Friday, August 27, 2010

SEO Strategies

SEO is hard work. It takes much effort to optimize just the
right elements of your web site so search engines will
not only find you, but will also index your site so that it
appears high in search query results. And all of that effort must
be attended to by you. There are currently no tools that will
put all of the elements of SEO in place for you.
Instead, you have to build your web site with SEO in mind,
choose all the right keywords, and use them in the right places
and balance on your site, determine if pay-per-click and paidinclusion
programs are for you, use the right meta tags in the
right places, create great content, and add all the right links.
Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it?
It is. But don’t let the amount of work overwhelm you. Consistent
effort and the strategies included in this part of the book will have
you working toward your SEO goals in no time. Each of the chapters
in this section contains an explanation of how these elements
affect SEO, and how you can create and implement strategies to
help you leverage that element to reach your SEO goals.
Search engine optimization is a collection of strategies that improve the
level at which your web site is ranked in the results returned when a
user searches for a key word or phrase.
By now, that’s a definition you should be pretty familiar with. What you probably
don’t know (yet) is how to achieve SEO. You can’t do it all at once. Instead,
SEO has to happen in stages. If you try to implement too many strategies at
one time, two things are going to happen.
First, you won’t be able to tell which of your efforts are successful. Imple -
menting one strategy at a time makes it possible for you to pinpoint which
strategies are working and which are not.
Second, when you try to implement too many strategies at one time, your
efforts — even the successful ones — could be lost in the shuffle. It’s like having
too many children running around the house on the weekend. If you’re
not paying complete attention to all of them (and that’s virtually impossible),
at least one is bound to get into something.
SEO is most successful when you concentrate on one effort at a time. A great
place to start concentrating is on the way your site is built. One of the first
things that attracts a search engine crawler is the actual design of your site.
Tags, links, navigational structure, and content are just a few of the elements
that catch crawlers’ attention.
Before You Build Your Site
One of the most common misconceptions about SEO is that it should be implemented after a web
site has been built. It can be, but it’s much harder. A better option is to consider SEO even before
you begin to build your web site, if that’s at all possible. It may not be. But if that’s the case, you
can still implement SEO strategies in the design of your site; it will just require a lot more work
than building it in at the beginning.
Know your target
Before you even start contemplating how to build your web site, you should know in what types
of search engines it’s most important for your site to be ranked. Search engines are divided into
several types, beyond the primary, secondary, and targeted search engines that you learned about
in Chapter 2. In addition, search engine types are determined by how information is entered into
the index or catalog that’s used to return search results. The three types of search engines are:
Crawler-based engines: To this point, the search engines discussed fall largely into this
category. A crawler-based search engine (like Google) uses an automated software agent
(called a crawler) to visit, read, and index web sites. All the information collected by the
crawler is returned to a central repository. This is called indexing. It is from this index
that search engine results are pulled. Crawler-based search engines revisit web pages
periodically in a time frame determined by the search engine administrator.
Human-powered engines: Human-powered search engines rely on people to submit
the information that is indexed and later returned as search results. Sometimes, humanpowered
search engines are called directories. Yahoo! is a good example of what, at one
time, was a human-powered search engine. Yahoo! started as a favorites list belonging to
two people who needed an easier way to share their favorite web site. Over time, Yahoo!
took on a life of its own. It’s no longer completely human-controlled. A newer search
engine called Mahalo (www.mahalo.com) is entirely human-powered, however, and it’s
creating a buzz on the Web.
Hybrid engine: A hybrid search engine is not entirely populated by a web crawler, nor
entirely by human submission. A hybrid is a combination of the two. In a hybrid engine,
people can manually submit their web sites for inclusion in search results, but there is also
a web crawler that monitors the Web for sites to include. Most search engines today fall
into the hybrid category to at least some degree. Although many are mostly populated by
crawlers, others have some method by which people can enter their web site information.
It’s important to understand these distinctions, because how your site ends up indexed by a search
engine may have some bearing on when it’s indexed. For example, fully automated search engines
that use web crawlers might index your site weeks (or even months) before a human-powered search
engine. The reason is simple. The web crawler is an automated application. The human-powered
search engine may actually require that all entries be reviewed for accuracy before a site is included
in search results. In all cases, the accuracy of search engine results will vary according to the search query that is used.
For example, entries in a human-powered search engine might be more technically accurate, but the
search query that is used will determine if the desired results are returned.
Page elements
Another facet of SEO to consider before you build your web site is the elements needed to ensure
that your site is properly indexed by a search engine. Each search engine places differing importance
on different page elements. For example, Google is a very keyword-driven search engine; however, it
also looks at site popularity and at the tags and links on any given page.
How well your site performs in a search engine is determined by how the elements of your page
meet the engine’s search criteria. The main criteria that every search engine looks for are the site
text (meaning keywords), tags — both HTML and meta tags — site links, and the site popularity.
Text
Text is one of the most important elements of any web site. Of particular importance are the keywords
within the text on a page, where those keywords appear, and how often they appear. This
is why keyword marketing has become such a large industry in a relatively short time. Your keywords
make all the difference when a search engine indexes your site and then serves it up in
search results.
Keywords must match the words and phrases that potential visitors will use when searching for
your site (or for the topic or product that’s listed on your site). To ensure that your keywords are
effective, you’ll need to spend some time learning which keywords work best for your site. That
means doing keyword research (which you learn more about in
Tags
In search engine optimization, two kinds of tags are important on your web site: meta tags and
HTML tags. Technically, meta tags are HTML tags, they just appear in very specific places. The
two most important meta tags are the keyword tag and the description tag.
The keyword tag occurs at the point where you list the keywords that apply to your web site. A
keyword tag on a search engine optimization page might look something like this:

The description tag gives a short description of your page. Such a tag for the search engine optimization
page might look like this:
Not all search engines take meta tags into consideration. For that reason, you site should use both
meta tags and other HTML tags. Some of the other HTML tags that you should include on your web
site are the title tag, the top (or H1) heading tags, and the anchor tags.
The title tag is the tag that’s used in the title of your web site. This tag will appear like this:
Your Title Here< / Title >
Once you’ve tagged your site with a title tag, when a user pulls the site up, the title that you entered
will appear at the very top of the page if the user is using an Internet Explorer browser (IE) earlier
than IE7, as shown in Figure 3-1. In IE7 and the Firefox browser, the title will appear on the browser
tab, shown in Figures 3-2 and 3-3.
High-level headings (H1s) are also important when a crawler examines your web site. Your keywords
should appear in your H1 headings, and in the HTML tags you use to create those headings. An H1
tag might look like this:

High-Level Heading


Anchor tags are used to create links to other pages. An anchor tag can point users to another web
page, a file on the Web, or even an image or sound file. You’re probably most familiar with the anchor
tags used to create links to other web sites. Here’s what an anchor tag might look like:
Text for link
Other criteria to consider
In addition to the four main elements you should plan to include on your site, there are a few others.
For example, the body text on your web site will be examined by the crawler that indexes your site.
Body text should contain enough keywords to gain the attention of the crawler, but not so many that
it seems the site is being “stuffed’ with such words.
Alternative tags for pictures and links are also important. These are the tags that might appear as a
brief description of a picture or graphic on a web site that fails to display properly. The alternative
tags — called alt tags — display a text description of the graphic or picture, so that even if the actual
image doesn’t appear, there’s some explanation of what should be there. Alt tags are a good place to
include additional keywords.
Understanding Web-Site Optimization
Web-site optimization is all about creating a site that is discoverable by search engines and search
directories. It sound simple enough, but there are many aspects of site optimization to consider, and
not all of them are about the keywords, links, or HTML tagging of your site.
Does hosting matter?
That question comes up frequently when a company or individual is designing a web site. Does it
matter who hosts your site? The answer is no, but that’s not to say that domain hosting is unimportant.
Elements of the hosting have a major impact on how your site ranks in search results.
One of the biggest issues that you’ll face with domain hosting is the location of your hosting company.
If you’re in the United States and you purchase a domain that is hosted on a server in England,
your search engine rankings will suffer. Geographically, search engine crawlers will read your site as
being contradictory to your location. Because many search engines serve up results with some element
of geographical location included, this contradiction could be enough to affect your ranking.
The length of time for which you register your domain name could also affect your search engine
ranking. Many hackers use throw away domains, or domain names that are registered for no more
than a year, because they usually don’t even get to use the domain for a full year before they are shut
down. For this reason some search engines have implemented ranking criteria that give priority to
domains registered for longer periods. A longer registration also shows a commitment to maintaining
the web site.
Domain-naming tips
The question of what to name a web site is always a big one. When selecting a name, most people
think in terms of their business name, personal name, or a word or phrase that has meaning for
them. What they don’t think about is how that name will work for the site’s SEO. Does the name
have anything at all to do with the site, or is it completely unrelated?
Have you ever wondered why a company might be willing to pay millions of dollars for a domain
name? The domain name business.com was purchased for $7.5 million in 1999, and was
recently thought to be valued at more than $300 million. Casino.com went for $5.5 million and
worldwideweb.com sold for $3.5 million. What’s so important about a name?
Where SEO is concerned, the name of your web site is as important as many of the other SEO elements
that you concentrate on. Try this test. Use your favorite search engine to search for a topic,
perhaps “asphalt-paving business.” When your search results are returned, look at the top five results.
Most of the time, a web site containing those words will be returned in those top five results, and it
will often be in the number one slot.
So, if your company name is ABC Company, but your business is selling nutmeg graters, consider
purchasing the domain name NutmegGraters.com, instead of ABC Company.com — ABC Company
may not get you in the top of search rankings, but the very specific nature of your product probably
will. And both the content of your site and your domain name will attract crawlers in the way you
want. Using a domain name containing a keyword from your content usually improves your site
ranking.
A few more things that you should keep in mind when you’re determining your domain name
include:
Keep the name as short as possible. Too many characters in a name mean increased potential
for misspellings. It also means that your site address will be much harder for users to
remember unless it’s something really startling.
Avoid dashes, underscores, and other meaningless characters. If the domain name that
you’re looking for is taken, don’t just add a random piece of punctuation or numerology
to the name to “get close.” Close doesn’t count here. Instead, try to find another word
that’s relevant, and possibly included in the list of keywords you’ll be using. For
example, instead of purchasing www.yourwebsite2.com, try to find something
like www.yoursitesubject.com.
Opt for a .com name whenever possible. There are lots of domain extensions to choose
from: info, biz, us, tv, names, jobs. However, if the .com version of your chosen domain
name is available, that’s always the best choice. Users tend to think in terms of .com, and
any other extension will be hard for them to remember. Com names also tend to receive
higher rankings in search engines than web sites using other extensions. So if your competition
has www.yoursite.com and you choose to use www.yoursite.biz, chances
are the competition will rank higher in search results than you.
Again, it’s important to realize that domain naming is only one facet of SEO strategy. It won’t make
or break your SEO, but it can have some effect. So take the time to think about the name you plan
to register for your site. If you can use a name that not only reaches your audience but also lands you
a little higher in search results, then by all means purchase it. But if no name really seems to work in the SEO strategy for your site, don’t get discouraged. You can make up for any domain-naming issues
by implementing solid keyword strategies, tagging strategies, and other elements of SEO.
Understanding usability
Usability. It means different things to different web site designers. It’s also been at the top of every
user’s requirements list since the Web became part of daily life. When users click through to your
web site from a search results page, they want the site to work for them. That means they want to be
able to find what they’re looking for, to navigate from place to place, and to be able to load pages
quickly, without any difficulties.
Web-site users are impatient. They don’t like to wait for pages to load, they don’t want to deal with
Flash graphics or JavaScript, and they don’t want to be lost. These are all elements of usability —
how the user navigates through and uses your web site. And yes, usability has an impact on SEO.
Especially from the perspective of your site links and loading times.
When a search engine crawler comes to your site, it crawls through the site, looking at keywords,
links, contextual clues, meta and HTML tags, and a whole host of other elements. The crawler will
move from page to page, indexing what it finds for inclusion in search results. But if that crawler
reaches the first page and can’t get past the fancy Flash you’ve created, or if it gets into the site and
finds links that don’t work or that lead to unexpected locations, it will recognize this and make note
of it in the indexed site data. That can damage your search engine rankings.
Navigation knowledge
When you consider web-site navigation, there are two types: internal navigation and external navigation.
Internal navigation involves the links that move users from one page to another on your site.
External navigation refers to links that take users away from your page. For your navigation to be
SEO-friendly, you have to use both types of navigation carefully.
Look at a number of different high-ranking web sites. How is the navigation of those sites designed?
In most cases, you’ll find that the top sites have a left-hand navigation bar that’s often text-based, and
some have a button-based navigation bar across the top of the page. Few have just buttons down the
left side, and all of them have text links somewhere in the landing page.
The navigation for many sites looks the same, because this plan works. Having a text-based navigation
bar on the left works for SEO because it allows you to use anchor tags with the keywords you’re
using for the site. It also allows crawlers to move from one page to another with ease.
Buttons are harder for crawlers to navigate, and depending on the code in which those buttons are
designed, they might be completely invisible to the crawler. That’s why many companies that put
button-based links at the top of the page also usually include a text-based navigation bar on the
left. The crawler can still move from page to page, but the user is happy with the design of the site.The other element you see on nearly every page is text-based links within the content of the page.
Again, those links are usually created with anchor tags that include the keywords the site is using
to build site ranking. This is an effective way to gain site ranking. The crawler comes into the site,
examines the linking system, examines the content of the page, compares these items, and finds
that the links are relevant to the content, which is relevant to the keywords. That’s how your ranking
is determined. Every element works together.
Take the time to design a navigational structure that’s not only comfortable for your users, but is also
crawler-friendly. If it can’t always be perfect for the crawlers, make sure it’s perfect for users. Again,
SEO is influenced by many different things, but return visits from users are the ultimate goal. This
may mean that you have to test your site structure and navigation with a user group and change it
a few times before you find a method that works both for returning users and for the crawlers that
help to bring you new users. Do those tests. That’s the only way you’ll learn what works.
Usability considerations
It’s not always possible to please both your site users and the crawlers that determine your page
ranking. It is possible, however, to work around problems. Of course, the needs of users come first
because once you get them to your site you want them to come back. On the Internet, it’s extremely
easy for users to surf away from your site and never look back. And returning visits can make or
break your site.
But the catch is that in order to build returning visitors, you have to build new visitors, which is the
purpose of SEO. That means you need search engines to take notice of your site.
When it seems that users’ preferences are contrary to crawlers’ preferences, there is a solution.
It’s a site map. And there are two types of which you should be aware. A basic site map is an
overview of the navigational structure of your web site. It’s usually text-based, and it’s nothing
more than an overview that includes links to all of the pages in your web site. Crawlers love site
maps. You should, too.
A site map allows you to outline the navigational structure of your web site, down to the second or
third level of depth, using text-based links that should include anchors and keywords. An example
of a site map for the Work.com web site is shown in Figure 3-5.
When a site map exists on your web page, a search engine crawler can locate the map and then
crawl all of the pages that are linked from it. All of those pages are then included in the search
engine index and will appear on search engine results pages. Where they appear on those SERPs
is determined by how well the SEO is done for each individual page.
A second type of site map, the XML site map, is different from what you think of as a site map in
both form and function. An XML site map is a file that lists all of the URLs for a web site. This file
is usually not seen by site visitors, only by the crawlers that index your site. There are more specifics
on XML site maps in Chapter 16.Components of an SEO-Friendly Page
Building an SEO-friendly web site doesn’t happen by accident. It requires an understanding of what
elements search engines examine and how those elements affect your ranking. It also requires including
as many of those elements as possible on your site. It does little good to have all the right meta
tags in place if you have no content and no links on your page.
It’s easy to get caught up in the details of SEO and forget the simplest web-design principles — principles
that play a large part in your search engine rankings. Having all the right keywords in the right
places in your tags and titles won’t do you much good if the content on your page is non-existent or
completely unreachable by a search engine crawler.Understanding entry and exit pages
Entry and exit pages are the first and last pages that a user sees of your web site. It’s important to
understand that an entry page isn’t necessarily the home page on your web site. It can be any other
page where a user lands, either by clicking through search engine results, by clicking a link from
another web site or a piece of marketing material, or by bookmarking or typing directly into the
address bar of a browser.
Entry pages are important in SEO, because they are the first page users see as they come onto the
web site. The typical web site is actually several small connected sites. Your company web site might
contain hubs, or central points, for several different topics. Say you’re a pet store. Then you’ll have
hubs within your sites for dogs, cats, birds, fish, and maybe exotic animals. Each hub will have a
main page — which will likely be your entry page for that section — and several additional pages
leading from that central page to other pages containing relevant content, products, or information
about specific topics.
Understanding which of your pages are likely entry pages helps you to optimize those pages for
search engine crawlers. Using the pet-store example, if your home page and all the hub pages are
properly SEO’ed, you potentially could be ranked at or near the top of five different sets of search
results. When you add additional entry pages deeper in your web site structure (that is, a dogtraining
section to the hub for dogs), you’ve increased the number of times you can potentially
end up at the top of search engine rankings.
Because entry pages are important in the structure of your web site, you want to monitor those pages
using a web-site analytics program to ensure they are working the way you expect them to work. A
good analytics program, like Google Analytics, will show you your top entry and exit pages.
Exit pages are those from which users leave your site, either by clicking through an exiting link,
selecting a bookmark, or typing a different web address into their browser address bar. But why
are exit pages important? They have two purposes; the first is to drive users from their entry
pages to a desired exit page. This is called the path that users travel through your site. A typical
path might look something like this:
SERP ➪ Home ➪ Women’s Clothing ➪ Product Pages ➪ Shopping Cart ➪
Checkout ➪ Receipt
In this example, Home is the entry page and Receipt is the exit page. By looking at this navigational
path, you can tell how users travel through your page and where they fall off the page. But there’s an
added benefit to understanding the navigational path of your users. When you know how users
travel through your site, you can leave what’s called a bread-crumb trail for them. That’s a navigational
indicator on the web site that allows them to quickly see where they are on your site, as shown
in Figure 3-6. This is the navigation path shown on the Wal-Mart web site. You can quickly see
where in the navigational structure of the site you’re located.The bread-crumb trail not only helps users return to a previous page in the navigational path; it also
makes it easier for a web crawler to fully examine your site. Because crawlers follow every link on
your page, this is an internal link structure that leads crawlers to individual pages that you want to
have included in search engine results.Choosing an Analytics Program
An important element in any SEO plan is analytics — the method by which you monitor the effectiveness
of your web site. Analytics are the metrics that show you how pages, links, keywords,
and other elements of your web site are performing. If your web host hasn’t provided you with an
analytics program, find one. Not having an analytics program is like walking around in the dark,
hoping you won’t bump into a wall.
Many web-site owners shy away from analytics packages because they appear to be complicated as
well as expensive. However, they don’t always have to be. You can find a good analytics program
that’s not only easy to use but is also inexpensive or even free. But use caution about making ease
and low cost the deciding factors when selecting an analytics program.
The program will give you the power to see and control how your web site performs against your
goals and expectations. You want it to show you everything you need to know, so here are some considerations
when you’re evaluating analytics programs:
What reports are included in the tools you’re examining, and how will you use those
reports?
How do you gather the information used to create the metrics you need?
How often are your reports updated?
How much training is necessary to understand your application and the reports provided?
Do you get software installation or is the product provided strictly as a web-based service?
What is the total cost of ownership?
What types of support are available?
What is the typical contract length?
Many analytics programs are available to you. Google Analytics, AW Stats, JayFlowers, ClickTracks,
and dozens of others all offer something different at a different price tag. If “free” is what you can
afford, don’t assume you’ll get a terrible package. Google Analytics is one of the free packages available;
it’s an excellent program and is based on what used to be the Urchin Analytics package (which
was quite costly). Other programs cost anywhere from $30 to $300 a month, depending on the
capabilities you’re purchasing.
The cost is not the most important factor, however. Ultimately, your consideration should be how the
analytics package can help you improve your business.Using powerful titles
Page titles are one of the most important elements of site optimization. When a crawler examines
your site, the first elements it looks at are the page titles. And when your site is ranked in search
results, page titles are again one of the top elements considered. So when you create your web site,
you need to have great page titles.
There are several considerations when coming up with your page titles. Here are some of the key
factors to consider:
Unless you’re Microsoft, don’t use your company name in the page title. A better choice
is to use a descriptive keyword or phrase that tells users exactly what’s on the page. This
helps ensure that your search engine rankings are accurate.
Try to keep page titles to less than 50 characters, including spaces. Some search engines
will index only up to 50 characters; others might index as many as 150. However, maintaining
shorter page titles forces you to be precise in the titles that you choose and ensures
that your page title will never be cut off in the search results.

TIP
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has determined that the outside length of a
page title should be no more than 64 characters. Search engines will vary in the size of
title that’s indexed. Using 64 characters or less is an accepted practice, however, that still leaves your
page titles cut off in search engines that only index up to 40 or 50 characters. For this reason, staying
at or below the 40-character length is a smarter strategy within your SEO efforts.
Don’t repeat keywords in your title tags. Repetition can occasionally come across as spam
when a crawler is examining your site, so avoid repeating keywords in your title if possible,
and never duplicate words just to gain a crawler’s attention. It could well get your site
excluded from search engine listings.
Consider adding special characters at the beginning and end of your title to improve
noticeability. Parentheses (()), arrows (<<>>), asterisks (****), and special symbols like
££££ can help draw a user’s attention to your page title. These special characters and
symbols don’t usually add to or distract from your SEO efforts, but they do serve to call
attention to your site title.
Include a call to action in your title. There’s an adage that goes something like, “You’ll
never sell a thing if you don’t ask for the sale.” That’s one thing that doesn’t change with
the Web. Even on the Internet, if you want your users to do something you have to ask
them to.
All your page titles should be indicated with the title tag when coding your web site. The title tag
isn’t difficult to use. Here’s an example of such a tag:
< title >A Descriptive Web Site Title< / title >
If your page titles aren’t tagged properly, you might as well not be using those titles, so take the
time to ensure that your page titles are short, descriptive, and tagged into your web-site code. By
using title tags, you’re increasing the possibility that your web site will be ranked high within search
engine results.
Creating great content
Web-site content is another element of an SEO-friendly site that you should spend plenty of time
contemplating and completing. Fortunately, there are some ways to create web-site content that will
make search crawlers love you.
Great content starts with the right keywords and phrases. Select no more than three keywords or
phrases to include in the content on any one of your web pages. But why only three? Wouldn’t
more keywords and phrases ensure that search engines take notice of your site?
When you use too many keywords in your content, you face two problems. The first is that the effectiveness
of your keywords will be reduced by the number of different ones you’re using. Choose two
or three for each page of your site and stick with those.
The other problem you face is being delisted or ignored because a search engine sees your SEO
efforts as keyword stuffing. It’s a serious problem, and search engine crawlers will exclude your site
or pages from indexes if there are too many keywords on those pages.
Once you have the two or three keywords or phrases that you plan to focus on, you need to actually
use those keywords in the content of your page. Many people think the more frequently you use the
words, the higher your search engine ranking will be. Again, that’s not necessarily true. Just as using
too many different keywords can cause a crawler to exclude you from a search engine index, overusing
the same word will also cause crawlers to consider your attempts as keyword stuffing. Again,
you run the risk of having your site excluded from search indexes.
The term used to describe the number of times a keyword is used on a page is keyword density. For
most search engines, the keyword density is relatively low. Google is very strict about ranking sites
that have a keyword density of 5 to 7 percent; much lower or much higher and your ranking is
seriously affected or completely lost.
Yahoo!, MSN, and other search engines allow keyword densities of about 5 percent. Going over that
mark could cause your site to be excluded from search results.
Keyword density is an important factor in your web-site design, and is covered in more depth in
Chapter 4. But there are other content concerns, too. Did you know that the freshness and focus
of your content is also important in how high your web site ranks? One reason many companies
began using blogs on their web sites was that blogs are updated frequently and they’re highly focused
on a specific topic. This gives search engines new, relevant content to crawl, and crawlers love that.
Consider implementing a content strategy that includes regularly adding more focused content or
expanding your content offerings. It doesn’t have to be a blog, but news links on the front page of the
site, regularly changing articles, or some other type of changing content will help gain the attention of
a search engine crawler. Don’t just set these elements up and leave them, however. You also have to
carry through with regular updates and keep the links included in the content active. Broken links
are another crawler pet peeve. Unfortunately, with dynamic content links will occasionally break. Be
sure you’re checking this element of your content on a regular basis and set up some kind of a userfeedback
loop so broken links can be reported to your webmaster.
Finally, when you’re creating your web-site content, consider interactive forums. If you’re adding
articles to your site, give users a forum in which they can respond to the article, or a comments section.
This leads to more frequent updates of your content, which search crawlers love. The result?
An interactive relationship with your web-site users will keep them coming back, and give an extra
boost to your search engine ranking.
Maximizing graphics
Images or graphics on your web site are essential. They’re also basically ignored by search engines,
so what’s the point of putting them on your site? There’s a good reason that has nothing to do with
SEO. Without images, your page is just boring text. You’re not going to be happy with using plain
text instead of that cool new logo you had designed for your company, and neither are your users.
They want to see pictures. If images are a must on a web site, then there should be a way to use those images to increase your
web-site traffic or at least to improve your site ranking. And there is.
One technique that will help your SEO make use of graphics on your site is to tag those graphics
with alt tags inside the img tags.
Alt tags are the HTML tags used to display alternative text when there is a graphic present. Your alt
tags should be a short, descriptive phrase about the image that includes the keywords used on that
page when possible.
Img tags are the tags used to code the images that will appear on your web site. Here’s an example
of what an img tag, with an included alt tag, should look like:
”alternative
Here’s how that tag breaks down: text”/> is your alternative text tag. The alternative text tag is where your keywords should be
included if at all possible.
You want to tag your images as part of your SEO strategy for two reasons. First, crawlers cannot index
images for a search engine (with an exception, which is covered shortly). The crawler “sees” the image
and moves on to the text on the page. Therefore, something needs to take the place of that image, so
the crawler can index it. That’s what the alternative text does. If this text includes your keywords, and
the image is near text that also includes the keywords, then you add credibility to your site in the
logic of the crawler.
The second reason you want to tag your images as part of your SEO strategy is to take advantage of
image-based search engines, like Google Images. These image-based search engines are relatively
new, but they shouldn’t be undervalued. Just as a search engine can find and index your site for
users searching the Web, image-based search engines find and index your images. Then, when
users perform a search for a specific keyword or phrase, your image is also ranked, along with the
text on the pages.
Image searches are gaining popularity. So crawlers like the one Google uses for its Google Images
search engine will gain momentum, and image searches will add to the amount of web-site traffic
that your SEO strategies help to build. But while not discounting the value of images, don’t overuse
them on your web pages either. As with any element of a web page, too much of a good thing
is just not good.
Problem Pages and Work-Arounds
No matter how much time and consideration you put into your SEO strategy, there are going to
be elements of your web site that require special consideration. Some sites — like portals — need
a different approach than a standard web site might require. How you deal with these issues will
impact the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. Painful portals
The use of portals — those web sites that are designed to funnel users to other web sites and
content — as a search engine placement tool is a hotly debated topic. Many experts will start
throwing around the word “spam” when the subject of SEO and portals comes up. And there
have been serious problems with portals that are nothing more than search engine spam. In the
past, portals have certainly been used as an easy link-building tool offering nothing more than
regurgitated information. Sometimes the information is vaguely reworded, but it’s the still the
same information.
Search engine operators have long been aware of this tactic and have made every effort to hinder
its usefulness by looking for duplicate content, interlinking strategies, and other similar indicators.
Using these techniques, search engines have managed to reduce the usefulness of portal web sites
as SEO spam mechanisms.
However, because search engine operators need to be cautious about portals that are nothing more
than SEO spam, your job in optimizing your site if it’s a portal is a little harder. As with all web-site
design, the best objective for your site, even for a portal, is to help your visitors achieve a desired
result, whether that’s purchasing a product, signing up for a newsletter, or finding the desired information.
If you make using your site easy and relevant, your site visitors will stay on your site longer,
view more pages, and return to your site in the future. Portals help you reach these goals by acting
as excellent tools for consolidating information into smaller, more manageable sources of information
that users find easier to use and digest.
Too often people optimizing web sites focus on the spiders and forget about the visitors. The sites you
are developing have to appeal to the visitors and provide them with the information that they’re looking
for, or all you’ll get at the end of the day is hosting bills and low conversion rates. Portal web sites
enable you to create a series of information resources giving full information on any given topic while
structuring a network of information covering a much larger scope.
Though the visitor is of significant importance when building a web site, the site itself is of primary
significance, too. There’s no point in creating a beautiful web site if no one’s going to see it, and portals
are a fantastic tool for increasing your online visibility and search engine exposure, for a wide
variety of reasons.
Perhaps the most significant of these reasons is the increase in keywords that you can use in portal
promotion. Rather than having one web site with which to target a broad range of keywords, portals
allow you to have many web sites, each of which can have its own set of keywords. For example,
instead of trying to put “deer hunting” and “salt-water fishing” on the same page, you can create a
hunting portal that allows you to have separate sites for deer hunting, salt-water fishing, and any
other type of hunting activity that you would like to include.
On one page it is much easier to target the two keyphrases “deer season” and “Mississippi hunting
license” than it is to target two keyphrases like “deer season” and “marlin fishing.” Targeting
incompatible keywords or phrases — that is, keywords or phrases that aren’t related to a larger
topic — makes it harder to have both readable, relevant content and to reach the keywords that
you need to use.There are other advantages to creating web portals, as well. Having a portal allows you to have
multiple home pages, which can give you the opportunity to create sites that consistently appear in
top ranking. You also have more sites to include in your other SEO strategies, and more places to
include keywords. However, there is a fine line between a useful portal and one that causes search
engines to turn away without listing your portal on SERPs.
Don’t link all your sites to all of the others within your portal using some link-farm footer
at the bottom of every page. You may not even want to link all of them to the others on a
site map or links page. Instead, interlink them in an intelligent way. When you want to lead visitors to
another site in the portal, or when you want those users to be able to choose which site is most useful
to them, you can create intelligent links that have value for the site user. This value translates into better
rankings for your web site.
As with most issues in web design, keep it user-friendly and attractive. If you have any doubt that the
actions you’re taking with your site or the design methods that you’re using could lead to negative
results for the SEO of your site, don’t use them. If you’re feeling that a strategy won’t work, it probably
won’t, and you’re wasting your time if you insist on using a design you’re not comfortable with.
Fussy frames
Some web-site designs require the use of frames. Frames are sections of a web site, with each section
a separate entity from the other portions of the page. Because the frames on a site represent separate
URLs, they often create display issues for users whose browsers don’t support frames, and for search
crawlers, which encounter the frames and can’t index the site where the frame is the navigational
structure.
You have a couple of alternatives when frames are essential to the design of your web site. The first is
to include an alternative to the framed site. This requires the use of the noframes tag. The tag directs
the user’s browser to display the site without the framed navigational system. Users may see a strippeddown
version of your site, but at least they can still see it. When a search crawler encounters a site
made with frames, the noframes tag allows it to index the alternative site. It’s important to realize,
however, that when you use the noframes tag, you should load the code for an entire web page
between the opening tag and closing tag.
When you’re creating a noframes tag for a framed site, the content of the noframes tags
should be exactly identical to the frame set. If it’s not, a search crawler could consider it
spam, and then your site would be penalized or even delisted.
Another problem with frames is that search engines often display an internal page on your site in
response to a search query. If this internal page does not contain a link to your home page or some
form of navigation menu, the user is stuck on that page and is unable to navigate through your site.
That means the search crawler is also stuck in that same spot. As a result, the crawler might not index
your site.
The solution is to place a link on the page that leads to your home page. In this link, include the
attribute TARGET = “_top”. This prevents your site from becoming nested within your own
frames, which locks the user on the page they landed on from the search results. It also makes it
possible for crawlers to efficiently crawl your site without getting stuck.That link back to your home page will probably look something like this:
Return to Home Page
Frames are difficult to get around when you’re putting SEO strategies into place, but doing so is
not entirely impossible. It’s a good idea to avoid frames, but they won’t keep you completely out of
search engine rankings. You just have to use a different approach to reaching the rankings that you
desire.
Cranky cookies
Cookies are one of those irritating facts of life on the Internet. Users want web sites tailored to them,
and cookies are one way companies have found to do that. When users enter the site and customize
some feature of it, a small piece of code — the cookie — is placed on the user’s hard drive. Then,
when the user returns to the site in the future, that cookie can be accessed, and the user’s preferences
executed.
When cookies work properly, they’re an excellent tool for web designers. When they don’t work
as they should, the problems begin. So what constitutes a problem? The main issue with cookies
is that some browsers allow users to set how cookies will be delivered to them. And some source
code prompts the user to be asked before a cookie is accepted. When this happens, the search
engine crawler is effectively stopped in its tracks, and it doesn’t pick back up where it stopped
once the cookies are delivered. Also, any navigation that requires cookies will cause the crawler
to be unable to index the pages.
How do you overcome this issue? The only answer is to code cookies to ensure that the source code
is not designed to query the user before the cookie is delivered.
Programming Languages and SEO
One aspect of web-site design you might not think of when planning your SEO strategy is the programming
language used in developing the site. Programming languages all behave a little differently.
For example, HTML uses one set of protocols to accomplish the visuals you see when you
open a web page, whereas PHP uses a completely different set of protocols. And when most people
think of web-site programming, they think in terms of HTML.
But the truth is that many other languages also are used for coding web pages. And those languages
may require differing SEO strategies.
JavaScript
JavaScript is a programming language that allows web designers to create dynamic content. However,
it’s also not necessarily SEO-friendly. In fact, JavaScript often completely halts a crawler from indexing
a web site, and when that happens the result is lower search engine rankings or complete exclusion
from ranking.To overcome this, many web designers externalize any JavaScript that’s included on the web site.
Externalizing the JavaScript creates a situation where it is actually run from an external location,
such as a file on your web server. To externalize your JavaScript:
1. Copy the code, beginning at the starting tags, and paste it into a Notepad file.
2. Save the Notepad file as filename.js.
3. Upload the file to your web server.
4. Create a reference on your web page to the external JavaScript code. The reference
should be placed where the JavaScript will appear and might look like this:

This is just one of the solutions you can use to prevent JavaScript from becoming a problem for
your SEO efforts. There are many others, and depending on your needs you should explore some
of those.
Sometimes, people use JavaScript as a way to hide content or links from a search engine.
However, search crawlers can read JavaScript and most can even follow the links that are
in JavaScript. So if you try to hide content or links behind JavaScript, you run the risk of having your
site labeled as search engine spam. There’s more about search engine spam in Chapter 17.
Flash
Flash is another of those technologies that some users absolutely hate. That’s because Flash, though
very cool, is resource intensive. It causes pages to load slower, and users often get stuck on an opening
Flash page and can’t move forward until the Flash has finished executing. If the user is in a hurry,
it’s a frustrating thing to deal with.
Flash is also a nightmare when it comes to SEO. A Flash page can stop a web crawler in its tracks,
and once stopped, the crawler won’t resume indexing the site. Instead, it will simply move on to
the next web site on its list.
The easiest way to overcome Flash problems is simply not use it. But despite the difficulties with
search rankings, some organizations need to use Flash. If yours is one of them, the Flash can be
coded in HTML and an option can be added to test for the ability to see Flash before the Flash is
executed. However, there’s some debate over whether or not this is an “acceptable” SEO practice,
so before you implement this type of strategy in an effort to improve your SEO effectiveness, take
the time to research the method.
Dynamic ASP
Most of the sites you’ll encounter on the Web are static web pages. These sites don’t change beyond the
regular updates by a webmaster. On the other hand, dynamic web pages are web pages that are created
on the fly according to preferences that users specify in a form or menu. The sites can be created
using a variety of different programming technologies including dynamic ASP. The problem with these sites is that they don’t technically exist until the user creates them. Because a web crawler can’t make
the selections that “build” these pages, most dynamic web pages aren’t indexed in search engines.
There are ways around this, however. Dynamic URLs can be converted to static URLs with the right
coding. It’s also possible to use paid inclusion services to index dynamic pages down to a predefined
number of levels (or number of selections, if you’re considering the site from the user’s point of view).
Dynamic ASP, like many of the other languages used to create web sites, carries with it a unique set
of characteristics. But that doesn’t mean SEO is impossible for those pages. It does mean that the
approach used for the SEO of static pages needs to be modified. It’s an easy enough task, and a quick
search of the Internet will almost always provide the programming code you need to achieve SEO.
PHP
Search engine crawlers being what they are — preprogrammed applications — there’s a limit
to what they can index. PHP is another of those programming languages that falls outside the
boundaries of normal web-site coding. Search engine crawlers see PHP as another obstacle if
it’s not properly executed.
Properly executed means that PHP needs to be used with search engines in mind. For example,
PHP naturally stops or slows search engine crawlers. But with some attention and a solid understanding
of PHP and SEO, it’s possible to code pages that work, even in PHP.
One thing that works well with PHP is designing the code to look like HTML. It requires an experienced
code jockey, but it can be done. And once the code has been disguised, the PHP site can be
crawled and indexed so that it’s returned in search results.
Other Design Concerns
You’re likely to encounter numerous problems with SEO when designing your web site. Some are
easy to overcome. Others can be quite difficult. And still others aren’t problems you have to overcome;
rather, you just need to beware of them or risk being ignored by search engine crawlers.
Among tactics that might seem okay to some, but really aren’t, are the so-called black-hat SEO
techniques. These are practices implemented with a single thought in mind — increasing search
engine rankings, no matter how inappropriate those rankings might be. Some companies deliberately
use such techniques when creating web sites, even if the results that show up have absolutely
nothing to do with the search terms users entered.
Domain cloaking
On the surface, domain cloaking sounds like a great idea. The concept is to show users a pretty web
site that meets their needs, while at the same time showing search engines a highly optimized page that probably would be almost useless to users. In other words, it’s a slimy trick to gain search
engine ranking while providing users with a nice site to look at.
It starts with content cloaking, which is accomplished by creating web-site code that can detect and
differentiate a crawler from a site user. When the crawler enters the site, it is re-directed to another
web site that has been optimized for high search engine results. The problem with trying to gain
higher search results this way is that many search engines can now spot it. As soon as they find
that a web page uses such a cloaking method, the page is delisted from the search index and not
included in the results.
Many less-than-savory SEO administrators will use this tactic on throw-away sites. They know the
site won’t be around for long anyway (usually because of some illegal activity), so they use domain
cloaking to garner as much web site traffic as possible before the site is taken down or delisted.
Duplicate content
When you’re putting together a web site, the content for that site often presents one of the greatest
challenges, especially if it’s a site that includes hundreds of pages. Many people opt to purchase bits
of content, or even scrape content from other web sites to help populate their own. These shortcuts
can cause real issues with search engines.
Say your web site is about some form of marketing. It’s very easy to surf around the Web and find
hundreds (or even thousands) of web sites from which you can pull free, permission-granted content
to include on your web site. The problem is that every other person or company creating a web
site could be doing the same thing. And the result? A single article on a topic appears on hundreds
of web sites — and users aren’t finding anything new if they search for the topic and every site has
the same article.
To help combat this type of content generation, some search engines now include as part of their
search algorithm a method to measure how fresh site content is. If the crawler examines your site
and finds that much of your content is also on hundreds of other web sites, you run the risk of
either ranking low or being delisted from the search engine’s indexing database.
Some search engines now look for four types of duplicate content:
Highly distributed articles. These are the free articles that seem to appear on every single
web site about a given topic. This content has usually been provided by a marketing-savvy
entrepreneur as a way to gain attention for his or her project or passion. But no matter
how valuable the information, if it appears on hundreds of sites, it will be deemed duplicate
and that will reduce your chances of being listed high in the search result rankings.
Product descriptions for e-commerce stores. The product descriptions included on
nearly all web pages are not included in search engine results. Product descriptions can
be very small and depending on how many products you’re offering, there could be thousands
of them. Crawlers are designed to skip over most product descriptions. Otherwise,
a crawler might never be able to work completely through your site. Duplicate web pages. It does no good whatever for a user to click through a search result
only to find that your web pages have been shared with everyone else. These duplicate pages
gum up the works and reduce the level at which your pages end up in the search results.
Content that has been scraped from numerous other sites. Content scraping is the
practice of pulling content from other web sites and repackaging it so that it looks like
your own content. Although scraped content may look different from the original, it is
still duplicate content, and many search engines will leave you completely out of the
search index and the search results.
Hidden pages
One last SEO issue concerns the damage to your SEO strategy that hidden pages can inflict. These
are pages in your web site that are visible only to a search crawler. Hidden pages can also lead to
issues like hidden keywords and hidden links. Keywords and links help to boost your search rankings,
so many people try to capitalize on these requirements by hiding them within the body of a
web page, sometimes in a font color that perfectly matches the site background.
There’s no way around the issue of hidden pages. If you have a web site and it contains hidden pages,
it’s just a matter of time before the crawler figures out that the content is part of a hidden SEO strategy.
Once that’s determined by the crawler, your site ranking will drop drastically.
After Your Site Is Built
Building the right site to help maximize your SEO efforts is a difficult task. And when you’re finished,
the work doesn’t end. SEO is an ongoing strategy, not a technology that you can implement and forget.
Time needs to be spent reviewing your practices, examining results, and making adjustments
where necessary. If this ongoing maintenance is ignored, your SEO efforts to this point will quickly
become time that would have been better spent standing out on the street with a sign around your
neck advertising your web site. That might be more effective than outdated SEO.
Beware of content thieves
Maintenance of your SEO strategies is also essential in helping you find problems that might be completely
unrelated to SEO. For example, SEO strategies can help you locate content thieves. One such
strategy is tagging your web site. Some people (including black-hat SEOs) take snippets of content
from your site to use on their own. If you tag your content properly, you can use some very distinctive
tags, which will help you quickly locate content that has been stolen.
Another way in which SEO helps you to locate stolen content is through tracking. Presumably, if
you’re executing SEO strategies, you’re monitoring your site metrics with a program like Google
Analytics. Watching the metrics used by one of those analytics programs can help you locate content
thieves. For example, if you look at your incoming links on one of these programs, you might
find that people are coming to your site from a completely unexpected location. If that’s the case,you can follow the link back to that site to find out why. A site using stolen content is easy to find
using this method. There are also many services available that will help you track your web-site
content. Those services are covered in more depth in Chapter 12.
Tagging works well for finding content thieves, and there’s another tactic you can use to thwart automatic
content scrapers — domain cloaking. This is a process by which your web site appears to be
located somewhere other than where it is. This is accomplished using an HTML frame set that redirects
traffic from one URL to another. For example, if your web site address is www.you.somewhere.com,
you can use domain cloaking to have your site appear to be www.yourbusiness.com.
The problem with using domain cloaking is that it can confuse a search engine crawler, because the
same content appears to be on two pages, although it’s only one page and one that redirects. And
another problem is that some search engine crawlers can’t read the frame set that’s used to redirect
the user, which means your site may end up not being ranked at all. This is a tactic that should only
be used in special cases where content is truly unique and could possibly affect your SEO rankings
(or that of someone who might steal it) in a dramatic way.
Dealing with updates and site changes
One last problem you may encounter after you’ve initially set up your SEO strategies is the updates
and changes that your site will go through. Often, people feel that once the SEO is in place, then it’s
always in place, and they don’t have to think about it again. But believing this can lead to a very
unpleasant surprise.
When your site changes, especially if there are content updates or changes to the site structure, links
can be broken, tags may be changed, and any number of other small details may be overlooked.
When this happens, the result can be a reduced ranking for your site. Site crawlers look at everything,
from your tags to your links, and based on what they see, your ranking could fluctuate from
day to day. If what the crawler sees indications that your site has changed in a negative way, the site’s
ranking will be negatively affected.
Many things affect the way your site ranks in a search engine. You’ve seen an overview of a lot of
them in this chapter, and you’ll see them all again in more depth in future chapters. Realize that
SEO is not a simple undertaking. It is a complex, time-consuming strategy for improving your
business. And without attention to all of the details, you could just be wasting your time. So plan
to invest the time needed to ensure that your search engine optimization efforts aren’t wasted.

Creating an SEO Plan

Before you can even begin to optimize your web site for search engines,
you need to have a search engine optimization plan in place. This will
help you create SEO goals and keep those goals in focus as the purpose
of your site changes, and as the methods for search engine optimization
change — and they will change.
Your SEO plan will help you see where you need to concentrate your efforts at
any given time. This need will change over time. In the beginning, you’re most
likely to be focusing on getting started with SEO. However, after you’ve put all
of your SEO strategies into place, the focus of your SEO activities will change.
Note that I said they will change, not that they will end. Once you’ve started
SEO, if you plan to continue using it, you’ll need to constantly monitor and
update your SEO plan, strategies, and activities. There was a time when the
only thing you had to worry about was which keywords or links would be
most effective for getting your site ranked high in relevant search results.
Today, very few search engines focus on a single aspect of search engine optimization.
This means that over time those who focused only on keywords or
only on links have found themselves with diminished SEO effectiveness.
Search engines will naturally change and mature, as the technologies and principles
that enable SEO and the engines themselves change. For this reason, the
SEO plan should be considered a dynamic, changing document. To keep up
with that document, you need to be evolving or changing as well. And that’s
where your SEO plan will help you stay on track.
Using the SEO plan, you can quickly and easily tell where you are and where
you need to be with your search engine optimization efforts.
Understanding Why You Need SEO
Before you can understand the reasons for using SEO, it might be good to have a definition of what
SEO — search engine optimization — is. It’s probably a safe assumption that if you’ve picked up this
book, you have some understanding of SEO, so I’ll keep it simple.
SEO is the science of customizing elements of your web site to achieve the best possible search engine
ranking. That’s really all there is to search engine optimization. But as simple as it sounds, don’t let it
fool you. Both internal and external elements of the site affect the way it’s ranked in any given search
engine, so all of these elements should be taken into consideration. Good SEO can be very difficult to
achieve, and great SEO seems pretty well impossible at times.
But why is search engine optimization so important? Think of it this way. If you’re standing in a crowd
of a few thousand people and someone is looking for you, how will they find you? In a crowd that
size, everyone blends together.
Now suppose there is some system that separates groups of people. Maybe if you’re a woman you’re
wearing red and if you’re a man you’re wearing blue. Now anyone looking for you will have to look
through only half of the people in the crowd.
You can further narrow the group of people to be searched by adding additional differentiators until
you have a small enough group that a search query can be executed and the desired person can be
easily found.
Your web site is much like that one person in the huge crowd. In the larger picture your site is
nearly invisible, even to the search engines that send crawlers out to catalog the Web. To get your
site noticed, even by the crawlers, certain elements must stand out. And that’s why you need
search engine optimization.
By accident your site will surely land in a search engine. And it’s likely to rank within the first few
thousand results. That’s just not good enough. Being ranked on the ninth or tenth page of search
results is tantamount to being invisible. To be noticed, your site should be ranked much higher.
Ideally you want your site to be displayed somewhere on the first three pages of results. Most people
won’t look beyond the third page, if they get even that far. The fact is, it’s the sites that fall on the
first page of results that get the most traffic, and traffic is translated into revenue, which is the ultimate
goal of search engine optimization.
To achieve a high position in search results, your site must be more than simply recognizable by a
search engine crawler. It must satisfy a set of criteria that not only gets the site cataloged, but can
also get it cataloged above most (if not all) of the other sites that fall into that category or topic.
Some of the criteria by which a search engine crawler determines the rank your site should have in
a set of results include:
Anchor text
Site popularity
Link context
Topical links
Title tags
Keywords
Site language
Content
Site maturity
There are estimated to be at least several hundred other criteria that could also be examined before
your site is ranked by a search engine. Some of the criteria listed also have multiple points of view.
For example, when looking at link context, a crawler might take into consideration where the link
is located on the page, what text surrounds it, and where it leads to or from.
These criteria are also different in importance. For some search engines, links are more important
than site maturity, and for others, links have little importance. These weights and measures are constantly
changing, so even trying to guess what is most important at any given time is a pointless exercise.
Just as you figure it out, the criteria will shift or change completely.
By nature, many of the elements are likely to have some impact on your site ranking, even when
you do nothing to improve them. However, without your attention, you’re leaving the search ranking
of your site to chance. That’s like opening a business without putting out a sign. You’re sure to
get some traffic, but because people don’t know you’re there, it won’t be anything more than the
curiosity of passersby.
Setting SEO Goals
Okay, so you understand how important it is to put time into SEO. Now, how exactly do you go
about it? One thing you don’t do is begin trying to implement SEO strategies without some sort of
goal for what you want to accomplish.
One of the greatest failings of many SEO plans, like all technology plans, is the lack of a clearly defined
goal. The goal for your SEO plan should be built around your business needs, and it’s not something
every business requires. For example, if you run a simple blog, SEO might be more expense than it’s
worth. But if your plans for that blog are to turn it into a brand, then the simplest of SEO strategies
might be just what you need to build the traffic that begins to establish your brand.
If you have a larger business, say a web site that sells custom-made silk-flower arrangements, one
way to increase your business (some estimate by more than 50 percent) is to invest time, money,
and considerable effort into optimizing your site for search. Just don’t do it without a goal in mind.
In the case of the silk-flower web site, one goal might be to increase the amount of traffic your web
site receives. Another might be to increase your exposure to potential customers outside your geographic
region.Those are both good reasons to implement an SEO plan. One other reason you might consider
investing in SEO is to increase your revenues, which you can do by funneling site visitors through
a sales transaction while they are visiting your web site. SEO can help with that, too.
So before you even begin to put together an SEO plan, the first thing you need to do is determine
what goal you want to achieve with that plan. Be sure it is a well-articulated and specifically defined
goal, too. The more specific, the closer you will come to hitting it.
For example, a goal to “increase web site traffic” is far too broad. Of course you want to increase
your web site traffic. That’s the overarching goal of any SEO plan. However, if you change that goal
to “increase the number of visitors who complete a transaction of at least $25,” you are much more
likely to implement the SEO that will indeed help you reach that goal.
Make sure the goal is specific and attainable. Otherwise, it’s very easy to become unfocused with
your SEO efforts. In some cases, you can spend all your time chasing SEO and never accomplish
anything. Search engines regularly change the criteria for ranking sites. They started doing this
when internal, incoming, and external links became a factor in SEO. Suddenly, every webmaster
was rushing to add as many additional links as possible, and often those links were completely
unrelated to the site. There was a sudden and often meaningless rise in page links. It wasn’t long
before the linking criteria had to be qualified with additional requirements.
Today, link strategies are quite complex and must abide by a set of rules or your web site could be
banned from some search engines for what’s called SEO spam, or the practice of targeting a specific
element or criteria of search engine ranking, with the intention of becoming one of the highest ranked
sites on the Web. If an SEO goal has been established, however, you’re more likely to have a balanced
traffic flow, which will improve your search engine ranking naturally.
In addition to well-focused goals, you should also consider how your SEO goals align with your
business goals. Business goals should be the overall theme for everything you do with your web
site, and if your SEO goals are not created with the intent of furthering those business goals, you’ll
find the SEO goals ultimately fail. Be sure that any goal you set for optimizing your site for search
is a goal that works well within the parameters that are set by your overall business goals.
Finally, remain flexible at all times. Get a goal, or even a set of goals. And hold tightly to them. Just
don’t hold so tightly that the goals get in the way of performing great SEO activities. SEO goals and
plans, like any others, must be flexible and must grow with your organization. For this reason, it’s
always a good idea to review your SEO goals and plans periodically — at least every six months, and
quarterly is much better.
Creating Your SEO Plan
Once you have a goal or set of goals in mind for your web site, it’s time to create your SEO plan.
The SEO plan is the document that you’ll use to stay on track as you try to implement SEO strategies
on your site.For many people, the thought of implementing SEO on a web site that includes dozens or even
hundreds of pages is overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be, though.
Prioritizing pages
Look at SEO in small, bite-size pieces. For example, instead of looking at your site as a whole, look
at each page on the site. Prioritize those pages, and then plan your SEO around each page’s priority.
Taking a single page into consideration helps to eliminate the “everything has to happen right now”
issue and makes it possible for you to create an SEO plan that will maximize your web site’s potential
in the minimum amount of time.
Top priority pages should be the ones that your visitors will most naturally gravitate to, such as
your home page, or pages that will generate the most in terms of traffic or revenue. When prioritizing
pages, you’re also creating a roadmap for your marketing efforts. If three of the pages on your
site are your top priority, those three will have the lion’s share of time, capital, and effort when it
comes to SEO and marketing.
Site assessment
After you have prioritized your site, you should assess where you stand and where you need to be
with your current SEO efforts. Again, assess each page individually, rather than the site as a whole.
In SEO, individual pages are equally important (if not more so) than the entire site. All of your
efforts are designed to rank one page above all others in search results. Which page is the most
important should be determined by your business needs.
Your SEO assessment should be a document that outlines the current standing of the main SEO
elements of each page. It should contain columns for the element of the site you’re assessing, the
current status of that element, what needs to be improved in that element, and the deadline for
improvement. It’s also helpful if you have a check box next to each item that can be marked when
improvements are completed and a column for follow-up, because SEO is a never-ending process.
The elements that should be considered during an assessment include:
Site/page tagging: The meta tags that are included in the coding of your web site are
essential to having that site listed properly in a search engine. Tags to which you should
pay specific attention are the title tags and description tags, because these are the most
important to a search engine.
Page content: How fresh is your content? How relevant is it? How often is it updated? And
how much content is there? Content is still important when it comes to search results. After
all, most people are looking for a specific piece of content, whether it’s information or a
product. If your content is stale, search engines could eventually begin to ignore your site in
favor of a site that has fresher content. There are exceptions to this generalization, however.
And one exception is if your content is, by nature, very rich but not very dynamic. Because
of the usefulness of the content, your site will probably continue to rank well. But it’s a difficult
case to determine. In most cases, fresh content is better.
Site links: Site links are essential in SEO. Crawlers and spiders look for the links into
and out of your site in order to traverse your site and collect data on each URL. However,
they also look for those links to be in-context, meaning the link must come from or lead
to a site that is relevant to the page that is being indexed. Broken links tend to be a large
problem when it comes to search engine ranking, so be sure to check that links are still
working during the assessment process.
Site map: Believe it or not, a site map will help your web site be more accurately linked.
But this is not the ordinary site map that you include to help users quickly navigate through
your site. This site map is an XML-based document, at the root of your HTML, that contains
information (URL, last updated, relevance to surrounding pages, and so on) about each
of the pages within a site. Using this XML site map will help to ensure that even the deep
pages within your site are indexed by search engines. If you don’t have a site map, you
should create one. If you do have one, make sure it’s accurate and up to date.
You can find an example SEO Assessment worksheet in Appendix D of this book. Use
this worksheet to create an accurate assessment of your web site.
Finishing the plan
With the site assessment out of the way, you should have a good idea of what areas need work and
what areas are in good shape. Don’t assume the areas that don’t currently need work will always be
perfect, however. That’s not how it works. At the least, changes to the pages will require changes to
the SEO efforts that you’re putting forth; at most they may require that you begin SEO efforts for
that page all over again.
You can now take the time to put together all of the information that you’ve gathered into a cohesive
picture of the SEO efforts you should be making. Your SEO plan is more than just a picture of
what’s there and what’s not, however. This is the document that you use to tie everything together:
current standing, marketing efforts, capital expenditures, time frames — all of it.
The document should look much like any other plan that you’ll create, for instance your business
plan. In this plan, you should have an area for background information, marketing information,
plans for growing the business, and plans for managing problems that may arise.
An SEO plan is very similar. You’ll have your current standings, the goals that you plan to hit, and
the marketing efforts that you plan to make for each page (or for the site as a whole). You’ll even
have the capital expenditures that you plan to encounter as you implement your SEO plan.
You’ll also want to include the strategies you plan to use. Those strategies can be efforts such as submitting
your site or pages from your site to directories manually and planning the content you’ll use
to draw search crawlers, or they can be keyword marketing plans or pay-per-click programs you
plan to use. Also be sure to include a time line for the testing and implementation of those efforts as
well as for regular follow-ups.Follow-up
Follow-up is also an essential part of your SEO plan. Many people believe they can develop and
implement an SEO plan and then just walk away from it. The truth is, however, that SEO is not just
a one-time event. It’s an ongoing process that requires testing, monitoring, and often re-building.
A good plan for conducting follow-ups is to plan for them quarterly. Some companies will choose to
follow up and reassess their SEO bi-annually, but to be truly effective quarterly is much better. One
thing to keep in mind, however, is that following up on your SEO efforts too soon is non-productive.
In many cases, it takes at least three months to get a clear picture of how successful your efforts are.
Conducting an evaluation before that three-month mark could have you chasing after an elusive SEO
goal that doesn’t really exist. Or worse, it could lead you away from a successful strategy.
Give your plan at least three months but no more than six between checkups. Once you create the
habit of re-evaluating your SEO efforts on that time schedule, it will be much less time consuming
than you assume.
Understanding Organic SEO
All this talk about planning for SEO is great, but what about organic SEO. You don’t have to put any
efforts into that, do you?
Don’t go foolin’ yourself. Organic SEO is just as much work as any other type of SEO. It’s just a
little different method of creating a site optimized for search ranking, without having to implement
any new technologies or spend a lot of time submitting your site to different primary and
secondary search engines. And really, the distinction here is a very general one. Only SEO purists
consider “real SEO” as being strictly organic — meaning you use no fee-based services whatever.
Most people are happy with “just plain SEO,” which usually means a combination of organic and
fee-based. It’s best if you just think of SEO as just SEO; then you don’t have to worry about distinctions
that aren’t really important in optimizing your web site.
The definitions of organic SEO vary a little, depending on whom you talk to. Some SEO experts think
it’s all about optimizing the content of your web site to catch the attention of the crawlers and spiders
that index sites. Others think it’s the number of quality links you can generate on your site. But in
truth, organic SEO is a combination of those and other elements, such as site tagging, that will naturally
place your web site in search engine rankings. How high in those rankings depends on how well
you design your site.
But before you go thinking that organic SEO is just the solution you’ve been looking for, take a step
back. What organic SEO is not is an easy way to land in a search engine. Basically, if you put a web
site online and spend a little time getting it ready for the world to see, you will have probably
achieved some measure of organic SEO without really trying.That’s because your site will probably end up listed in some search engine somewhere, without
too much time and effort from you. Elements that naturally occur on a web site — like the title of
the site, the URL, included web links, and even some of the content — will probably land you in
a search engine (unless those elements are black-hat SEO efforts, in which case the engine could
permanently exclude you). The question is where in the results will you land? Without attention
from you, that might not be as high in the rankings as you would like.
Organic SEO maximizes those naturally occurring elements, building upon each element to create
a site that will naturally fall near the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). One of the most
attractive features of organic SEO is that the methods used to achieve high SERPs rankings are of
no cost — other than the time it takes to implement these ideas.
However, there is a trade-off. Achieving organic SEO can take anywhere from three to six months.
For web site owners impatient to see results from their SEO efforts, this can seem like an eternity.
But it’s worth the extra time if the budget is an issue.
Achieving Organic SEO
Achieving organic SEO can take time, but it also takes targeting the right elements of your web site.
You can spend a lot of time tweaking aspects of your site, only to find that it still ranks below the
third page of search results. If your attention is focused on the right elements, however, you’ll find
that organic SEO can be a fairly effective method of achieving a higher search engine ranking.
Make no mistake, however; organic SEO alone is not as effective as organic SEO combined with some
form of pay-per-click or keyword advertising program. Though organic SEO is good, adding the extra,
more costly programs can be what you need to push your site right to the top of the SERPs.
A good first step in search engine optimization is to ensure that the organic elements of your site
are as optimized as possible. Although these elements are covered in detail in future chapters, here
is a look at some of the basics.
Web-site content
Web-site content is one of the most highly debated elements in search engine optimization, mostly
because many rather unethical SEO users have turned to black-hat SEO techniques, such as keyword
stuffing to try to artificially improve search engine ranking. Despite these less-than-honest approaches
to search engine optimization, however, web-site content is still an important part of any web-site
optimization strategy.
The content on your site is the main draw for visitors. Whether your site sells products or simply provides
information about services, what brings visitors to your site is the words on the page. Product
descriptions, articles, blog entries, and even advertisements are all scanned by spiders and crawlers as
they work to index the Web.One strategy of these crawlers and spiders is to examine just how the content of your page works
with all of the other elements (like links and meta tags) that are examined. To rank high in a selection
of search results, your content must be relevant to those other elements.
Some search engines will de-list your page or lower your page rank if the content of your site is not
unique. Especially since the advent of blogs, search engines now are examining how frequently the
content on pages is updated and looking for content that appears only on your web site. This doesn’t
mean you can’t have static content on your page. For e-commerce sites, the product descriptions may
rarely change.
But including other elements on the page, like reviews or product updates, will satisfy a crawler’s
requirement that content change regularly. Content is an important part of your site and the ranking
of your site in search engine results. To achieve organic SEO, take the time to develop a content
plan that not only outlines what should be included on each page of your site, but also how often
that content will be updated, and who will do the updates.
One other element you might want to consider when looking at your page content as part of SEO
is the keywords that you plan to use. Ideally, your chosen words should appear on the page several
times. But again, this is a balancing act that might take some time to accomplish.
Chapter 4 contains additional information about keywords and how to use them to
improve your search engine ranking.
Keywords are part of your site content, and as such require special attention. In fact, the selection
of the right keywords is a bit of an art form that takes some time to master. For example, if your
web site is dedicated to selling products for show dogs, you might assume that “show dogs” would
be a perfect keyword. You might be wrong. Selecting the right keywords requires a good understanding
of your audience and what they might be looking for when they want to find your web
site. People looking for products for show dogs could search for “grooming products,” “pedigree
training,” or just “dog supplies.” It could even be something entirely different, like the name of a
product that was featured at the most recent dog show.
Learning which keyword will be most effective for your site will require that you study your audience,
but it also requires some trial and error. Try using different keywords each quarter to learn
which ones work the best.
It’s also advised that you use a tracking program such as Google Analytics to monitor your web site
traffic and to track the keywords that most often lead users to your site.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free web site statistics application that you can use to track your web site traffic.
You can access Google Analytics by going to http://www.google.com/analytics. You are
required to have a Google user name to access the program.If you do not have a Google user name, you can create one when you sign up for the application. It’s
simple. Provide your e-mail address and a password, type the verification word from the graphic provided,
and then read the Terms of Service and click “I accept. Create my account.”
Once you’ve created your user name and password, accessing the tracking capabilities of Google is
no problem. You’ll need to copy a snippet of text that Google provides into the coding of your web
site. Once you’ve added the code to your site it will take a few days for Google to gather enough
information to provide reports about your site, and as much as two months to gather enough data
to give you real insight into your site. But once there is enough data, you’ll have access to the keywords
that most often lead visitors to your site.
Google Analytics can also be combined with Google’s AdWords program to provide paid keyword
tracking and information. To learn more about Google Analytics, check out the book Google Analytics
2.0 by Mary Tyler and Jerri Ledford (Wiley, Aug 2007, ISBN: 978-0470175019). It should be noted
that Google Analytics doesn’t track spiders and crawlers at this time, however, so there may be some
limitations to its SEO functionality. Still, if you need a (free) tool to help you examine some of the
metrics surrounding your SEO efforts, Google Analytics is a good starting point.
Internal and external links
Another element of organic SEO that’s just as important as your web-site content is the links on your
pages. Links can be incoming, outgoing, or internal. And where those links lead or come from is as
important as the context in which the links are provided.
When links first became a criteria by which crawlers ranked web sites, many black-hat SEO users
rushed to create link farms. These were pages full of nothing but web links, some of which led to
relevant information and some of which led to sites in no way related to the topic of the web site. It
didn’t take long for search engine designers and programmers to catch on to these shady practices
and change the way that crawlers use links to rank sites.
Today, links must usually be related to the content of the page, and they must link to something
relevant to that content. In other words, if your links don’t go to or lead in from pages that match
the keywords that you’re using, they will be of little value to you.
The balance of links that are included on your page is also relevant. Too many links and your
site could be labeled as a link farm. Too few and you’ll lose out to sites that have more and
better-targeted links.
Your best option when including links on your web site is to link to the pages you know for sure
are relevant to your site content. Don’t include a link unless you’re sure it will have value to your
users, and then take the time to pursue links into your site from them as well.
One other type of link, the internal link, is also important. This is a navigational link that leads users
from one page to another on your site. The navigation of your site (which is what these links are,
essentially) should be intuitive, and natural in progression. And you should also include a site map.Your site map not only makes it easier for crawlers to index every page of your site, but it also makes
it easier for users to find their way around in it. Ideally, users will never have to rely on the site map;
however, it’s nice for it to be there in the event that they either need it or simply want to click directly
to the page they’re seeking.
How you design your site map is a matter of preference. Some organizations create site maps that
only include the top two levels of pages. Others include ones that go three levels down or deeper.
Whatever level of depth you think will be required by the majority of users is how deep your site
map should go. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that site maps can become just as overwhelming
as any other navigational structure if there are hundreds of pages in your site.
Design your site map so it’s easy to decipher and will take users to the pages they are seeking without
difficulty and confusion.
User experience
User experience is a little harder to quantify than other site-ranking elements. It’s easy to say that
users will find your site simple to use, that they will find the information or products that they’re
seeking, or that they will have reason to return to your site. But in practice, that’s a little more difficult
to achieve.
So, how in the world can a site gain search engine ranking by user experience? It’s fairly simple
really. Search engines today are smarter than they have ever been. They may not be able to make
you a grilled cheese sandwich, but they can certainly keep track of what results users click when
they run a search. Those result selections are essential to adding to the organic ranking of your site.
Here’s a scenario. Say you search for something like health-insurance information. When the search
results come up, how are you going to choose which results to look at? Most users read the small
descriptive lines that are included with the search engine ranking and select from those.
In most cases, the sites that are visited are those sites that are highest in the rankings. But search
engines also monitor which sites are actually clicked on, so let’s say you search through the results
and click a link on the fifth page. And suppose several other people do so as well.
That link on the fifth page is going to show more traffic than links that are higher in the results, so
smart search engines will move that page higher in the rankings. It may not jump right up to the number
one position, but it’s entirely possible for the site to move from the fifth page of rankings to the second
or third. This is part of the equation used when user experience is taken into consideration.
Another part of that experience might be how quickly the user jumps back to the search page. Maybe
when you click that link on the fifth page, you can tell when you hit the site that it’s not the page you
were looking for (or doesn’t contain the information or product that you were looking for). You click
the back button, and you’re taken back to the page of search results.
This is called bounce, and the rate at which users bounce off your site is an indicator of the usability
of the site in terms of how relevant it is to what users are searching for. This relates directly to the
keywords the user searched for, which relates directly to how your site matches those keywords.
To maximize the usability of your site, make sure the keywords you choose and the description of
your page are as accurate as possible.
It may take some time for you to learn how to make all of these elements work together, especially
when it comes to elements like descriptions and keywords. Be patient, and be willing to experiment
with different combinations of words or descriptions until you hit on the ones that combine to send
your site rank closer to the top search results. Just remember, it’s an art more than a science, and it
takes time (usually two to three months) to see the most accurate results.
Site interactivity
When the Internet first came into being, web sites were all about disclosing information. The only
interaction between a web site and a user was the reading the user did while on the site. Today, reading
is still important. Users search for web sites to learn more about products, services, or topics.
However, there’s much more to web sites today than just text on a screen.
We now live in the Interactive Age. Most of us want to interact with the web sites we’re visiting. That
interaction might take the form of a poll, the ability to comment on a blog post, the downloading of
a file, or even a game that relates to the site content. No matter what the type of interaction, users
expect it, and search crawlers look for it.
Site interactivity is essential to achieving a high SEO ranking. Sure, you can garner a high ranking
without interaction, bit it won’t happen nearly as fast, and the ranking will likely be lower than that
of a site that has some form of interaction with the user.
Why is interaction so important? Simple. If you can influence a user to interact with your site, you
have more of a chance of gaining a goal conversion. Goal conversions are the completion of some
form of activity designed to gather further information about your user. A goal conversion can be
something as simple as enticing users to sign up for a newsletter, or it can be more specific, like
persuading them to make purchases.
No matter what goal conversion you’re seeking, the way to achieve it is through interactivity. And
the more frequently the user interacts with your site, the more likely it is that this person will reach
that goal conversion page that you’re monitoring so closely.
Goal conversion is the purpose of many web sites. For example, the target goal conversion for an
e-commerce web site might be for the user to make a $25 purchase. If you can entice a user to purchase
from your site — that is, meet the goal conversion — you have more of a chance of getting
them back to your site for a future purchase, to find additional information, or simply to interact
with your site some more.
All of these are important aspects of your web site’s traffic patterns. And search engines will look for
elements of interactivity to judge the value of your site to users. One goal of search engines is to provide
value to users. Those users turn to the search engine for help in finding something specific.
Just as it’s important for your site to land high in the search results, it’s important for the search
engine to provide the information that a user seeks within the first page or two. Making the user
happy is one way search companies make their money. Another way is through the dollars that
advertisers will pay to have their pages ranked high in the search results or their advertisements
shown according to the keywords for which the user was searching.
In other words, search engine optimization is two-way street. It’s also a business, and search engine
companies are always trying to find ways to improve their business. For that reason, these elements,
and many others, are an essential part of search engine optimization.
Organic SEO is certainly not easy to achieve. One way to achieve it is to have a solid SEO plan that
outlines where you are and what needs to be added to your site design or content to make it more
visible to users. It also takes a lot of time and effort to create and implement the right SEO plan.
However, if you use your SEO plan as a stepping stone, even for organic SEO, you’ll stay focused
and eventually, you’ll achieve the search engine ranking that you’ve been working toward.