How to do SEO Properly

 

This article explains SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) in a nutshell. It's a short guide for do it yourself SEO; or at least a concise overview of SEO and SEM for the beginner. It has taken me years of designing and developing websites to figure this all out, and I'd like to share it with you here.

Why is SEO important? Statistically, most people use search engines to find websites that contain information they're looking for. Most people do not look past the first page of Google, or their search engine of choice, when doing a search. The top spot in Google gets 40% of the clicks. The further down the page one goes, the less clicks each result gets. With competition for the first page, and the top spot heating up, it becomes imperative to take an active roll to move forward and stay on top. SEO is the name given to that active roll.

SEO is actually a constantly changing blend of art and science. What we have here in this article are the current trends in SEO in 2009 and 2010.  Implementing any of these strategies will move your site up the search engine rankings. Implementing them all will put you at the top in all but the most competitive niches.

When it comes to getting great search engine rankings there are on-site and off-site factors that must be taken into consideration. On-site factors are things such as the title of the site (URL), page titles, internal links (links within the site itself), use of H1, H2, H3 tags in your code, the bolding of important words, Alt tags on image, etc.

Currently, along with the title of the page, the most important on-site factor is your content - the text on the page. That may sound simple and obvious, but you'd be surprised to know how many people don't know that. That means a site with a lot of valuable text written in a non-spammy way, will outrank a content poor site, if all other things are equal. As there are too many on-site factors to fit into a nutshell look here for a detailed SEO chart of what is currently considered the best on-site practices.

In order to know what text to use for your site and its SEO, you must first do research . It doesn't make sense to optimize your site for the wrong words... Right? Research means finding out what words in your niche are being searched, how many times they are being searched, and what and how many sites you are competing against. With these details in hand, one can make choices that will get you on the first page in Google. This type of research can often be done with free tools such as Google's keyword research tool, but can be done more effectively using other tools.

It's best to incorporate all of your on-site factors when the website is being built. That way you'll have a good base to build on. A good website designer will include all the things that the search engines are looking for as the site is designed and developed, but as that would add to the price of the site, SEO is often reduced or omitted from the quote.  As it isn't seen by the customer it is often the first thing to go, even though it can be the most important part of a site. But all is not lost. It's possible to take an existing site and add any SEO factors that are missing.

There's one more thing to consider when it comes to on-site SEO factors. Content should be changed and added to on a regular basis. The search engines assume that a site that's being changed and added to regularly is better than a site that is not. That's why it's often better to have a database driven CMS, or blog type of website than a static html or flash website.

Although on-site factors are considered a must for every site, and will work wonders on local and low competition search terms, it is believed that on-site factors currently account for only 40% of the factors that will get you high rankings. For the other 60% we have to look at off-site SEO factors.

Off-site factors include things such as links to your site from other sites (the higher the authority the better), anchor tags from other sites (the words that link to your site from other sites), links from video sites, topical relationship of sites that link to yours, etc. Off-site factors are also links to your site or blog from other blogs, or comments on other blogs. Off-site factors also take into consideration directory linking, Social Bookmarking, and Social Media like Twitter.

Off-site factors can come from other site owners linking to your site because they think the content would be of interest to their readers. It can also be self-generated by creating your own off site content like extra off-site blogs, Hub pages, Squidoo lenses, and E-zine articles. Not only are the pages that are created at these sites indexed highly on the search engines, but links that are included on these pages link back to your main site, raising your site in the search engine rankings by passing on their page rank, and by sending more visitors at the same time.

Social Media is gaining a lot of ground in a today's SEO strategy. Using Social Media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin, your business takes a more proactive approach in your online marketing strategies. Not only can people who are looking for what you have to offer find you, and get to know, like, and trust you, but you can easily go out and find interested people who would love to hear about your offer. Facebook is currently used by two-hundred million people, and twitter is growing at an astounding rate. They are both more than likely going to become more and more important to SEO as time goes on.

Social Bookmarking uses sites like Digg, del.icio.us., StumbleUpon, and others to get your site seen and linked to. The links are valuable incoming authority site links, and the traffic that social bookmarking brings to your site is good for business and for raising your Alexa score. Both help with your search engine rankings.

On-site factors used to be the most important factors on a website. That is quickly becoming old-school because there are more and more websites competing for the first pages of the search engines. On-site factors are still very important to getting indexed correctly; especially for local or low competition keywords. But for now it seems they remain merely an important core of a good website.

With competition for the first 10 spots on Google getting stiffer and stiffer off-site factors have become more and more important. As a matter of fact it's impossible to compete in today's world at a national or global level without making sure that all of your off-site factors are being updated and added to on a regular basis.

One other thing that can be done to bring traffic to your site is Google PPC (pay per click). This is where an advertising account is set up with Google and your adds are shown in the search results, usually on the very top of the page or the right side of the page, in the sponsored links area. This is a great way to bring additional traffic, or to get on the first page while waiting for your site SEO to get you there naturally.

To sum things up: For low competition keywords, especially where people are typing a location into their search, like "Chiropractor in Lake Worth Florida," on-site SEO may be all you need. But for national and global searches, or highly competitive search terms (which are the majority of sites on the web today) it's going to take more work and some on-going off-site SEO.

Would you like to have Action Website and SEO do your SEO work for you? See our SEO Pricing here.

SEO Report for First Page Ranking on Google

At Action Website and SEO we base our search engine optimization programs on hard facts. Each program begins with a 65-page report that covers all aspects of your SEO, including what your competition is doing. We use this information to create a customized plan of action for your website.

This report is perfect for people who would like to do thier own SEO. If you'd like to purchase this report, the price is $199. Please contact us for more information about how you can receive your report. Typical delivery time is only 24-48 hours. Here is a sample of what our first page ranking on Google report contains.

Do It Yourself SEO - A Step by Step Guide

In this section I'll go into what it takes to do SEO yourself on your own site, or for clients. SEO may be time consuming and may take several talents that not all people possess, but it's not rocket science, and it can be done by almost anyone who is dedicated to the task. Over the next few weeeks I hope to build a checklist of best SEO practices that anyone with full access to a website can implement.

Let's take SEO step by step.

On-site SEO factors:

  1. The Project
  2. Keyword Research
  3. Site and Domain Naming
  4. Age of Site
  5. Page Titles
  6. Page Contents
  7. Alt Tags
  8. Meta Description
  9. Meta Tags

Off-Site Factors:

  1. Page Rank Factors
  2. Submit your site to the search engines.
  3. Submit your site to social bookmarking sites.
  4. Submit articles with your backlink to Article Submission sites.
  5. Submit to blogs.
  6. Submit to Social Networking sites.

Onsite factors used to be the most important factors on a website. now they remain important core of a good website. With competition for the first 10 spots on Google getting stiffer and stiffer off-site factors have become more and more important. As a matter of fact it's impossible to compete in today's world at a national or global level without making sure that all of your off-site factors are being updated and added to on a regular basis.

Use this information any way you see fit. If at any point you feel that the learning curve is too steep, this is not for you, or you can make more money by focusing on your own business and letting the SEO experts handle the SEO, feel free to contact Action Website and SEO for help.

If you'd like to do your own SEO, and you'd like a report that goes into detail about all aspects of your site, visit our SEO Report page.

Lead Capture Page

Having a website is important in today's world, and a very important aspect of your total marketing plan. But have you ever just wanted to generate leads? Using  a lead capture page to generate leads is perhaps the simplest, most cost effective us of the internet for marketing purposes. It's one of the best ways ever developed for generating interested new clients for your business.

A proper lead generation page is developed using all the priciples of SEO that Action Website and SEO is known for. A lead generation page is a single website page with a contact form on it, that informs your client what it is that you do or sell, and asks for their contact information ( sometimes in return for some free information). These pages are then advertised on Google Adwords (pay per click) and leads are thereby generated at a very cost effective rate. If the site is built correctly from the ground up by Action Website and SEO, you'll get the added benefit of free organic results as well.

Interested in learning more? Give us a call at 561-358-2259, or use our easy contact page. We design lead capture pages in West Palm Beach, Florida, and globally via the Internet.

How is PageRank Calculated?

PageRank is one of the most important considerations that determines where your site will fall in the search engine results. PageRank is mostly a product of what pages link to your page, but is also a product of internal links as well. That said, it's important to have high quality incoming links to your site if you expect to see your site on the front page of Google.

To calculate the PageRank for a page, all of its inbound links are taken into account. These are links from within the site and links from outside the site.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

That's the equation that calculates a page's PageRank. It's the original one that was published when PageRank was being developed, and it is probable that Google uses a variation of it but they aren't telling us what it is. It doesn't matter though, as this equation is good enough.

In the equation 't1 - tn' are pages linking to page A, 'C' is the number of outbound links that a page has and 'd' is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.

We can think of it in a simpler way:-

a page's PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a "share" of the PageRank of every page that links to it)

"share" = the linking page's PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page.

A page "votes" an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.

From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.

If the PageRank value differences between PR1, PR2,.....PR10 were equal then that conclusion would hold up, but many people believe that the values between PR1 and PR10 (the maximum) are set on a logarithmic scale, and there is very good reason for believing it. Nobody outside Google knows for sure one way or the other, but the chances are high that the scale is logarithmic, or similar. If so, it means that it takes a lot more additional PageRank for a page to move up to the next PageRank level that it did to move up from the previous PageRank level. The result is that it reverses the previous conclusion, so that a link from a PR8 page that has lots of outbound links is worth more than a link from a PR4 page that has only a few outbound links.

Whichever scale Google uses, we can be sure of one thing. A link from another site increases our site's PageRank. Just remember to avoid links from link farms.

Note that when a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doing the voting doesn't give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn't a transfer of PageRank. It is simply a vote according to the page's PageRank value. It's like a shareholders meeting where each shareholder votes according to the number of shares held, but the shares themselves aren't given away. Even so, pages do lose some PageRank indirectly, as we'll see later.

Ok so far? Good. Now we'll look at how the calculations are actually done.

For a page's calculation, its existing PageRank (if it has any) is abandoned completely and a fresh calculation is done where the page relies solely on the PageRank "voted" for it by its current inbound links, which may have changed since the last time the page's PageRank was calculated.

The equation shows clearly how a page's PageRank is arrived at. But what isn't immediately obvious is that it can't work if the calculation is done just once. Suppose we have 2 pages, A and B, which link to each other, and neither have any other links of any kind. This is what happens:-

Step 1: Calculate page A's PageRank from the value of its inbound links

Page A now has a new PageRank value. The calculation used the value of the inbound link from page B. But page B has an inbound link (from page A) and its new PageRank value hasn't been worked out yet, so page A's new PageRank value is based on inaccurate data and can't be accurate.

Step 2: Calculate page B's PageRank from the value of its inbound links

Page B now has a new PageRank value, but it can't be accurate because the calculation used the new PageRank value of the inbound link from page A, which is inaccurate.

It's a Catch 22 situation. We can't work out A's PageRank until we know B's PageRank, and we can't work out B's PageRank until we know A's PageRank.

Now that both pages have newly calculated PageRank values, can't we just run the calculations again to arrive at accurate values? No. We can run the calculations again using the new values and the results will be more accurate, but we will always be using inaccurate values for the calculations, so the results will always be inaccurate.

The problem is overcome by repeating the calculations many times. Each time produces slightly more accurate values. In fact, total accuracy can never be achieved because the calculations are always based on inaccurate values. 40 to 50 iterations are sufficient to reach a point where any further iterations wouldn't produce enough of a change to the values to matter. This is precisely what Google does at each update, and it's the reason why the updates take so long.

One thing to bear in mind is that the results we get from the calculations are proportions. The figures must then be set against a scale (known only to Google) to arrive at each page's actual PageRank. Even so, we can use the calculations to channel the PageRank within a site around its pages so that certain pages receive a higher proportion of it than others.

To simplify this formula, find high PageRank sites with few outgoing links, and get them to link to your site. That's easier said than done. One way is to pay for the links as ads on the high ranking sites. But that can be expensive. Another way is to provide content that is so good that high ranking sites will want to link to you.

There are many other ways to get high PR incoming links as well. Submit articles, post on forums, upload videos, Etc. The point is this: It's necessary to get those links, and it takes work and time to do so. Rome wasn't built in a day. Working on getting incoming links should be a major part of any SEO strategy.

 

This information was provided by Phil Craven of www.webworkshp.net

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