Webmaster Secrets for Top 10 Search Results in Google, Yahoo and
MSN
Author: Mark Senden
<div style="font: small/normal Verdana, Arial, Helvetica,
sans-serif;"> <h3>Webmaster Secrets for Top 10 Search Results in
Google, Yahoo and MSN.</h3> <p>In the following article, 3
simple steps that are easy to remember will reveal just how easy
search engine optimisation can be once you know how. There are
many websites that will complicate SEO by referring to engine
algorithms, page rank formulas, key-word density or what have
you. This article will not dwell anything that technical. Lets
leave the theorists and bloggers to do what they do best and
argue till the cows come home. In the meantime we can work towards getting your webpage up into the top 10 results at
Google, MSN and Yahoo.</p> <p>There are only three simple steps
of the SEO equation to remember:</p>
<ol> <li>Choose to target
search terms that are not hotly contested by competitors.</li> <li>Optimise your page content and html for those terms.</li>
<li>Actively seek external, one-way, incoming links with the
targeted key terms as the anchor text.</li> </ol> <p>Let's take
a look at those 3 steps in greater detail.</p> <h4>Choose to
target search terms that are not hotly contested by
competitors.</h4> <p><strong>Why..?</strong> Would you rather
spin the roulette wheel and take your chances against
high-rolling competitors, who throw tonnes of cash into
professional SEO and advertising campaigns; or get qualified
traffic hitting your site now? Websites targeting the most
popular search terms are small fish in a big pond. By targeting
less popular terms with fewer possible search results, you
become a bigger fish in a smaller pond.</p>
<p>Lets take an
extreme example. Your a commercial web host and you want your
site optimised for search engines. With Google, the search
phrase 'web hosting' returns 23 million results. That's a lot of
competition; <em>small fish in a big pond remember</em>. How
about 'commercial website hosting'? Well you have about 9
million other pages to compete with there. The phrase
'webhosting specials' only returns 1.2 million results. So how
many other pages do you want to compete against, 23 million or
1.2 mil?</p>
<p>There are a few convenient tools around for
selecting your search terms. To find how many search-result
competitors exist for related terms, check out
<a
href=" http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&complete=1">Google's keyword suggest</a>. Once you've narrowed down a list of
candidates, head on over to the
<a
href=" https://signup.overture.com/s/dtc/signup/?mkt=us">Overture's site</a> and start up a dummy account. The key-word suggest
tool is invaluable for gaining an insight to what people punch
into search engines and how many hits these terms are scoring at
Overture per month. Your looking for a sweet spot of say 5-10%
of the result pages that your industry's hottest terms
return.</p> <h4>Optimise your page content and html for your new
terms.</h4>
<p>The most logical page to optimise first time
round is your homepage. There are factors that play into SEO
which are heavily dependant on how many external websites link
to your page. The most common link you are going to score from
other sites is the default homepage, so it follows that this is
the best place to start. The most critical part of your web page
is behind the scenes in the html. Particularly important is the
header and it's relationship to the rest of your html.</p>
<p>Your website should include 3 important tags in the head.
They include title, meta description, and meta key-words. It's
important to have the title as the first tag in the head, with
the 2 mentioned metas soon following. Stuffing your head tags
with other metas and clutter such as lengthy javascript can only
harm your search engine results page ranking (SERPs);<head>clutter will never improve it.</p> <span
style="font: small/normal Verdana, Arial, Helvetica,
sans-serif;"><p>So lets take a look at our web hosting site
example. The beginning html for the index page should be
something along these lines;</p> <pre><html> <head> <title>Webhosting Specials</title> <meta
name="keywords" content="webhosting specials, webhosting,
specials, web, hosting" /> <meta name="description"
content="ACME Webhosting offers competitive webhosting specials"
/> <!-- keep all your css external --> <style
type="text/css" media="screen">@import "your_css.css";</style> <!-- get a funky bookmark icon
in there --> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico"
type="image/x-icon" /> <!--get any javascript external
from head tags --> <script language="JavaScript"
type="text/javascript"
src="externalJavascript.js"></script> </head></pre> <p>Now the header tags have set the stage
for the rest of the page. The idea is to make the rest of the
html and content appear with 'Website specials' as the most
prominent topic. Search engines see tags such as <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <strong>, <em>, <u>
and <a href> as prominent indicators of topic relevancy.
You want to make sure that 'website specials' appears in a h1 or
h2 tag as close to the beginning of your content tag as
possible:</p> <pre><body> <h1>Website
Specials</h1><!-- this may be the web page title -->
..snip.. <h2>ACME Webhosting offers competitive webhosting
specials</h2></pre> <p>Whatever copy or text content you
have on the page, you want 'website specials' to appear in bold
and italic or underlined (just once will do). Don't go overboard
in repeating the terms throughout your text content over and
over. Don't hide the terms by giving them a font colour the same
as the background. Just sprinkle the term sparingly throughout
the copy so that it remains easily read. Remember you still have
to sell product and no one likes to read spam; say a ballpark of
once per 100 words of content. For the first 3 images that
appear in the html from the top of the page, you want the key
terms to appear in their 'alt' attributes.</p>
<pre>..blah...<strong>Webhosting Specials</strong>.<u>Webhosting Specials</u> ..blah.. <img
src=mainlogo.jpg alt="Webhosting Specials Logo" /></pre>
<p>Look at the links on your page. "Website Specials" should
appear as link text 3-6 times. Those links can also do with an
additional 'title' attribute with the terms mentioned too.</p>
<pre><a title="Website Specials of the Month"
href=website_specials.htm>Website Specials</a></pre>
<p>You also want the terms to be mentioned as close to the end
of the page as possible. One idea is to have a footer with a
link to an about-us page.</p> <pre><a title="About ACME
Website Specials" href=about_acme_website_specials.htm>About
ACME Website Specials</a> ;<br /></body> </html></pre> <p><em>Now for a list of Don'ts</em></p> <ul> <li>Don't
bother optimising a page that redirects.Don't use robots.txt or
meta tags to impede search engine access to optimised pages.<li>Don't use same colour text and background.</li> <li>Don't
spam keywords with immediate repeats.</li> <li>Don't force any
text to appear at 4px or under.Don't use frames, if you HAVE to,
your serps are going to hurt in some engines.</li> <li>Don't
fill your pages up with internal scripts. Where possible, use
links to external scripts.</li> </ul> <h4>Actively seek
external, one-way, incoming links with the targeted key terms as
the anchor text.</h4> <p>Don't trust automatic linking software.
It's far, far too easy to get listed in link-farms and dodgy
directories when using automatic submission software. You want
to ensure that you have a certain level of control over who and
how your site gets linked. The most valuable links you can get
are from highly (Google PR) ranked sites that are related to
your optimised page content. (If you haven't submitted your site
to <a href=" http://dmoz.org">http://dmoz.org</a >, then do it
now.)</p> <p>Each time you submit a form or email for a link,
keep a record. Part of a good SEO campaign is backlink
management and you'll be glad you have records of all
applications sent out when maintenance time comes round. When
asked for a "Title" of your site, give your search term, e.g. "Website Specials", if possible. The title in most cases is the
anchor text for the link. Remember, external links with your key
terms in the anchor text are the most valuable. Be sure that the
site you are submitting to will give you a direct link, not a
redirect link. You can tell by mousing over some example links
and looking at the status bar. If you see your domain name, go
for it. If their domain name shows up with bunch of other values
tacked on the end, give the site a miss.</p> <p>When searching
for link candidates, it's wise to have a Google toolbar
installed on your browser. If there's one available for your
browser, install it. If your worried about your privacy from
Google's IE toolbar, install Firefox and get the Google toolbar
extension installed. Your main objective is to get a link on as
many pages that have a Google PR of 4+. Totally avoid unranked
pages and steer well clear of pages that register as a gray bar
in IE's Google toolbar. This is an indicator of a site being"black-listed" for exploiting search engines.</p>
<p>Directories, directories and more directories. This is a good
place to start. Many directories will give you a free link
without the need to reciprocate. Do a Google search for
directory + 'your business category'. Here's a list of some high
ranking directories: http://www.bestcatalog.net/seo_tips/directories.htm. Start at
the top and work your way down. Free Classifieds! Search for
sites that allow you to post free or cheap classifieds with
basic html enabled. Get your key terms in the classified ad as
the anchor text for the link to your optimised web page.</p>
<p>Discussion Forums! Start hunting for discussion forums with
high ranking Google PR's. The forums must allow for links in
your account signature. When making the sig, be sure your key
terms are the anchor text for the link/s to your site. Once
registered, start posting your little heart out and be sure to
enable your signature to be attached to your post. Each post = 1
external link. Join a dozen or so forums and those links will
start piling up.</p> <p>Press Releases! Do you think you have
something newsworthy to say? Then write up a news story and be
sure to include a link (don't forget keywords = anchor text) in
the body or by-line. Submit the article to related sites in
exchange for prominent links. Submit to all the major web news
sites. Each website that publishes the article is another
incoming, one-way link with your key terms as the guiding
light.</p> <p>Do backlink searches on your competitors. Back
link searches are search criteria which asks for sites linking
to a page that do not include the page's domain. For example, at
Google a back link search for www.acmehosting.com would be
link:www.acmehosting.com -site:acmehosting.com. Duplicate your
competitors efforts and get your site linked where ever they've
managed to.</p>
<p>On a finishing note, there's one important
thing to realise about Google SERPs, the "Sandbox" effect. It's
theorised that Google filters new domain names out of all
searches except for their own domain name for a period of 6-9
months depending on the popularity of the site's targeted
key-words. Google PR rank and SERPs are inter-related but are
not the same thing. Your site can enjoy a Google PR of 7 yet
still be sandboxed and appear nowhere in the results for your
targeted key terms. The only thing you can do is work on your
external linkage and optimise more pages of your site. The hard
work will pay off on steady incoming traffic and high ranks at
MSN and Yahoo etc. When Google finally releases your domain,
then you'll enjoy similar SERPs to the other majors and
reliable, incoming qualified traffic.</p> </div> |
