15 Search engine optimization tips

September 18, 2007

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Many webmasters / bloggers try to get as much traffic as they can but 90% of them want it for free. Search engine optimization is the way to go. From wikipedia; Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

Here are some tips based on some some search engine optimization factors:

1. Patience: This is the most important tip/factor in search engine optimization. Getting at the top in Google is not an easy stuff, it will take time and more if the site/domain is new.

2. Keyword Use in Title Tag: The title tag is the most important on-page search engine factor and have been like this for years. Optimize your title with the keyword that you want to be listed at the top. A small resarch that I did some days ago was with the keyword: wtdirect review. When it was first published it was at number #9 in the first page of Google but the title was: wtdirect review - webmaster world blog (or the past blog title). Then I twiked this blog to be shown only for the title and not the blog title so it will be just: wtdirect review. Guess what? Now is #2. This is a small example on how to optimize your title tag.

Aaron Wall has to say something about this:

If it is overdone it can actually supress a site’s rankings, but if the site is well mixed and the titles look more like descriptive newspaper titles than overt SEO it helps a lot. Plus many people link at documents by their official names, and thus the title acts as anchor text for viral content.

3. Keyword Use in Body Text: Nowadays, search engine bots/crawlers/spiders are being more sophisticated “intelligent” I am sure that they are now able to analyse the document to be able to see if the content is revelant to the keywords *My guess this is done with artificial intelligent*. Here is recommended to not try to fool the crawler, write your content for humans and not for search engines. When you are done writting your content try to bold your main keyword (with the tag “b” or “strong”.

Again, we go for the example that I mentioned, wtdirect review. When you search for “wilmington trust reviews” you will find the wtdirect review also is ranking in #5. Why is that? If you read the review I did mentioned wilmington trust and made a small review about this company which is related to wtdirect. How the hell the crawler knew this? They are smarter than in 2005.

4. Keyword Use in H1 Tag: In some of my tests, I really didn’t saw a huge change about this (talking about Google) I am not saying that H1 tag is not important. Of course it is important, and some SEO experts say that this is the second most important factor on-page. My recommendation is to use the H1 tag just for the title and not overdoing this.

This is what Aaron Wall (by the way, many friends have been recommending his seo book but he accepts only paypal, and tried to email him to see if there is an opportunity to use any other payment processor) have to say about it:

May hurt your rankings if it is too well aligned with the page title and anchor text. If templating issues cause too much duplication in a large section of a website it may also lead to reduced crawling.

5. Keyword Use in Domain Name: This is one of the best practice to optimize your site. If you are a blogger using wordpress (the only one that I use) the best practice is to use permanent link like this: /%post_id%/%postname%/ because in the postname will be the title/keyword in the domain that you want to be ranked well. Check some posts here that are ranked well in google: Adsense vs Adbrite, wtdirect review, Agloco Another Scam, How can you increase eCPM?, Making Money with YouTube and Adbrite tips and many to count, some of the list are on the Top Posts. But making it better (difficult to find the domain niche nowadays) is for example: You want your site about dog and be ranked well with this keyword? The best practice is to buy the domain: www.dog.com if you got your keyword in the domain you have the last 25% guarantee in your pocket.

6. Domain names extensions: I have reading many discussions about if the domain name extension makes a difference. My research still in the way but for now my conclusion is YES. It seems that extensions like: .com, .net and .org are well ranked but .biz and .info is far away. As an example I will took some of my friend sites which is Webhosting Review which is a .biz When we first started the site we really wanted to be ranked with “Webhosting review” but it was impossible so we gave up till he has some time to make some unique content constantly.

What is strange about this, that the site is well ranked when someone is using Google India, Russia, Turkey… But using UK and the default one (english .com) it is not even listed in the first 15 pages. Another thing, it seems that Yahoo don’t care about it, when we first launched the site we had a page which was called top 5 webhosting and was ranked #1 in Yahoo. To prevent some headache while you are optimizing your site, register a .com, .net or .org to build your site.

7. Keyword Use in Meta Description Tag: This is a very important factor and gives you extra keywords to be found in your article/post (in case of the bloggers).

I will recommend each blogger (wordpress) to use All in One SEO pack. I use this plugin just to change the description of each article. Let’s go back to wtdirect review example:

Look how Google really counts the description and how it can be good in your side:

This is the description that I added for the wtdirect review:

and now when you search for that keyword you will see the same description that I have added:

As you can see there is nothing about wilmington trust there right? Check when someone search for Wilmington Trust review:

That is something amazing when you check how spiders works. My conclusion here is; your description that you added in All in SEO pack or your description tag page will be shown when someone search for the title in this case: wtdirect review. But when someone search for Wilmington trust they will add automatically the description from the content in this case is taken from the article.

So description is really important, first because when someone find your article they will read the description and decide to click into it so make the description very provocative. Second, with the description you can add your keyword and will be bolded so it will it more weight (don’t overdo it).

8. Keyword Use in Meta Keywords Tag: I am not 100% sure if this is worthless or not. Many SEO experts say that is worthless and do it just “in case”. Going back to the example (and you know which one) I have added the some keywords just “in case” and guess which keyword is there? “Wilmington Trust” may be this is why I am ranking well with that keyword as well? May be Google found that keyword tag and found in the article that it is also mentioned and ranked well? The research still in progress. At the moment just add your most important keyword in the meta keywords tag “in case”.

9. Frequency of Updates to Page: I want to tell you my experience about it and you judge about it. When I started Googlelady.com I updated the blog 1-3 times per week but after a year I stopped to write for one whole year. Yes that’s right check this post: My Blog review after 1 year. What was the effect? The only effect was that my pagerank went from 7 to 6. On the other hand, the traffic was increasing. Google says that they love blogs and I am sure because the frequency of the updates and the new information (updated) that bloggers write. But if the frequency it really matters I will see a better ranking in Googlelady from now on. Watch and see.

10. Accuracy of Spelling & Grammar: English is not my first language and Googlelady is well ranked in Google. But what is important here are the readers when an article is not accurate they will run from your website. Hope you will not run when you come to googlelady and I am really sorry for my english promise that I will improve

11. HTML Validation of Document (to W3C Standards): I thought that it will effect my rankings but if you remember my first theme was a mess and it ranked very well. In SEO validation is useless but make it at least good for your readers.

12. Link Popularity of your Site: Link Popularity is definitevely important. The more links that other sites links to you the more popular / authority will be your site and the more backlinks you have a better ranking. When I first started Googlelady many webmasters have been linking my articles over the first year, even you can see a backlink on adbrite blog and Anwers Google.

I have few concerns about what is a good back link. Matt from Google (don’t remember where) said that all depends on the “Quality” link that you get and not Quantity. But I have something to tell you that I found, there is a blogger which is well-known. He is ranked very well with a competitive keyword and guess how he did? Giving away wordpress themes and adding in the footer his link with his anchor text. So is this really true that Quality matters more than Quantity? I can’t tell you… Let’s use again this just “in case” try to get Quality backlinks and don’t focuss on Quantity. But in general, your link popularity is very important in SEO terms. Nowadays, making a new blog/website and be ranked well in Search engines is really difficult but if you think “Out of the box” you will come with something great and unique to be well ranked.

13. Age of the site: Definitively this really matters when Google ranks your site. By the age of the site it doesn’t mean by the domain registration or expedition date but when Google starts to index your site. Take into consideration another age factor is the age of the link that have been linked to your site. Adbrite linked my blog since 2005 I think. Don’t think that you can fool the big “G” so easily when you buy a backlink for only months (3-4 months) it will not affect your ranking. Is better to have a permanent backlink from a site than having just for months.

14. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site: Google tells you always that this is important but what I think is that their algorithm still in the process to make it good (not perfect, nothing is perfect). I have doing some research about this and I found that many sites (for example, the blogger that I talked above) use backlinks from various topics/niches and still count. Thinking of a long-term and being friends with Google try to not getting links from sites that are not your niche.

But here we go another problem, what if you have an enemy or a blogger that don’t have your niche and links back to your site? Or may be someone wants to make your site die and start linking to his p-o-r-n site (I had this issue before).

15. Pagerank: In my experience this will not affect your search rankins, I have seen many sites that have pagerank 3-4 being at the top while some sites with pagerank 6-7-8 is ranked below. Don’t why advertisers still focuss in pagerank more than traffic.

Search engine optimization topic is very wide but I hope this can help for some of you.

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Posted in Search Engine Optimization