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Search Engine Optimization
For The Real World
SEO Techniques For
Everyday Webmasters
Introduction:
David Congreave, Tim Whiston, Roy Miller and
Terry Telford recently recorded a tell-all
TeleClass that showed attendees how to massage
your website to grab the search engine's
attention. The following excerpts were taken
directly from the TeleClass.
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You're about
to:
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Peek under the hood of your favorite search
engine
David:
Ok. To start off, when we say search engines, we
tend to say Google, because Google accounts for
the vast majority of searches. For myself,
Google ranges from 80 to 90% of my search engine
traffic. So when we talk about Google it means
search engines in general.
Ok. Search engines are
essentially a document retrieval program. They
use computer programs that follow links on the
internet and catalog web pages. The programs
analyse the pages to try and figure out what the
pages are about. Once they establish the page
content, that page is indexed under a keyword,
or set of keywords that relates to that page.
When someone enters a search
term into the search engines, the software
displays the most relevant webpages, based on
the keywords they’re filed under. You could
think of the internet as a giant filing cabinet
and each website is a file folder. The search
engines simply sift through the files and pull
out the ones that match what you’re looking for.
It usually starts with the
top 10 results. So the challenge is trying to
convince the search engines that your webpage is
more important than everyone else in you niche.
If you do that, it means a lot of traffic for
your website.
Terry:
So its not a mystical instrument. It’s just a
document retrieval system.
David:
Yeah. Actually it’s like a match making service.
On page vs. off page SEO
Terry:
Ok. Cool. So you have to make your website as
attractive to Google as possible. But there’s
actually two kinds of search engine optimisation
isn’t there? On page and off page.
Tim:
Yes. That’s right.
Terry:
Ok Tim, can you explain the difference between
them?
Tim:
Sure we'll start with on page. This is what most
people think of when they think of search engine
optimization. On page or onsite SEO refers to
the elements of your webpage that tell Google
what keywords to index your page under. The off
site or off page optimization, refers to the
number, quality and nature of the links that are
pointing back to your pages.
If we look at each of these
in a little more detail, the primary element for
onsite or on page optimisation would be your
tags. The HTML title tags, the image ALT tags,
the image filenames and the textual content. But
the most important is the title tag. If you
don’t get anything else perfect, get that title
tag right. Its going to synchronize up with your
off site efforts and create some really nice
results for you.
Terry:
So we don’t have to do anything with meta tags
or descriptions? Nothing?
Tim:
Well I wouldn’t encourage somebody to completely
neglect it, but more importantly you need to
focus on your offsite optimisation.
The truth about keywords
Terry:
Ok. Now what about keywords? Should I be
concerned with keywords when I’m developing a
website?
Tim:
I would start by keeping it basic and building a
list of what we call a long tail keywords. Just
get a pen and paper or a notepad on a computer.
Start with common sense and write down all the
terms you think people would be searching for in
your niche. For example, if we continue with the
organic gardening theme, maybe people are
looking for “natural fertilizer, organic
gardening techniques, or organic gardening
designs. After you write down all the terms you
think people will be searching for within that
niche, then start a bit of research and expand
your list. It’s kind of like trying to get into
your prospect’s head.
Terry:
So what Tim’s saying is you sit down and write
common sense words and phrases, that surround
your subject matter. Can we give an example of
that? How would you start?
David:
It really depends on where you are coming from.
If you have a website already and you want to
optimise it, you already have a lot of your
keywords on your pages. You built a site that is
full of keywords, so you want to look in Google
and see which keywords you are ranking for
already. Then you just optimize for those words
so you move higher up the search engine
rankings.
If you want more keywords, or
you haven’t started a website yet, you will
start with keyword research. Start by think
about what your prospect will be looking for.
And then if you want to get a little bit more
detailed about it, you can use services like
WordTracker.com
Terry:
OK. Other than WordTracker, what other services
are available?
David:
Google has a free tool. If you go Google’s
website and sign up for a free Google AdWords
account, there are several tools in there that
you can use to research your keywords.
Terry:
Ok, so I can go either to Google or WordTracker
and start off, like Tim said, with common sense
and the system will pop out some additional
keyword phrases for me.
Content in review
Terry:
Ok. That brings up another aspect of developing
your website. The content. I would like to
switch gears for a moment from search engine
optimisation and take 5 minutes with you Roy. If
you can describe how you start to write copy for
your website. Right from the very beginning.
Roy:
The first thing to note is that search engines
are getting a little bit smarter. Especially
Google. They are a smart bunch of folks at
Google. They are always improving their
algorithms. One of the things they are getting
smarter about is homing in on the pages that are
truly helpful for people. If you are searching
for a page about organic gardening, Google wants
to find the best page about organic gardening
for you. They want to serve up the page that
gives the human searcher the best information
about that topic. And you mention earlier, Terry
about the spammy keyword stuffed pages that only
a cyborg would understand. You don’t want that.
Increasingly, search engines
are not looking favorably on pages like that.
Especially Google. Google’s getting pretty cut
throat about it. And the reason is, they provide
a service. They want people to come to Google
and get good out of it. The only way to get good
out of it is, to find pages that are actually
helpful. So when people ask, how do we write
copy that is good for humans and good for search
engines? You can’t forget the first part. Focus
on the first part first. Make your copy good for
human beings. It’s got to communicate your
message. If it’s providing good information
about your topic, search engines actually like
that better that just bunch of keywords in there
that sound like your talking in chant. So that’s
the first thing to keep in mind.
When people talk about
copywriting, they often talk about sales pages.
Most people who create those pages aren’t really
focused on SEO at all. They are getting traffic
to those pages from other sources besides search
engines. So when we are talking about web copy
for the most part, when we are talking about it
in SEO terms, we are talking about other kinds
of copy.
So you have a website about
organic gardening and on your home page you talk
a little bit about organic gardening. You have a
page with a different aspect of organic
gardening. Remember the first rule is to make
the page helpful to human beings and then you
want to do what you might call SEO-affying your
page. The other guys have talked about that a
little bit. I know that in lucid SEO we are
going in a little more detail about it. But
here’s some examples of the things you might do
to SEO-affy your copy.
So you’ve made it useful to
human beings. Then you want to inject your
keyword into the copy or just go back and make
sure your keywords are in your copy in ways that
will make the search engines really like your
page. So again, lets go back to something that
is not even on your page in the way most people
think about it. Your title tag. That’s copy.
People won’t think about it as copy but it’s
copy. Copy doesn’t mean just the text on the
middle of your page, it’s all the copy on your
page.
Tim mentioned the ALT tag in
the image tag earlier. That’s copy too. But
getting back to the actual stuff that the human
being can read on the page. Start with the title
tags that show up in the title bar of your
browser. Make sure your keywords are in it. On
your page, you will have a headline or two.
You’re going to have H1 tags, H2 tags, H3 tags,
anything with an H in it. Put your keywords in
there. Then you want to make sure your keywords
are in the actual text on the page, and you want
to have a healthy amount of text on the page. If
you just have a few keywords on the page, or a
few words on the page that’s probably not going
to cut the mustard. What you really want is a
healthy bit of text with your keywords in it in
a natural way.
So if you’re trying to write
human readable stuff, how do you do that? Well
it’s pretty easy, actually. Start by talking
about your topic and use your keywords early and
often in your copy. That is the rule of thumb.
Early and often, just use your keywords. You
don’t need to get all in a twist about keyword
density and all that stuff. Just use your
keywords early and often naturally. Also,
something else to mention, that is becoming
relevant with search engines is related
keywords. I won’t go in to too much detail, but
using stuff that is related to your keywords,
but not exactly your keywords. So synonyms for
your keywords. Topical stuff that relates to
your keyword. Google’s getting smarter, they are
getting smarter all the time and they are going
to be moving in the direction of really trying
to figure out what the page is about.
So don’t just say, well my
keyword is organic gardening. I’ll include 67
instances of organic gardening on my page.
That’s not going to do it. Include organic
gardening, a few times, 10 times, how ever many
times, just a healthy number and also include
related concepts in your copy that search
engines will like. If you do that, your going to
end up with copy search engines like. But your
not going to fix it so human beings will look at
your page and say, “uuuggghhh! This is junk and
pull away.”
This report has been compiled
from information contained in
"Search Engine Revolution
- Making The Search Engines Work For You."
--- End Report
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