I recently attended a seminar held by Network Solutions on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I wanted to share some important points I thought were noteworthy.
Be aware that another way to get quick temporary results is “Paid Click Marketing” (this is a separate subject and will not be discussed in this article.) This article discusses SEO for “Organic links” (the links that are not paid for on the Google result pages).

To begin with, it is important to state that no one knows for sure what Google bases their ranking system by. Google keeps it a secret. As an example - there are some camps that claim that Google spiders don’t even look at Meta Key Words. This said, we will assume that they do, because even if they don’t, we do know that many other search engines do. The following assumptions are based on collective sampled results according to the Network Solutions seminar.

• “Organic listings” cannot be paid for.
• Google strives to have thier search results be relevant
• SEO results take time. After optimization and submittal of sitemaps, results can take 3 - 6 months (depends on the industry).
• Use Flash sparingly. (Unless your web is about entertainment) Search engines cannot search Flash. For the most part, user’s don’t want to be entertained, they want to do business.
• 65% of users click o0n the first 10 Organic listings on a Google result’s page.
• When visitors come to a site, they generally give your site about 2-3 seconds before they decide whether to stay or bounce. Most of this time is focused on a “Pupil Hotspot” (the top left portion of the website, about 15% of the entire webpage.
• There are plenty of tricks for “Keyword Stuffing”. Google programmers know all of them. They are some of the smartest PhD’s in the country. If you try to use these techniques, your search engine rankings will be penalized. BTW - Google hates link farms. Don’t try to trick Google.
• Make sure you use text-base navigations on your website so that spiders can find all of your pages
• Remember that most searches do not link directly to the “home page”. So be sure all other pages in your site have navigation to the other pages of your site, and that there are no “dead ends”.

Keywords (”keywords” will also mean “keyword phrases”)

• important not to use keywords that are too general
• when identifying keywords you would like to use consider:
  • Traffic - How often do people search using the keyword
  • Competition - How many other sites appear with this keyword
  • Relevancy - Is this the keyword people will use when searching for this product or service
• Location is often used as a keyword for small businesses located in a specific city, state or region
• Most effective keywords are going to be keyword phrases averaging  2-4 words
• People’s searches are becoming more and more specific
• Separate keywords for separate landing pages.

Keyword Don’ts

• Don’t waste space on keyword “misspells”
• Don’t use competitor’s names
• Don’t try “Comment” keyword stuffing
• Don’t simply copy keywords or copy from other sites and then paste them on to your site. Duplicate content is punished and counted as somewhat irrelevant (although you could change the copy enough to make it somewhat unique)

Page Titles

• 8-10 words
• No more than 72 characters
• Use keywords early on in the sentence

Meta Descriptions

• start with Benefit Statement

Meta Keywords

• number of words is controversial, but studies have shown that using too many keywords or many duplicate words in keyword phrases will hurt your ranking
• they suggest 10 to 12 keywords or keyword phrases that are related to the content on your page

Body Copy

• 250 - 600 words with 3 or 4 occurences of a keyword. (if you overdo it, you will be penalized)

Headline Tags

• Use keywords in headline tags <h1>
• use them  just for headlines and not copy
• you can style them with CSS

Optimization Of Your Page For Keywords

• Relevancy
• Fresh Content
  • Newer content can be seen as more relevant
  • Optimization is a never-ending process
  • Buzzwords change
  • Sites that keep up on optimization will have best success
  • Search Engine rankings will plateau and then decline if SEO is not kept up
• Unique Value
• Can’t optimize for too many products at once, best to narrow down to products that will pay off the most
• Links for other sites using those keywords

Build Inbound Links - Website “link popularity” is based on factors that include:

• Number of sites linking to a website
• Relevance of inbound links in relation to content
• Links are like votes for the word that is underlined or used as a link

Great Ways to Get Inbound Links

• One way links
• Reciprocal links
• Directory or Listings links
• Press Releases
• Blogs

Sitemap.xml

• have a sitemap.xml file at the root of your site
• more info at www.sitemaps.org

Locales

• one of the first things Google checks for when a user uses their search forms is Location and IP addresses
• Using locations in your keywords can help
• Use separate landing pages for different locales.

SEO Resources:

• http://www.sitemaps.org
• http://www.google.com/webmasters
• http://marketing.networksolutions.com/web-promotion-tools.php
• Keyword Research Tools
  • http://www.nichebotclassic.com
  • https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Free Press Release
  • http://i-newswire.com
• http://marketing.networksolutions.com/seminars
• http://marketing.networksolutions.com/blog

Posted: November 9th, 2008 under General Website Design Knowledge.
Comments: none