SEO - Optimized Keywords

We are discussing everything in Web context so in web terminology a keyword is a term that a person enters into a search engine to find specific information. Most people enter search phrases that consists of between two and five words. Such phrases may be called search phrases, keyword phrases, query phrases, or just keywords. Good keyword phrases are specific and descriptive.

There are following concepts related to Keywords which helps in optimizing keywords on a web page.

Keyword Frequency:

This is calculated as how often does a keyword appear in a site's title or description. You don't want to go overboard with frequency, however, since on some engines if you repeat a word too many times, you'll be penalized for "spamming" or keyword stuffing.

In general though, repeat your keyword in the document as many times as you can get away with, and up to 3-7 times in your META tags.

Keyword Weight:

This refers to the number of keywords appearing on your Web page compared to the total number of words appearing on that same page. Some search engines consider this when determining the rank of your Web site for a particular keyword search.

One technique that often works well is to create some smaller pages, generally just a paragraph long, which emphasize a particular keyword. By keeping the overall number of words to a minimum, you will increase the "weight" of the keyword you are emphasizing.

Keyword Proximity:

This refers to the placement of keywords on a Web page in relation to each other or, in some cases, in relation to other words with a similar meaning as the queried keyword.

For search engines that grade a keyword match by keyword proximity, the connected phrase .home loans. will outrank a citation that mentions .home mortgage loans. assuming that you are searching only for the phrase "home loans".

Keyword Prominence:

A measure of how early or high up on a page the keywords are found. Having keywords in the first heading and in the first paragraph (first 20 words or so) on a page are best.

Keyword Placement:

WHERE your keywords are placed on a page is very important. For example, in most engines, placing the keywords in the Title of the page or in the Heading tags will give it more relevancy. On some engines, placing keywords in the link text, the part that is underlined on the screen in a browser, can add more relevancy to those words.

Best Places to Put Keywords:

Here is a list of places where you should try to use your main keywords.

• Keywords in the <title> tag(s).
• Keywords in the <meta name="description">
• Keywords in the <meta name="keyword">
• Keywords in <h1> or other headline tags.
• Keywords in the <a href="http://yourcompany.com">keywords</a> link tags.
• Keywords in the body copy.
• Keywords in alt tags.
• Keywords in <!-- insert comments here> comments tags.
• Keywords contained in the URL or site address, e.g., http://www.keyword.com/keywordkeyword.htm.

Finding Keywords:

There are many different ways to find keywords for your website. Some good keyword ideas are:

• Words people would search for to find your product or service.
• Problems your prospective customers may be trying to solve with your product or service.
• Keyword tags on competitors websites.
• Visible page copy on competitors websites.
• Related search suggestions on top search engines.
• By using an online tools like: Google Keyword Tool
• By analyzing your website carefully and finding out proper keywords. This task can be done by expert SEO Copywriters.
• Pay attention to stemming for your keywords - Particularly to what the root word is and what Google considers to be a match for that word when optimizing pages over time.
• You can do brainstorming to identify correct keywords for your site.

What is Word Stemming?

Google uses word stemming. Word stemming allows all forms of the word - singular, plural, verb form as well as similar words to be returned for a given search query.

So if someone types in "house plans", not only will pages that are optimized for that phrase be returned, but so will pages that contain all variations of that phrase, for example: "house plan", "house planning", "house planer".

Hope you have some understanding on keywords and how to identify them and where to use them. Next chapter will explain you how to optimize Metatags for better results.

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SEO - Design & Layout

A web site design and layout gives first impression about your site. There are sites which are too fancy and regular net surfers will just reach on those sites and will come out even without creating a single click.

Search Engines are very smart but after all they are software and not human being who will read the content of their interest. If you make your site too complicated then Search Engine would not be able to parse the content of your site properly and finally indexing would not be efficient which will result in a low rank.

The actual page content should have a keyword density of about 10% and should weigh in at about 200 words - but there are as many opinions about this as there are SEO experts. Some say keyword density should be 5% and some say it should be 20%. 10% works for me.

Here are few guidelines which should be considered while designing a web page.

• You should have more text content than HTML elements.
• No frames. They are the enemies of Search Engines and Search Engines are Enemies of Frames.
• No ads if possible. Because most of the ads uses Java Script which is not advised to be used.
• No JavaScript. If you need JavaScript, call it from an external file rather than dumping the code in the HTML file. JavaScript drop down menus prevent spiders from crawling beyond your homepage. If you use them, be sure to include text links at the bottom of the page.
• Nothing that does not fit perfectly into the page topic; There should be no doubt in the search engine's mind (or in he user's mind) what your page is about.
• No unnecessary directories. Keep your files as close to the root as possible.
• No fancy stuff (Flash, Splash, Animated Gifs, Rollovers etc.) unless absolutely necessary.

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SEO - Relevant Filenames

One of the simplest methods to improve your search engine optimization is to look at the way you name your files. Before writing this tutorial I did lot of research on file names and found that search engines like Google give too much importance to file names. You should think what are you going to put in your web page and then give a relevant file name to this page.

Just try giving any keyword in Google search engine and you will find file names highlighted with the keyword you have given. So it simply proves that your file name should have appropriate keyword.

File Naming Style:

• The filename should preferably be short and descriptive. It's always good to use same keywords in file name as well as in page title.
• Don't use file names like service.htm or job.htm. But use actual service name in your file name like computer-repairing.htm
• Don't use more than 3-4 words in file name and separate them with hyphens rather than underscores. Try to use 2 keywords if possible.

File Name Example:

Here are some file names which should be preferred from SEO as well as from user point of view.

slazenger-brand-balls.html
wimbledon-brand-balls.html
wilson-brand-balls.html

Notice that keywords are separated by hyphens rather than underscores. Google sees file names as follows:

seo-relevant-filename as seo relevant filename(good)

But Google sees

seo_relevant_filename as seorelevantfilename (not good)

File Extension:

It should be noticed that .html, .htm and .php and any other extension do NOTHING for your visitors, and they are simply a means of offloading some of the work of configuring your webserver properly onto your visitors. In effect you are asking your site vistors to tell your webserver HOW to produce the page, not which one?

Many Web masters think that its a good idea to use filename without using extension. It may help you but not a whole lot.

URL Sub-Directory Name:

From Search Engine Optimization point of view URL sub-directory name hardly matters. You try giving any keyword in any search and you will not find any sub-directory name matching with your keywords. But from user point of view you should keep very much abbreviated sub-directory name.

Guru Mantra:

Finally, I will suggest to keep the following points in mind before naming your files:

• Use web page file name short, simple, descriptive and relevant to page content.
• Try to use maximum 3-4 keywords in your file name and these keywords should be appeared in your web page title as well.
• Separate all keyword with hyphen rather than with underscore.
• Keep your sub directories name as shorter as possible.
• Keep the file size fewer than 101K though because Google chops almost everything above that.

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SEO - Web Site Domain

When you start thinking of doing a business through internet, first thing which you think about is your web site domain name. Before you choose a domain name you should consider the followings:

• Who would be your target audience?
• What you intend to sell to them. Is it a tangible item or just text content?
• What will make your business idea unique or different than everything else that is already on the market?

Many people think it is important to have keywords in a domain. Keywords in the domain name are usually important, but it usually can be done while keeping the domain name short, memorable, and free of hyphens.

Using keywords in your domain name give you a strong competitive advantage over your competitors. Having your keywords in your domain name can increase click through rates on search engine listings and paid ads as well as make it easier to Using your keywords in get keyword rich descriptive inbound links.

Avoid buying long, and confusing domain names. May people separate the words in their domain names using either dashes or hyphen. In the past the domain name itself was a significant ranking factor but now search engines have advanced it is not very significant factor anymore.

Keep two to three words in your domain name it will be more memorable. Some of the most memorable websites do a great job of branding by creating their own word. Few examples are eBay, Yahoo!, Expedia, Slashdot, Fark, Wikipedia, Google...

You should be able to say it over the telephone once and the other person should know how to spell it and they should be able to guess about what you sell.

Guru Mantra:

Finally, you should be able to answer yourself for the following questions:

• Why do you want to build your website? Why should people buy off your site and not from other Site? What makes you different from others?
• Who are your target audience and what you intend to sell to them?
• List 5 - 10 websites which you thing, they are they amazing. Now think why are they amazing?
• Create 5 different domain names. Make at least 1 of them funny. Tell them to a half dozen people and see which ones are the most memorable. You will get more honest feedback if the people do not know you well.
• Buy your domain name which is more catchy, memorable and relevant to your business.

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SEO - Tactics & Methods

SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:

1. Techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design referred to as White Hat SEO, and
2. Techniques that search engines do not approve and attempt to minimize the effect of referred to as Black Hat or spamdexing.

White Hat SEO:

An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered as White Hat if it follows the followings

• If it conforms to the search engine's guidelines.
• If it does not involves any deception.
• It ensures that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.
• It ensures that a Web Page content should have been created for the users and not just for the search engines.
• It ensures the good quality of the web pages
• It ensures the useful content available on the web pages

Always follow a White Hat SEO tactic and don't try to fool your site visitors. Be honest and definitely you will get something more.

Next chapter onward we will put light on White Hap SEO techniques. The WHST are very simple and can be done without investing much cost.

Black Hat or Spamdexing:

An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it follows the followings

• Try to improve rankings that are disapproved of by the search engines and/or involve deception.
• Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly.
• Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the search engine ranked.
• Serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors. This is called Cloaking SEO tactic.
• Using Hidden or invisible text or with the page background color, using a tiny font size or hiding them within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.
• Repeating keywords in the Meta tags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the site's content. This is called Meta tag stuffing.
• Calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page. This is called Keyword stuffing .
• Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar key words and phrases. These pages are called Doorway or Gateway Pages
• Mirror web sites by hosting multiple web sites all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs.
• Creating a rogue copy of a popular web site which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious web sites. This is called Page hijacking.

Always be away to adopt any of the above Black Hat tactic to improve the rank of your site. Search engines are smart enough to identify all the above proprieties of your site and ultimately you are not going to get anything.

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