I have talked to many readers of my blog recently, a lot asking about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Asking everything from what is it, to how do I go about it cheaply, to much more detailed questions. Admittedly I didn’t know all the answers, I knew alot but not all. That’s mainly because Search Engines (SE’s) like Google, MSN and Yahoo, keep search algorithms secret.

Now this might sound scary and make it almost impossible one would suggest to get a good ranking from such SE’s. However this isn’t strictly true, there a few things you can do and these will help you alot in getting your site out there and seen.

This first blog will deal with techniques and how they can make or break a sites rank. Further blogs will talk about Meta Tags and other key suggestions as well as talking about how accessibility and SEO go hand – in hand.

These tips are not fully detailed, nor should be taken directly. It is suggested by myself that you read between the lines, do some more research, or approach me individually at admin*at*andykinsey.com or leave a comment below.

There are two main catagories of technique, these are; White Hat and Black Hat.

Black Hat - deals with the things SE’s dislike alot, and penalise websites for. These include things like “link farming”, “doorway pages”, keyword stuffing, spamdexing and other such activities (which i wont go into right now).

White Hat – talks about the things SE’s are known to like or that SE’s are likely to like, things such as;
Fresh Content, good meta tagging, inbound links from “good neighbourhoods”, no dead ends, easy to navigate websites, submitting to directories (DMOZ etc) clean/non-clutters code and more.

If a website was to use black hat tricks (and it should be added, gets caught) all SE’s have been known to blacklist websites permanently or place you in a “sandbox” this is to say your site can’t be see from the SE for a particular period of time. Some BH tricks are worse than others, for example link farming is almost certain to be penalised as its easy to spot bad neighbourhoods.

Where as if a site uses White Hat techniques, although not guaranteed, it is much more likely SE’s will link and rank you highly. Some techniques grab attention more than others, some are more important than others. But it is not the same for all websites!.

Each website can benefit from good SEO techniques but if used incorrectly or not implemented correctly they will simply be a waste of time.

Meta Tags are those things at the top of a websites code. Literally they contain information about information, but its best to look at these as “attention grabbing friends”. You have to take care of your meta data as much as your content, if you mess them up you can mess up your ranking from Search Engines (SE’s). The measureable importance of Meta Tags is a matter of great contention, some say it now means nothing, others like myself know it does have importance even if the edge has gone a little. Either way managing Meta Data is of key importance to any website and should not be over looked. Also its easy to forget managing this Meta Data is very much a full time job, even if you already have a good ranking.

A meta tag can contain anything from information about a websites designer, its SEO provider, but the things SE’s recognise (mostly) are the Keywords and the Description (and robots), so this is what I will concentrate on in this blog.

Keywords – one of the most important things on a website. I make no quarms over this, get this wrong and to be blunt, you’re dead in the water. They can do as much harm as good, so get it right.
[Before you look at keywords you need to remember , firstly shorter keyword phrases are used more often (for example "design" is used more often than "web design" which is more often than "andy kinsey web design"), selecting your keyword phrases is very important, you have to specialise in an area to get seen there but not be so specific you lock out other markets which could be of interest. This may make no sense but it will as we go on.]
As a general rule of thumb your keywords/labels/phrases tags should be of no more than 10-15 words, this means you can have this many keywords of around 7-10 phrases/keywords. (Anymore than this and your Keyword stuffing, a very black hat trick likely to be penalised.) Selecting these keywords is important and you have to be careful to specify but not so much you close your market. So…
-Do some research into your competitors keywords
-Do not use the same word twice if you are to do this use the word once and follow keywords (so andy 1, andy 2 would become andy,1,2, etc)
-Use keyword analysis tools such as google keyword centre
Then use your research for a month, analyse the results (google webmaster tools will help you with this), give each phrase/word a mark out of ten. then change them, a month later compare results, then again and keep doing this. not only will you tweak til your perfect but google will like that you refresh them, they class as fresh content!

marking them on a scale in accordance to relevance, general rank after a period of time, total number of hits via this keyword/phrase. do this in a spreadsheet, if you can keep this spreadsheet archive and use it well your site will continually improve not only over a few months but it will allow you to see trends of change a long time before your competition will ever do. ….unless they read this blog too, in which case…best of luck to you all.

Another application of keywords for SE’s is keyword / content ratio, this means how often keywords appear in your content. You should aim for between 7% and 15% keyword density. Anymore and SE’s get cautious and its keyword stuffing again, and less and your not doing your job properly as a website owner and maintainer.

Notes From History: Over the years the importance of Keywords has decreased due to abuse by various “black hatters” whom abused the system, today the fact google and other SE’s don’t show todays results but rather a month or two behind it is hard to see how important it is at this second, or any other second for that matter. The idea of time lapsing keywords is one you should consider, circulating keywords is of importance.

Description - Although not as important as keywords a description is what brings people to your site (ultimately). This is because unless your submitted via DMOZ (or another directory) / and even if you are in some cases, Search Engines will show this description and your title as the search result.
There are certain words that draw people in like “free”, “sale” and ”discount” but use them incorrectly or too often and people will just not click, links that says “100% free” for example, I will instinctively ignore, most the time this is on the basis of my subconscious saying This IS SPAM! . so word it carefully refresh it often, be specific to your target audience and do not repeat yourself, or make yourself look silly.
This is to say if your title says your a web design company, don’t repeat this in your description, or do but re-word it call yourself an Internet design agency, this will draw people in to your site, and will more often than not mean they stay longer.

Practical Advice: Your description should not be of more than 140-200char in order to ensure all SE’s can show it within their search results pages.

Robots - this is not one of the more important factors of a web page, however the information it contains is often vital. meta robots (not to be confused with link factors) in essence tell a search bot/spider what it can and can not do with your page. For example – “follow” means a SE can follow links on a page as “no follow” means it can not follow them. “Index” and “noindex” do as described, “snippet” means it can take extracts from your site to show as results elsewhere (if an SE wants to, though normally it doesn’t). The most common meta bot “all” is assumed by SE’s to me “index,follow,snippet*” (*snippet is not confirmed).

Meta tags are formed as follows:

For example

After my recent postings I have been approached by several people asking about accessibility and how does it link to SEO, as they don’t quite understand what I meant when I said this in my first blog that they go hand-in-hand.
By hand-in-hand I mean that if you make a site accessible (as per the content) then you will make the site accessible to Search Engines (SE’s). This will mean content easy to read, follow, and be read aloud, it will mean images have alt-tags and that links will have title tags and meaningful keywords attached (not click here!). This also helps because if people can get access to your site they are more likely to not only recommend your site but maybe become a client. Hope that clears it up, and also reasons to make a site accessible. Also there will be a blog series on accessibility soon

More for your internal workings

URL’s – SEO friendly URL’s are helpful for (believe it or not as the name suggests) SE’s. This is where the likes of index.php?page=1&model=2 becomes /pagetitle/modelname. From this it is clear to see how it helps SE’s because you now have a more descriptive URL for your pages. But how to do this. Well if you have wordpress, there is setting for this. If not research .htaccess files and in particular mod_rewrite functions, they are quite easy once you get used to them.

If you can’t use .htaccess for whatever reason simply use directly relate directory names and file names, not useless rubbish like page1.html instead use aboutcars.html etc.

Sitemaps – This is a fantastic tool for showing google what is on your site and where. You need to submit them to google and other SE’s for the best results. a simple search on google for sitemaps will bring up automatic generators if you cant make one yourself. though be careful some give the same priority to all pages, not the best of ideas.

So moving on to todays topic External Opportunities

Link Building – This in general is one of the more important features of SEO work, getting a site “good, reliable and continual growth links” is very hard work, but the more you get of these links the more SE’s will rank you. If you get recommended by a website (for example BoagWorld, TWiT or Silicon [for web industry people]) SE’s will take you more seriously and rank you better than if you, say, just have links from your friends unrelated site, the same applies to blogs. A good way to make these links is to offer a link exchange, though only do this with relevant sites, even offer to just have their link on for a while.
If a site has a forum, talk in there, comment wisely but do not blatantly plug your website. build a reputation for being a good person and company then link, they will ban you for spamming, if you do spam! and you will instinctively if your not careful.
Finally remember these are references, almost as good as word of mouth, have a good reference and a visitor to a site becomes a client of your company.
Further to this it is important to know that you are better to have a link from one site with a page rank of 5 or above than several with a rank of 1.

Social Bookmarking / Networking – Although not as important for most sites, SB/SN is something that is become more and more important as the Internet continues to grow at a hugely under-estimated rate. If a site is Dugg (by digg.com), Stumbled (by stumbleupon.com), Red (by reddit) or Flurked (by flurk.net*), on a regular basis it will grow a ranking within these communities and more people will visit, your site will get known for being a great site and highly recommended by Internet users. However again these sites are tough on spam. Getting friends to help is a good way to avoid being seen as a spammer, the server see’s a new ip and knows its not you (or should i say thinks)….proxy is another way but this is black hat so i don’t suggest it.
Further to the above sites that allow microblogging such as TWITTER (twitter.com/andykinsey) allow for blatant spamming, but if you are good, update a few times a day or week you will gain momentum and following (like a blog) and people will follow you and visit your recommended sites. Just looking at some of my recent twitters i should really stop blatant self promotion, but i wont because i know SE’s like these sites (twitter and SN’s).

Word of Mouth – this is the most important part of any SEO effort, believe it or not. If your site is recommend by a person by talking it will stick in the human brain more than if you just get linked to a site, its why podcasts do so well (in general). Talking is a great tool, so use it, go to meet ups for your industry make friends with everyone and become the envy of everyone as you get their work. more to come on network meetings soon.

Business Cards - This is one of the final/first chances you will have to make an impression, good business cards sell you and everything about you and your company. Having a good business card is a key weapon in beating your competition.

Finally – (well almost) – ensure you submit your sites to every directory and search engine you can (beware some cost money like yahoo directory, but their SE is free).

In Summary

so heres what you have been waiting for… the overall summary, and i can finally release myself from my blog writing for this series, at least until your questions pile in again to admin*at*andykinsey.com
Andys SEO tips are:

Look after your meta data, and it will look after your site.
Refresh your content (both on your pages and your meta data) regularly.
Keep clean code, google will only read upto 40% of your pages at once (it is thought) so make the most of it.
Use Sitmaps and SEO URL’s
Avoid link farms at ALL costs.
Submit sites to all SE’s and directories
Link Exchange to the bigger websites in your industry
Gain a reputation via forums, and social networks, but do not spam (ask friends to help).
Most importantly – Make your site accessible and SE’s rankings will show favour to you.

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Andy Kinsey is a Designer and Marketer from Manchester (UK).

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SEO Hints on How to Optimize a Website – Advanced SEO Tips

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SEO Hints on How to Optimize a Website – Advanced SEO Tips

If you learn how to optimize a web page properly using these SEO hints and tips, then you will never have to pay for traffic again. The profit that your visitors bring you will go straight into your bank account.

You no doubt understand all the basic stuff, but in case you are new to this, let’s first have look at these basic SEO hints and tips, since many seem to omit them from their web pages. The most important are the HTML tags that are used by search engines to determine the relevance of your page to the search term used by the search engine’s customer.

Note the term ‘web page’, because many people don’t realize that Google, along with most other search engines, doesn’t list websites, but individual web pages. It is essential that you understand how search engines work if you want to learn how to optimize a web page.

I am going to refer to Google, not only because it is the biggest of the search engines, but also to save the bother of referring to search engines all the time. I will refer to Google, but take that as meaning search engines in general. Here are the main SEO basics:

a) The TITLE tag. This appears in the HEAD portion of your html, and is not actually seen by your visitors but is the most important tag on your web page because the spiders place very high weight to it. Use your main keywords here, and also any other text that will inform Google of the theme of your web page.

b) Heading (H) tags. Your page title should be placed within H1 tags, and should contain the same major keyword as you used in the TITLE tag. Your subheadings, if any, should be bracketed with H2 tags. I don’t use any of the lower tags, from H3 down, except perhaps H3 very occasionally. Any text with H tags will be regarded by Google as of specific importance, and most weight will be given to the lower numbers (H1 and H2). Don’t place eberything within H1 tags, or that will reduce its emphasis and Google will ignore the tag.

c) Text enhancements: Use bold, italic and underline enhancements sparingly, and where you one again want to stress the importance of certain keywords.

d) Your keyword density should be concentrated in the first third of your web page. Don’t use too many: I get good results with under 1% overall keyword density, but using the main keyword in the first 100 characters, once in the last paragraph and once more each 300 words but concentrated in the first third of the page. Thus, an 800 word page will have the keyword three times in the first 250 words and once in the last paragraph.

e) Meta tags: the only meta tag worth using is the description tag, which is used by most search engines in the description of your web page in their listings. Google mainly uses it exactly as you write it. The keyword tag can also be used, but few search engines are thought to use it: Google does not. Any other meta tags are a waste of your space. Anybody that claims differently is wanting to sell you something.

These are the basic hints on SEO, now here are some of the more advanced SEO hints and tips that will teach you not only how to optimize a web page, but to understand the way that search engines work. These are less obvious, and generally not used by beginners to search engine marketing.

f) You should use text links from one page to another on your siet. Search engine spiders love text, and fancy graphics or java links might look great, but don’t get you kudos from the spiders. Stick to text if you want a good listing: there’s no point in fancy graphical links if you have no visitors to use them.

g) IT will benefit to you use as liuttle code as possible on each web page compared to the amount of text: maximise your text:code ratio. Your code to text ratio should be minimized as far as possible because . . . yes, you’ve got it! Spiders love text!

h) Another good SEO tip is to focus on your off-page linking. It is possible to get a #1 spot on Google with no content: just loads of links coming into your web page from other websites. Not just any websites, but authority sites, so reciprocal links to and from web pages not directly related to your niche are a waste of time, and can even harm you. Link farms can positively damage you.

i) Use anchor text for your links where at all possible. Google shouldn’t have to work out what your web page is about: tell them. Hyperlink your keyword to your website, but don’t use the same form of keyword from every webpage linking to yours. Mix them about so as to keep the links fresh.

j) And lastly: keep adding pages to your website. A single website containing 80 pages will likly provide you with more visitors that two of 40 pages due to a higher overall Google listing from the former as compared to both of the 40 page sites. Refresh your content frequently by adding new pages, but don’t ignore your older pages: rdevise these now and again with new vocabulary. Google detests stagnation.

These are just a few SEO hints and tips that can teach you how to optimize a web page. There are many, many more. Some quite basic, others very much more advanced than the above. However, you can’t get everything free!

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