How Do You Choose Keywords for Your Website?
When we talk about ranking in search engines, we are indeed talking about ranking for a particular key word of key phases in the search engines. One problem webmasters may find is that it is difficult to determine the key words for their web pages. For example, if you have a website selling books, you can take either book store or book shop as your keyword. In fact, choosing a suitable key phase should be done by some strategy but not your instincts. You should never choose the key words by merely guessing.
The question now is how to determine the best key words for your web pages. Without any surprise, the best key words will be words that have a large search volume but little competitions. Here are some ways to search for such key words.
Using Word Tracker
You can use word tracker to help you to search for the best keyword. The data in word tracker is based on the data from msn.com. You can pre-define some key phases and then submit to word tracker. It will in turn give you an index which shows the ratio between search volume and competition. As a result you will be able to find the best key words or phases for your websites.
Estimating Yourself
If you do not want to pay and want to get a free solution to the problem, you may estimate the ratio discussed in the previous section yourself. You can use the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool to get an estimation of the search volume of a key phase. You will then take a search of that key phase in Google. In Goolge, you will get the total number of search results. Then you can just simply calculate the ratio between the search volume and the competitions. Of course you may find it a bit strange since you are collecting data from two different databases, namely Yahoo and Google. There is no doubt that it will be better to have data from a single source but it will be good enough as an estimation.
You may think that it is so easy to determine the quality of the keyword. However, this estimations and ratios are not without problem. In fact, the idea of this ratio assumes that there is no difference in order to get from a rank of 4000 to 2000 and from 2000 to the first place. This is not the reality, however. Normally it will be more difficult to get to the first rank. As a result, you will also need to analyze your competitors on the search engines. You need to study the websites which get the highest places for your key phases so that you will get a whole picture of the key phases your have chosen.
Jerry Leung an author. You can find more about SEO and Making money online from http://making-money-online-and-seo.blogspot.com/
How to Launch a Search Engine Optimization Campaign
In case you ever wondered how to launch a Search Engine Optimization Campaign for your website? This article is for you.
Achieving consistent rankings in search engines is a result of understanding the fundamental building blocks that determine relevance.
Variables such as how lean website code is, the website/server hosting environment, the age of the domain name, if the name has keywords in the URL, how many back links the site has, where the links come from are they trusted links with website authority or back links that pass no value, etc. All of these as well as hundreds of other criteria impact the algorithm.
By understanding what is important to search engines, you can construct your pages to have the highest appeal to search engine spiders. This ensures that all of your pages get indexed and can work on your behalf.
Here are five contributing factors that impact search engines. Master them and you will be rewarded with website authority and consistent high rankings.
Ranking Criteria:
1. Make sure you use the most appropriate programming platform – XHTML,.PHP, etc. Each site has unique needs.
2. Develop strong on-page SEO factors – keyword-rich yet engaging content, unique meta tags, optimization of the pages / directories and on page hyper link architecture, site map, privacy policy and contact information.
3. Develop Website Authority for your Niche – it’s promotion time using articles, blogs, directories, link building and social media to get the word out and create a buzz for your new content.
4. Research, evaluate and fine-tune the results to enhance the holistic optimization process. Check your analytics, see where people are coming from, how long they stay, are your pages converting?, do you need to make your website more sticky and engaging to increase customer retention, etc.
5. Rinse and Repeat steps 3-5
Enough preamble, let us get to the optimization part.
Selecting a platform for your on page content
Various platforms exist that can provide substantial results in regard to SEO ranging from old school WSYWG editors, dynamically generated content or content management systems. Regardless of the format you select, AJAX, PHP, ASP, XHTML, HTML etc. The main requirement for SEO is lean functional code with distinct tagging capabilities.
Blogs are excellent as they are already W3C compliant and can validate as strict XHTML with slight adjustments to the preferences. Things like making the title of the post an h1 tag, adding the All In One SEO Pack which is packed full of goodies, like the ability to tag your links and performing some other tweaks that were all privileged knowledge at one time to elite SEO companies.
Now virtually within hours you can install and have one of the most powerful and mutable platforms known to man, functioning on your behalf. Also, with the ability to customize the theme, any .css can be plugged in, rendered and used for the main static areas of your site like the masthead, columns, etc. while still having the functionality of the CMS (content management system) at your disposal to invoke at will.
The days of hand coding HTML are almost a thing of the past. However, sometimes there is nothing like a static HTML page to polish up on SEO the way it started, meta tags and all. For the most part if you want to have strong internal and external links developed proportionately then word press is the way to go, otherwise feel free to use which ever platform you deem sufficient.
Selecting the appropriate On Page Factors
Now that you have selected the format, you need to make sure that certain things align in order to maximize your optimization,
Inbound to outbound links – try not to have too many links leaving your home page in your anchor text. If you do, make sure that the anchor text and the page that it points to are themed and correlate with the highest relevance. If you have a website that is just getting started this is even more crucial.
We will address building links shortly, but essentially we like to build links in the early stages as you can implement on page SEO that can essentially generate it’s own best back link like a self generating dynamo if designed properly.
So implementing solid on page SEO and then building links is usually the formula for success, but once again every one is unique in how they approach the initial stages.
Developing Website Authority and Niche Visibility
Here are a few methods or optimization modules You could employ for creating visibility for your website.
You could:
a) let a site percolate for months adding links from highly acclaimed sites from the same marketing category then use article marketing to give it a jump start on website authority by having others build links for you by syndicating your content. Submit 10-12 articles over the course of a month and use the author’s box to build organic back links to deep links in your pages (pages other than the homepage) with supporting anchor text
Then, go back in 3 months update the content, add a blog and launch with verve.
Or you could
b) start with an existing site, promote that site through directories (which have a tendency to load up the home page with links) and then use that concentrated inbound link density through adding 5 specific links to deeper sub folders or pages in your site and then funnel that link juice to the pages in question. As long as the new pages are optimized (using consistent titles, h1 tags, description, use of the main keywords at least 4-6 times and hyper-linking them 3-4 times). Then observe the effect as the page gains momentum in the SERPs.
c) Retool or redesign a site (tweak the code, content and tags) add links from directories let it get established using a select few keywords to focus on (giving you a great vertical approach to link development) then after attaining visibility using the root phrase to build long tail SEO from.
For example, do you want your site to rank for a few very specific terms with high search volume or are you seeking to have the site draw traffic from a plethora of the terms used on the pages? If so, that is long tail optimization which happens after a site hits the website authority zone.
d) Go straight for the juggler and build website authority and let every thing else happen naturally. I think that option D and all of the above, no tens inpunded, seem to be the option with the highest demand, as it provides the most impact as far as an optimization method.
Website authority is something that can skyrocket past pages despite page rank or back links. Even when our site was a page rank 2 and was only 4 months old, we had already amassed multiple top 10 rankings as a result of the website authority route.
This type of optimization is not for everyone (as it is very time consuming) and you have to live, breath and sleep your site in order to pool all of the resources properly.
Things such as link diversity, using a broad base of Class-C IP addresses to pass authority (the original Class C-IP addresses were the first 8000 Domains on the web) and each passes tremendous weight in the SERPs particularly when you have specific anchor text pointing to specific pages.
Being socially present in discussions, forums, posting articles for positioning to gain long term back links in the background in addition to your other link building efforts, as well as making constant updates to your pages (word press works just fine).
In order to get website authority, you really need to write content with precision and everything that can be found leading back to your site, should be ideal in representing the benchmark you wish to attain in the future.
With all of the unscrupulous methods occurring from jealous competition, negative SEO can try to tarnish a reputable company through link building and directing low quality links, post negative comments in social media sites etc.
If your site is a true authority, it will absorb and devour such infantile attempts or use them to outrank them in the SERPs, but say for example you have a slew of paid links or something which is now a no-no, your competition could use that to your dismay, which is why it is important to make every post count and always put your best foot forward when building links or making any type of social comment.
So, when you think about adding content, try to avoid little 200 word blurbs, each post should stand on it’s own as if it were an article in it’s own right. When the spiders get wind of the world class content they pay their regard by passing the seal of excellence to your pages which will be apparent as you can post something of upload a page and within 72 hours it hits the top 10, that is true website authority. Not just because of the title or tags, but where it comes from as your website gains trust from search engines.
Evaluation and adjustments to enhance the holistic process
So how do you know it is working? Top 10 rankings get easier to acquire and you should have more visibility for your keywords in multiple search engines.
What used to take months when performing keyword research to attain, you can systematically select a target phrase, write a post about it or create a new page, add a few links and watch it hang in the SERPs like a kite on steroids.
This measure of barrier to entry for new keywords becomes easier and your site will spread out as the long tail of search settles in and provides untold hits from unintentional word stemming (latent semantic indexing) as a result of the sheer volume of words on your pages.
Also if done correctly, you will see consistent rankings in the top 3 major search engines Yahoo, Google & MSN which will then disseminate those calculations to other search engines who rely on those sites to assess your relative global site authority.
Based on the results, you should rinse and repeat stages 3-5 until you hit the target of your website SERP ceiling. Then continually raise the bar through propagating more useful information and references for others including the spiders to find you website.
As stated, each SEO will have their own methods for how to start, manage and develop an ongoing SEO campaign, but this was just to prime the pump and share a few of the tactics that we use in order to launch a site from lackluster to blockbuster. I hope you found this information useful.
Jeffrey L. Smith is an seasoned search engine optimization strategist and founder of Seo Design Solutions Chicago Web Design Company.
http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/chicago-website-design.html
Bust Loose And Establish Search Engine Ranking
A simple, easy way to better search engine placement is dependant on the number of links and the quality of those links. Today it is important to invest in better search engine placement to improve search engine ranks. When you place your website on the internet for the first time many people are under the assumption that they will receive tons of traffic, this is not true, you need to market the website or no one will find it. Yes, you can buy keywords and put paid ads in search engines, but many people spend a lot of money doing this. Better search engine placement is very precise and starts with a proper foundation like any great structure.
When doing keyword research put those keywords you selected in the title, these are the keywords people will search for. Remember, this title is your entire identity on the search engines. Many websites are still not using meta tags or setting the title, so when you use these strategies you gain an advantage. The link title should be a short keyword or phrase. Major search engines do not read titles which are too long. Your page title should be a short summary of your keywords you’re using.
Choose the most effective keywords for your online site. The most common keywords are not necessarily the most effective ones. Now the most important place to use these keywords is first in the title heading of the page. To get higher rankings make sure you put the keywords, titles and meta tags on each one of your pages. Make sure keywords are placed outside of images in the page text.
Ranking well in the search engines is very important, when people search on the search engines they will find your website and it depends on your keywords, content and links. Higher the ranking your site can have in the search engines, higher is the rate of success of your website. The more other web sites link to your web site, the higher is your link popularity. Therefore, the inbound link is regarded as a “positive vote” to your website. The more inbound link you have, the higher is your link popularity.
Back Links are very important way to get better search engine placement. Description again can contain keywords of your site; it’s a little advantage to your site but surely is a benefit. Links are usually placed on the links page or resources page of the site.
Submitting your website url to free online directories is a great avenue of promotion. One way you can find directories is to use search engines and type in online directories. Search engines as we have learned are automated software based systems which aid the web search. Proper submission to the major directories is critical. Directories are generally human based indexes in which the web sites are visited & catalogued by human beings. That’s why you should start submitting your website to the directories.
If you want to build traffic to your website you can do it yourself by building one way links, submit to directories and write articles and distribute them.
David Marc Fishman created a system that help internet marketers with link popularity at http://www.sociallinknetwork.net. The system established one way links. Another linking system post to blogs at http://www.socialblogtrust.net. Get Lifetime links with http://www.thecypher.biz
5 Effective Local Search Engine Optimization Tips
Ever wondered how to attain higher local search engine rankings?. Here are a few SEO tips to strengthen organic search engine placement. Although the competition can be fierce from local businesses (who often resort to keyword stuffing) local search engine optimization is far less convoluted by comparison to national search engine placement.
Without further ado, here here is our suggestions for improving search engine visibility through local search engine optimization.
1. Include your city, state and zip code in the page you seek to have indexed.
*If you want to rank for something, it should be located somewhere on that page. Sounds simple enough right? Search engines pay particular attention to proximity as well as keyword density (the number of times the keyword appears) as well as proximity to other keywords or qualifiers.
A qualifier is a term like services, company, professional, expert, affordable, specialist, etc. and are used specifically to (a) add relevance to your keywords or (b) assist your positioning when people use them in search queries. How many times have you noticed that when you conduct a search and you see the description is a hybrid of the terms in the search box?
This is because, based on the accessibility of your content to web spiders, they can extract words outside of chronological order and truncate them in the description in order to return content with the highest exact match phrases. But once again, if those qualifiers are missing in action from the page in question, chances are your page will be missing in action for that search and one of your competitors who build their pages with keyword-rich content will get the click through on that session.
There are however ways to rank for terms that are non existent on your pages (off page link building), but that is a more advanced SEO technique. So starting with the basics make sure to add your most pertinent information to a clearly identifiable area.
2. Use the city name and abbreviation of the state in the title or description tag.
*Pages are interpreted and indexed with the intitle, inanchor and intext (pretty obvious what theses term imply) so understanding this provides one more unique opportunity to construct your pages in accordance to standards which are known to affect how search engines rank and respond to your content.
3. Hyper link the city and function of your web page in the body of the pages content.
*When employing links, the less the better for the strength of the link, also the higher up on the page a link is placed, the higher relevance it garners like Chicago Web Design Company, is a perfect example of a keyword rich, optimized hyper link that leads to a specific page with the highest relevance for the term. Not sure on how to determine which page has the strongest affinity for the keyword check out this SEO tip to find out how.
4. Add the qualifiers or specific geographic terms to the footer in addition to a local reference.
*This rule applies if you have qualifiers in the title, description and page, then solidifying the affect of the collective goal of the page for the sake of word density can be accomplished in this manor. Example: Company Name, Offering Professional Web Design Services in (City and State). For an added kick, hyper-link the main terms in the footer on every other page and point them to your about us page, which usually has the highest concentration of local and geographic information.
5. Once you have added the above information to your website, that is it. From that point, merely let the spiders do their job. These tips should increase your ranking potential via the on-page factors, for even more punch, build links to your site using exact match anchor text (local seo, local search marketing, etc.).
Speaking from first hand experience that this is a very effective local search marketing tactic. If implemented in conjunction with link building, it is merely a matter of finding a high traffic term, writing a page to match the terms with high search volume (using word tracker or another keyword discover tool) using the on page SEO tips on this page and waiting for the results to get indexed.
If you get the formula right the first time the next time you conduct a search using the local search terms, you will be able to see the response for yourself.
Jeffrey L. Smith is an seasoned search engine optimization strategist and founder of Seo Design Solutions Search Engine Optimization Company in Chicago.
http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/local-search-engine-optimization.html