SEO - The Magic of Success! (part three)

Disclaimer: this blog is intended for average user that would like to know more about ways to improve his/her site ranking. Experts are invited to post their comments, agree or disagree with my posting so this blog will be learning experience for everyone. Isn’t that cool? 

We are done with keywords, meta tags title, description and the content of your site. Before submitting your pages to any search engine or directory is a good idea to see how your HTML knowledge stands out. Checking the accuracy of your HTML code is again quite important. Believe me, mistakes are done even by the most proficient people in the industry. Is always a chance that you forgot to close "" something or you forgot that "&" has to be followed by three letter code and ";" ("&"). 

If your site has several pages with a lot of coding, how you will be able to check for mistakes that will put search engines in a dilemma to continue indexing or not? Luckily for all of us there is an easy way to do it with the help of  W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) . W3C is an international organization that develops standards for the web so everyone will be on the same page. All you have to do is submit your URL to W3C and you will have a report with all the errors in a second or to. 





You might have critical errors that have to be corrected right away and also you might have some warnings in regards to possible mistakes. Go to the line number listed on the error list and corrected if that is the case. Sometimes is part of the code you intended to be that way. W3C Organization is the only authority I recommend to check your HTML with.

Next time we will discuss about optimizing your links, pictures, videos and more.
 

SEO -- The Magic of Success! (part two)

Disclaimer: this blog is intended for average user that would like to know more about ways to improve his/her site ranking. Experts are invited to post their comments, agree or disagree with my posting so this blog will be learning experience for everyone. Isn’t that cool?
So, as you can see time is not on my side this time. It has been quite awhile since my last post. Sorry!

I am assuming that you already built your keyword list using whatever method you choose. And you have checked those keywords against Google's Search-Based Keyword Tool and/or AdWords Keyword Tool. What most people do not realize is that search terms changes constantly. So what one word or phrase has been used 50,000 times today that does not mean will be used the same tomorrow. Keywords gain or loose popularity daily but more noticeable are monthly trends. That is good because you submit your site to search engines on a monthly basis, don't you?



Before submitting a keyword/keyword phrase trend analysis should be performed and any necessary changes should be made to meta tags, your heading and content to reflect the changes. You don't do this you are at risk to lose or not getting any possible higher rank than previous month. Again Google will help you with this trend analysis: Go to Google Insights for Search page and plug in the chosen keyword and select whatever filter will best suit your needs. You will get a wealth of information so you know what kind of changes to make.

The golden rule of search engines: their crawlers and spiders and whatever they use to read and search your pages is that they actually pick up information starting from the top and from the left; it's like you read a book (I admit that few nations have a different way to read like up then down from right to left or whatever other way) but don't go into that -- that means most of your keywords / key phrases should be at the beginning of your page. Your heading should not have more than 150 characters with a keyword density no more than 3%; your content will be best at 300 - 500 characters with keyword density of 5 - 7% mostly on the beginning. And yes, your footer about 100 characters with a maximum ratio of 2%.

Until next time, Happy SEO!

SEO -- The Magic of Success!

Disclaimer: this blog is intended for average user that would like to know more about ways to improve his/her site ranking. Experts are invited to post their comments, agree or disagree with my posting so this blog will be learning experience for everyone. Isn’t that cool?


SEO – Search Engine Optimization – is the top topic for any Webmaster, Consultants, would be Webmaster from the smallest on line presence to largest corporations on line.


It seems that nowadays everyone knows everything and anything about SEO and more and more individuals (a few calling themselves “SEO AGENCY” and/or “CONSULTANTS” doing business in the SEO/SEM niche for decades!!!) are trying to make a fortune on this. I have strong conception that the average website owner (my potential client!) should have some knowledge about SEO/SEM business. It is much easier to negotiate a contract with a knowledgeable client.






What is SEO? It stands for Search Engine Optimization. In plain talk, you make your site user friendly for search engine crawlers and spiders and implicitly for your visitors. At the very basis of any optimization is choosing the right keywords. Users will always use keywords (or key phrases) to find what they are looking for. Choosing the right keywords is crucial and a site should be build around the chosen keywords. There are many software on internet claiming to make this job a breeze. Choose carefully! Instead you can use Google AdWords itself (highly recommend!) to find the right keywords by going to their Search-Based Keywords page or AdWords Keyword Tool.


Now, you have several sets of keywords, one set for each page of your site. Oops! I didn’t mention that you need to treat each page in your site as an individual website: its own head, meta tags, title, description, side bars and so on. You need to insert those keywords into your page content. I use an elementary method for this. I write down on a large piece of paper all keywords I want to insert in my content. Then I build sentences and phrases with each word. And then I put all together in a meaningful way. I structure my pages the same way I use to do my research papers in school.: it’s quite important to have your header (“opening statement”), the body and footer (“closing statement”) that resembles the header with different words.

That is, what is called, organic way to build an optimized page (site). Keep in mind that in this posting I just lightly scratch the surface of SEO. More to come!