This is the first part of an as yet to be determined series on absolute SEO basics. It’s the absolute bare bones of SEO knowledge and is not comprehensive… but it should give a beginner a point of reference to begin their efforts. It’s the first part of about 3 or 4… I don’t know how many there will be yet, I seem to keep on thinking up more and more to write about as I go along!
What is Search Engine Optimisation?
Search engine optimisation (or SEO) is named according to the fine traditions of this industry. We make everything sound a lot harder than it actually is!
At a very basic level, SEO is simply the process of changing aspects of your site to make it more relevant to search engine queries made by people looking for the product or subject matter of your site.
There are many things which a search engine looks at to determine which sites are most appropriate to be displayed in response to queries. When you engage in SEO you are merely trying to respond to these criteria.
Further Reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/SEO.html
How Search Engines Rank Web Pages
Each search engine has a subtly different way of ranking pages in response to search queries. They all apply a formula known as an “algorithm” or “algo” to analyse the content of a web page and determine its relevance. Search engine algos are top secret and the details of exactly how they work are not made public. This is for a very good reason. Obviously if we all knew exactly how Google & other search engines ranked their pages, the search results would lose relevancy because every man and his dog would know how to create a site with killer rankings (as opposed to a site with the user in mind). In the past, this kind of knowledge has led to spammy search engine results, which is why search engines brought out their cloaks and daggers to create ranking algos which were difficult to exploit. So your current endeavours to learn the mystic art of SEO have been made that much more complex by all us pre 2003 affiliates who could create 10,000 ranking pages in about 5 minutes flat!
Learning about SEO by reading online information is rendered extremely difficult by the fact that nobody knows for sure exactly what goes on inside the algos. This means people develop their own methodologies and articles can be contradictory as a result of this. The best advice I can give on this is to not get bogged down in this by accepting everything you read as gospel and then getting confused by blatant contradictions. You, like everyone else, will eventually formulate your own working methods based on the results you see from your efforts.
If I tried to analyse even just a part of a search engine algo, I’d probably have enough for a PHD thesis. So this article is intended to be very basic to give you some pointers to the areas you should spend time on when trying to build site visitors.
So what makes search engines love your site?
This is not a definitive list… it’s the basics. You’ll no doubt hear of other things to do to make your page hyper-relevant from loads of different sources. When researching SEO further bear this in mind – if a method sounds too good to be true / like an overly easy shortcut you may be straying into search engine ban territory. Broadly speaking, SEO is hard work these days, but the rewards are wonderful!
Content: Now, before I even start the list properly I want to give some sage advice on what your site pages should contain. The phrase “content is king” is well worn for a good reason. Sites with thin content, and with no original content tend not to perform (particularly in Google). You should be writing original content you think will be genuinely useful to your target audience to include on your site. It’s not enough to adopt a copy and paste attitude towards your new search engine hobby… it’s just not going to wash in the search engines. Google in particular has something called the “Duplicate Content Filter”. If your site has content copied from somewhere else, the great Google will know and will penalise rankings accordingly. You have been warned!
OK, there are two aspects about your site which will be looked at: On site Factors and Off Site Factors. See, optimisation is not only about how your site looks, but also about how other sites are talking about it. Still interested? Yes? OK. Let us proceed!
On Site Factors
Keyword Rich URL’s – Search terms in domains are deemed to be relevant to the sites content. Think about it from the search engine’s point of view. If the domain name carries certain search terms this is likely to be a strong indicator of the sites subject matter.
Don’t worry if your site doesn’t have this, many millions of sites rank without this benefit. However, if you can get a popular search term as your domain name, it is most definitely of assistance. It can also help your site achieve a better click through rate, as most search engines will highlight matching search terms within a site in bold, including your URL.
Below is an example of Google search results for the term “Cookware”:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1B2GGGL_enGB176GB176&q=cookware&btnG=Search&meta=
As with many search results, particularly Google, there is a strong presence of keyword-bearing url’s in the search results. This does suggest that it can help significantly with your rankings. Depending on the competitiveness of the search term, this will not always be a factor that will tip the search engine scales in your favour without other work. It is possible to rank highly for lower volume search terms quickly using this tactic, which can be lucrative if you’ve found an unexploited niche area with low competition and good conversion rates.
Keyword Distribution
When a search robot visits a web page it analyses the position and frequency of search terms throughout the page. Search engines look for some key markers to determine what terms contained in the page are most relevant to the subject matter. On a very simple level, a search engine robot reads your page in the same way you or I might scan a newspaper to determine what was going on with the days news.
Search terms contained within certain page elements such as titles, italicised and bold text, and link anchor text are considered to be likely to contain terms relating to the main subject matter of the page and therefore carry a greater weighting.
Search engines also look for which terms are sprinkled evenly thoroughout your page, the logic behind this is that if a term is mentioned frequently in all areas of the page it is again likely to relate to the subject matter of the page. I always describe this analysis as “Top, Middle, and Bottom” to SEO newbies. If you look at your page and see terms of relevance in all these areas, your text content is going to be pretty close to being right.
Pseudonyms
Don’t just repeat your main search term. Think of different ways to describe it in your page content, and use lots of related keywords. For example, a page about “designer lingerie” should also mention related terms like “underwear” “bras” “thongs” etc. This will reassure the robot that your page really is relevant!
A proviso for all you would-be search marketers: - Don’t try to manipulate this by engaging in “Keyword Stuffing”. By this I mean creating pages with artificially high amounts of your search term. That search ship sailed long ago, and Google will actually penalise a site it considers to be engaging in this practise. You have been warned (again!).
The optimum keyword density (i.e. the % of keywords from all your text that cover your desired search term or terms) ranges between 5% and 20% for Google. The optimum level changes with subject matter, and apparently anything above the threshold will trigger Google’s keyword spamming alarm. How true this is I am unsure. The best advice I can give on keyword density is to keep it natural when writing your page content. Simply talk about your desired subject using as many relevant words as possible without putting in superfluous pap (yep, that’s a technical term) and you should be fine.
Page elements search engines give special weighting to: -
</strong> - It’s important to create a unique title for each page of your site which contains information of relevance to the content. Keep the length to around 60 characters. Search engines only look at a certain portion of the page title. </p>
<p><strong>Meta Keywords & Description</strong> – In the good old days of search engine yore, search engines put an incredibly high weighting on the search terms contained within the keyword and description meta tags. Spammers promptly took advantage, so those days are now gone. However, a search engine will still display your description in its search results with relevant terms highlighted in bold, so a good search term rich description with compelling copy can increase your site click through rates.</p>
<p><strong>Header Tags</strong></p>
<p>Search engines pay close attention to keywords contained within H1, H2 & H3 tags. Much like a newspaper’s sub-headings, these tags are likely to contain terms of relevance to the core subject matter of your page. You can use a CSS stylesheet to alter the appearance of your headers to make them fit in with your page design. Yet another of my little words of warning here. Don’t get any fancy ideas about using stylesheets to give your entire web page a H1 attribute. I direct you to my comments above regarding keyword stuffing. Any jiggery pokery may well be a one way ticket to a dreaded Google search engine penalty. Hard to reverse once you’ve got it!</p>
<p><strong>Alt Text</strong></p>
<p>Take the time to put alternative text on all your site images. Make sure that they are actually of relevance to the image as opposed to stuffing them full of spammy keywords. One key part of the Google Florida Update (known affectionately as the “Coronary Update” amongst my circle of friends) was to add the contents of alt tags to the keyword density analysis. As with other page elements, over-stuffing can trip a nice Google Spam penalty. Gosh, I’m starting to sound like a broken record about this Google stuff… but as Google is such a key driver of traffic, it’s important not to get on the wrong side of the big G-Meister.</p>
<p><strong>Link Anchor Text</strong></p>
<p>Just in case you don’t know. Link anchor text refers to the text you use to describe your link on your web page. For example: <a href=http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk>This Is The Anchor Text</a></p>
<p>Again, text highlighted in this way will be considered more relevant to the page content. Make sure that anchor text is keyword rich. </p>
<p>Similarly, this “keyword relevance” can be passed between site pages. If you use keyword rich anchor text to link to pages within your own site, the search engine will deem the page being linked to as relevant to the term within the anchor text.</p>
<p><strong>Cross Linking / Site Structure</strong></p>
<p>As well as making sure you are using internal links with relevant search terms, it is important to create a well structured site with a high degree of cross linking. Search engines, particularly Google, analyse the structure of your site to determine the importance of various pages within it. A strong site will have the following basics in place: - </p>
<p>A high degree of cross linkage between site pages – A page will be considered to be of relevance to your site subject matter if a search engine can see it is linked to by many other pages within your site. This shows the search engine that a page is pivotal to the site content, and will therefore be boosted in the relevancy stakes.</p>
<p>It is important to create a menu structure that has as many of your site pages linking to each other as possible. Try not to create any pages that are only linked to from one place within your site. These will be considered “orphan pages”, and will suffer from reduced search engine strength / relevance.</p>
<p><strong>The Index Page</strong> – should be very text rich and should have lots of great content relating to your target subject matter. Like the front page of a newspaper, the index page of a site is seen by search engines as most likely to be strongly representative of a site’s subject matter. The index page is therefore given an additional weighting in search engine rankings. Getting the content and SEO right on this page gives you the best chance of ranking well for your target search terms.</p>
<p><strong>Robots Text File</strong></p>
<p>The first thing a search engine spider will look for when it arrives for a gander at your site is a robots.txt file. These don’t help with search engine rankings in any shape form or fashion. However, as we’re being belt and braces about this SEO for beginners guide, you should include one! They can also be used if you don’t want any particular pages in your site spidered or indexed for any reason. Particularly useful if you don’t want some custom / copyright images showing up in Google’s image search.</p>
<p>More about robots.txt files and how they are structured and created at <a href="http://www.w3.org">W3.org</a></p>
<p><strong>Sitemap</strong></p>
<p>Make it easy for search engines to find all your site pages and get them in the indexes where they need to be. Create a sitemap, and link to it from every page of your site.</p>
<p>More about sitemaps at <a href="http://www.sitemaps.org/">SiteMaps.org</a></p>
<script>
var bz_url='http%3A%2F%2Fwww.affiliatestuff.co.uk%2Fgetting-started-as-an-affiliate%2Fbeginners-seo-part-1-definitions-on-site-factors%2F';
var bz_num_comments=0;
var bz_comment_date='';
</script>
<script src="http://api.bumpzee.com/affiliatemarketing/bumpwidgetjs.php?v=$bzversion" type="text/javascript"></script>
</div>
<div class="meta">
<div class="author">
Kirsty @ 9:56 am
</div>
Filed under: <a href="http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/category/getting-started-as-an-affiliate/" title="View all posts in Beginners Affiliate Marketing" rel="category tag">Beginners Affiliate Marketing</a>
</div>
<div class="feedback">
<a href="http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/getting-started-as-an-affiliate/beginners-seo-part-1-definitions-on-site-factors/#respond" title="Comment on Beginners SEO Part 1 - Definitions & On Site Factors">No Comments</a> </div>
<!--<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:trackback="http://madskills.com/public/xml/rss/module/trackback/">
<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/getting-started-as-an-affiliate/beginners-seo-part-1-definitions-on-site-factors/"
dc:identifier="http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/getting-started-as-an-affiliate/beginners-seo-part-1-definitions-on-site-factors/"
dc:title="Beginners SEO Part 1 - Definitions & On Site Factors"
trackback:ping="http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/getting-started-as-an-affiliate/beginners-seo-part-1-definitions-on-site-factors/trackback/" />
</rdf:RDF> -->
</div> <!-- Closes the post div-->
<div class="postnavigation">
<div class="rightdouble">
</div>
<div class="leftdouble">
</div>
</div>
</div> <!--Closes the contentright div-->
</div> <!-- Closes the content div-->
<div id="bottomcontentdouble">
</div>
</div> <!-- Closes the container div-->
<div id="footer">
<p class="credits">
Theme by <a href="http://www.sw4n.net" title="Theme designed by Sw4n">Sw4n</a><br />
You can syndicate both the entries using <a href="http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/feed/" title="Syndicate this site using RSS">
<abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr></a> and the <a href="http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/comments/feed/">Comments (RSS)
</a>.
<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer">xhtml 1.0 trans </a>/
<a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer">CSS </a>.
<br />Proudly powered by <a href='http://wordpress.org' title='Powered by WordPress, state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform'><strong>WordPress</strong></a>.
</p>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-3394460-4");
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>
</body>
</html>
