The Market Outfit

With search engines like Google currently indexing over 8 billion pages, it is becoming more and more difficult to get a top search engine ranking. Type in a popular search phrase such as “Internet Marketing” into Yahoo or Google and you will be returned over 8 million results!

Unless your website is in the first two or three pages, it is unlikely that you will receive many visitors from search engines.

So what should a webmaster do to give their website the best chance of ranking high in the search engines?

All search engines work slightly differently and have ever changing algorithms for ranking web pages, but these tips can be applied when planning, developing or marketing a website to help you reach that top page of search engine results.

(1) Choose your keywords carefully

It’s extremely important to set aside time to research your keywords. It’s best to do this in the planning stages, before developing your website, but many of us start a website without knowing a thing about how the search engines work, so you may find yourself doing this weeks or months later.

Try to choose phrases that are searched on frequently and if possible have a low number of competing websites.

To get an idea of the number of times a keyword is searched for per month, type a keyword into the box at

Overture Search Suggestion Tool

This will tell you how many times your keyword was searched on in the previous month (based on Overture’s partner search engines) and give you a list of similar keywords.

Another useful tool to help you choose your keywords is Word Tracker. This tool will help you choose your keywords and give you a “KEI” for each set of keywords based on the popularity of the keyword (number of searches) and the amount of competition.

You can try this out for free on Wordtracker

If you manage to pick your keywords in the planning stages you may even be lucky enough to find a domain name that contains your keywords.

(2) Optimise your pages

Once you have decided on your keywords you will need to optimise your pages for those keywords. Here are a few tips.

- Ensure that the Title of your page contains your keywords.

- Mention your keywords inside the meta tags. Most search engines no longer use meta tags, but some make use of them so it is still worthwhile using these.

- Try to make sure that the first occurance of readable text on your page contains your keywords

- Ensure that your keywords are mentioned in the initial paragraph of your page

- Use your keywords throughout the text of your page - but be careful not to overdo this. Your page should still be readable by humans!

- Use your keywords between the headline tags on your page (”H1″ tags or H2/H3 if H1 is too big)

- Occasionally bold or italicise your keywords

- Make sure that links pointing back to each page on your site contain the keywords for each page

- Give all your images an “ALT” tag and put your keywords in here too - again, don’t overdo this

- Try to put some of your keywords in your outbound links

(3) Start Linking

One of the most important criteria in getting a good search engine ranking is the number of backlinks you have to your website from related websites.

Type in your chosen keywords to Yahoo or Google and take note of the top 3 sites returned to you.

Now go to Link Popularity Checker and put the URLs of the top three sites into the linking tool, along the URL of your own site.

Have a look at the difference between your site and the top 3 sites and this will give you an idea of how many links you need in order to get a top search engine ranking for these keywords.

The best ways to get links back to your site are:

- By writing articles related to the subject of your website and getting them published on the internet

- Reciprocal Linking with other related websites

- Posting on newsgroups and forums that allow you to have a signature attached to your posting (with your uRL in it)

- Submitting your site to directories.

Try to make sure that the anchor text (clickable text) that links back to your site contains your keywords.

(4) Add Content Regularly

Another thing you may have noticed is that top ranking websites have lots of content.

Regularly updating your website and adding fresh content will also help your site to rank more highly in the search engines.

If you don’t have time to create your own unique content there are plenty free articles available Just type “Free website content” into Google and you’ll have your pick of the 18 million results that it returns to you!

To improve your ranking, follow steps 1 and 2 above and repeat steps 3 and 4 regularly.

Suzanne Morrison is the webmaster and owner of http://www.homebiz-direct.com To learn more about how to promote your website visit her Beginner’s Guide to Internet Marketing

Uniquely built web sites can create unique issues when being promoted on the
search engines. From a basic 3 page brochure site to a corporate site with hundreds
of dynamically generated pages, every web site needs to have certain design aspects
in order to achieve the full effects of an SEO campaign. Below are a few points to
take into consideration when building or updating your web site.

1. Size Matters.

The size of a web site can have a huge impact on search engine rankings. Search
engines love content, so if you have only a few pages to your site and your
competitors have dozens, it’s difficult to see a top page ranking for your site. In
some cases it may be difficult to present several pages of information about your
business or products, so you may need to think about adding free resources for
visitors. It will help in broadening the scope of your web site (which search engines
like) as well as keep visitors on your site longer, possibly resulting in more sales.

2. Graphics-Based Web Sites.

While web sites that offer the visitor a more esthetically-pleasing experience may
seem like the best choice for someone searching for your product, they are the most
difficult to optimize. Since search engine robots cannot read text within graphics or
animation, what they see may be just a small amount of text. And if we learned
anything from point #1, small amounts of content will not result in top rankings. If
you really must offer the visitor a graphics-heavy or Flash web site, consider
creating an html-based side of your site that is also available to visitors. This site
will be much easier to promote on the search engines and your new found visitors
will also have the option to jump over to the nicer looking part of your site.

3. Dynamic Web Pages.

If most of your web site is generated by a large database (such as a large book
dealer with stock that is changing by the minute) you may find that some of your
pages do not get indexed by major search engines. If you look at the URL of these
pages they can be extremely long and have characters such as ?, #, &, %, or = along
with huge amounts of seemingly random numbers or letters. Since these pages are
automatically generated by the database as needed, the search engines have a
tough time keeping them up to date and relevant for search engine users.

One way to combat this problem is to offer a search engine friendly site map listing
all your static pages just to let them know that you do have permanent content on
your site. If search engines see links going to and from these dynamic pages within
a good internal linking system, this may also lead to the pages getting indexed. The
link popularity of your site may carry more weight in this case as well, so if you can’t
offer as much static content as your competition, make sure you have an aggressive
link campaign on the go.

4. Proper Use of HTML.

There is quite a bit of sub-par web design software out there. Word processors
usually have a way to create HTML documents which can be easily uploaded to a site
via ftp. However, in many cases the code that the search engine robots see is mostly
lines and lines of font and position formatting, not relevant content. The more
efficiently written web sites usually achieve higher rankings. Our choice for web
design software is Macromedia Dreamweaver, as it is an industry standard. It also
makes using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) a breeze, which can drastically cut down
on the amount of text formatting in HTML code. Hand-coding HTML to design sites
is also a good method if you are proficient enough.

There are some no brainers too: Web sites with abnormal amounts of hyperlinks,
bold or italicized text, improper use of heading, alt, or comment tags can also
expect to see low rankings.

5. Choosing a Domain Name.

The golden rule to web development of any kind is to keep your visitors in mind
above all else - even search engine optimization. When choosing a domain name,
one should pick either your business name (if you have a high-profile business
name such as Chapters or Coca-Cola) or a brief description of your products.
Domain names can always help with search engine optimization, as it is another
area of your web site that important keywords can appear. Forget about long-
winded domains such as www.number-one-best-books-on-earth.com as no one
will ever remember it and it will be hard to print on business cards or in ads.

If you need to change your domain name for any reason you obviously don’t want to
lose existing rankings. An easy way to do this, and one that is currently supported
by most search engines, is the 301 redirect. It allows you to keep your existing
rankings for your old domain name, while forwarding visitors to your new web site
instantly.

6. Using Frames.

Don’t use frames. Frames are a thing of the 90’s (and in the Internet world that is
eons ago) and are not even supported by some search engines. The search engines
that are able to index your site through frames will most likely frown upon them.
Whatever you are trying to accomplish by using frames can usually be done with the
help of PHP includes or CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Some browsers are not
frames-compatible, so there is the danger of some visitors not being able to see
your site at all. Bookmarking of individual pages within a frame becomes difficult
without lengthly scripts being written.

7. Update Your Information.

Not only does information printed two or three years ago look badly on your
organization when it is read by a visitor, it is also looked down upon by search
engines. Web sites that continuously update and grow their web sites usually
experience higher rankings than stagnant sites. When the trick to SEO is offering
visitors the most relevant information, you can bet that the age of web pages is
taken into consideration by search engines. Consider creating a section of your site
devoted to news within your organization, or have a constantly updated resources
area.

Many shortfalls of web sites can easily be attributed to designers who just don’t
keep the user or search engines in mind. Search engine algorithms are quickly
improving to try and list the most user-friendly sites higher, given that the content
and link popularity are there to back it up. So first and foremost, know your target
market and make your web site work for them before focusing on search engine
optimization. If you build it (properly), they will come.

Copyright John Metzler of Abalone Designs, November 2004. This article may be
freely distributed if credit is given to the author. Abalone Designs is a family-run
Search Engine Optimization firm in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Visit http://www.abalone.ca for
a free personalized analysis of your web site.

Web Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization, SEO, is the most cost competent means to campaign a net website online. Full Stop. SEO is half science, half experience and gut sensing, so if you are serious about SEO, engage an SEO companion to do the work.

There are at least four steps required in SEO:

The beginning step is the technical proof of your web site; How about Server Headers? Are you using the proper META tags? Etc.

The second step is content and context. You will need real search optimized copy writing, picture optimisation, video optimization, search term analysis, contender research, market research, etc.

The 3rd step is having incoming joins. Links weigh as votes, the more links you get, the stronger, and the improved the link referrer is, the greater the link. You can receive links by submitting your site to directories, article publishers, sending web log inputs, meeting place involvement, guest posting,

The 4th phase is tracking and analytic thinking. Tracking and analyzing what is passing, on your website, is essential for advanced development and reinforced SEO campaigns.

Every now and again, you have to start over with step one and carry on to better your internet sites profile performance and thus the upgrade in visitants in your webshop

In a wider sentience, SEO is share of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which takes on SEO, Pay per Click (PPC) and different types of on-line marketing and advertisement. SEO is often referred to as organic optimisation and refers to the results on the left side of the search engine results page (SERP) as opposed to the paid Adwords results.

You can do yourself a big favour by start learning the basic principles of SEO. This will serve you pick up a sound and outstanding SEO agency and the kinetics in thought switch with the office is very notable. You will get a stronger functioning by your agency and the SEO company gets an interesting and concerned client, that’s what we call a win-win situation. If you don’t have the budget for an SEO professional, there are lot’s of content on the cyberspace to help you to do it yourself SEO, just do a search on Google for “do it yourself SEO” and you’ll find lot’s of good sites to help you grow into an SEO Samurai.

I built my website, it’s perfect. My chosen subject of the website is Computer Support Services. Of course this is an example, but moving along, what should my keywords be?

Keywords are what people type into a search engine to find something on the internet. These words are what drive user requests.

Words to live by I like to call them. Why? Because on the internet your website will live and die by the words you use, or the words I use when you hire me to optimize your site.

How many words should I use?
What should they say?
How many phrases should there be?

What’s a phrase?

First off, let’s cover what a keyword is. A keyword is a word or collection of words used to describe your website. For those doing their own website design these words are applied in what is called a meta tag such as the following:

meta name=”keywords” content=”these words, would describe, your site”

keywords should say something about your website. They should also directly reflect the content of your site. They should not be random words that have nothing to do with your site, or you. If they are, you can expect that your page ranking will fall rather than rise. Of course, you will still have to submit or resubmit your website to keep your page in the eyes of the various search engines.

The number of words and phrases should be no more than 21-22, or a combination of the two. I have seen sites that had over 780 keywords, but no content to support them. Even if there was content there to support that large number of words, it’s fruitless to have that many words. Most search engines will ignore anything over the 22 words limit.

A phrase is defined as more than one word. “Real Estate Sales” is a phrase. “Real, Estate, Sales” is a collection of keywords. Both of these if used in a search would render completely different results.

Short, to the point, and using some of the keywords that describe your service or product. Here it’s Auto Repair Service, it’s New, and it’s Terrific.

Description - The second most important item on the page. Make this relevant to the content (typing) that you have on your webpage:

Bob’s New Terrific Auto Repair Service is the most experienced auto repair shop on the coast. Servicing All types of autos from 9am - 5pm 7 days a week. We offer early bird service on Fridays and Free Car Washes to all customers who pay by cash.

KEYWORDS -
Select about 22 words/phrases that descibe your product or service, and separate them with a comma. This line would look like: auto, automobile, service, terrific, new, free car wash, pay with cash.

How do I find these keywords? Use the following tools:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

This tool known as the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool is one of the most widely used methods of finding out what subjects people are searching for. What products they are searching for, what services they search for.

Enter your words like this: star wars or use something like business plan sample and when you click the button, you will be presented with a listing of how many times that word or words was searched for in the past month. Picking the higher ranked ones will be good for your site.

How does keyword selection help sales? It helps in the sense that by selecting the correct keywords, your site will be more visible, found more often in searches, and as a result of more visitors, eventually you will get more sales. Please make sure that the BUY IT NOW message on your website is clear. If not, all the optimization in the world will not help your sales increase.

Michael Murdock - former Macintosh Systems Engineer for PIXAR now owns/runs DocMurdock - A website optimization & Internet Marketing company. Helping websites move higher on the right search engines, and helping clients products move out the door and into the hands of the ideal clients.

Are profitable, top search ranks possible without the help of an experienced search engine optimization company?

Can a software package or online miracle site touting testimonials and grandeur guarantees of success elevate your online presence enough to really increase sales?

Unfortunately, unless the software or miracle website were able to research your market, find hidden niches within it, author intriguing, creative, relevant and keyword laden content, house it in a framework that meshes precisely with that content, dissect and analyze your ranking competition and apply that statistical data within the afore mentioned tasks, you’ll be using that money back guarantee.

The same goes of number one rank promises for a keyword for $49. Now I’m not suggesting a claim like that is bogus or false advertising. But, ask if that keyword or phrase has actually had more than one search somewhere in the world in the past month. Or to shake them, insist your keyword phrase they must bring to the number one spot is “online casino.

IS THERE INEXPENSIVE HELP THAT WORKS?

Is there a working alternative for smaller businesses and sites that can’t budget pro SEO right now? There are techniques that would give your site a chance of rising higher in the ranks. You’ll find countless articles and instructions online and in bookstores about general things you can do to your site to improve it’s online presence.

While helpful and usually accurate, blindly applying techniques to your site without some further knowledge of your own site, your competition, and your online market will hinder your efforts.

With some real world, current analysis of YOUR individual situation at your disposal, you can greatly improve your efforts with even the smallest copy, title or content adjustment. It is going to require some work on your part, no matter what do-it-yourself tactics you employ.

HOWEVER, there are tools and analysis reports available to you that can give you a towering leap for the do-it-yourselfer. Some plain English comparisons of your page vs. the top 10 ranking pages in a particular engine for a particular keyword phrase will define dozens of parameters to begin your do - it -yourself optimization.

How many links do you need, are there better keywords you should choose, and then what do you do with all this information once you have it? Comparisons and analysis of your site and your competitors are usually presented in an easy to understand format and reveal patterns and collected intelligence that can help you re-write and revise your content and page layout and begin your SEO efforts a lap ahead of everyone else.

SET REALISTIC GOALS

You must remember, legitimate, professional search engine optimizers are immersed in their field and are educated with experience. The time, knowledge, talent and effort that you get with a pro is worth every penny.

A professional SEO’s approach involves research of your market, competition and many times a significant renovation of your existing site from code to content. The in-depth detail and deep analysis, content development, link and page structure requires a significant amount of time, experience, and a lot of hand work.

In other words, if you want to feel better and improve your self image, you don’t have to pay a doctor to tell you that eating healthy, taking a vitamin and regular exercise will make a marked improvement in your well being.

If you want the large scale, lasting and radical change a facelift can give you, you must pay a plastic surgeon for his education, experience and talent.

Don’t forget to use some common sense when looking at your market. If you think you’re going to rank for a highly competitive keyword that has several well known companies at the top without the aid of a professional, you’ll probably end up disheartened.

Achieving first page ranks for competitive keywords in a saturated market is a mammoth task, and at the very least would require a full time effort by an experienced firm with resources to take on such a challenge. Don’t be discouraged; with some brainstorming you can think of some related, less competitive keywords and niche markets to target.

HOW A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE CAN GO A LONG WAY

Some very simple copy adjustments in the right place can go a long way on less competitive sites. Let’s look at a few easy changes anyone can make.

Page Titles

The page title, the words that display in the top of your web window, is one of the most crucial elements on the page as far as the search engines go. When you do a search for something what do you type in the search field? Unless it’s a company’s specific name, you type in a keyword or key phrase like “mens cross training air sneakers”.

A very common mistake is to put your company name in the page title. Sometimes it’s appropriate, but for ranking purposes, use a concise description of your page with a prime keyword from that page.

Bonus Hint- Start your first sentence with that same keyword!

Content Quality

You’ll surely find as many opinions about content as there are about politics. Take away the extremes and you’ll find the meat is the same. To increase your rank, you have to have searchable content, and it must be quality. What is quality? More importantly, what do the search engines think is quality?

The answers depend on your site and position on the internet. However, all quality content shares some characteristics.

It’s useful information about your products or service. Don’t throw random free, generic, carbon copied stuff from the web onto your site. Use some thought and creativity. Build copy around different aspects of your target.

LOOK FROM A NEW PERSPECTIVE

If you have a site about restoring classic cars, make a page about the evolution of headlights over the decades. Add another page about how and where to find hard to find classic parts.

Content should be:

Easy to follow- and well written for a human reader, not a search engine.

Unique- write it yourself or hire a writer.

Varied- Don’t fill your page with the same keyword repeatedly or you risk being considered spam. Examine the keyword densities of your keyword in the top 10 listings it returns in a particular engine. Stay within that number.

Take a few more evenings or weekends and improve your ranks by doing some research and digging, and applying that invaluable knowledge strategically to your web site.

KINDS OF SEO RESEARCH you can do to win

There are SEO companies online who offer various reports that can save you a lot of the legwork. Even the simplest of tasks can be too time consuming when you need to focus on editing your pages. For example, finding your current rank, if any, in all of the major engines for all of the keywords you want to rank could take a day on your own. Some other types of reports available are:

Keyword Research-

A list of keywords you or I might make sitting down with a pencil and paper is a good start. The important word here is “start”. That list is dozens of revisions away from completion. It will expand and contract many times as further information is gathered.

Are your words focused and targeted enough so you’ll attract qualified leads? Are there related words and phrases that you haven’t thought of? What words does your competition have throughout their pages? And most importantly, are the words you’ve chosen actually being typed into search engines?

You can find many different levels of keyword services from simple analysis of your existing pages to research and development of an entire list ready for use in your pages, Adwords or PPC campaigns.

Competition Research-

Who is ranking now? Who is in the positions where you want to be? Examine your competition’s pages with a microscope. An Understanding of those you want to outrank gives you a working outline to revise your own. (Do NOT copy their content.) Focus on trends, keywords, densities, titles, page elements… their pages, structures and their links.

On Page Optimization-

A report like this analyzes the words in the elements on your page like titles and boldface or headings as well as your body copy, and link text. It also tells you information about keyword density. Earlier I mentioned that using a keyword too many times on a page could be considered spam. An analysis like this will show how many times each word, word pairs and groups of words were used on a page and what percentage of all the words they are.

A report on a high ranking competitor’s site will give you some insight into a page that is successfully ranking for keywords you want.

Off Page or Link Reports-

As soon as you start learning about search engine optimization, you’ll understand what a key role good quality links play in determining rank. These types of analysis will show who is linking to you, or even better, who is linking to a ranking competitor. You can get some ideas of sites to list with and an approximate number of links of a particular quality that you’ll need to rank.

TAKE SOME ACTION- a few well researched changes can give you a boost

If ranking and online presence are crucial, then find a respected, recommended and experienced search engine optimization professional. The same logic that tells you to go to the doctor when aspirin doesn’t do the applies to this situation.

If budget is constricting, your keywords have little competition, or you’d like to improve your presence to the best it can be without employing a professional then you’d be surprised what a little knowledge and time can do for your ranking. Applying the same techniques every few weeks and keeping your site fresh will put you a level even higher above the rest.

Remember, many variables and factors are considered and given varying weights by different engines to determine where you rank. A brand new site, no matter how optimized it is usually doesn’t show any rank in Google until it miraculously appears about a year later. Older sites of more than a few years often take the top ranks for competitive words.

Don’t be discouraged. The simple SEO methods you read about online or in publications can give your site a stronger presence, but will achieve far better results for you if you employ some smaller, budget based intelligence and research.