Top 10 SEO Tips

The following tips are not necessarily in order of importance, but are in the order you should consider when building a new website from scratch. My top 10 tips ranked by order of importance for high rankings are displayed elsewhere.

1. Know your geographic market and ensure your domain has the correct TLD.
   If your primary market is the UK it is important to use a .UK TLD and ideally have your domain hosted on UK based servers.
2. Include keyword in Domain name (using hyphens if necessary).
   This doesn’t mean having a domain name like keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.com try to stick to the one hyphen and not read as spammy. A good example is a site that sells wheelchair ramps with the URL of the site being www.wheelchair-ramps.co.uk
3. Create as much content about your products or subject as you can.
   After doing this divide in to 4 or 5 sections (this will help later when creating your navigation structure)
4. AFTER you have your site content start keyword researching
   There are tools you can use for keyword research; Wordtracker and The Google AdWords Keyword Tool to name but two. I personally use a combination of the Google Keyword Tool, Google LSI and T.J. Common Sense.
5. Decide on 4 or 5 primary keywords to use as main sub-sections
   Ideally have an idea of 4 or 5 main keywords, call them your Primary Keywords and then try to position secondary keywords with the Primary Word most closely associated with it.
6. Sit down and sketch out your navigation system
   Put a lot of time in to this and play around until it is right, use Primary Keyword as headers for 5 main Sub-sections and use secondary keywords as headers for content pages under each Primary Keyword

   

   The above diagram shows the early stages of constructing a navigation system. The green section (Sub-1) shows how all other sub sections will be. The Home page, All 5 Sub-section, About us, Terms, Contact, Privacy, Resources and Sitemap pages are always interlinked with each other forming 12 strong pages (more about this later)

7. Re-write content using knowledge previously gained about keywords and phrases
   This doesn’t mean totally re-writing and stuffing the page with keywords, it requires writing paragraphs ensuring the right phrases are in the right places but isn’t obvious that the phrases are written for the search engines. Do not write too much information on each page and do not stray of in to writing about something else.
8. Structure each individual page
   With your content rich, keyword balanced page written, you now have to create the page structure. Each page should be seen as an individual website.
   Starting from the top,
   • Page title should reflect the content of the Page ensuring you use the primary keyword for that Page
   • Meta keyword tags, (although not overly important), should list 4 or 5 individual keywords related to the Page you have created.
   • Meta Description tags, this should be a short concise description describing what the Page is about. This is very important as a selling point as you can manipulate the search engines in to displaying this when the person searches for the keyword used in the description. A favourite of mine is “Provides information about the latest KEYWORD now in stock and available online” or words suitable for the product.
   • Avoid bloated code by using external style sheets and minimum coding.
   • Main page layout was previously discussed whilst sketching the navigation system, but it is important that all links are seen by the engines and are using the correct anchor text related to the pages they are pointing too. Avoid using javascipt for links and if you have to use images ensure you use the correct alt attributes. If the page has too many links on it and looks messy this can be overcome by using a combination of css and javascript to create drop down boxes, but should only be used if you know what you are doing. If you have the opposite problem, and want to include links on the page but not necessarily have search engines follow them, this can be achieved using drop down option boxes.
   • With yout general layout and your linking structure sorted you should now sort out your headings. The main page heading of the page should use your Keywords and be in H1 Tags, this should be followed by your most important paragraph, ideally working down the page you should use secondary headers from h2 to h4 (always using the keywords if possible)
   • If you have used images on your page ensure keywords in the Alt attributes, this doesn’t mean keyword stuff them but just describe the image using the keyword.
9. Proof read your completed page and get a 2nd opinion
   With your page completed try and get someone to check it for you to see if it reads to spammy and to see if you have missed out any obvious key phrases that should be on the page.
10. Construct your site.
    With the previous procedure completed for all pages it’s now time to put the site together. Simply use the previously devised linking structure, group similar pages together under appropriate sub headings and ensure all links are active and using correct anchor text.

Improve Search Engine Ranking

Optimizing to improve search engine ranking is one of the best ways to increase website traffic and expose your content, product or service to people who might be interested in what you have to offer.

The major search engines utilize mathematical formulas to determine where a web page ranks.
The search engines review specific criteria that a page must meet to get to the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Tailoring your site/pages for improved search engine rankings is also known widely as search engine optimization, or SEO. Here are the first steps to follow:

1) Research your keywords. I use various SEO tools to estimate the amount of search traffic for keywords related to a particular niche market. This is an absolutely critical first step, as search engines do NOT create searchers, they route them onto the most relevant pages for a given search term. If your keywords are only searched on 100 times per day on a particular search engine, you can only expect about 40 visitors a day once you have achieved the top spot on page 1 of that SERP. If your business model requires 400 searchers a day, you need to consider supplementing organic traffic with other sources i.e. Google Adwords, offline advertising, etc.

2) The first thing to understand when targeting keywords is that it’s not all about ranking for the most popular keyword. The most successful search engine marketing and optimization campaigns target the most relevant keywords for your niche that you stand a chance on getting onto page 1 for. In competitive niches this will mean targeting “long tail” keywords i.e. “UK SEO” vs “SEO“.

3) Focus on the reader when writing your content. Think about what your target market needs to accomplish their goals and then put it on your site in a way they can d it. If you want to be relevant for specific keywords, then you need superior or at least highly competitive content. Write about 225+ words of copy for each page. In less competitive niches, one can target between 3-5 related keyword phrases per page. For very competitive markets, I like to reduce this to one key phrase per page.

4) Make sure that the critical pages of the site have unique title, meta description and meta keyword tags. On less important pages I typically only specify a unique title and don’t bother with the description and keyword metas at all. If your site is using the same tags for all pages, you are losing a chance to tell the search engines which pages are important for particular search terms.

5) Keep the structure, navigation and URL structure of your site simple enough for search engines to follow. Remember that search engines cannot parse your navigation if it’s using flash or javascript. So stay close to standard HTML links when it comes to Navigation. This rule of thumb is slowly changing but why take a chance when CSS menus provide interesting functionality while retaining the advantages of a text link?

6) Create a site map on your site and register your site on Google Webmaster tools. This won’t help your site get indexed but it does provide valuable information on issues that crop up with linking, missing pages, etc.

7) Build your popularity. So now you have determined the right keywords on the right pages, you’ve created all of the necessary content and you’ve optimized the content to the best of your capabilities. Congratulations - you’re now in the top 80th percentile (from an optimization standpoint) of the websites listed for the keywords you’re trying to target. As always, the last 20% of the progress to an objective takes 80% of the work. Once you have arrived at this point, in order to get all the way to your goal, which should be the top spot on page 1 of Google, you need to shift your focus onto building links into your “money” pages. There are a number of ways of accomplishing this but the bad news is that they all involve effort, money and consistent activity for as long as you want to rank #1 for a particular keyword phrase on a particular SERP. Google in particular rewards consistent link building over time, so if you start off building 1 link a day, in order to achieve the best positioning, you need to continue building 1 link a day indefinitely

Basic Seo Tips

Google is rated by many as the number one search engine in the world. A  large majority of websites get about 90% of their search engine traffic direct from Google searches.

Highly placed rankings for specific keywords seems to be the nut that most internet marketers find hardest to crack. (more…)