Search Engine Optimization – A Beginners’ Guide (part 2)
This article by guest blogger Greg Rodgers completes our two-part Beginners’ Guide to Search Engine Optimziation.
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With Google’s algorithm for ranking sites being one of the best kept secrets in the world, webmasters have to resort to speculation and leveraging what techniques are proven to create better rankings for their businesses.
All guessing aside, the only sure way to get a top-10 ranking in Google is to obtain as many high-quality backlinks as possible. Links on other websites which point back to your site should contain the keywords that you wish to target. Getting a link back to your site with “click here” in the link anchor text is hardly useful. Instead, encourage people to create quality links back to your site by writing good content.
A prime example: Perform a Google search for “badger” and check out the top result. This bizarre animation ranked #1 just because of the number of backlinks pointing back to the site with theword “badger” in the anchor text of the link. The site (www.badgerbadgerbadger.com) contains no useful information about badgers, SEO tricks, or keywords that would merit a #1 ranking; however, they beat thousands of entries simply because they received enough links which contain the word “badger” pointing back to their website.
When Google sees one website linking another, it serves as an “endorsement” of sorts for the website being linked. The only way to receive quality links from other people is to create useful content that they are interested in sharing with their own readers. While some small SEO optimizations can be made in the content of your site, always write material for humans rather than search engines. With Google earnestly on the lookout for cheaters and SPAM, stuffing too many keywords into a page is asure way to lower your ranking – or worse.
That being said, there are a few small things we can do onsite to make both search engines and human eyes happy.
- Choose one or two primary keyword phrases that you wish to target with your content; be specific. Take advantage of Google’s keyword tool to see what terms get more searches than others. Put yourself into the shoes of someone searching for your business among thousands of websites: What would you type as a search?
- Once you have chosen your primary keywords, put them once at the top of the page as a large header. Blogging platforms such as WordPress typically do this for you automatically. The keywords should be in <h1> or <h2> HTML tags and bold.
- Find a natural way to insert your primary keywords early in the article – preferably in the first or second sentence. Not only does this keep Google happy, it helps to hook your reader and ensures them that they are in the right place for what they are searching for.
- Throughout the content on the page, mention your exact keyword phrase a couple of times more – always naturally! Most word-processing software will allow you to check the keyworddensity of words in an article. A good, natural keyword density to aim for should be only between two and three percent.
- If the page contains a picture or image, use your keywords in the ALT description for the image. Search engines cannot “see” images, so adding an ALT tag to images that you use is important.
- Mention your keyword(s) in bold somewhere in the course of the article. Once will do, too much bold text can be flagged as SPAM for Google.
- Mention your keyword(s) once in the closing paragraph of the page.
- Some SEO experts contend that linking out from your page to one of the current top-10 results for your keyword helps ensure Google that your site is relative and friendly. Consider linking Wikipedia or another site that gives more information about the target of your article.
- In the HTML <TITLE> tag for your article, mention your keywords early – preferably at thestart of the title. A title written to target dog collars would look something like: “Dog Collars –Find the Best Prices on Collars for Dogs”.
- Mention your keywords in the META description for the page. The META description serves as the excerpt shown in search engine result pages. Put a call-to-action inside so that humans will choose and click on your site above the others. If your keywords happen to be “dogcollars,” use verbiage such as “Read more about dog collars” or “Everything you need to know about dog collars” in the META description.
While search engines do not put as much weight on onsite SEO optimizations as they once did, these small changes will ensure them that your site is relevant enough to be included in the search results. The main goal of onsite optimization is to keep your readers on the site longer and to hopefully encourage them to share your site with others by creating a backlink!
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Greg Rodgers left his job at IBM to travel and write full-time. He now develops and manages a family of more than twenty websites.
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Search Engine Optimization – A Beginners’ Guide (part 1)
“How do I make my site show up in Google?” “How do I drive traffic to my website?” “How do I increase my page rank?” These are questions we get a lot and they all ask the same thing – how to get greater visibility in Google to draw more traffic to your website. The two best ways to have your website displayed in Google search results are to purchase advertising through Google AdWords or to improve your site’s “organic” search ranking. “Organic” search ranking is how Google places your site within search results based on how relevant it is to a user’s search compared to similar sites.
We discussed Google AdWords in a previous article so this two-part article will focus on “Search Engine Optimization”. Called “SEO” for short, Search Engine Optimization is the practice of optimizing a website to improve its ranking in Google based on keyword searches relevant to your line of business. Good SEO engineers teach their customers best practices that include both technical implementation guidelines as well as a particular style of content creation. A complete guide to SEO best practices would fill volumes but in this two-part article we’ll cover some simple techniques you can use to start moving your page rank upwards. First up? The technical side of SEO. Please keep in mind that this blog is created for a non technical audience so we’ll avoid any techniques that involve more than minimal coding. We’ve included as many links as possible to provide further explanation of each tip but if you’re unclear about something please leave a comment or write us.
SEO Technical Tips
- When considering an online identity for your business, strive for uniformity. For example, avoid registering “Denton Solutions” on one service and “Denton Business Solutions” on another. Before you begin registering accounts do some due diligence and make sure your desired profile name is available on all the major social media platforms (see below).
- Offer as many ways for your customers to reach you as possible. Maintain as many online profiles and services as you can, including Twitter,Facebook, LinkedIn,YouTube, blog directories such as Technorati, industry and local directories, etc.
- Create an XML Sitemap of your site and submit it to the major search engines including Yahoo! Site Explorer, Bing WebMaster Center, and especially Google WebMaster Tools. This ensures the search engines “know about” each and every component of your site. For help with this, read this Google article about how to create a Sitemap.
- Create an RSS feed to syndicate your content. If your site uses a Content Management System (“CMS”) like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla there are plugins to do this for you; otherwise check out this guide.
- Link said RSS feed to FeedBurner. This provides your readership lots more ways to get timely content updates from you. Additionally, it allows you to automatically notify other social media outlets when you publish new content.
- Register your business for Google Places to ensure potential customers can find you when performing searches for a particular geography. With Google’s integrated search results (web pages, images, videos and locations appear in one search) this could jump you way ahead of more well-established competition. Paid Tags on Google Places can quickly identify your business to potential customers.
- Create unique HTML page Title and Description meta tags for each page of your website. This is an opportunity to tell Google and potential readers what the page is about. Google may use these fields as the title and description that are actually displayed in search results. Don’t worry too much about the “keywords” meta tag as Google doesn’t use it for page ranking.
- Use meaningful webpage URLs (filenames). For example, rather than naming the files in your webpage “page1.html” and “page2.html” try “About-My-Company.html” or “Products-and-Services.html”. Google is smart enough to “read” page names so make them something descriptive!
- Build “back links” to your site. In other words, find websites that will place a link to your site somewhere on their site. Often times you may need to offer a “link exchange”, where you both link your sites to each other. Good places to start looking for link exchanges are professional societies, chambers of commerce, or local/community-based websites. Other large business directories you can list your business in include Yelp, CitySearch, YellowPages, or MerchantCircle.
- Lastly, sign up for Google Analytics. It will provide you with amazing insight into the people visiting your site, where they live, how they found your site, and more.
And that covers our top ten technical tips for optimizing your site for better search engine results. Keep in mind that these changes will not rocket your site to the top of Google searches overnight but with some diligence you should see some improvement in your site’s search rankings in just a couple months. If you have any questions or think we’ve left something out feel free to contact us or just leave a comment below. Thanks for reading and keep an eye out for Part 2, where we’ll discuss optimizing your site’s content for Search Engine Optimization!
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Google enhances Analytics tracking code
Google announced yesterday that it has finally released Asynchronous Tracking for its Analytics product. Asynchronous tracking has been in beta testing/development for almost six months now so Denton Business Solutions is pretty excited that it’s finally out of beta testing and approved for general use.
According to Google the new code offers the following benefits:
- Faster tracking code load times for your web pages due to improved browser execution
- Enhanced data collection and accuracy
- Elimination of tracking errors from dependencies when the JavaScript hasn’t fully loaded
Essentially, this “Google Analytics 2.0″ will give your business a more accurate depiction of its website’s actual statistics, as well as increase tracking code stability and page load times. Ever since Google announced that it now includes website load times into its page rank algorithms, every little bit of speed one can squeeze out of a page load helps. If you have any questions about Analytics or how to upgrade to its new tracking code drop us a line!
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Video search results 50 times more likely to come out “on top”
Have you noticed that when you search for things on Google you now get more than just text results? Ever since 2007 Google search results have included “blended search results” – a mixture of text pages, images, map locations, items for sale online, and videos, as appropriate.
A study performed by Forrester Research found that while there are 4,700,000 text results competing for placement on the first page of search results for a typical Google search, there are only 11,000 video results. Forrester also found that the vast majority of online video content is NOT optimized for high search ranking placement. That means properly optimized video can provide premium search results that reach way higher than even the most popular and most optimized text results, giving the “little guy” instant top search ranking. If you’re curious about how to use online video content to your business’ advantage drop us a line and let us know.
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