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Iowa Web Design & Development
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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Search
Engine Optimization (SEO) Guide |
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The expression Search Engine
Optimization is often
abbreviated SEO and it means that
you optimize a website for the
search engines. The objective is to
reach the No. 1 spot in the SERPs
(Search Engine Result Pages) when
someone searches for a particular
word or phrase. However, in this day
and age it is very hard to reach the
number one spot unless you have a
very niche market and have a product
or service that not a lot of people
are offering.
A more realistic objective is to
reach the first or second page of
any search engine. Statistics have
shown that most people don’t click
on the first couple of listings on a
search engine page and are more
likely to go closer to the bottom or
the next page.
A large amount of the people who
visit a website come via the major
search engines. Among the search
engines out there, Google is the
largest on the search market, and
when you do serious search engine
optimization it is therefore a must
that you follow
Google's webmaster guidelines.
If you chose to not play by the
rules, either intentionally or
unintentionally, your site could be
banned from Google's index. |
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The abbreviation SEO is also short for
Search Engine Optimizer, i.e. a person who
works with search engine optimization. The
interest of optimizing websites increase all
the time, and more companies are beginning
to understand the importance of optimizing
their website. Sales online increases every
year and it is therefore becoming
increasingly important for companies to
market themselves on the Internet. This is
why it is important to work actively with
search engine optimization, so that your
present and future customers find your
website, and not your competitor's website.
Google and other search engines continuously
update and change their algorithms that
control the search engine result pages
(SERPs). This means that a site that holds
the No. 1 position today may not do so
tomorrow. In order to be successful in the
long run with SEO, it is important to follow
the search engines' guidelines. Don't try to
deceive them by using hidden text or other
methods. Your competitor could easily report
your site.
It takes a lots of hard work and patience to
be successful with the search engines
(especially with Google), but if you know
what you are doing you will do well in time.
Also, if you work seriously with your SEO,
then you will not have to fear upsetting
Google and being kicked out of their index.
You should focus on creating a great site
for your human visitors, and not only
for the search engine robots. You do
want people to find your site via the search
engines, but if your site is no good to the
visitor, he or she will hit the "back
button" and find a better site.
While this is not a complete guide, it will
give you the basics of SEO and some of the
guidelines that need to be addressed to gain
a better presents with your site.
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Links &
Backlinks |
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The one thing that is probably the most
important of all in search engine
optimization is links. The more incoming
links a website has, i.e. other sites that
link to it, the more important it is in the
eyes of the search engines. A site that has
many relevant incoming links will help it
rank well in the search engines. |
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PageRank (PR)
Google has for a long time been
known to put a big focus on the
number of incoming links,
also known as backlinks, and
have developed the
PageRank
system. PageRank (PR) is a relative
measure of a website's importance in
relation to other sites. It is based
on an algorithm and can have a value
of 0 to 10, the higher PR the
better. Google.com for example has
the highest possible PR of 10.
Google is, however, focusing more on
the quality of links, rather than
the quantity. A site with a high
PageRank is also normally of a
higher quality, so it is those kinds
of sites that you want linking to
your site.
If lots of websites with high Page
Ranks link to your site, it too will
most likely get a high PR. It is a
good thing for a site to have a high
PR, but it does not automatically
mean that it will rank better than a
site with a low PR. Google and other
search engines take many parameters
into consideration when deciding how
to rank a site. Page Rank is only
one of those, among maybe thousands
of different parameters. It is
therefore good to know what Page
Rank is, but it is nothing that you
should think too much about. There
are other much more important things
to work with, such as creating a
great website.
Submit your site to the Open
Directory Project. This is one of
the most important link directories.
Make sure that your site is of high
quality, because the ODP only
accepts sites with unique and good
content.
Anchor Text
The words in the anchor text are
also very importance. They should be
relevant and easy to understand. If
you, for example, link to this SEO
guide you could use the anchor text
SEO guide
or
Search Engine Optimization Guide,
instead of just writing "click
here". Then you make it easier for
both the human visitors and the
search engine robots to see what the
link is about. |
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Link Quality
As mentioned above the quality
of the back links is very important
in order to rank well in the search
engines, and particularly in Google.
A link from cnn.com for example -
who is trusted by Google - is worth
a lot more than a link from a
smaller and newer website.
Page Rank is often a measure of
quality, a link from a page with
high PR is better than a link from a
page with low PR. A website can also
have different Page Rank values on
its sub pages, and you want your
link on a page with a high PR. Also,
a relevant link (within the same
subject) is better than a
non-relevant link, and an older link
is better than a newer link.
Outgoing Links
The outgoing links are also
important and will probably be even
more so in the future. They should
be relevant and interesting to your
visitors, then Google will also like
them.
A site about hand tools should link
to other hand tool sites, because
these links could be of interest to
your visitors, who are looking for
more information. If you don't want
to link to your competitor's
website, you could instead link to
e.g. hammers, screwdrivers or saws.
Don't link to spammers or other bad
neighborhoods, or sites that have
been kicked out from Google. Before
you decide to link to a website, you
should first see if you can find it
in Google's index. Also look at its
outgoing links, just to make sure
that it does not link to any bad
neighborhoods. |
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Search Engines |
The three major search engines in the United
States are Google, Yahoo & MSN (Live).
Google is the biggest and most popular
search engine, with Yahoo second and MSN
coming in third.
It requires lots of hard work to rank well
in Google, and Google does not like new
websites. You should expect it to take at
least a year until it is possible to rank
well in Google, regardless of how many links
you may have. Therefore it can be a good
thing to work with less popular keywords or
phrases in the beginning, and then focus on
more competitive words and phrases later on
when your site is established. |
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The search engine result pages
(SERPs) are driven by an
algorithm that takes into
account a great many variables
when you search. The algorithm is
built to deliver the best result
possible that is relevant to your
search query. Google puts a big
weight on link structure and link
popularity (PageRank), whereas MSN
puts a lot of weight on the domain
name.
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When you optimize your website you should
select a few keywords or phrases to focus
on. It should be words or phrases that you
think people use when they search for
information in the search engines. Try to
figure out the most important words and
phrases that are relevant to your site.
Also optimize every sub page of your site
for a couple keywords or phrases per page.
For example, if you have a site about Hand
Tools, write one page about Hammers, one
page about Screwdrivers and so on. This way
every page has its special niche, and is
relevant for only one keyword.
The keywords that you choose should
preferably be high in demand and low in
supply. The demand, i.e. how many that
searches for a specific word, can be found
in the "Keyword Selector Tool" or
"Wordtracker". The supply is the amount of
websites about the subject, you can easily
see in Google or the search engine of
choice. Look for the total number of
websites found. Demand in relation to supply
should be as high as possible. |
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The more that you specialize
toward a specific phrase the higher
the quota becomes, but at the same
time the demand is reduced. In this
example it would be most favorable
to create a website about "Phillips
screwdriver". To create a site only
about the
Craftsman Phillips Screwdriver
could probably be very successful,
because demand is high in relation
to supply with not much competition.
However, since the demand is so low,
you will not get many visitors, even
if you rank very well. Instead you
could create a sub-page about the
Craftsman Phillips Screwdriver
on your hand tool summary site.
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Examples of
demand in relation to supply |
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Keyword/phrase |
Demand |
Supply
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Quota |
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"screwdriver" |
2071.62 |
143632.00 |
12.30 |
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"cordless screwdriver" |
210.23 |
14576.00 |
1.25 |
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"phillips screwdriver" |
60.23 |
4176.00 |
0.36 |
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"craftsman phillips screwdriver" |
20.54 |
112.50 |
0.12 |
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The domain name is very important to a
website, not so much for the search engines,
but for the visitors. If you have a short
and relevant domain name that is easy to
remember, you have an advantage. It is also
a good thing to have your most important
keyword in your domain name. For example,
handtools.com would be a great domain name
for a site about hand tools. It makes it
clear and easy to understand what the site
is all about.
It is also common to use the domain name as
anchor text when linking to a site, and this
is yet another good reason to have a keyword
in the domain name, or at least in the
catalog or file name.
The country specific top level domains (TLDs)
seem to become more important in regional
markets, for example .se for Sweden. If your
site is country specific you should
therefore choose the correct TLD. If however
your site is international, the best TLD is
still the .com domain. I recommend GoDaddy
to anyone who is looking for a good and
cheap registrar. It costs about $ 8-9 per
year to register a dotcom domain. |
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It is no problem to use a hyphen (-)
in the domain name. However, you
should try to avoid using more than
one hyphen, because two or more make
the domain look spammy and people
may not trust your site. There are
hardly any serious sites or
companies that use more than one
hyphen in the domain name, so
neither should
you. In file names, however, it is
recommended to use hyphens to
separate the words, for example:
search-engine-optimization.html. |
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Choosing Good Web Hosting Company |
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You should choose a web hosting company that
has its servers in the country where most of
your visitors come from. Your site will be
faster, which is good if you use a lot of
images on your site. The ranking in Google
could also improve if the server is located
near your main market.
Be aware of the less serious web hosting
companies that is out there. Search the
Internet or visit webmaster forums to see
what other people write about different web
hosting companies. Some hosting companies
offer "free traffic", which means that your
site could use an endless amount of
bandwidth. This is, however, not possible.
The traffic is only "free" if your site
doesn't use too much bandwidth.
Stay away from these types of companies,
instead choose a serious one that explicitly
specifies the amount of bandwidth that you
can use per month. |
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You should optimize every title on every
page, all texts and headlines to make it
easy for human visitors and search engine
robots to read and understand the content.
Use a unique title on every page, and for
the headlines you should use the tags <h1>
and <h2>.
The search engine robots love text that is
unique and well written. If you copy text on
the Internet, your site could be punished by
Google, and it may not be indexed at all if
the site is new.
It is also recommended to use a unique and
relevant meta description on every page.
Avoid Flash and JavaScript frames since the
search engines may then have difficulty
reading everything on your website. |
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Title
Every page should have a unique and relevant
title that briefly describes the content on
the page. It should not be longer than 60
characters. The title is the clickable link
in the search engine's result pages (SERPs).
It must therefore look interesting enough
for the visitor to click on.
Meta
Description
Write a short description of the page in the
meta description. It should be relevant and
unique for every page. The meta description
is also visible in the SERPs, just below the
clickable title. The description should be
relevant to the search query, at the same
time it should describe the content on your
page, and the visitor should be tempted to
click on it. End it with a period.
Headlines
You should use the tags <h1> and <h2> for
your headlines, and not just use a bold
font. Use a <h1> on top of the page and then
one or more <h2>. When you use headlines it
makes it easier for the person who reads to
get a quick overview of the content. Add
your most important keywords in the
headlines, but make it sound natural.
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Text
You must use the keywords and keyword
phrases in the text, but you must also let
the text flow naturally, and not repeat the
keywords too often. If you don't write well
and interesting articles your visitors will
leave. You should therefore write mainly for
humans, but not forget to use the keywords
and phrases in the text.
Divide your text in short paragraphs, this
makes it easier to read. The first paragraph
is the most important one and it should
therefore contain your keywords. Also use
correct grammar and spelling.
To make it even easier to read you could use
bold text and italics to
highlight the most important words in the
text.
File &
Catalog Names
Use a simple and clear structure on your
site with file names that are relevant. If
you use database generated pages, you can
rewrite the URLs to make them easier to
remember and understand. Don't repeat the
keywords in the domain, catalog and file
names. Instead you should keep it as simple
as possible. |
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Serving Eastern Iowa Communities and their
Surrounding Areas. |
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PROWEB DESIGN ENTERPRISES
105 East 5th Street ∙ Anamosa, Iowa
52205
Phone: (319) 462-6120
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Email:
proweb_design@msn.com
Iowa Web Design & Development
Copyright © 2008 PROWEB DESIGN ENTERPRISES |
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