Posts Tagged ‘search engine optimization’

Search Engine Optimization-Site Content & Structure

Friday, July 18th, 2008

The optimal keyword density doesn’t appear to have changed but rather appears to have declined in value altogether. Sites with low keyword densities are starting to appear more often for phrases based more on their links than their content and also overall site relevancy.

While the importance of a specific keyword density on a page has declined, this has been countered by an increasing importance of relevancy throughout the site. Google is opting to assign relevancy based more on the overall content of the site rather than a single page. General directories will be showing up less and less in exchange for topic-specific directories. Additionally, sites with a central theme carried throughout the majority of pages will tend to rank over sites with a specific page or even section on a topic.

Internal links are carrying a solid weight in attaching relevancy to specific internal pages. Properly worded internal links, preferably built into the content of your site (see note on natural links above) will add weight to those internal pages and increase the likelihood of those pages ranking for specific secondary phrases.

Search engine optimization-The Way Backlinks Are Counted

Friday, July 18th, 2008

Similar to the history of your site, the history of the links to your site have gained importance. As was noted in Google’s patent application #20050071741 titled, “Information retrieval based on historical data,” links, like sites, gain weight over time. This point was further clarified in the latest update as sites with longstanding links gained strength while sites with many new links did not see significant ground gained. The “sandbox” on links is functioning in fractions in that after a period of time a link will gain part of it’s weight, after a bit longer, it will gain more, etc. (the exact length of time is of course a closely guarded secret by Google and likely changes as their algorithm does). This means your link building today won’t create any substantial effect on your Google rankings until months down the road.

Additionally, the relevancy of links to your site is still important however Google’s ability to determine relevancy appears to have improved. Pages no longer have to containing the exact keyword phrases to be relevant but rather have to be from related industries. For example, a link to an SEO site from a web design site would be considered relevant even though the keywords on the page are not specifically related to SEO.

Natural links have gained weight over unnatural links. Links that are contained within content areas of a page will be weighted more strongly that links that appear alone or in a directory-style (like reciprocal links pages) as they are considered more natural. When you are having links built to your site try to get them placed within the content (within the description portion of your reciprocal link for example). Also, in link building you will want to insure you’re varying the terms of your anchor text. Creating hundreds of links with identical anchor text will quickly be detected as a link building effort (i.e. not natural) and thus will carry little weight. Different anchor text for your links will appear more natural and thus will have a more positive impact on your rankings.

Search engine optimization-The History Of Your Web Pages

Friday, July 18th, 2008

The history of your website and in fact, the individual pages within it are playing an increasingly important role in your site’s ability to rank well. The longer your site has been online the better your chances of ranking highly. Further, the longer a specific internal page has been live the better it will rank for additional phrases.

What this means to you is that you will have to take into account the length of time your domain has been around when you set your expectations regarding which phrases you should be ranking for. In the beginning of a promotion you will not want to target an intensely competitive phrase with hopes of attaining it on Google; rather you will want to select less competitive secondary phrases that contain the primary phrase (”seo services” vs. “guaranteed seo services” for example) and optimize for that. What you will accomplish is rankings on Google for at least a relevant phrase while at the same time building links with relevancy for your primary phrase which you will rank well for once your website has gained history.

The less competitive the phrase, the more weight the other factors will have on your ability to rank highly. History is only one factor among many. For highly competitive phrases where you are competing with sites that have history and have also addressed the other factors noted below you will find it extremely difficult to outrank them, however for less competitive phrases the other factors will hold more weight in that the other sites will likely not be optimized as strongly for them and thus, your site stands a much better chance of beating them out.

Search engine optimization-Use the keyword phrase in your URL

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Even if you can’t get your keywords into your domain name, you can put them into your URLs. Search engines read the URLs and assign value to the text they find there.

Search engine optimization-Use the keyword phrase in your title tag

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

The title tag is one of the most important tags on your Web page. And placing your keyword phrase in the title tag, preferably at the beginning, is very important to get that phrase into the search engines. Plus, that puts your keyword phrase as the link in the search engine index.

Search engine optimization-Write an accessible site

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Accessible HTML is accessible to both search engine spiders and screen readers. The more accessible you make your pages, the easier it will be for search engines to read and rank your pages.

Search engine optimization-Choose a phrase that is popular, but not too popular

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

When trying to decide on a keyword phrase, you want to find one that is popular but not extremely popular. This may seem counter-intuitive, but the reality is that extremely popular keywords are very desirable and so very competitive. It’s better to try to optimize for keywords that you can rank higher. You’ll get more pageviews from a less popular keyword when you’re on the first or second page of the search engines, than from a super popular keyword that you only make it to page 50 of search engines.

Search engine optimization-Create a great keyword phrase

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

The first thing you should do when working on search engine optimization is find a great keyword phrase for that page. You shouldn’t try to optimize your entire site to one keyword phrase - instead focus on writing pages for specific keywords and phrases.

Search engine optimization-Add new content all the time

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Sites that have new content added on a regular basis are seen as more reliable than sites that rarely do. This also helps you to increase the amount of relevant content on your site, which also improves your rankings.

Search engine optimization-Write unique content

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Unique content is important too. You need to provide content that has different information than what is on other sites and other Web pages.