trendmx search engine optimization software company and seo services

SEO News Bytes June 16, 2006 - Everyone has to pay their dues

I am often asked to give a website review and SEO proposal via our online from. One of the most striking similarities among the websites I regularly review is the competitiveness of the keywords these websites are targeting versus their age and readiness to compete in the natural search results. These hopeful website owners are dreaming of getting top ranking on the search engines for terms like “web design”, “health insurance”, “mortgages” and many other very tough keywords.

Most of the websites fall into the under 1 year age category with poorly optimized web pages, and a complete lack of link popularity. It’s obvious these website owners are just starting to get their feet wet in the search engine marketing world and are in for a rude awakening when they look at their first few months of visitor stats.

Those of us who have been around in the SEO industry for at least a few years commonly refer to this phenomena as the “If you build it, will they come” new website owner syndrome. The unfortunate thing is, some website owners don’t get the complete picture even after being online for a few years and going through dozens of trial and error search engine optimization phases.

Some fundamental SEO for optimizing web pages

I decided to layout some web page optimization fundamentals to help you get over the initial bumpy road of search engine optimization.

• Longevity is key, your website’s age matters a great deal. Get your head out of the sand and take a look at the top ranking websites for your target keywords on Google, Yahoo and MSN, most of them are at least a year old. The more competitive your keyword terms are, the older the websites are in the top of the results. You can find out the age of any website using the Archive.org website.
• Have a clear focus and the keywords will follow. Keyword research starts with understanding your website’s focus and goal. If someone were to ask you today why your website is online, how would you answer?
  Is it online to sell, promote, build brand recognition, generate leads, get user feedback, build community, position yourself as an expert… and the list goes on. Once you have answered the question to your website focus, you can find the keywords that will lead visitors to your website. Use these tools to get your keyword brainstorming started: Nichebot, Overture keywords suggestion.
  Don’t stop until you have 20-30 keywords in 4-5 main categories.
  For example if your website’s focus is generating insurance leads, you would create the following main categories, car, life, home, health insurance, then in each of these categories find the 5 most popular keywords.
  If the keywords appear too competitive choose 3-4 word phrase alternatives with less competition. How do you know if a keyword is too competitive? Get the answers in the Keyword Popularity vs. The Competition SEO training lesson.
• Write unique interesting content. You can’t attract the search engines or potential visitors to your website with 2-3 pages of content. Your website should have at least 15-20 page of unique content. If you have done your homework in the previous step, you should already have 20-30 keywords to work with. As a SEO rule, don’t target more than 2-3 keywords per page. Another cardinal rule of SEO copywriting is, write for you website readers not the search engines.
  Meaning, don’t obsess over your keywords as you write the content. You can always increase the keyword count in the body text by looking for places where you can make some clever substitutions.
  When you create your website content, create the main category pages first and than focus on the specific sub pages within that category. Keep your articles between 250-500 words per page breaking them into 2-3 sections using H1-H2-or H3 tags as the subheadings. Once your pages are complete, add a page title incorporating 2-3 keyword phrases which are most often contained in the body text. As the last step add a sentence or two that most accurately describes the web page to the META description tag and you are done. You may have noticed I have not talked about META keywords. Read more about why META keywords are history.
• Use internal linking in the body text and navigation. It’s one of most important, yet least understood and under utilized SEO technique used by new web masters. Incorporating hyper links in the body text pointing to other related web pages creates an effective linking structure for the search engines to follow.
  
  Website navigation is what leads visitors and search engine crawlers from page to page. Unfortunately, search engines can’t see inside an image file to interpret the link’s purpose, but a text link can convey the exact meaning.
  
  Don’t use image or flash based navigation for linking to your web pages. If you can’t avoid using images or flash as the main navigational elements, you have to create somewhere else on the web page an alternate text based navigation. You should also add a site map to allow the search engine crawlers to find all of the web pages.

In conclusion

This short tutorial barely scratches the surface of all the on-page optimization techniques used by SEO experts, but nonetheless it’s good start.
I would like to recommend you to download a free copy of the SEO Studio Lite edition and use the Keyword Analyzer tool to analyze and optimize your website utilizing the techniques you have learned in this newsletter. The Keyword Analyzer tool is a great companion in any website optimization project.
 
Are you interested in learning more about search engine optimization and gaining the knowledge necessary to turn your dreams of attaining top positions on the search engines into reality?

Please visit our SEO training guide and learn everything you need to know to get a top 10 ranking on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Stay tuned for quick link popularity building tips in our next newsletter