cause confusion, as "web log" can also mean a server's log files.

link popularity

Definition

A measure of the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site.

Information

Link popularity is an example of the move by search engines towards off-the-page-criteria to determine quality content. Off-the-page-criteria adds the aspect of impartiality to search engine rankings, as citations from other authors in the Web community helps define a site's reputation. In theory, great sites will naturally attract many links, and content-poor sites will have difficulty attracting any links.

Link popularity assumes that not all inbound links are equal. For example, an inbound link from a major directory carries more weight than an inbound link from an obscure personal home page

Q. What are Meta Tags?

A. Meta tags are HTML codes that are inserted into the header on a web page, after the title tag. In the context of search engine optimization, when people refer to meta tags, they are usually referring to the meta description tag and the meta keywords tag.

The meta description tag and the meta keywords tag are not seen by users. Instead, these tags main purpose is providing meta document data to user agents, such as search engines. In addition to the well-known meta description and meta keywords tags, there are other useful meta tags, including the meta http-equiv tag, meta refresh tag, the meta robots tag, the meta copyright tag, and the meta author tag, etc. These tags are used to give web browsers and search engine spiders directions or data on various information.

Meta tag

Meta tags are important players in the game of search engine optimization

What Is A Title Tag

The title tag is an element in the header part of an HTML page denoted by two tags. For instance, you might have .

Title Tag Guidelines

There are no hard and fast rules for writing titles but there are some guidelines you might want to follow. a title should be 64 characters or less and that titles may be truncated if it’s longer than that. Google show 66 characters in their search results listing, Yahoo allow listings up to 120 long.

Who or What Uses Title Tags

1. Titles are used by website resource librarians, directory editors (such as DMOZ), and other webmasters (such as strategic link partners) when they link to your website.

2. The title is displayed in web search results by the vast majority of search engines to help you target and attract your visitors.

3. Nearly all the major search engines use a title tag in order to rank your page. Search engines deem the title one of the most important pieces of information when determining what the content of your website is.

4. The title is displayed in the visitors browser window usually at the top of the viewable part of the browser screen.

Why Are Title Tags Important - Accessibility

Firstly, by carefully crafting your website title you make it more accessible to resource librarians, editors and webmasters. If you have a nice simple title link which they can add to their pages both relevant and understandable they are far more likely to link to your website. If they link to your website using a hyperlinked title relevant to your target audience, you get targeted traffic from simply writing a good title tag. More relevant traffic means much higher conversion.

Why Are Title Tags Important - Relevancy

Secondly, if Google or Yahoo crawl your website and find that the title tags you’ve written are relevant to the page on which they are written it means there is a much greater chance of a good ranking on the engines.

A good ranking on the engines for your selected keywords means that you’re more likely to be found by your target audience. This again means that you attract the people that you want to your website, the people who are looking to buy your product or service. The title tag becomes your search engine listing. Think of it this way, in a similar way to the classified ad you write for a newspaper, the title tag listing is your online advert, so make it as attractive and relevant as possible to attract the right visitor.

Why Are Title Tags Important - Readability

Thirdly, the browser window is affected by the title and it’s convenient for the visitor to your page. How many times have you had five or six Internet browser windows open? A good title tag means that a quick scan of these titles shows the reader which page is which. The first couple of words in the title it could be argued for this reason alone are the most important text you will ever write for a web page you want to be read.

Q. What is the most used search engine?

A. Google is by far the most used search engine. It provides search results not only on it's home page, but powers other search engines' results as well. Google claims to have indexed over 3 billion pages, but in reality, that number is probably too small. More than 300 million searches a day filter through Google's fingertips.

Q. What are Meta Keywords?

A. The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with the rest of what you've written on your site.

One way to use the meta keywords tag is to emphasize a particular word or phrase in the main body of your text. For example, if you own a website all about plaid pants, and want to reinforce the word "tartan", then what you would want to do is have that word sprinkled liberally throughout your web copy, and also inserted into your Meta keywords.

Another option is to insert unusual words or synonyms into your Meta keywords tags that you don't actually have on the page itself. For instance, if you are a Star Wars fan and have a website about collectible Jawas, a good idea would be to put George Lucas's name in your keyword Meta tags.

This would increase the odds of someone stumbling onto your page that only was looking for George Lucas; however, an even better way to increase those odds would be to include his name throughout your copy as well.

Questions

Q. How long will it take me to get to the top of the search engines?
It takes around 1 month to 6 months to gain ranking. Google takes more time to spider up the websites than other major search engines

Q. Why should I go in for search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization is required to gain more exposure on the Internet. This helps to drive more good quality traffic to your site. So every site needs optimization for better performance.

Q. Are search engine rankings guaranteed?

A, It is not possible to guarantee top ten rankings for generic terms.
Secret algorithms that are programmed by the search engines determine the rankings. No SEO firm has control over the algorithms, hence it is difficult guarantee rankings.

Q. What are the factors on which your site rankings depend?
The below listed factors are responsible for good rankings.

o The competition for your key phrases

o Number of links pointing to your website

o How long your site has been on the web

o The magnitude of your current web presence

o How much good content is provided on your site

o The strength of your post monthly maintenance plan

o The design of your website

How long will the search engine optimisation process take?

Once you have sent Weblinx your approved targeted keywords, it will take between 2-6 weeks to complete the page creation and usually around 5-8 weeks for changes to reflect (or initial positioning to be gained) in Google due to our search engine optimisation.

There are two important factors in any Search Engine Optimization Campaign:

1. Serve the Site Visitors what they want
2. Serve the Search Engines what they want

What is Natural Search Engine Optimization?
The web sites that rank high in the major search engines (like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc) are the ones getting traffic, and often sales. Many of those sites have been "Optimized" by companies like We Build Pages.

On-Page Search Engine Optimization Factors
Search Engines have computers and programs called "Spiders" that collect information about your web pages in an attempt to "figure out" what your pages are about. These spiders gather information from your pages and use these in factoring which sites get ranked higher than others. Search Engines analyze over 100 On-Page Factors when analyzing your web pages.

Some of the major On-Page Search Engine Optimization Factors are:

Why Do You Need On Page Optimization?

If you want to maintain a successful web presence you need our on page optimization services. Perhaps your website ranks great, but what if your targeting the wrong keywords? What if your "over optimized" and your website has been considered spammy. Do you have proper site architecture and are all your pages getting spidered? Are you taking full advantage of the unknown elements that can help you naturally rank high

January 2008 Google Page Rank Update

Today we are having our first Google Toolbar PageRank update of 2008. At least there are dozens and dozens of reports that PageRank scores on the 72.14.25.x data center has been updated.

What does this mean to you? To your rankings? Nothing.

In any event, for many Toolbar PageRank is a prestige thing. So congrats if your PageRank score went up. Sorry if it went down.

Why do some SEOs want toolbar PageRank to go away.

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion over the PageRank score found within Google's Toolbar. So I thought I explain why I, and many other SEOs/SEM reporters would love to see the PageRank score disappear from the Google Toolbar.

Back in the good old days, SEOs used to do whatever they could to increase their PageRank. If you had a high PageRank, typically a 7 or higher - you were set. You could literally rank for almost anything, if you also followed that up with good, on-page SEO work. That quickly went away, I believe, with the florida update of November/December 2003. In any event, SEOs used to wait for the toolbar PageRank to update, to see how they did in getting links from high PageRank sites. If they did a good job with that, they would see their PR increase and immediately see their rankings improve. SEOs were able to see an update coming, when the various Google Data Centers didn't match each other. Google rankings would change on some data centers, the link counts would change and the PageRank would change. Hence, the term, the Google Dance. Those days are pretty much over. Google is now changing almost daily. Google's current link count is almost useless at the time being. Google's data centers are frequently updating.

Ever since then, top SEOs and even Google engineers have been pushing to explain that PageRank is not as important as it once was. In fact, some go to extremes to declare Google PageRank Lunacy, in Sweden, we had a Google representative tell us that the link command was not so useful, later we had someone quote Google as saying PageRank is for Entertainment Purposes Only, which was then refuted by GoogleGuy.

All that understood, it is clear that many would like to see the PageRank score go away from the Google toolbar. I am confident, this won't happen soon. I would say that most engineers would probably like to see it go away. But the marketing folks probably would not. I am not talking for Google her, I am just throwing out my feelings on it.

So we see that people are or were obsessed with PageRank, and rightly so. Hence why SEOs and reporters and even some Googlers wanted to tell people to not live and die by it. Some were extreme in their message, but for good reason.